TRUMP ADMIN CORRUPT

maybe belated/ INCLUDES INEPTELECTION FUCKERY CLETA HONEY

HEADER ATTACH 10 26? = ? Trump's aides: In public, he's declaring victory but behind closed doors the talk is very different​​​​

no merri

four years of plague followed by two years of pandemic

SEE CRYPTO-CURRENCY

SEE CORRUPT 3 KAKI-KLEPTO

SEE GOP STEAL ELECTION

SEE FASCISM ~ RULE OF LAW EXTRAJUD KILLING

SEE FREE & FAIR ELECTIONS ~

SEE TRUMP PARDONS

see HOMAN

SEE GRIFT

SEE REV DOOR

SEE DON JR 3 EXEC BRANCH CLUB

SEE SWAMP THINGS/INSIDE THE WIRE

SEE INAUGURATION

SEE GOP WASTE FRAUD

includes inept

SEE GREGG PHILLIPS FEMA CORRUPT QANON

see regulatory capture, agency dismantle, gubmint dereg 5

i forgot, maybe about alum pension plans 1021?

broken code see bak

see trump Town (early)

prolly neglected, see kushner

extending beyond quid pro quo bribery to include EPA dereg

-=-=

TRENT MORSE TAYLOR FARM

----

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump

=-=-=

-=-=

CHRIS HAYES MONTAGE OF INCOMP GREEK AMB KIMBERLY NEW SPOX

// THOM 10 26

Put an alcoholic B-list weekend TV guy in charge of the Pentagon, a plumber in charge of DHS, a fracking guy in charge of Energy, a wrestling billionaire in charge of Education, a brain-worm-disabled former heroin- and sex-addicted lawyer in charge of our nation’s health, let a ketamine-addled trillionaire rip apart our federal government and destroy our soft power around the world by taking down USAID, shut down our pro-democracy propaganda operations (VOA, etc.), put a weight-loss “miracle pill” hawker in charge of Medicare and Medicaid, a C-list former reality TV star in charge of our airlines, his own criminal defense lawyer to run the coverup of Epstein at the Department of Justice, etc. The list is virtually endless.

-=-=

-=-=

On Thursday, Daily Beast columnist David Rothkopf laid out the true breadth of President Donald Trump's "epidemic" of lies, and detailed the "grim" consequences if they go unchecked. According to Rothkopf, under Trump's leadership, the government has gone "braindead," and if he and his allies have their way, the American people will be next.

"This administration has waged war on the First Amendment and is the least transparent in history, while it is erratic and chaotic and the goat rodeo to end all clusterf–ks, there is one thing about which we can be absolutely certain," writes Rothkopf. "It lies. The president lies. His soon-to-depart press secretary lies… and so will her replacement, no matter who that is. His director of communications lies. His Cabinet secretaries lie."

The harms caused by these lies, asserts Rothkopf, have touched nearly every aspect of American life. As he explains, "When economic data is released, it is no longer reliable. When casualty counts for military actions are announced, they are wrong. When new policy initiatives are announced, what we’re sure of is that the ones that might help us will never happen and the ones that appear crazy or ill-conceived will surely turn out worse than we can imagine. When big deals are announced, we know that there are side deals we will never hear of."

Rothkopf argues that we can't believe any benefit or information the administration claims to offer, writing, "Did DOGE save us money or enhance government efficiency? No. Will the Make America Healthy Movement make us healthier? The opposite. When the insanity of RFK Jr. and his quack clack leads to disease outbreaks, contaminated food and viral misinformation, the only thing we know for sure is that these unqualified nutcases are lacing their announcements with science they read off a tile over a urinal at an 1-95 rest stop.

Wherever possible, mendacious goons kill or pervert or attempt to coopt reliable sources of government data, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to the National Weather Bureau. Look out your window; do you see a baked landscape? Shriveling crops? Europe in flames from wildfires? Well, try to find information about climate change on a government website — it’s not there. There is no climate change, folks."

Trump's allies, says Rothkopf, feed into the lies. For example, while hard data shows that the Republicans are poised to take major losses in the upcoming midterms, "what kind of predictions do you hear from the White House, the Keebler Elf serving as Speaker of the House, or the confederacy of dunces in the GOP caucuses? That it’s all gonna be great!

Prosperity is around the corner. (It must be. Scott Bessent said it would be.) Peace is around the corner. (It must be. Marco Rubio said it would be.) Big victories are coming. (They must be. Because Dear Leader says so and he is never wrong.)"

What's more, writes Rothkopf, the American people not only know they're being lied to, but "we also know that behind their lies are malevolent intentions, incompetence, pathological personalities, ignorance and corruption. They are not just unleashing a never-ending torrent of falsehoods, but they are doing it to hide a destructive agenda in which the people of the United States are very often the intended victims." And other nations know Trump is lying to them too.

Rothkopf says the situation arose "because we stopped giving proper value to the character of our leaders, and like a virulent epidemic, the flaws of those we elevated then spread so rapidly that they now threaten the very life of our republic. That’s no exaggeration." He argues, "The only path out is that each of us, individually, makes seeking the truth our top priority, and skepticism our constant ally. We must seek out reliable sources of information and reject those who deliver anything less. For voters, it is also essential we become intolerant of liars in government, media, the corporate world, academia — anywhere...Demand proof. Demand evidence. Make people work for your trust."

He concludes on a dire note, warning, "In the best case, if we reject lies and demand truth again — starting with November’s elections — it will still take many years to restore trust in the U.S. government at home and abroad. But if we fail to, if we allow the lies to triumph yet again, we may well live the rest of our lives in this new grim, unnecessarily, tragically dark age, and with the fear that must carry with it."

-=-=

MPU 7 26

VULCAN elements, a three year old startup with 30 employees that makes rare earth magnets.

In August 2025, 1789, invested in Vulcan as a part of a $65 million funding round.

Three months later, the Pentagon gave them a $620 million loan.

the push for this loan came directly from Peter Navarro, Trump's senior trade adviser and a close personal friend of Don Jr.

So close that Don Jr visited Navarro in prison and was one of the few people Navarro's latest book was dedicated He's a friend legitimately can't believe that this is happening to him,

One Pentagon employee told ProPublica that the call came, quote, from the white House.

---

bannon mma 7 26

June 30, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): SAVE America Act — a lot of people are saying, hey, do we have time to implement it? Are we going to have lawsuits? But President Trump is driving forward. We're a huge proponent of that.

We also know that Bill Pulte is at DNI, and that John Solomon of Real America's Voice is leading a task force on declassification. And yesterday, Pulte hired, from the RNC, as his chief of staff, one of the top election fraud people in all of the RNC to be his chief of staff. So he's telling you where he's — signaling where he's going on this.

My understanding — I don't have any access to this classified information — but my understanding is that there is going to be real revelations about the stealing of the 2020 election.-

---

---

AN 5 26 PRETY GOOD LIST OF DAMAGE BY CABINET

Nikita Khrushchev famously said, “We will bury you” (“My vas pokhoronim”) to Western ambassadors in Moscow on November 18, 1956. Seventy years later, it appears that Russia’s goal is being realized.

Putin called Trump last Wednesday and they talked for almost two hours. Fewer than three days later, America announced we’re pulling 5,000 US troops out of the NATO forces in Germany, accomplishing a 60-year-long Russian goal. Trump also ended sanctions on Russian oil, handing the Putin regime billions in revenue, while continuing to block U.S. weapons delivery to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, HHS Secretary brainworm-infected heroin addict Bob Kennedy has hollowed out America’s core public health infrastructure and elevated anti-vaccine messaging, undermining trust in immunization and disease prevention. The result is a sicker and more vulnerable America as measles and whooping cough outbreaks spread across the nation and U.S. science leadership in the world has been kneecapped.

Over at the Pentagon, Whiskey Pete Hegseth, whose mother says he abuses women, has purged senior career leadership of women and Blacks and weakened the independence of the JAG corps, eroding professional military norms and devastating morale. He’s stupidly burned through so much ordnance with his illegal, unconstitutional Middle East war crimes that our military readiness and deterrence capacity are at an all-time low in the modern era.

Through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Nazi-saluting, multiple-baby-producing billionaire Elon Musk has impaired basic federal functions and hollowed out institutional expertise. When he destroyed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), killing millions in the Third World, both China and Russia swept in to fill the vacuum and secure key natural resources and strategic military outposts.

Over at the Voice Of America, conspiracy nut Kari Lake has turned the network from independent journalism into a right-wing propaganda operation that delights Putin and damages U.S. credibility abroad, weakening a cornerstone of America’s advocacy for democracy and soft power.

With ICE and an ever-expanding network of concentration camps, brutal racist Stephen Miller has driven hardline immigration policies that gut asylum processes and expand detention (even for children), straining courts, destroying our reputation around the world, and devastating tourism.

Over at the Office of Management and Budget, billionaire-lapdog and neofascist ideologue Russell Vought has weaponized budget authority to illegally defund agencies and programs Congress authorized, concentrating power in the hands of the president, undermining constitutional checks, and destabilizing federal operations.

The FBI has been weaponized by the unqualified drunk Ka$h Patel (as he brands himself), politicizing investigations and purging career officials, weakening the bureau’s independence and ability to fight actual crime, while complicating intelligence cooperation with allies.

After showboat Kristi Noem destroyed the credibility of DHS with mass detention policies and multiple unaccountable murders of American citizens, former plumber Markwayne Mullen continues to gut civil liberties safeguards and execute Miller’s vision of a nearly-all-white America.

Wrestling billionaire Linda McMahon is actively vandalizing the Department of Education, cutting support for public schools and student protections in ways that widen inequality and weaken long-term workforce competitiveness.

Climate change denier and fracking company CEO Chris Wright now runs the Department of Energy, which has been redirected toward aggressive fossil fuel expansion while obliterating clean-energy initiatives, making America weaker and more vulnerable to both climate disasters and oil supply disruptions.

Under fossil fuel shill Doug Burgum’s leadership at Interior, the National Park Service is being dismantled by political interference, workforce depletion, corruption, and the systematic erasure of American history. He’s prioritized drilling and mining over conservation, producing long-term environmental damage, while corruptly moving $100 million in our tax dollars over to a group run by Trump loyalists.

At the Department of Justice Pam Bondi (who dropped an investigation into Trump University when he gave her campaign $25,000), and now Trump’s former criminal defense attorney and Ghislaine Maxwell buddy Todd Blanche continue to hide the Trump-Epstein files and have gutted enforcement against polluters, fraudsters, and other white-collar criminals while pushing hard to torment and bankrupt with malicious prosecution those individuals who’ve called out Trump’s corruption.

Failed reality-TV star Sean Duffy now runs the Transportation Department, where oversight has been loosened in key safety and infrastructure areas. The result is increased risk for the traveling public in aviation, rail, and roadway systems while much-needed modernization has been delayed or killed off altogether.

Billionaire Scott Bessent controls America’s Treasury as he pushes deregulation and financial concentration, helping his fellow billionaires while increasing the systemic risk that inevitably hits homeowners, small investors, and ordinary working people like it did in 2008.

Billionaire and former Epstein Island buddy Howard Lutnick now runs the Commerce Department, pushing Trump’s tariffs and politicized trade decisions, disrupting supply chains and straining longstanding relationships with trading partners while exploding inflation here at home.

Real estate billionaire Steve Witkoff, with no diplomatic experience whatsoever, has screwed up our negotiations with Iran to the point that gas is now pushing five bucks a gallon here and the world is horrified. His sons hooked up with the Trump kids to make millions off their dads’ government jobs, as Witkoff himself regularly travels to Moscow to consult with Putin.

Rightwing crank Brooke Rollins runs USDA programs that have been reshaped to favor large agribusiness over small and mid-size farms while stripping millions of American children from food stamps and school meals, hitting rural America particularly hard.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, carbon hustler Lee Zeldin has rolled back pollution and climate regulations while reducing enforcement capacity, delighting Putin and increasing profits for fossil fuel billionaires.

Scott Turner is turning HUD from a pro-housing agency into one that pushes rightwing talking points and is shedding programs designed to give housing access to low-income and homeless families.

Putin-friendly Tulsi Gabbard now oversees the nation’s Intelligence agencies, politicizing their assessments while sidelining career analysts and distorting threat reporting. As a result, our allies have become less willing to share sensitive intelligence and Russia’s power is increased.

And at the State Department, Marco Rubio has hollowed out diplomatic staff and reduced emphasis on alliances and multilateral engagement, weakening U.S. influence and opening space for Russia and China to set the agenda.

This list is an operational blueprint, the kind of document a hostile foreign intelligence service might draw up if it had been handed unlimited access to the executive branch and told to dismantle the American republic from inside without firing a single shot:

— Hollow out the public health system so disease can do its work,

— Demoralize the officer corps and burn through munitions in unconstitutional wars,

— Terminate the diplomats and intelligence professionals who keep allies aligned,

— Replace independent journalism with state propaganda at Voice of America,

— Defund the agencies Congress created,

— Abandon the clean energy transition that would have weakened OPEC and Russia simultaneously,

— Politicize the FBI and DOJ so they target dissenters instead of crooks,

— And turn armed, masked ICE thugs loose to terrorize immigrant communities while training the rest of us to accept anonymous federal agents disappearing our neighbors into massive concentration camps.

Every line item that would appear on such a plan has been checked off in the last 14 months, executed by a Cabinet of grifters, ideologues, and 13 billionaires whose loyalty runs to Trump and the morbidly rich rather than to the nation whose Constitution they swore an oath to defend.

When Louise and I lived in Germany back in the 1980s, we could feel what the American military presence meant to the Germans we shared meals and beers with. The GIs at Ramstein and Grafenwöhr weren’t an abstraction or a budget line; they were the visible, daily reassurance that the United States had learned the lessons of 1914 and 1939 and that we would never again let Europe sleepwalk into catastrophe.

Older Germans I met would talk about the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Airlift the way Americans of that generation talked about Pearl Harbor or the moon landing, with a kind of stunned gratitude that another country had voluntarily done such a thing for them.

That moral capital, accumulated over eight decades and across both Republican and Democratic administrations, is precisely what Trump’s people set on fire this week, with the Pentagon’s announced 5,000-troop withdrawal coming on the heels of that nearly two-hour Putin call and Trump’s weekend promise that we’re cutting “a lot further” still.

In Europe, Boris Pistorius, Donald Tusk, Friedrich Merz, and Keir Starmer are now openly discussing how to defend the continent without us, which is exactly the world Vladimir Putin has been trying to engineer ever since the day he first took over the Kremlin.

The grim irony of Khrushchev’s famous threat is that he never literally meant we’d be “buried” by a tank or warhead (although rightwingers loved to claim it did).

The Russian phrase “My vas pokhoronim” was a Marxist taunt lifted from Marx’s line about the proletariat being capitalism’s gravedigger, and what Khrushchev was actually saying — as he later explained at length in Yugoslavia — was that history itself would do the work because socialism would outlast and replace what he called the rotting capitalist order.

He was wrong on the substance, of course, since the Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1991, buried by its own corruption and by the open society it had spent half a century trying to subvert. But he may have been right about something deeper than ideology: a great power can absolutely be killed from the inside by people who pretend to govern while methodically removing every load-bearing wall in the structure just to enrich themselves.

That’s the project Trump’s Cabinet is executing in plain sight right now, and the only force on earth capable of stopping it is the same force that both beat back fascism in 1945 and, after the Republican Great Depression, built the very institutions we’re watching get demolished: ordinary Americans deciding we’ve finally had enough.

---

---}:

AN PP 5 26

When President Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election, the institutional guardrails of American democracy held — but just barely.

If faced with the same tests today, those guardrails and the people who held the line would largely be missing, a ProPublica examination found.

At least 75 career officials who once held roles at federal agencies related to election integrity and safety are gone. Two dozen appointees — including many who either actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote or are associates of such people — have been hired to replace them. And once-fringe actors now have access to vast powers.

As the midterms approach, current and former government officials and election security experts expressed concerns that Trump appointees who’ve espoused debunked conspiracy theories about balloting are now in positions to control the narrative around the vote’s soundness.

It’s hard to debunk false claims “coming with the seal of the federal government,” said Derek Tisler, counsel and manager with the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program. “I certainly worry what damage that could do to voters’ confidence.”

Here are some of the key things you should know about the Trump administration’s efforts to, as the president said, “take over” the midterms. Read the full investigation here.

1. In 2020, institutional guardrails helped to prevent Trump from overturning the election.

Following his defeat in the 2020 election, Trump pushed for federal officials to uncover proof that he had, in fact, beaten Joe Biden at the polls. Election cybersecurity experts with the Department of Homeland Security relayed to Attorney General William Barr that the election fraud claims that they looked into were false. Barr then told the president what he didn’t want to hear: The election had not been hacked.

Barr was one of many federal officials — most of them Trump appointees — who refused to bend to the president’s demands, which only intensified in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. Despite the violent uprising at the Capitol on that day, the election results held firm.

2. Less than 18 months into his second term, Trump has dismantled many of those same guardrails.

Since the start of his second term, Trump and his appointees have made significant changes at federal agencies tasked with helping to safeguard elections. In all, at least 75 career officials who’d played important roles in elections work at DHS, the Department of Justice and other agencies have left, been fired or been reassigned, ProPublica found.

In their place are roughly two dozen people Trump has installed in positions that could affect elections. Ten of them actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote, and the rest are associates of those people. In some cases, ProPublica found, officials have been hired from activist groups that are pillars of the election-denial movement.

3. Among the first agencies Trump gutted after returning to office was one that had repeatedly disproved his stolen-election claims.

Officials at DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had provided research to the first Trump White House that disproved many theories claiming that the 2020 election had been hacked. CISA also played a crucial part in publicly countering these claims by producing a “Rumor Control” website to rebut them.

Then, only weeks into Trump’s second term, DHS leadership put employees focused on countering disinformation and helping safeguard elections on leave. They also froze CISA’s other election security work, which included assessing local election offices for physical and cybersecurity risks. Eventually, all CISA employees specializing in elections were fired or transferred.

A DHS spokesperson told ProPublica that the changes at CISA were in response to “a ballooning budget concealing a dangerous departure from its statutory mission,” which included “electioneering instead of defending America’s critical infrastructure.”

4. Trump and his appointees have gutted election-related teams at federal law enforcement agencies.

FBI Director Kash Patel dismantled the agency’s public corruption team, which had previously been deployed to help monitor possible criminal activity on Election Day. The Foreign Influence Task Force, which aimed to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics, was also disbanded.

(An FBI spokesperson said the bureau “remains committed to detecting and countering foreign influence efforts by adversarial nations.”)

The voting section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division had enforced federal laws that protect voting rights, particularly those that combat racial discrimination. But now, nearly all of the section’s roughly 30 career lawyers have resigned or been moved. Trump then filled the section with conservative lawyers, including at least four who participated in challenging the 2020 vote or have worked with people who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.

5. Trump has replaced ousted career specialists with “Team America.”

In the summer of 2025, after the Trump administration had forced out most of the career specialists, a small group of political appointees — which once called itself “Team America,” according to sources familiar with the matter — began convening at DHS headquarters, looking for federal levers it could pull to realize a March 2025 executive order, in which Trump tried to exert greater federal control over aspects of voting.

Among the core members of the group was David Harvilicz, a DHS assistant secretary tasked with overseeing the security of election infrastructure, including voting machines, and three of his top staffers. As ProPublica has reported, Harvilicz co-founded an AI company with an architect of Trump’s claims about election hacking in Michigan.

Heather Honey, who serves under Harvilicz in a newly created position focused on elections, is a source of the false claim that more ballots were cast in Pennsylvania than there were voters in the 2020 presidential election — a claim Trump cited on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.

At least 11 administration appointees, including Honey, have ties to the Election Integrity Network, a conservative grassroots organization led by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. Since moving into government, Honey has maintained close ties to Mitchell’s organization, and she and at least two other federal officials have given its members private briefings.

6. Team America members are using a powerful Homeland Security Investigations tool to try to identify noncitizen voters.

The DOJ has been demanding that states turn over confidential voter roll information, and it has sued around 30 states for this data.

Meanwhile, DHS has urged states to upload their voter rolls to its tool, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.

The goal in both efforts has been to find noncitizens on the voter rolls. But the SAVE tool has come up short, often identifying citizens as noncitizens, as ProPublica has reported, and officials have faced other roadblocks with its use.

More recently, according to two people familiar with the matter, Team America has worked to harness a more powerful tool used by another branch of DHS, Homeland Security Investigations, to increase its ability to search for noncitizen voters and bring criminal charges against them.

In response to questions sent to DHS, Harvilicz and Honey, a DHS spokesperson disputed that they were seeking to use the department’s powers to advantage Trump. In response to questions about their ties to the election denial movement, the spokesperson wrote, “To meet the diverse and evolving challenges the Department faces, we hire experts with diverse backgrounds who go through a rigorous vetting process.”

7. Trump’s head of election security is behind the FBI’s seizure of 2020 election ballots in Georgia.

Attorney Kurt Olsen once worked to try to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in court and was later sanctioned by judges for making baseless allegations about Arizona elections. He is now Trump’s director of election security and integrity and is the driving force behind the January raid of the election center in Fulton County, Georgia.

Toward the end of 2025, Olsen flew to Georgia to meet with Paul Brown, the head of the FBI’s Atlanta field office, according to people familiar with the matter. Olsen wanted the FBI to seize ballots from the Democratic stronghold, and he gave Brown a report he claimed would justify the extraordinary action. Brown’s team submitted an affidavit to superiors at the DOJ that did not make a strong enough case to move forward with what Olsen wanted. Afterward, Brown was given a choice: retire or be moved to a new office. Brown retired. The raid went forward under his replacement, based on an affidavit that cited information from the report Olsen provided to Brown.

Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.

An FBI spokesperson said that Brown “elected to retire” and that its “work in the election security space is entirely consistent with the law.”

8. The DOJ’s Public Integrity Section could have tried to block the administration’s Georgia voting investigation.

In the months following Trump’s return to office, the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, which had been responsible for making sure the department’s inquiries weren’t improperly influenced by politics, was eviscerated. Resignations, firings and transfers reduced the 36-person section to two.

Multiple former lawyers for the section said they likely would have tried to block the Fulton County investigation because it lacked strong evidence, had a clear political slant and went against department directives that actions should not be taken “for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”

John Keller was principal deputy chief of the section from 2020 to 2025 and was acting chief when he resigned in early 2025. He worries that allegations of irregularities in the upcoming election will be handled on a partisan basis.

“Without that review and without apolitical, objective, honest brokers involved in the process, there is a much greater risk for intentional manipulation or inadvertent interference,” Keller said.

---

AN 4 26

President Donald Trump's Navy secretary revealed "we screwed up."

The USS Boise, a nuclear sub is being taken offline after spending about $800 million trying to overhaul it. The goal was to use what they have and rebuild, but the costs are mounting, and it isn't even halfway completed. The full maintenance cost could reach $1.9 billion. So, they've decided to scrap it and build a new one instead,Semafor reported on Friday.

Secretary John Phelan said that Trump is aiming for a new "Golden Fleet" of ships. His 2027 budget allocated less than $42 billion for 19 new battle force ships.

“We screwed up,” said Phelan, who said he was embracing “radical transparency” now that he's in charge. “We did. This doesn’t look good. It is what it is. Time to move on, and try to get going in the future and move forward.”

A Congressional Budget Office report cited that building a modern equivalent of the Boise, a Los Angeles-class submarine (SSN-764), would cost about $8.7 billion. The Navy calculates it closer to $7.1 billion. A 2024 report from The National Interest said, "Modern aircraft carriers, like the U.S. Navy’s Gerald R. Ford-class, cost around $13 billion each due to their immense complexity and advanced technology."

Trump's "golden fleet" demand would be "battleships described as highly advanced and heavily armed. The proposal requests $65.8 billion for shipbuilding, aiming to produce 18 battle force ships, 16 non-battle vessels, as well as an increase in public shipyard capacity," Business Insider reported.

“I think, by killing these programs, it’s sending a message that we’re not going to continue to send good money after bad investments, and that we’re going to try to make prudent economic decisions that are in the best interest of the fleet and the force,” Phelan explained.

He implied, however, that Trump's $65.8 billion budget request for shipbuilding won't be enough to meet the goal Trump has set for ship production.

“The ’27 budget [will have] a very big impact on this, and in trying to get after it, and really an exponential increase in our readiness,” Phelan said.

---

see soc sec guy B

---

AN 3 26

The White House was a revolving door during Donald Trump's first presidency, which found him clashing with many of his appointees and announcing their firings on social media. Firings of administration officials, however, haven't been nearly as common during Trump's second term, as he has made a point of surrounding himself with MAGA loyalists. But on Thursday, March 5, the news broke that Trump was firing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and nominating Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma).

Noem wasn't the only one who was fired that week. CBS News reported that Todd Inman had been fired the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

In a statement to CBS News, Inman said he learned he was being fired on March 6. And details on possible reasons why he was fired emerged on March 9.

"To date," Inman told CBS News on March 8, "I have not received any reason for this termination."

But CBS News' Jennifer Jacobs, on March 9, tweeted, "NEWS: White House is citing use of alcohol on the job, harassment of staff, misuse of govt resources as reasons Todd Inman removed from National Transportation Safety Board, per @CBSNews @emmacnicholso . Inman was the NTSB's initial on-scene spokesman at midair collision in D.C. He said Sunday he hadn't been given reason for dismissal."

Inman served in the U.S. Department of Transportation during Trump's first presidency, reporting to then-Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao (who is married to former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell).

Inman, on March 8, referenced the aviation disasters that occurred during his time on the NTSB.

Inman told CBS News, "Having been the member on scene for two of the largest aviation incidents in the past two decades, working with all of the impacted families and first responders has made me appreciate how the original mission of the NTSB is more crucial now than ever before. Witnessing these horrible accidents have undoubtedly taken a toll on me and my family and has changed my perspective in a positive way on how we regulate safety for the traveling public."

Inman's firing is generating a lot of comments on X.

Inside Elections' Nathan Gonzales tweeted, "Kind of interesting reasoning in light of news about another Cabinet official."

Business consultant John Hochroth posted, "Are they firing him because he did these things, or because he didn't do enough of them?"

X user Jocelyn Johnson remarked, "Real reason for his dismissal: he refused to blame DEI for the crash."

Another X user, Piper Holmes, wrote, "So basically we’ll never know why he was fired. (It's not like this administration is ever truthful)."

---

AN 3 26

During his first presidency, Donald Trump famously clashed with a long list of traditional conservatives he appointed — including a secretary of state (Rex Tillerson), two U.S. attorneys general (Jeff Sessions, Bill Barr), a national security director (John Bolton), a White House chief of staff (Gen. John F. Kelly), a defense secretary (Jim Mattis), and, in the end, a vice president (Mike Pence). Some of the conservatives who served in the first Trump Administration, including former U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Miles Taylor, Pence staffer Olivia Troye, and ex-White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham), endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024.

But the second Trump Administration is considerably different. Although Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a traditional conservative, far-right MAGA Republicans dominate Trump's administration this time. And Trump made a point of picking mostly staunch loyalists this time.

In an article published by The Guardian on March 1, journalist David Smith stresses that although Trump's second administration is a "clown car," there are no signs that a shakeup is coming anytime soon.

"In the past two weeks alone," Smith explains, "(Democrats) saw a health secretary who boasted about snorting cocaine off toilet seats; a homeland security secretary who allegedly fired a pilot for leaving her blanket on a plane; and an FBI director who chugged beer with Olympic hockey players in Italy at taxpayers' expense. In all of U.S. history, there has never been government leadership quite like it."

Smith continues, "Although these individuals swear undying fealty to the president, their colorful and erratic antics may prove his political undoing. Yet there is no hint that the man who became famous for saying 'You're fired!' on reality TV has any intention of casting them aside."

Seneca Project founder Tara Setmayer, a Never Trump conservative, believes that Trump is now leading the worst administration in U.S. history.

Setmayer told The Guardian, "If you elect a clown, he brings the circus. This is the Cabinet that we currently have. It is the most corrupt, incompetent, and embarrassing Cabinet in the history of the United States, and unfortunately, it's the American people who are paying for it, literally and figuratively. When you look at Donald Trump's Cabinet, and how they have performed, you have to ask yourself: How are any of these people making America great again?"

Elections expert Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, draws a major distinction between the first Trump Administration and the second.

Sabato told The Guardian, "There were actually some good people in Trump's first Cabinet, which probably saved us, saved the country. But this time, I don't recall a Cabinet in my lifetime with this many problematic characters who are just awful and who normally would never have been selected and if somehow they'd slipped through would have been fired by now. Trump keeps them around because, in a way, they may look him better. They're so awful…. You have to use this kind of twisted psychology in analyzing Trump."

---

an 2 26

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), led by Secretary Kristi Noem, hired 21-year-old Peyton Rollins — a former U.S. Labor Department employee — to help manage its social media accounts. But the hire is now being scrutinized by the New York Times, which reports that Rollins made posts on Labor Department accounts that "raised internal alarms over possible white-nationalist messaging."

Times reporter Evan Gorelick, in an article published early Wednesday morning, February 11, explains, "Mr. Rollins has spent most of the past year giving the Labor Department's social media pages a makeover in Mr. Trump's image. Current and former employees said career staff members had been pushed aside after Mr. Rollins' arrival and rarely, if ever, crafted social media posts once he took control. Instead, Mr. Rollins personally posted social media content, which he has included on his personal website."

Recent federal government posts, according to Gorelick, "have used evocative imagery, some reminiscent of the 1920s and 1930s, with phrases like 'Restore American Greatness' and 'he globalist status quo is OVER.'"

"During the period when those posts were made," Gorelick reports, "the department's social media following exploded, even as colleagues warned superiors that the department's accounts could be seen as promoting white-supremacist rhetoric, Nazi imagery and QAnon conspiracy theories. Some employees who have since left the Labor Department said that the agency's posts had grown increasingly questionable."

Gorelick notes that according to "dozen internal e-mails and Microsoft Teams conversations obtained by The New York Times," Rollins' co-workers "expressed personal discomfort with the posts, cited data showing engagement with right-wing extremists, and urged a more moderate messaging style."

Former Labor Department employee Egan Reich, who spent 15 years with the agency before leaving in April 2025, told the Times, "It's incredibly chilling and disappointing, and I do feel it diminishes the work my colleagues and I did over the years to educate people about the government."

AN 2 26

Within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Donald Trump loyalist Daren Margolin is serving as director of the Executive Office of Immigration Review — which oversees asylum claims and deportations in immigration cases. And he’s doing so as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Border Patrol agents carry out militarized raids in Minneapolis and other American cities.

The Daily Beast, according to reporter Will Neal, discussed Margolin with four immigration officials who have worked with him. And they were highly critical of his performance.

Neal, in an article published on February 3, reports, "Donald Trump's gun-toting immigration courts chief is a 'total moron' ... who doesn't actually understand his job, according to multiple sources who've worked alongside him. ... They slammed him as 'lazy' and 'extremely dysfunctional,' with a 'fundamental lack of understanding' of both his administrative duties and the laws he oversees."

One of the four interviewees, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Beast, "Nobody ever had much confidence in him. I never got the impression he understood the law very well. He just wanted an easy job, where he didn't have to learn or do anything."

Another interviewee told the Beast, "He's a total moron. Such a 'f—— dope."

One of the interviewees alleges that Margolin was picked not despite his "incompetence," but "because of" it.

That interviewee told the Beast, "He's just going to be a mouthpiece, relaying orders and telling everybody else they have to follow them."

Another interviewee lamented, "I'm so worried about the agency. It really breaks my heart to see."

George Pappas, a former immigration judge in Georgia, argues that the United States' immigration system is in total disarray during Trump's second presidency.

Pappas told the Beast, "We're witnessing a complete dismantling of the immigration courts, which in substance are now dead."

---

---

AN 2 26

A bombshell Saturday report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family secretly backed a massive $500 million investment into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture months before the Trump administration gave the United Arab Emirates access to highly sensitive artificial intelligence chip technology.

According to the Journal’s sources, lieutenants of Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan signed a deal in early 2025 to buy a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the startup founded by members of the Trump family and the family of Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Documents reviewed by the Journal showed that the buyers in the deal agreed to “pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities,” while “at least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with” the Witkoff family.

Weeks after green lighting the investment into the Trump crypto venture, Tahnoon met directly with President Donald Trump and Witkoff in the White House, where he reportedly expressed interest in working with the US on AI-related technology.

Two months after this, the Journal noted, “the administration committed to give the tiny Gulf monarchy access to around 500,000 of the most advanced AI chips a year—enough to build one of the world’s biggest AI data center clusters.”

Tahnoon in the past had tried to get US officials to give the UAE access to the chips, but was rebuffed on concerns that the cutting-edge technology could be passed along to top US geopolitical rival China, wrote the Journal.

Many observers expressed shock at the Journal’s report, with some critics saying that it showed Trump and his associates were engaging in a criminal bribery scheme.

“This was a bribe,” wrote Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, in a social media post. “UAE royals gave the Trump family $500 million, and Trump, in his presidential capacity, gave them access to tightly guarded American AI chips. The most powerful person on the planet, also happens to be the most shamelessly corrupt.”

Jesse Eisinger, reporter and editor at ProPublica, argued that the Abu Dhabi investment into the Trump cypto firm “should rank among the greatest US scandals ever.”

Democratic strategist David Axelrod also said that the scope of the Trump crypto investment scandal was historic in nature.

“In any other time or presidency, this story... would be an earthquake of a scandal,” he wrote. “The size, scope and implications of it are unprecedented and mind-boggling.”

Tommy Vietor, co-host of “Pod Save America,” struggled to wrap his head around the scale of corruption on display.

“How do you add up the cost of corruption this massive?” he wondered. “It’s not just that Trump is selling advanced AI tech to the highest bidder, national security be damned. Its that he’s tapped that doofus Steve Witkoff as an international emissary so his son Zach Witkoff can mop up bribes.”

Former Rep. Tom Malinkowski (D-NJ) warned the Trump and his associates that they could wind up paying a severe price for their deal with the UAE.

“If a future administration finds that such payments to the Trump family were acts of corruption,” he wrote, “these people could be sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act, and the assets in the US could potentially be frozen.”

---

AN 2 26

...

Attorney General Pam Bondi set off a furor when she appeared to link the aggressive immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota to the state’s refusal to share its voter rolls with the Trump administration. The FBI searched a Fulton County, Georgia, election office, apparently as part of a criminal investigation into the 2020 election. Congressional Republicans dropped big new legislation to overhaul election administration.

Against that backdrop, secretaries of state from around the country gathered in a hotel ballroom in Washington, D.C., many expressing growing unease about the implications of the Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric around the 2026 elections they’re responsible for administering in November.

Multiple Trump administration officials were scheduled to address the secretaries’ conference at various points, but the plans kept shifting. Earlier this week, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of State said Bondi — whose Justice Department has so far sued 23 states and Washington, D.C., for access to their voter rolls — and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem would potentially be added to the schedule. Later, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was added to the list of expected officials, less than 48 hours after she appeared at the FBI search in Fulton County.

It wasn’t clear what they were planning to say, and some Democratic secretaries said they planned to skip the remarks.

But after a crowd of secretaries of state, their staff, consultants, vendors, and media members filled the ballroom Friday afternoon, with four chairs set up on the dais, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, a Republican, announced that the chairs would stay empty.

“Unfortunately, it appears that we will no longer be having a 3 o’clock session,” Watson said, to rueful chuckles.

It wasn’t the only shift.

An early agenda had called for a Thursday panel with two White House officials, as well as Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, and Heather Honey, the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity for the Department of Homeland Security. Ultimately, only one official, Jared Borg of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, spoke. Borg opened by outlining the administration’s efforts to overhaul a federal database used by many states to verify voter citizenship, as well as ongoing consultations with secretaries of state on that and related initiatives.

Election officials from both political parties had pointed questions.

Referring to comments from Justice Department officials about states’ maintenance of voter rolls, Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican and the state’s chief election officer, said it is “problematic to publicly claim that secretaries of state are not doing our jobs and that the federal government has to do it for us.” Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas, a Democrat, asked why the administration wasn’t answering their questions about its election initiatives.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, asked pointedly how the Trump administration squared his executive order on elections with the fact that the Constitution gives authority over elections to the states and Congress. Borg said the question would be better directed to Bondi or Noem the next day.

But as it turned out, Bellows didn’t get the chance, and she wasn’t happy about it. After Watson announced the session wouldn’t happen, a small group of Democratic secretaries of state spoke to the press. “Noem, Bondi, and Gabbard are cowards for not showing up today and answering the questions from election officials from across the country about this administration’s abuses of power,” Bellows said, while secretaries of state from Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Vermont looked on.

Their frustrations with the Trump administration were clear. But the Democratic secretaries ended on a more upbeat note: emphasizing that NASS is still a bipartisan organization, and that their Republican colleagues are just as committed to administering a fair 2026 election as they are.

“Following the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law,” Thomas said, “is not a partisan issue.”

*Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie atclevine@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

---

AN

Trump allies are looting the Kennedy Center: senator - Alternet.org

---

an 1 26

Former Trump Department of Homeland Security he is furious that ‘wannabe school shooters’ in high positions in the administration of President Donald Trump are hijacking government social media and demeaning “decent” employees who work for the federal government.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that high-ranking Trump officials have posted on social media references to “neo-Nazi literature, ethnic cleansing and QAnon conspiracies.” They’ve also “mused about deporting nearly a third of the U.S. population, and promoted lyrics from an anthem bellowed by the far-right militants of the Proud Boys,” according to the Times.

“I'm sitting here kind of on the edge of my seat because just hearing you go through that really pisses me off, because there's a lot of good people that work in [government] and want to do the right thing, and they have been by these people who sound a lot more like wannabe school shooters than they do public servants.”

“You look at the rhetoric out of people who [President] Donald Trump has appointed in his second term,” Taylor told MS NOW anchor Nicole Wallace. “You see folks who'veoffered praise for Adolf Hitler. You've seen folks who've said they're ‘a little bit of a nazi’ and who've been kept inside this administration, people who have been kept in jobs carrying out the work of the American people. I don't think as taxpayers, we want to fund wannabe nazis to run these agencies.”

Davis said this was no longer a matter of one or two embarrassing individuals fouling the water for the rest of employees.

“This isn't some coincidence,” said Davis. “You cannot possibly be a Republican and say, ‘this is just a couple of bad apples.’ This is a whole tree. The whole tree is rotten from the core, all the way out to every single one of those branches. And that tone is being set by the top. It starts with Donald Trump saying Somalis are garbage and then sending 3,000 troops into that state.”

---

---

AN 126

One prominent conservative writer is arguing that the White House's response to the fatal shooting of 37 year-old U.S. citizen Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota last weekend marks a turning point in how President Donald Trump's administration views its relationship with the law.

In a Monday conversation hosted the New York Times' Matthew Rose, conservative columnist David French – speaking alongside the Times' Lydia Polgreen and Michelle Goldberg — asserted that Pretti's death is merely the latest escalation from a president who has continued to push the legal envelope. French cautioned that Americans are collectively "witnessing the total breakdown of any meaningful system of accountability for federal officials."

"The combination of President Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons, his ongoing campaign of pardoning friends and allies, his politicized prosecutions and now his administration’s assurances that federal officers have immunity are creating a new legal reality in the United States," he wrote. "The national government is becoming functionally lawless, and the legal system is struggling to contain his corruption."

French — a retired major in the U.S. Army's Judge Advocate General Corps — went on to observe that Trump was "exploiting years of legal developments that have helped insulate federal officials from both criminal and civil accountability." He posited that the American legal system has been shaped by years of belief that the federal government is a rational, good-faith actor while people who criticize the government are presumed to be "almost always wrong." Now, in Trump's second term, French warned that Americans are "tasting the bitter fruit of Trump’s dreadful policies" with little recourse.

"The Trump administration breaks the law, and also ruthlessly exploits all the immunities it’s granted by law," he wrote. "The situation is unsustainable for a constitutional republic."

Rose prodded French on his recent argument that the United States during Trump's second term is similar to the system of government described by Nazi-era Jewish labor lawyer Ernst Fraenkel as "the dual state." Fraenkel's theory was that German citizens under the Nazi regime simultaneously lived in "a capitalist economy governed by stable laws" and under a brutal dictator who carried out heinous acts of genocide. French commented that while the "the dual state" under Trump is "not to the same extent as the Nazis," Fraenkel's theory was "still relevant."

"The Nazis didn’t create their totalitarian state immediately. Instead, they were able to lull much of the population to sleep just by keeping their lives relatively normal. As you say, they went to work, paid their taxes, entered into contracts and did all the things you normally do in a functioning nation," French said. "But if you crossed the government, then you passed into a different state entirely, where you would feel the full weight of fascist power — regardless of the rule of law."

---

One of President Donald Trump's Cabinet officials is now in hot water over an investigation into alleged alcohol abuse on the job and relations with a subordinate. And on Monday, some of her staffers were put on leave.

That's according to an article in Bloomberg, which reported that two senior staffers in the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) have been suspended in the wake of a DOL inspector general investigation into Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-Deremer. One of Bloomberg's sources anonymously confided to the outlet that Chavez-Deremer's chief of staff Jihun Han and deputy chief of staff Rebecca Wright have been officially put on leave.

The New York Post recently reported that DOL staffers were allegedly fabricating work trips on behalf of Chavez-Deremer so she could visit family and friends. The labor secretary reportedly had more than 50 official trips in 2025, visiting 37 states. Chavez-Deremer is also accused of drinking alcohol in her office, and for having an inappropriate relationship with an unnamed male subordinate.

According to the Post, Chavez-Deremer — who is married — has hosted the staffer at her Washington D.C. apartment on multiple occasions, and also invited them to her hotel room during work trips. The Post's sources also referred to the labor secretary as the "boss from hell," accusing her of ordering employees to run personal errands for Chavez-Deremer and perform other mundane tasks unrelated to their jobs.

Chavez-Deremer's alleged inappropriate relationship reportedly involved one episode in which she invited the subordinate to her Las Vegas hotel room, where she was staying to celebrate her niece's 40th birthday in October, when the federal government was shut down. The labor secretary reportedly dismissed her security detail before inviting the man over.

The Post also alleged that when Han asked Chavez-Deremer about a stash of alcohol she kept near her office desk, the labor secretary reportedly told her chief of staff to "leave it alone." The stash reportedly includes champagne, bourbon and Kahlua.

Trump administration spokespeople denied the report. White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers called the accusations "baseless," and insisted that Chavez-Deremer "is an incredible asset to President Trump’s team and she will continue advancing the President’s America First agenda."

"These unsubstantiated allegations are categorically false,” DOL spokesperson Courtney Parella told the Post. “Secretary Chavez-DeRemer has complied with all ethics rules and Department policies and remains fully engaged in carrying out the Department’s work on behalf of this historic Administration. The Secretary is considering all possible avenues, including legal action, to fight these baseless accusations from anonymous sources.”

Click here to read Bloomberg's article in its entirety, and click here to read the New York Post's report.

---

an 12 25

an in-depth report published by the Washington Post on Tuesday offers new details about the damage being done to the Social Security Administration during President Donald Trump’s second term.

The Post, citing both internal documents and interviews with insiders, reported that the Social Security Administration (SSA) is “in turmoil” one year into Trump’s second term, resulting in a customer service system that has “deteriorated.”

The chaos at the SSA started in February when the Trump administration announced plans to lay off 7,000 SSA employees, or roughly 12% of the total workforce.

This set off a cascade of events that the Post writes has left the agency with “record backlogs that have delayed basic services to millions of customers,” as the remaining SSA workforce has “struggled to respond to up to 6 million pending cases in its processing centers and 12 million transactions in its field offices.”

The most immediate consequence of the staffing cuts was that call wait times for Social Security beneficiaries surged to an average of roughly two-and-a-half hours, which forced the agency to pull workers employed in other divisions in the department off their jobs.

However, the Post‘s sources said these employees “were thrown in with minimal training... and found themselves unable to answer much beyond basic questions.”

One longtime SSA employee told the Post that management at the agency “offered minimal training and basically threw [transferred employees] in to sink or swim.”

Although the administration has succeeded in getting call hold times down from their peaks, shuffling so many employees out of their original positions has damaged the SSA in other areas, the Post revealed.

Jordan Harwell, a Montana field office employee who is president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 4012, said that workers in his office no longer have the same time they used to have to process pay stubs, disability claims, and appointment requests because they are constantly manning the phones.

An anonymous employee in an Indiana field office told the Post that she has similarly had to let other work pile up as the administration has emphasized answering phones over everything else.

Among other things, reported the Post, she now has less time to handle “calls from people asking about decisions in their cases, claims filed online, and anyone who tries to submit forms to Social Security—like proof of marriage—through snail mail.”

Also hampering the SSA’s work have been new regulations put in place by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency that bar beneficiaries from making changes to their direct deposit information over the phone, instead requiring them to either appear in person at a field office or go online.

The Indiana SSA worker told the Post of a recent case involving a 75-year-old man who recently suffered a major stroke that left him unable to drive to the local field office to verify information needed to change his banking information. The man also said he did not have access to a computer to help him change the information online.

“I had to sit there on the phone and tell this guy, ‘You have to find someone to come in... or, do you have a relative with a computer who can help you or something like that?’” the employee said. “He was just like, ‘No, no, no.’”

Social Security was a regular target for Musk during his tenure working for the Trump administration, and he repeatedly made baseless claims that the entire program was riddled with fraud, even referring to it as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”

---

maralago ?

an 12 25

President Donald Trump's Sunday night decision to name Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) as his administration's new special envoy to Greenland is already making waves around the world.

Trump posted late Sunday to his Truth Social account that Landry "will strongly advance our Country’s Interests for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Allies, and indeed, the World," and that the Louisiana governor "understands how essential Greenland is to our National Security." Landry appears to accept the role, though he posted on his official X account that his new "volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the U.S." would not intrude on his ongoing responsibilities in Baton Rouge.

Simon Marks, who is a contributor to the United Kingdom-based iPaper, quipped that Landry's role advancing U.S. efforts in Greenland's capital city of Nuuk "won’t be easy, since so far there is limited appetite for non-stop flights between the two cities." He also observed that Trump's announcement has caused a significant amount of consternation for Denmark, which has dominion over Denmark and controls its military and foreign policy (though Greenland has its own parliament).

"Land borders and the sovereignty of states are rooted in international law," Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Parilament chairman Frederik Nielsen said in a joint statement. "You cannot annex other countries. Not even with an argument about international security. Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders … We expect respect for our territorial integrity."

Marks went on to note that Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen called Landry's appointment "unacceptable" and that he was "deeply angered" upon learning of Trump's announcement. Ken Howery, who is the U.S. Ambassador to Denmark (and a co-founder of PayPal) has reportedly been summoned to Copenhagen to discuss Landry's appointment.

Trump's announcement that he was putting Landry in charge of the United States' diplomatic efforts in Greenland comes as his administration continues to threaten Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, which Trump recently admitted was about "getting land" and "oil rights." Marks wrote that "Trump is indicating that his expansionist tendencies are back in vogue, especially with regard to worldwide locations that are rich in natural resources."

The iPaper columnist hypothesized that if Venezuela is about oil, Trump's efforts in Greenland may be about mineral resources. He reminded readers that Greenland was rich in 25 of 34 minerals classified as "critical raw minerals" by the European Commission.

Click here to read Marks' full column in iPaper.

---

---

OMFG

MOJO

This story was originally published by theGuardian and is reproduced here as part of the*Climate Desk*collaboration.}:

The Trump administration is breaking up a research center praised as a “crown jewel” of climate research after accusing it of spreading “alarmism” about climate change.

Russell Vought, the director of the White House’s office and management budget, said the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, would be dismantled under the supervision of the National Science Foundation.

“This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” he wrote in a social media post. “A comprehensive review is underway & any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.”

The announcement was the latest in a series of climate-skeptic moves by the administration, which has vowed to eliminate what it calls “green new scam research activities.”

It drew fierce condemnation from climate experts, who said the Colorado center was renowned for advances in the study of weather patterns, including tropical cyclones.

Roger Pielke Jr, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute thinktank, told *USA Today*, which first reported the story, that the facility was “a crown jewel of the US scientific enterprise and deserves to be improved not shuttered.”

He added: “If the US is going to be a global leader in the atmospheric sciences, then it cannot afford to make petty and vindictive decisions based on the hot politics of climate change.”

The move was also criticized by Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, who said it put “public safety at risk.”

“Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science,” he said. “NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”

The center employs approximately 830 staff and includes the Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, which Vought said would be shut. It also operates two aircraft for atmospheric research and manages a government-owned supercomputing facility in Wyoming.

The decision to dismantle it is consistent with Donald Trump’s frequent characterisations of climate change as a “con job” or a “hoax.”

The White House has accused the centre of following a “woke direction” and identified several projects that administration officials say are wasteful and frivolous, USA Today reported.

These include a Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences that seeks to “make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered,” as well as research into wind turbines, an innovation that Trump has repeatedly denounced.

The administration has already proposed a 30 percent cut to the funding of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, slashing spending on its climate, weather and ocean laboratories, which work to improve forecasting and better understand weather patterns.

---

ALL SAME DAY 12 3

Trump’s 'autopilot' Cabinet meeting shows he’s 'in bigger trouble than he thinks' - Alternet.org

CNN uses Trump’s own words with supercut of 'sleepy Joe' insults to mock Cabinet nap

'F-A-T, for fat people': Here are 5 wild moments from Trump’s freewheeling Cabinet meeting

Trump repeatedly struggles to stay awake in Cabinet meeting video

'Bowing and scraping': Kristi Noem mocked after suggesting Trump controls weather

Trump lashes out at Fox News reporter as 'fake news' after Cabinet meeting

AN 12 25

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made an eyebrow-raising comment about President Donald Trump during a recent meeting of the Trump administration's Cabinet.

While in the middle of her remarks at the meeting, Noem observed that no hurricanes had made landfall in the U.S. during the 2025 hurricane season, which typically lasts from June through November. Her comment was met with laughter from the assembled Cabinet members.

"Sir, you made it through the hurricane season without a hurricane — you kept the hurricanes away. We appreciate that," Noem said.

The Homeland Security secretary's praise of Trump was immediately met with ridicule from various elected officials, journalists and commentators. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), took a sarcastic tone while also being disgusted at Noem's display.

"Thank you, Oh Great One, for keeping the hurricanes away," Huffman tweeted. "The bowing and scraping hits new lows every day with these sycophants."

"God this is so embarrassing," Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) wrote on her official X account.

AttorNey and progressive influencer Aaron Parnas tweeted: "This is an SNL skit right?"

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) also weighed in on both of his X accounts. On his personal account, the presumptive 2028 Democratic presidential candidate wrote: "ICYMI [in case you missed it] Trump controls the weather." The "Gavin Newsom Press Office" account — which the California Democrat typically uses to mock the administration — posted a doctored image of Trump's famous gaffe in which he used a sharpie to expand the scope of Hurricane Dorian in 2019 to include Alabama. The new image included text Newsom inserted that read "NO hurricanes allowed!"

"It was his magical sharpie, wasn't it Kristi?" Newsom's press office tweeted.

Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee also piled on, posting an image of North Korean news anchor Ri Chun Hee with the text: "Glorious Supreme Leader has kept the hurricanes away. His power over the weather is unmatched."

---

AN 12 25

Today’s Office Hours discussion question is particularly difficult to answer. After more than 10 months of this catastrophic Trump regime, who has emerged as the worst person in it, other than Trump himself?

There are so many candidates for this distinction that’s it been hard to narrow down the finalists, but I’ve done the best I can to identify the most dangerous. All have caused extensive damage. This isn’t to excuse Trump, of course. He appointed them and continues to support them. His rantings and ravings have encouraged them.

Which of them in your view is the worst of the worst?

Pete Hegseth. Trump’s secretary of defense (or of “war” as Trump and Hegseth want to call it) has created more chaos, infighting, and likely war crimes than any defense secretary in living memory. The former Fox News host reportedly gave a verbal order to kill everyone aboard vessels suspected of smuggling drugs, which led a military commander to carry out a second strike to kill those who had initially survived an attack in early September.

Senator Mark Kelly this week called Hegseth “unqualified” for his job. “He runs around on a stage like he’s a 12-year-old playing army. And it is ridiculous, it is embarrassing, and I can’t imagine what our allies think of looking at that guy in this job, one of the most important jobs in our country…. He is in the national command authority for nuclear weapons. This is the secretary of defense. This is not a serious person. He should have been fired after Signalgate. And then every single day after that.”

Pam Bondi. Bondi has turned the Justice Department into Trump’s private law firm — going after his enemies and pardoning his friends. When Trump demanded that she prosecute former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, Bondi didn’t hesitate. She has purged many lawyers for being inadequately loyal to Trump. DOJ has lost thousands of experienced attorneys. Even the elite Solicitor General’s Office has lost half of its staff.

Last week a federal judge found that Bondi’s appointment of Lindsey Halligan to the post of U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was illegal and threw out the cases she had brought against Comey and James. Federal judges have also ruled illegal the appointments of U.S. attorneys for the Central District of California and the District of Nevada. This week a federal appeals court rejected Alina Habba as U.S. attorney for the district of New Jersey and instead selected Desiree Leigh Grace, an experienced prosecutor, to lead the office. Bondi then fired Grace and maneuvered Habba back into control of the office.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.RFK Jr. has almost single-handedly destroyed public health in the United States. His war on vaccines poses a clear and present danger. He has decimated the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health — substituting anti-science fanatics for health experts. He has caused the U.S. to be less prepared for the next pandemic.

On Tucker Carlson’s podcast in June, Kennedy falsely claimed that the hepatitis B birth dose is a “likely culprit” of autism and said the hepatitis B virus is not “casually contagious.” Wrong on both counts. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisory panel appointed by Kennedy is scheduled to discuss and vote on the hepatitis B birth dose recommendation during its two-day meeting starting December 4, likely no longer recommending it for newborns.

Stephen Miller. Miller is the most powerful force behind the regime’s cruel and unconstitutional expurgation of immigrants from the United States. It began with a promise that it would target only undocumented immigrants who had committed terrible crimes here; then spread to all undocumented immigrants; then to many green-card holders and others here legally; and has now encompassed almost everyone who has immigrated to the United States.

Miller has turned the Department of Homeland Security into a domestic police force and the State Department’s visa and refugee operations into a personal fiefdom. He is overseeing efforts to separate families in which one parent is here legally, to detain people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, and is sending others to prisons in foreign countries, all without due process of law. He and Trump are turning America into a nativist den of bigotry and hate.

---

---

FAILS TRUMP FLOATS HEALTH CARE PLAN, 86D, RUSS PEACE DEAL RUBIO LAST SEC?

AN 11 25

President Donald Trump been violating his oath, and "lying nonstop in all conceivable venues, ever since," he took office, writes Jill Lawrence in The Bulwark, and "American life and America itself are now being shaped—in terrible, even tragic ways—by people who really did mislead and outright lie to Congress under oath."

"Right below Trump on the organizational chart is the problem wreaking daily havoc on the country: that so many of these havoc perpetrators were less than forthright when they were trying to get their jobs," Lawrence says, citing antivaxxer and United States Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

"He told the Senate Finance Committee under oath that he is not anti-vaccine and would do nothing as health secretary 'that makes it difficult or discourages people' from taking vaccines," Lawrence explains. "He also made several commitments to Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician, to win his support in the closely divided Senate, then went on to break them."

RFK Jr. also promised not to espouse his conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism on the website of the Centers for Disease Control, but "personally broke that one last Wednesday," Lawrence writes.

"And the misinformation avalanche has not abated. Last month, the man in charge of U.S. public health asserted without evidence that Tylenol and circumcision cause autism," she adds.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has also lied, she writes, saying in his confirmation hearings that he'd be honored to serve along women and Black soldiers, and then, "in February he had fired the black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ousted all four women who were four-star generals," Lawrence writes.

"Last month he said he’d hold the military to 'the highest male standard' for combat positions—which would likely result in large numbers of women removed from combat roles. 'So be it,' he said," Lawrence writes.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is another liar who said Trump has been “very clear that his priority is going to be deporting criminals.” But, Lawrence adds, 'that’s not happening, either."

"As of mid-November, nearly three quarters of over 65,000 ICE detainees had no criminal convictions, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which said 'many of those convicted' had committed minor offenses such as traffic violations," she writes.

In his contentious hearing confirmation,FBI Director Kash Patelpromised that “all FBI employees will be protected against political retribution," to which Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said a few months later in another hearing, “I’m not going to mince words: You lied to us.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi made the same promise in her hearing's opening statement, saying, "The partisanship, the weaponization will be gone. America will have one tier of justice for all.”

"Since her promises, and Patel’s, many prosecutors have been fired, forced out, or moved to resign in protest," Lawrence writes, noting the lawsuit filed by former FBI Director James Comey's federal prosecutor daughter Maurene, who claims she was fired for unconstitutional political reasons.

"On top of that, Trump has issued pardons or commutations to hundreds of allies, including 17 politicians and nearly 1,600 who were prosecuted in connection with the January 6th Capitol riot, while urging Bondi to prosecute his enemies—Comey included—as quickly as possible," Lawrence writes.

The case against James Comey, she says, "is so weak that Erik Siebert, the interim U.S. attorney, declined to prosecute and was then forced out of his job."

Comey was indicted on two felony charges for lying to Congress in 2020 and obstructing a congressional proceeding, which is connected to the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016.

"The whole flimsy, incompetent attempt to punish Comey seems doomed. And while one failure won’t derail this out-of-control president or the blatant lies and hypocrisy that pervade his administration, it would be a start," she adds.

===

AN 11 25

CNN reports the United Kingdom is no longer sharing intelligence with the U.S. about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, because it does not want to be complicit in “illegal” attacks.

The U.K. controls a number of territories in the Caribbean where it bases intelligence assets, and for years it had helped U.S. administrations locate and track vessels suspected of carrying drugs so the U.S. Coast Guard could interdict them, sources said. Under earlier administrations that meant military officials would merely stop and board suspect ships, and then seize drugs and detain the crew.

But now President Donald Trump and his military heads have decided to launch lethal strikes against the boats and treat criminal suspects without due process rights, which prompted the U.K. to worry the U.S. is abusing British intelligence to select targets and break international laws.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk said last month that the strikes violate international law and amount to “extrajudicial killing.” Sources told CNN that the U.K. agrees with Türk’s assessment.

Critics on X cheered the decision by U.K. officials and worried Trump was obliterating U.S. standing in the international community.

“The UK is correct: these strikes are indeed illegal,” said Valerie Morkevičius, an author and Associate Professor of Political Science at Colgate University on X. “Trump is burning through American soft power at an incredible rate.

CNN White House correspondent Betsy Klein noted the international drama on X, saying “Next season on The Diplomat.”

“Our closest ally doesn’t trust that we’re handling these alleged drug boats in the Caribbean lawfully. That’s concerning, to say the least,” said another X user, while a majority of opinions confirmed the U.K. was doing the right thing because what Trump was doing is “plainly illegal.”

“Good. We can’t be trusted not to do war crimes with dumb-dumb and Whisky Pete in charge,” commented yet another critic on X.

Read the CNN report at this link.

---

AN 11 25

During Donald Trump's first presidency, he bitterly clashed with a long list of traditional conservatives who pushed back against his proposals — from a secretary of state (Rex Tillerson) to a White House chief of staff (John Kelly) to a national security adviser (John Bolton) to two U.S. attorneys general (Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr). Even one of Trump's White House press secretaries (Stephanie Grisham) ended up giving Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris an enthusiastic endorsement at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

But Trump's second presidency is much different. This time, he has made a point of surrounding himself with unquestioning MAGA loyalists who are anxious to please him.

In an opinion column published on October 18, the New York Times' Frank Bruni stresses that desperation to please Trump is one of the things that makes his current group of allies so dangerous.

Bruni specifically points to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance.

"There’s no team of rivals around Trump, no constructive dissent, no battle of ideas from which the best one emerges," Bruni warns. "There’s just flattery and more flattery. Tribute upon tribute. Hyperbole atop hyperbole. Of course, telling bosses how effective, charismatic and visionary they are is a tried-and-true route to advancement…. But the sort of fanboy fan dances that Vance and Patel routinely perform? That's extreme. As was Attorney General Pam Bondi's pathetic effort, during a Senate hearing in which she was fielding questions, to make Democrats on the panel answer for their supposed crimes against Trump. How, she wondered, could they be so mean to him? How, I wondered, does she keep a straight face?"

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

Bondi, Patel and Hegseth, according to Bruni, are dangerous not only because of their extreme rhetoric, but because they are willing to back it up with actions.

"If that lip service were merely the ceremonial price that Trump's aides paid to be able to attend to the rest of their jobs in a serious manner," Bruni argues, "it would be little more than embarrassing. But it's part of a broader servility, a more profound humiliation. Their deeds must match their diction. So Bondi has either encouraged or indulged nuisance investigations and malicious prosecutions of Trump's enemies, including (former FBI Director) James Comey and (New York State Attorney General) Letitia James. Patel expanded polygraph tests at the FBI — to prevent pejorative portrayals of the administration from leaking out."

Bruni continues, "Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth channeled Trump's contempt for independent journalists and emulated Trump's attacks on the media by laying down new rules that essentially forced self-respecting reporters to hand in their Pentagon press credentials. The president was pleased: He wondered aloud about doing something similar at the White House. Maybe Patel and Hegseth were always this paranoid and petulant, but Bondi seems to have grown crueler and coarser in direct relation to her time with Trump. And Vance's cartoonish sycophancy is the convenient inverse of his past statements that Trump was 'America's Hitler' and an 'idiot.'"

---

AN 11 25

During his first presidency, Donald Trump bitterly clashed with a long list of traditional conservatives who media figures often described as "the adults in the room" — including a secretary of state (Rex Tillerson), a U.S. attorney general (Jeff Sessions), a secretary of defense (Jim Mattis), a White House chief of staff (Gen. John F. Kelly), and a national security director (John Bolton). Trump's third White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, even ended up endorsing presidential nominee Kamala Harris at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

But Trump's second administration, dominated by loyalists, is much more MAGA across the board. And according to Never Trump conservative Tom Nichols, those "adults in the room" from the first Trump Administration are nowhere to be found this time

In an article published by The Atlantic on November 3, Nichols compares the second Trump Administration to a group of unhinged "bullies and mean girls."

"The United States is now a nation run by public servants who behave no better than internet trolls, deflecting criticism with crassness and obscenity," Nichols laments. "The White House press secretary answers a question from a member of the free press — a serious question about who planned a meeting between the American and Russian presidents — by saying, 'Your mom did.' The secretary of defense cancels DEI and other policies by saying, 'We are done with that s——.' The vice president calls an interlocutor on social media a 'dips——.'"

Nichols continues, "The president of the United States himself, during mass protests against his policies, responds by posting an AI-generated video of himself flying a jet fighter over his fellow citizens and dumping feces on their heads. These are not the actions of mature adults. They are examples of crude people displaying their incompetence as they flail about in jobs — including the presidency — for which they are not qualified."

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

In Trump's second administration, Nichols argues, competence is irrelevant — all that matters is "loyalty" to Trump.

"When the U.S. military kills people at sea and (Vice President JD) Vance, responding to a charge that such actions might be war crimes, responds, 'I don’t give a s– what you call it,' the goal is not just to boost Vance's hairy-chest cred — it's also to grind others down into accepting the idea of extrajudicial executions," Nichols warns. "The collapse of a superpower into a regime of bullies and mean girls and comic-book guys explains much about why American democracy is on the ropes, reeling from the attacks of people who, in a better time, would never have been allowed near the government of the United States."

---

WIKI LIST NOMS PULLED List of Donald Trump nominees who have withdrawn - Wikipedia 10 25

Trump administration proposed a number of nominees to appointed positions who were rejected by the Senate or withdrew voluntarily.[1][2]

Executive Office of the President

Chairwoman of the Council on Environmental Quality

Department of Agriculture

Under Secretary of Agriculture

Department of Commerce

Under Secretary of Commerce

Assistant Secretary of Commerce

Department of Defense

Under Secretary of Defense

Department of Education

Assistant Secretary of Education

Department of Energy

Department of Health and Human Services

Department of Homeland Security

Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security

Department of the Interior

and nominated instead for Circuit Judge of the Ninth Circuit

Department of Justice

Department of Labor

Assistant Secretary of Labor

Department of State

Assistant Secretary of State

Assistant Secretary of State

Alternate Representative to the United Nations General Assembly

Alternate Representative of the United States to the United Nations

Alternate Representative to the United Nations General Assembly

Department of Transportation

Department of the Treasury

Under Secretary of the Treasury

Department of Veterans Affairs

Central Intelligence Agency

Environmental Protection Agency

Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Independent agencies

Assistant Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development

Assistant Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development

Assistant Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development

Federal judges

See also: Donald Trump judicial appointment controversies

See also

List of Trump administration dismissals and resignations

List of short-tenure Donald Trump political appointments

---}:

AN 9 25

President Donald Trump's border czar Tom Homan is facing backlash following reports released Saturday that revealed he was investigated by the FBI for allegedly accepting a $50,000 cash payment from undercover agents posing as business executives. The investigation, initiated in 2024, was ultimately closed by Trump administration officials earlier this year due to a lack of "credible evidence" of criminal wrongdoing.

Conservative commentator Sarah Longwell sharply reacted to the news, calling the lack of accountability “insane” and saying the scandal is emblematic of broader corruption in the Trump orbit.

During a podcast on The BulwarkSaturday, she argued that the entire “ecosystem around Trump sells influence,” noting that people close to Trump often profit simply by being close, promising to deliver favors or contracts if he wins, regardless of whether they hold formal office. She said it mirrors what she sees as “downstream corruption” from Trump — from countries offering bribes, to premium‑clubs run by his children — and that in Homan’s case, it shows how normalized these kinds of allegations have become.

Longwell noted that Homan has been a controversial figure in the administration.

"If this were just some unnamed member of the Trump administration, people would probably be like, yep, they’re all corrupt. But in this case, this guy is... like one of the biggest villains in the Trump administration."

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

She continued: "He is the architect of going and yanking people off the streets, of sending people to torture prisons, even when they’re innocent. Like that’s this guy. And so knives will be out forever for this guy. And rightly so. He has been terrible from the beginning. He has never made even an ounce of an attempt to act like he is going to work through the immigration process in sort of a lawful, humane way. He has been clear from the jump he was going to be as inhumane and destructive as possible as he did this. And so it doesn’t strike me one bit that this is not a good person. And that it is the kind of person who was taking old school bribes," she added.

The Bulwark's Tim Miller added that what distinguishes this scandal is its relative simplicity. He said the Homan case, essentially accepting a bag of cash in exchange for promising favors, is the sort of corruption most people can immediately grasp.

Miller contrasted it with more abstract or technical issues like crypto, stablecoins, or AI regulation, which tend to lose people’s attention.

"I do wonder if that the simplicity of it is going to mean that there is a greater firestorm around this than there’s been around the crypto stuff," he added.

---

---

an 8 25

Multiple people inside President Donald Trump's administration are already jumping ship after less than a year on the job and are securing highly lucrative jobs as lobbyists.

That's according to a Wednesday article by Politico's Caitlin Oprysko and Sophia Cai, who reported that high-profile lobbying firms are now scooping up several Trump administration staffers who have only been in the White House for a handful of months. Oprysko and Cai noted that the Washington D.C. "revolving door" between lobbying and government that Trump promised to bulldoze with his 2016 "drain the swamp" mantra remains alive and well given the announcement of the new hires.

"[B]arely a half-year into his second administration, a handful of senior White House aides are already heading for the exits — and right through the revolving door between the federal government and K Street, where they’re lining up cushy lobbying gigs," they wrote.

READ MORE:Trump 'in a tailspin': Answers demanded about 'remarkably close relationship' with Epstein

White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields is leaving the administration to join the Republican-run lobbying firm CGCN Group, after just seven months in his previous role. Fields was often quoted as a White House spokesperson in major media outlets, accusing NPR and PBS of "creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers' dime" in a May article for Axios and justifying Trump's attacks on large law firms for having allegedly "propelled one-sided justice by providing pro bono resources to those causes that make our nation more dangerous and less free" in a recent Wall Street Journal report.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

In addition to Fields' exit, Trent Morse — who is a deputy assistant to the president and the deputy director of the White House's Office of Presidential Personnel — is launching his own lobbying firm, while also teaming up with the powerhouse lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who worked alongside Morse at two other lobbying firms over the last decade, heaped praise on Morse as he made his exit, calling him "an important and integral part of the successes we’ve had."

Ivan Adler, who runs an executive hiring firm in Washington, told Politico that the early exits of senior Trump staffers was proof that so many lobbying clients are "looking for a sherpa for this administration, just because it’s so different," and that "people are taking advantage" of their knowledge by hiring them directly from the White House.

Federal law requires a year-long "cooling off" period from the time a former government worker leaves their position to when they can begin officially lobbying the West Wing and representing foreign entities, meaning that for Fields and Morse, their cooling off window will be longer than their actual time serving in the White House. However, they can begin lobbying Congress immediately.

READ MORE:'They said it's a felony': Police yank Dem lawmaker out of bathroom for speaking to media

Click here to read Politico's report in its entirety.

===

nyc mayor adams quid pro quo //

the hill

7 25

no lnx

Freedom of the Press Foundation has filed an ethics complaint against Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, arguing the close of ally of President Trump has “engaged in egregious misconduct,” and calling for him to be disbarred.

In the organization’s complaint, filed with the District of Columbia Court of Appeals’ Office of Disciplinary Counsel on Monday, cites Carr’s public statements and actions in the weeks leading up to the agency’s recent approval of the Paramount, Skydance merger.

“Everyone from U.S. senators to CBS employees to a dissenting FCC commissioner has said the settlement appears to have been a bribe to grease the wheels for Carr’s FCC to approve the merger,” the complaint reads. “Even putting Paramount aside, Carr has pursued numerous other frivolous and unconstitutional legal proceedings and threatened more of them in furtherance in his efforts to intimidate broadcast licensees to censor themselves and fall in line with Trump’s agenda.”

The organization’s complaint was first reported in journalist Oliver Darcy’s media newsletter Status.

Carr had in the weeks leading up to the merger publicly blasted CBS News over its coverage of the Trump administration and indicated he believed the “60 Minutes’ interview that sparked a lawsuit against the network from President Trump could hold up FCC approval of the $8 billion deal.

Paramount, CBS’s parent company, earlier this month agreed to pay Trump’s foundation $16 million and its new parent company made several concessions as part of its merger agreement with Skydance.

Carr praised those promises, including the appointing of an ombudsman to monitor CBS coverage for objectivity, in announcing the agency had approved the deal last week, saying “Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly. It is time for a change.”

“Carr’s actions brazenly violate legal and ethical standards that govern the practice of lawand public officials, undermining the First Amendment, the FCC’s credibility and the laws

he is trusted to administer,” the complaint said. “His abuse of his office to force an unwarranted settlement of a private lawsuit, is shameful and warrants disbarment.”

A representative for the FCC did not respond to a request for comment.

Tags Brendan Carr Donald Trump

------

the hill

7 25

no lnx

Freedom of the Press Foundation has filed an ethics complaint against Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, arguing the close of ally of President Trump has “engaged in egregious misconduct,” and calling for him to be disbarred.

In the organization’s complaint, filed with the District of Columbia Court of Appeals’ Office of Disciplinary Counsel on Monday, cites Carr’s public statements and actions in the weeks leading up to the agency’s recent approval of the Paramount, Skydance merger.

“Everyone from U.S. senators to CBS employees to a dissenting FCC commissioner has said the settlement appears to have been a bribe to grease the wheels for Carr’s FCC to approve the merger,” the complaint reads. “Even putting Paramount aside, Carr has pursued numerous other frivolous and unconstitutional legal proceedings and threatened more of them in furtherance in his efforts to intimidate broadcast licensees to censor themselves and fall in line with Trump’s agenda.”

The organization’s complaint was first reported in journalist Oliver Darcy’s media newsletter Status.

Carr had in the weeks leading up to the merger publicly blasted CBS News over its coverage of the Trump administration and indicated he believed the “60 Minutes’ interview that sparked a lawsuit against the network from President Trump could hold up FCC approval of the $8 billion deal.

Paramount, CBS’s parent company, earlier this month agreed to pay Trump’s foundation $16 million and its new parent company made several concessions as part of its merger agreement with Skydance.

Carr praised those promises, including the appointing of an ombudsman to monitor CBS coverage for objectivity, in announcing the agency had approved the deal last week, saying “Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly. It is time for a change.”

“Carr’s actions brazenly violate legal and ethical standards that govern the practice of lawand public officials, undermining the First Amendment, the FCC’s credibility and the laws

he is trusted to administer,” the complaint said. “His abuse of his office to force an unwarranted settlement of a private lawsuit, is shameful and warrants disbarment.”

A representative for the FCC did not respond to a request for comment.

Tags Brendan Carr Donald Trump

---

---

an 7 25

President Donald Trump has loudly criticized the roughly $2.5 billion renovation of the Federal Reserve headquarters. Yet, when it comes to another costly Washington project — refurbishing a “free” Air Force One jet gifted by Qatar — talk around the White House goes silent, the New York Times noted in a report Sunday.

Air Force officials appear to have disguised the cost of revamping the Qatar‑donated jet by embedding it within the over‑budget Sentinel nuclear missile modernization program, per the report. A recently revealed $934 million reallocation from the Pentagon’s beleaguered Sentinel ICBM modernization program has alarmed lawmakers, even as officials insist the missile project remains fully funded.

Officials have classified the refurbishment cost entirely, and efforts to conceal the funding behind Trump’s pet project are unusually elaborate.

READ MORE:One Trump court case will determine whether America will still have a democracy

The report noted that in hearings this summer, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink confirmed that surplus 2024 funds from the LGM‑35A Sentinel program were diverted to help finance a highly controversial project: converting a luxury Boeing 747‑8 gifted by Qatar into a makeshift Air Force One.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

Meink said the missile upgrade effort "is fully funded … and has all the resources it needs" despite the fund shift.

According to the report, no one seems willing to explain why exactly $934 million was shifted.

Democratic leaders including Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Jack Reed have demanded answers about the legality and propriety of redirecting funds from the Sentinel program — a flagship nuclear modernization effort — into what critics see as a politically motivated retrofit of a foreign-donated jet.

Despite calls for transparency, Meink declined to provide cost breakdowns or a precise timeline in the appropriations hearing, prompting further frustration from lawmakers overseeing defense budgets.

Meanwhile, the report generated backlash on social media.

Academic Robert McCollister wrote on the social platform X: "Guess where the money ($934 million) for Trump's used AF 1 came from? The Sentinel ICBM program which is already way behind and over budget!"

Economist Dean Baker wrote: "Pretty great how the government will spend $1 billion renovating Trump's 'free' Air Force One that was gifted to him by Qatar, which may never actually be used as a government plane -- goes straight to Trump's 'library' after he leaves office."

---

omg

an 725

Trump official bills CFPB $5 million for his security detail while gutting agency’s consumer work

A top Trump White House official who has incessantly bemoaned wasteful government spending has reportedly billed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau nearly $5 million for his security detail as he guts the agency's ability to fight for Americans scammed by predatory corporations.

Government Executive on Wednesday obtained a memo from the CFPB's deputy chief financial officer showing that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the consumer bureau "are entering into an interagency agreement to pay the costs" of Russell Vought's security.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

Vought currently serves as both OMB director and acting director of the CFPB—a longtime target of Trump, congressional Republicans, and corporate forces.

"The memo spelled out that the agreement was 'on a fast track,' despite the funding not being included in the bureau's fiscal 2025 budget," Government Executive noted. "The $4.7 million will cover Vought's security through December, meaning it will draw from both fiscal years 2025 and 2026."

Earlier this year, Vought described the consumer agency's budget—around $820 million for 2025—as "excessive in the current fiscal environment." An OMB spokesperson did not respond when Government Executive asked why CFPB is footing Vought's security bill.

David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, wrote sardonically that Vought—who has helped turn the consumer bureau into a shell of its former self—is "finally getting things done that matter at CFPB."

"And when I say that, I mean his security detail," Dayen added. "At heart, these guys are all kleptocrats."

Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, wrote that Vought is "simultaneously stopping CFPB from protecting American consumers from scams, while also charging it $5 million for his security team."

While the Trump administration's effort to dismantle the bureau entirely has been held up in court, Vought and Republicans in Congress have succeeded at slashing the consumer agency's budget and grinding its enforcement work to a halt. A pair of advocacy groups noted in a memo released in late May that the Vought-led CFPB has quietly dismissed more than 20 public enforcement actions against corporate wrongdoers.

Supporters of the CFPB, which was established in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, have described the agency as a "model of efficiency," touting the fact that it has returned tens of billions of dollars to consumers since its creation.

But that's done nothing to slow the Trump administration's assault on the bureau.

The Prospect's Maureen Tkacik and James Baratta wrote earlier this month that for close to half of 2025, the CFPB's roughly 1,500 staffers "have been locked out of their offices and agency computers, while attorneys and judges deliberate over the degree to which Trump's wrecking crew is legally allowed to assassinate the bureau."

"In the meantime, formal entries into the CFPB's consumer complaints database have soared, suggesting that the business of junk fees, predatory terms, and routine swindles is booming," the pair wrote. "All told, 2.5 million complaints have flooded into the CFPB over the past six months, roughly a quarter of the total complaints the agency has recorded since its inception in 2011, with reports of everything from being shut out of bank accounts after a hurricane to scammers impersonating ICE officials who convince consumers to buy them gift cards in order to help them avoid deportation."

"The ability to force financial scammers to return ill-gotten gains to millions of customers is an awesome authority in a political system that makes it so difficult to materially improve people's lives," they added, "so Vought has unsurprisingly dedicated special effort to destroying that power."

A report released earlier this week by the nonprofit Better Markets notes that the Trump administration's regulatory rollbacks at the CFPB have cost American consumers billions in savings and left them more vulnerable to corporate misconduct.

"The magnitude of the rollback and its costs for American consumers is staggering," said Brady Williams, legal counsel at Better Markets. "The Trump CFPB has aligned itself with industry interests, abandoning its mission to protect consumers."

---

---

AN 525

On April 9, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14270, blandly titled “Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting to Unleash American Energy.” Behind that bureaucratic name is a sweeping directive: Dismantle a century of environmental protections.

Every regulation related to the environment, natural resources, or energy, whether it safeguards air, water, species, or public lands, must be rewritten to serve polluters or vanish by default.

Some will claim this is just about efficiency. But no standard review process sets a mass expiration date for protections, regardless of science, impact, or legal mandate. This is not streamlining. It is a countdown to erasure.

While courts deliberate, rules will expire. Enforcement will be suspended. Polluters will act as if the rules are already gone.

The deadline is September 30, 2026. Any rule not revised and reauthorized by then will expire automatically.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

What will remain will not be protection. It will not be science. It will not be law. It will be a hollow shell, stripped of enforcement and public purpose.

This is not reform. It is demolition. It is sabotage by executive order.

They Said It Couldn’t Happen

To everyone who said, “They’d never go that far,” they just did. And the collapse has already begun.

With Executive Order 14270, Donald Trump issued not a policy revision but a regulatory kill order.

The EO mandates that all regulations under energy-related authority—especially those administered by agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Departments of Interior and Energy—must be reviewed and either revised to align with the administration’s priorities or be automatically terminated by September 30, 2026. While for some agencies the EO does not name specific laws, many foundational protections fall within these agencies’ regulatory domains.

Some may argue this is simply a regulatory reset or a call for modernization. But this is not a review guided by science, need, or public interest. It is a mandate that requires rules to serve industry or disappear by default. There is no neutral path. There is no room for delay. If an agency fails to revise and reauthorize a rule in time, it expires. No matter how vital it is.

Legal experts and environmental attorneys have described similar regulatory strategies by the previous Trump administration as calculated attempts to dismantle environmental protections from within.

Even the rules that survive review will be rewritten, stripped of science and purpose, then repackaged as hollow compliance.

This is not a bureaucratic obstacle. It is a regulatory kill switch.

What that means in practice:

• Endangered Species Act—gone.
• Migratory Bird Treaty Act—gone.
• Marine Mammal Protection Act—gone.
• Anadromous Fish Conservation Act—under threat.
• Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act—gone.

These aren’t just under review. They are all under attack.

Breadth and Scope of the Loss

The laws everyone recognizes, such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, are just the beginning.

Beneath them lie hundreds of foundational rules that safeguard public health, climate resilience, environmental justice, and disaster readiness. Under Executive Order 14270, they are all at risk.

Supporters may claim the order only targets outdated or burdensome regulations. But the text applies broadly and indiscriminately. It sets no exceptions for essential rules, no protections for high-impact safeguards, and no criteria for public benefit. Unless these rules are rewritten to meet the new standards and reauthorized by September 30, 2026, they will expire. Along with them goes the regulatory backbone of modern environmental protection.

This is not theoretical. These laws will fall unless actively rescued.

Key protections on the chopping block:

Air, Water, and Public Health

• Clean Air Act

• Clean Water Act

• Safe Drinking Water Act

• Toxic Substances Control Act

• Superfund cleanup authority

• Mercury and Air Toxics Standards

Land and Resource Protection

• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

• Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act

• Wilderness Act

• Antiquities Act

• Wild and Scenic Rivers Act

• Federal Land Policy and Management Act

Energy and Climate

• Energy Policy Act of 2005

• Greenhouse gas endangerment finding

• Energy Star Program

• Oil Pollution Act of 1990

Each of these took years, sometimes decades, of organizing, science, and compromise to create. They were not handed down by elites. They were won by people who refused to accept poisoned air, burning rivers, and dead coastlines.

Now they are being erased in a single executive order. Not one by one. All at once. This is not a rollback. It is erasure.

The Hidden Collapse

Executive Order 14270 does not just target major environmental laws. It dismantles the infrastructure that makes those laws real.

Supporters may argue that the laws remain untouched. But behind every statute, like the Clean Water Act or Endangered Species Act, are thousands of rules, monitoring systems, enforcement protocols, and technical standards. Without them, laws are just words on paper.

Now, all of that must be rewritten to serve polluters. If not, it disappears permanently.

Thousands of environmental regulations administered by agencies such as the EPA and the Department of the Interior could be subject to review and potential termination under Executive Order 14270.

Here is what that collapse looks like:

Public Health Protections

• Air monitoring rules vanish. No alerts for lead, benzene, or ozone.

• Radiation limits are lifted. Safety near nuclear sites erodes.

• Vehicle emissions testing ends. Smog returns to U.S. cities.

Water, Waste, and Pollution

• Stormwater runoff restrictions disappear. Waste floods rivers.

• Hazardous waste transport rules vanish. Disposal turns chaotic.

• Drilling oversight ends. Protected lands are opened to industry.

Climate and Disaster Response

• Energy efficiency rules are revoked. Electric bills rise.

• Fire mitigation programs are defunded. Wildfires grow deadlier.

• Fisheries protections vanish. Coastal economies are destabilized.

This is not just about forests or fish. It is about tap water, asthma medication, grocery prices, and cancer risks.

Betsy Southerland, former EPA director of science and technology for water, has warned that deregulatory approaches of this kind could lead to systemic breakdowns in public health protections.

This order does not trim fat. It guts the public architecture that keeps America safe, functional, and future-ready.

The Economic and Societal Cost

The damage from Executive Order 14270 will not stop with wildlife or wilderness. It will hammer the economy; threaten public health; and unravel industries that depend on clean air, safe water, and protected landscapes.

Some defenders will argue that environmental regulations stifle business, raise costs, or limit innovation. But environmental law in America was not born from ideology. It was forged in crisis, created to prevent economic collapse, mass illness, and ecological ruin. Many of these statutes were passed with overwhelming bipartisan support because Americans knew the cost of doing nothing was greater.

The Clean Air Act passed under former President Richard Nixon. The 1972 Clean Water Act was called “the most comprehensive and expensive environmental legislation in the nation’s history.” These laws did not just protect nature. They helped build the modern economy.

Many of the protections now targeted form the backbone of multibillion-dollar industries:

Wildlife and National Identity

• The Endangered Species Act saved the bald eagle, peregrine falcon, and California condor.

• The Migratory Bird Treaty Act protects ecosystems and supports rural economies across the country.

• The Marine Mammal Protection Act helped build a coastal tourism sector that generates billions.

• Fish conservation laws sustain sport fishing, a major driver in many regional economies.

Outdoor Economies

• Outdoor recreation supports $887 billion in consumer spending and 7.6 million jobs.

• Hiking, hunting, wildlife viewing, and camping all depend on healthy ecosystems.

• Without habitat protections, what is Yellowstone without wolves, or the coast without whales?

The law may speak of species and land. But the stakes are money, jobs, health, and identity.

This executive order guts the systems that protect them all.

The Human Toll and Environmental Injustice

The collapse will not hit everyone equally. It never does.

When environmental protections vanish, the first to suffer are the poor, the marginalized, and the politically powerless.

Some may argue that environmental burdens are shared evenly across society. But the data and history say otherwise. Environmental harm follows lines of poverty, race, and neglect. It hits those with the fewest resources, the least political power, and the highest exposure to toxins.

Without the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, vulnerable communities will lose safeguards against dumping, runoff, and lead contamination. New water crises will erupt in towns already on the edge.

Without the Clean Air Act, toxic smog will return to cities, especially in low-income and minority neighborhoods shaped by redlining and industrial zoning.

Without the National Environmental Policy Act, communities will have no voice in what gets built near their homes: pipelines, refineries, highways, landfills.

Without Superfund enforcement, the most toxic sites in America will be left to rot. Poison will seep into soil, water, and lives.

This is not theory. It is already happening:

• In Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, petrochemical plants poison Black neighborhoods. Cancer rates there are 50 times the national average.

• In West Virginia, abandoned coal towns face toxic water and respiratory illness.

• In Alaska and the Southwest, Indigenous communities still live beside Cold War-era uranium waste.

• Along the Pacific coast, salmon vanish and fishing economies unravel.

These are not isolated stories. They are previews.

The burden will fall hardest on those without lawyers, lobbyists, or local health departments—families already excluded from public hearings, ignored by regulators, and left behind by politics.

Executive Order 14270 turns temporary harm into permanent abandonment.

This is not just inequality. It is environmental apartheid..

Regulatory Collapse Is Guaranteed

This is not hypothetical. It is structural failure, built into the design.

Executive Order 14270 sets an impossible mandate: Every environmental regulation must be reviewed, revised, and reauthorized by September 30, 2026. If not, it will expire automatically.

Some will claim that with enough willpower and coordination, agencies can meet the deadline. But that is a myth. There are not enough staff. There is not enough time. And there is no intention to make it work. The order was built to break the system, not to improve it.

Environmental watchdogs and legal analysts suggest that only a small percentage of rules could realistically be reviewed and reissued before the deadline.

This is not deregulation. It is planned demolition.

Here is what that guarantees:

• Legal protections for ecosystems will collapse.

• Clean air and water rules will disappear.

• Ecotourism and outdoor recreation will suffer.

• Climate policy will be paralyzed.

• Inequality will worsen as states scramble to fill the void.

• Courts will be overwhelmed by lawsuits and confusion.

• Irreversible environmental damage will be locked in for generations.

Even if a future administration tries to reverse the damage, it could take years or even decades to rebuild what was destroyed.

Some things will not survive that long: species, coastlines, forests, ecosystems.

This is not a policy failure. It is policy used as a weapon.

The extinction of environmental protections is not a side effect. It is the goal.

Can This EO Actually Be Enforced?

Technically, yes. Executive Order 14270 can be enforced. But legally and practically, it is a minefield for all concerned.

Agencies can initiate rule reviews and assign expiration dates, especially when leadership supports the administration’s anti-regulatory agenda. But that does not make it lawful.

Under the Administrative Procedure Act, agencies must follow strict procedures before repealing or replacing rules. They must issue public notices, allow comment periods, hold hearings, and provide justifications. They cannot simply say, “The president told us to.”

Some defenders may argue the president has broad authority to manage agencies. But the law is clear: Regulatory repeal must follow legal process. Many of the protections targeted by this order were enacted by Congress. Agencies do not have the authority to let them quietly expire or gut them without breaking the law.

That is why lawsuits are already being filed. Legal challenges will come from environmental groups, state attorneys general, and public interest organizations.

But here is the catch: the damage will not wait.

While courts deliberate, rules will expire. Enforcement will be suspended. Polluters will act as if the rules are already gone.

Even if a judge rules against the administration, the harm will be done:

• Toxic waste released.

• Forests cleared.

• Communities exposed.

And if the White House refuses to comply? There is no enforcement arm of the Administrative Procedure Act. No agency exists to compel federal departments to enforce their own rules.

The only option is to sue, repeatedly, rule by rule, across jurisdictions.

As one Earthjustice attorney put it, “The law doesn’t enforce itself. And this administration knows it.”

Litigation takes money, time, expertise, and legal standing. These are resources many frontline communities do not have.

Environmental lawyers and watchdogs saw this coming. They are already planning for fights across dozens of fronts: air quality, pipelines, species protection, data suppression, and executive action.

But how many lawsuits will it take? 10? 50? 100?

Each one will be slow. Expensive. Uncertain.

This is not incompetence. It is sabotage, carried out with full intent.

And What About the Planet

This executive order is not just a domestic disaster.It is a climate change nuclear bomb.

Executive Order 14270 erases the foundation of nearly every federal climate policy:

• It nullifies the greenhouse gas endangerment finding, the legal trigger for regulating carbon emissions.

• It dismantles efficiency standards for appliances, buildings, and vehicles.

• It undermines the Energy Star Program and other clean energy incentives.

• It guts methane rules, fuel economy standards, and oil spill safeguards.

Some will argue that climate progress can continue without federal policy, through state action or private innovation. But without national coordination, incentives, and legal authority, that progress will slow, fragmented, and ultimately fall short. Federal policy drives investment, enforces accountability, and sets the global tone.

With these tools gone, the United States cannot meet its climate goals. Not nationally. Not globally.

We will miss our Paris agreement targets. We will exceed the 1.5°C warming threshold. And we will pull other nations backward with us.

The damage is not just about emissions. It is about lost leadership. Lost credibility. And a green light to polluters everywhere.

This is not a pause. It is a reversal.

Climate collapse is no longer a distant danger. It is a scheduled event, signed into law by the president.

The Heart of It

This executive order does not repeal environmental laws. It kills the systems that make those laws work.

The Clean Air Act will still exist. But if EPA regulations expire, there will be no enforcement.

The Endangered Species Act will remain on paper. But without specific protections and triggers, no species will be protected.

This is the method: Dismantle implementation. Remove enforcement. Let the law collapse from the inside out.

It is a bureaucratic kill switch, designed to erase a century of environmental progress without ever repealing a statute.

Legal on paper. Lethal in practice.

Once the rules disappear, the laws become theater:

• No enforcement.

• No funding.

• No consequences.

They will still be on the books, but they will no longer matter.

Empty laws. Empty air. Empty rivers. Empty promises.

How We Fight, and Why We Must

There is no silver-bullet lawsuit. No single agency. No shortcut.

This executive order will not be stopped by one clever court challenge. It will take dozens, perhaps hundreds, of battles—rule by rule, agency by agency, ecosystem by ecosystem.

Some will ask, why not file one big lawsuit to stop it all? Because Executive Order 14270 does not repeal a single law. It sets a countdown clock for thousands of regulations to vanish unless reauthorized. That makes it nearly lawsuit-proof by design. Each rule must be challenged individually, and only after harm has occurred. Courts cannot force agencies to act unless Congress explicitly mandates it. And even then, litigation takes time. By the time a ruling arrives, the damage may already be done. The law does not enforce itself. And this executive order exploits that fact.

There is no cavalry. Only us.

So we fight, everywhere:

• File lawsuits, fast and often: Legal action is the first and last line of defense. Every expired rule must be challenged. Every unlawful revision must be contested. Rapid-response legal teams must be ready to sue the EPA, Department of the Interior, and Department of Energy across multiple jurisdictions. Delay means destruction.
• Support legal and watchdog organizations: Groups like Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Center for Biological Diversity are already fighting. But they are underfunded and overwhelmed. They need staff, experts, and resources. Every donation matters. Every volunteer strengthens the line.
• Pressure elected officials at every level: Demand public hearings. Demand oversight. Call your governor. Write your city council. Make it politically toxic to support this executive order.
• Act locally: States and cities can pass their own clean air and water laws. They can fund conservation, restrict drilling, and sue federal agencies. Join local groups. Attend zoning meetings. Run for water boards and planning commissions. Build resistance into local government.
• Refuse to normalize this: Speak out. Disrupt. Document. This is not politics as usual. Say so. Organize protests. Submit op-eds. Flood comment periods. Call out silence. Expose polluters. Make the truth visible.
• Demand media coverage: Executive Order 14270 should be a daily headline. If it is not, make it one. Share stories. Elevate frontline voices. Hold media outlets accountable. If national media fails, local and independent voices must rise.

This is a regulatory blitz.And resistance must be relentless.

The strategy is simple: flood the system, fracture it, and exhaust the opposition.

While we scramble to save species, lands, and laws, they bulldoze everything else.

This is not a warning. It is a dispatch from the front lines.

They are not debating whether to dismantle environmental protections. They are dismantling them, right now.

If you ever said, “They would never go that far,” They just did.

This is not just bad policy. It is a deliberate attempt to cripple the government’s ability to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, the climate we depend on, and the living world we love.

It is not a mistake. It is the plan.

The question is no longer what they will do. The question is what we will do about it.

---

---

an intercept 5 25

The Intercept reports Donald Trump’s Pentagon budget proposal will almost certainly lavish Special Government Employee and Trump Senior Advisor Elon Musk and his company SpaceX with new expensive projects.

“No matter how you slice it, the Pentagon budget is obscenely high at a time when the fundamentals of our diplomatic infrastructure are being decimated, the social safety net is being shredded, and medical and scientific research are under attack,” said William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

In addition to Trump’s plan to budget an undisclosed sum for “U.S. space dominance,” the most obvious project benefiting Musk is a missile shield, dubbed the Golden Dome.

READ MORE: Trump’s toadies are peddling a dangerous new lie

“… Pentagon [funds] have as much to do with pork barrel politics and techno-fantasies like the Golden Dome as they do with a sound defense strategy,” said Hartung, who added that it was clear current resources going to the Pentagon “are not only excessive but are more likely to undermine than promote our security.”

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

The Golden Dome project involves launching a network of surveillance satellites to detect and track enemy missiles targeting the United States. Musk wants to use his SpaceX resources to build both the satellites and the rockets. The Intercept reports SpaceX is already the top Pentagon supplier of launch services and low-Earth-orbit communications systems.

However, Reuters reports SpaceX is proposing to provide Golden Dome technology to the Defense Department through a “subscription service,” similar to Tesla’s $12.99 monthly EV-charging services to non-Tesla owners. Such a subscription will charge U.S. taxpayers considerably more than $12 a month while putting technical knowledge of Musk’s seek-and-strike missile system under an intellectual property lock.

Gabe Murphy, a policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, said there is also no determining what happens to the system, or if it would even be usable should a new president refuse to renew Musk’s contract.

READ MORE:'You see falls in politics — but not like this': DeSantis’ star imploding amid fraud scandal

“With his subscription model plan, Musk is looking to both retain control of these systems and keep taxpayer dollars flowing his way,” Murphy told the Intercept.

Democratic lawmakers are already calling for the Pentagon’s acting inspector general to review Musk’s role in the bidding process for the missile defense shield.

“Mr. Musk’s formal or informal participation in any process to award a government contract raises serious conflict of interest concerns, including the possibility that SpaceX is a top contender for the Golden Dome contract because of Mr. Musk’s position in the government,” lawmakerswrote.

If the inspector general finds Musk provided an advantage to SpaceX in the bidding process, lawmakers could then request the findings be remanded to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, which would be more likely to happen under a future Democratic administration.

*Read the full Intercept report here.

---

---

an 525

Far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist Kari Lake was both disappointed and happy following the 2024 election — disappointed because she lost Arizona's U.S. Senate race to now-Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona), happy because Donald Trump was elected president instead of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. And Trump offered Lake a position, appointing her senior adviser for the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) — which supervises Voice of America (VOA) and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting as well as Radio Free Europe.

Now, according to Lake, VOA is partnering with One America News (OAN) — a far-right cable news outlet that, like Newsmax, prides itself on being to the right of Fox News and Fox News and considers itself more pro-Trump than those channels.

OAN is known for promoting conspiracy theories: After Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, OAN pushed the false and repeatedly debunked claim that the election was stolen from him.

READ MORE: 'You see falls in politics — but not like this': DeSantis' star imploding amid fraud scandal

In a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday, May 6, Lake wrote, "United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is excited to announce a partnership with One America News Network (OAN) to provide newsfeed services to USAGM networks, including Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), Radio Martí, and Voice of America (VOA)….. This is an enormous benefit to the American taxpayer, who is the sole-source of funding for USAGM's news outlets, which broadcast only to international audiences."

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

Lake added, "In my current role as Senior Advisor to USAGM, I don't have editorial control over the content of VOA and OCB programming, but I can ensure our outlets have reliable and credible options as they work to craft their reporting and news programs."

Lake's announcement is receiving a lot of reactions on X.

MeidasTouch's Ron Filipkowski tweeted, "Sure, why not wreck another great American institution that has been a beacon of light around the world for decades and replace it MAGA’s North Korean style media."

READ MORE:'Be more relatable': GOP begs Trump to stop talking about dolls

Awful Announcing's Ben Koo posted, "Absolutely brutal. VOA's reach is a very impressive ~330 million people a week. Outsourcing this content to OAN via an assist from Kari Lake..... just a really tough one to swallow. I recommend the 60 Minutes piece on VOA (available on Youtube) if unfamiliar."

RussOnPolitics' Russell Drew wrote, "Kari Lake turning Voice of America into a pro-Trump propaganda machine by piping in OAN content is insanity. VOA was meant to represent American values abroad — not far-right disinformation. This is how democracies rot from the inside. A nightmare move by a nightmare figure."

X user John Sellers wrote, "Goebbels lives."

Another X user, Harold Gallagher, posted, "Lake is unfit and unqualified. Bonafide Fox News Trash."

X user Julio Cesar wrote, "A former weather girl turned fascist grifter who spreads insane QAnon propaganda running VOA. What could possibly go wrong?"

---

an 525

Donald Trump has raised nearly a billion dollars from his various cryptocurrency schemes, says researcher Molly White. “He is really allowing for bribery and the types of corruption that we’ve never seen in the American presidency,” White says. She lays out how the Trump family profits from cryptocurrency while directly influencing policy and regulations, encouraging the transfer of wealth to the industry despite its “enormous risk of fraud and collapse.”democracynow.org

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

AMY GOODMAN: Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley are calling for a federal investigation into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture, after a fund backed by Abu Dhabi announced it would make a $2 billion investment in crypto exchange Binance using a Trump-branded cryptocoin. The deal could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family.

In their letter, Senators Warren and Merkley wrote, quote, “The deal, if completed, would represent a staggering conflict of interest, one that may violate the Constitution and open our government to a startling degree of foreign influence and the potential for a quid pro quo that could endanger national security,” unquote.

Senator Warren also released this video last week blasting the deal.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: The United States is getting ready to bless Donald Trump’s latest grift. A shady Abu Dhabi investment firm just announced it’s going to make a $2 billion business deal with a foreign crypto company called Binance. So, here’s the kicker: Binance and the foreign investment firm are going to use Donald Trump’s stablecoin to finance their transaction, essentially giving Trump a cut of that $2 billion deal. Boy, looks like corruption, smells like corruption. So, yeah, the Senate is going to put a stop to it, right? Wrong. Right now the Senate is getting ready to greenlight the grift by passing the so-called GENIUS Act next week. This is a bill that would make it even easier for the president and his family to profit off their own stablecoin and oversee their own financial company.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump is headed to the Gulf next week.

In related news, last night, on Monday, President Trump spoke at a crypto and AI innovators’ dinner to raise money for a pro-Trump super PAC. Tickets were one-and-a-half million dollars a plate. The event was held at the president’s golf club in Virginia. The co-host of the dinner was David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto czar. Sacks is a South African-born tech investor who was part of the so-called PayPal Mafia, founding PayPal with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.

On May 22nd, Trump is also hosting a private gala dinner for the top 220 investors in his meme coin. The dinner will also be held at the Trump National Golf Club. The promotion also offers an ultra-exclusive VIP reception with the president and a tour of the White House for the top 25 $TRUMP meme coin investors. The anti-corruption group CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called the promotion, quote, “one of the most blatant and appalling instances of selling access to the presidency we’ve ever seen,” they said.

We’re joined now by Molly White, an independent cryptocurrency researcher who runs the Citation Needed newsletter. She recently wrote an article headlined “Trump’s newest grift: Building a cryptocurrency empire while destroying its regulators.”

Molly, welcome to Democracy Now! If you can start off, for folks who aren’t following cryptocurrency that carefully, explain what cryptocurrency is.

MOLLY WHITE: Cryptocurrency is a digital asset. So, it’s an entirely digital form of speculation, essentially, that allows people to speculate on the value of tokens that are, you know, things like bitcoin or Ethereum, and it’s entirely digital. There is no physical representation. There is no physical asset or service backing the tokens.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in your recent piece, Molly, you wrote that “The scope of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency conflicts illustrates a degree of corruption that makes the emoluments concerns of Trump’s first term seem quaint by comparison.” Could you explain?

MOLLY WHITE: Yeah. So, Trump’s crypto ventures are growing, seemingly by the week. It seems like every week something new is announced, whether it’s his World Liberty Financial crypto platform or his $TRUMP meme coin or rumors of a new crypto game that his backers are working on. And so, he is really allowing for bribery and the types of corruption that we’ve never seen in the American presidency. You know, he’s allowing people to send him money. He is profiting directly from the cryptocurrency industry, while he is simultaneous influencing policy, legislation, calling off regulators who previously oversaw the crypto industry, in ways that are benefiting him and his family very directly.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And given the fact that cryptocurrency has become sort of the favored money-laundering method of criminals, drug dealers, anybody who wants to hide their money, what is the impact of the growing size of the crypto industry in terms of the financial system?

MOLLY WHITE: Well, it’s definitely concerning. I mean, there is this major potential for criminal activity using cryptocurrencies. We’ve seen it dramatically increase for use in money laundering, as you mention, terrorist financing. Ransomware is primarily these days done with cryptocurrency. And there’s very little in the way of regulations or laws that crack down on that type of activity.

And under the Trump administration, we’ve actually seen what few regulations were in place be pared back. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which previously was, essentially, the primary regulator of the cryptocurrency industry, has been called off the beat. We’ve seen cases against cryptocurrency companies dismissed with prejudice, investigations of crypto companies dropped. We’ve seen the cryptocurrency investigations teams at the SEC and the Department of Justice dismantled. And so, under the Trump administration, I think we are seeing dramatic expansion of the potential for criminal activity within cryptocurrency, as well as the, you know, complete reduction in consumer protections that would allow those who choose to get involved with cryptocurrency to do so without the fear that they are going to be scammed or taken advantage of.

AMY GOODMAN: Molly, how exactly does Trump and his family profit from these crypto ventures? How much money are we talking about? And explain. Trump has a crypto coin. Melania has one. Explain how this works.

MOLLY WHITE: Well, Trump has multiple crypto ventures that are directly enriching him. So, you mentioned there’s the $TRUMP meme coin, which is the token that is themed after him, essentially, and is being currently used as a ticket to this private dinner at his golf course. Melania has a token of her own. And the Trumps make money off of those tokens, both in terms of the trading that’s happening, as well as facilitating the liquidity for those types of tokens.

Then there’s the World Liberty Financial platform, which is a yet-to-be-released crypto platform that is nevertheless selling these World Liberty Financial tokens to interested buyers. Trump makes 75% of the protocol revenues from that project, and he owns a 60% stake in the company. He and his family sort of maintained the illusion that there was an arm’s-length relationship between the project, despite it being entirely themed after Trump, prior to his election and inauguration, but after he was inaugurated, they sort of gave up that facade and obtained a majority stake in the company.

And then, Trump has sort of an endless list of additional crypto ventures. He has his NFT projects. He has sold crypto-themed sneakers. You know, there has been reporting that he is working on a crypto game. His Trump Media & Technology Group, which is the company that is behind the Truth Social platform that he controls, is also getting into crypto with a partnership with Crypto.com to launch crypto ETFs, exchange-traded funds. And there’s also reporting that they are considering launching their own token. So, the list really goes on.

And so far, I think he has raised close to a billion dollars, or he has profited in close to a billion dollars from his combined ventures. That number is only continuing to increase, as there are deals like this stablecoin being used by the United Arab Emirates Investment Fund, and as, you know, multiple new ventures are being launched as we go on.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, of course, the Trump administration has claimed that all of Trump’s investments are in a blind trust, that basically his sons run the company, not him.

MOLLY WHITE: Right, that is the claim, although he’s made varying claims. He’s even claimed not to profit from crypto at all, which is plainly untrue. But I think that, you know, frankly, it is not fair to say that he is divested from crypto ventures when it is controlled by his sons. His sons are profiting, and ultimately he is profiting. You know, he should not be making policy decisions or influencing policy in ways that benefit his family quite, quite plainly. And I don’t think that the claims that he has divested are accurate whatsoever.

AMY GOODMAN: Molly White, can you talk about the latest push by the Senate Democrats? Tell us more about the legislation that they want to change on cryptocurrency pending in Congress. What did the so-called GENIUS Act, a bill backed by the crypto industry, call for?

MOLLY WHITE: So, the GENIUS Act is primarily intended to regulate stablecoins, which are a category of crypto assets that are intended to maintain a peg to some other form of asset. So, we often see dollar stablecoins, which are crypto tokens that are intended to be worth $1 a piece. Those are assets like USDC or Trump’s USD1 stablecoin, which was recently launched. And the GENIUS Act, you know, seeks to install some amount of legislation that would regulate those types of assets.

And this is something that we’ve seen the crypto industry pushing for for quite some time, even prior to the Trump administration. But Trump’s own crypto ventures, including launching his own stablecoin, have recently stalled that legislation, with a number of Senate Democrats speaking up to oppose this bill, as well as those in the House, signaling that, you know, the Trump family financial interests are a major concern for them. The crypto industry has also pushed for a number of changes to this bill that would benefit the industry. And we’re now starting to see Democrats in Congress saying that this bill does not go far enough to prevent national security concerns or even terrorist financing using these stablecoins, which have been used to transfer massive amounts of funds. They are sort of the bedrock of the crypto industry, almost like the poker chips at the casino. Stablecoins are a major venue through which value is transferred in the crypto world. And so, this type of legislation is extremely important to get right.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Do we have any sense of who in the United States does this investing in crypto coins? How widespread is it? Or is there a profile of typical people who are buying the coins?

MOLLY WHITE: Well, there are everyday people who are involved in crypto speculation, but we also see major venture capital firms and investment firms getting involved in the crypto world, as well, including a number that have a significant presence in Washington. Andreessen Horowitz, for example, is one of the largest technology venture capital firms. They have significant investments in the cryptocurrency world, and a number of Andreessen Horowitz employees have been installed in various positions at the White House. Marc Andreessen himself was involved in selecting members of the Trump administration, and they were very heavily involved in political campaigning. Then there are figures like David Sacks, who is the AI and crypto czar at the White House. He runs an investment firm that also has crypto investments, some of which he’s not divested from.

So, there are multiple profiles of crypto investors, many of them institutional, but also everyday people who have bought the story that cryptocurrency is a way to get ahead financially, that crypto investments can potentially provide high returns and are worth the enormous risk and volatility that crypto brings with it, and, you know, now the enormous risk of fraud and collapse throughout the crypto industry, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Molly White, we want to thank you so much for being with us, software engineer, independent cryptocurrency researcher, running the Citation Needed newsletter. We’ll link to your recent piece, “Trump’s newest grift: Building a cryptocurrency empire while destroying its regulators.”

:{---

---

2 25

When only a small group of people with extraordinary wealth have power over the government, our system is not responsive to the will of the people, but rather to the will of a handful of wealthy donors whose biggest concerns are lining their own pockets.

Yet, President Trump is rewarding his biggest donors with political favors and countless opportunities to enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.

In addition to funding his 2024 campaign, billionaires — with a combined net worth exceeding $1.2 trillion — also bankrolled President Trump’s inauguration.

But this was only the beginning. Case in point: Despite not being elected by the American people, billionaire Elon Musk's rise to power represents a dangerous new way Trump is manipulating our system so his biggest donors can use the government to line their own pockets.

Our government should not work this way. Presidents creating positions of power for and granting access to wealthy special interests as a thank you for their political donations is corruption and makes the executive branch less responsive to the will of the people.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has pushed for stronger campaign finance laws because the American people deserve a government that is transparent and responsive to all Americans, not just a tiny group of billionaires.

We hold all government actors — including Elon Musk — accountable to the laws that make sure public servants serve Americans and not their own business interests.

Elon Musk being gifted a position of power after financially supporting the Trump campaign makes our work fighting corruption more important than ever.

We must ensure that wealthy special interests cannot gain power through illegal coordination schemes, and we must hold all government officials to high ethical standards.

Americans are far too familiar with the ultra-rich using their wealth to access the halls of power. Campaign Legal Center has repeatedly sounded the alarm on the longstanding trend of presidents rewarding their biggest donors with powerful positions such as ambassadorships in their administration.

Now we’re witnessing President Trump reward his wealthy donors not only with ambassadorships, but also with positions in the Cabinet and new roles such as Musk’s unelected position that is influencing government decisions in the shadows.

While the public has little clarity on President Trump’s newly established “U.S. DOGE Service” (CLC has filed public records requests to bring clarity to the matter), Musk has already begun to exert sweeping control over agencies and the sensitive information they hold.

The experts in government agencies, like engineers, economists and scientists, help improve Americans’ daily lives and shouldn't be subject to threats and harassment by an unelected donor.

The Trump administration has already signaled that avoiding conflicts of interest will not be a priority for its political appointees.

The ethics pledge signed between his appointees and the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) has raised eyebrows by allowing several wealthy members of his administration to oversee matters they clearly have a vested interest in.

Perhaps nowhere are the dangers of conflicts of interest more apparent than with Elon Musk clearly standing to gain personal wealth from holding influence over the government’s approach to the federal budget and setting regulations.

He has many business interests intertwined with federal policy — from the hefty government contracts with his SpaceX rockets to the regulation of his electric vehicle company.

Now, in his largely undefined role with DOGE, Musk even has access to information about his company’s competitors.

While Musk only has money to gain, the American people have everything to lose — allowing a private citizen with billions in personal interest to dictate government actions threatens the public service mandate of our agencies.

The Supreme Court’s weakening of our campaign finance laws, the Federal Election Commission’s refusal to hold bad actors accountable and the lack of independent and enforceable ethics enforcement in our government have all played a key role in our country’s allowing only a few wealthy individuals to consolidate power.

However, we have the ability to uphold a government by the people and for the people before it is too late.

CLC will continue to hold the Trump administration accountable by uncovering and exposing corruption and self-dealing. We will also strenuously advocate for strong ethics laws and transparency requirements that ensure our officials remain beholden to the public good, not personal gain.

Now is the time to enforce the guardrails of democracy that will ensure that executive power cannot be auctioned off to the highest bidder by any president to come.

Campaign Legal Center will continue to push for transparent, accountable government at every turn.

Support CLC's work to make sure our government serves the American people, not the business interest of wealthy donors.

---

cnn

CNN —

Nearly three dozen of President-elect Donald Trump’s picks to serve in his incoming administration donated to his campaign or to the deep-pocketed outside groups that worked to elect him, a CNN analysis of federal campaign records shows.

They range from tech multibillionaire Elon Musk – who has emerged as the single largest, disclosed political donorof the 2024 presidential election – to others close to Trump tapped for key roles throughout government.

In all, eight of his Cabinet picks – led by Linda McMahon, the billionaire wrestling magnate Trump has selected to oversee the Education Department – and their spouses donated more than $37 million combined from their personal accounts to aid Trump, the review found, underscoring the proliferation of ultra-rich Americans now poised to shape US policy in the incoming second Trump administration.

(Two other Cabinet choices, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik and Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, transferred money from their campaign accounts to the pro-Trump effort.)

Musk has not been selected for a formal Cabinet job but is helping guide a new Department of Government Efficiency initiative and has played a pivotal role in the presidential transition – offering his views on job candidates, talking to world leaders and meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill as he weighs how to downsize the federal government.

In all, the SpaceX and Tesla chief executive donated more than $277 million to federal elections this cycle, the lion’s share of which – more than $262 million – benefited Trump. Most of Musk’s pro-Trump dollars flowed to a super PAC that the world’s richest man created to help turn out voters on the Republican’s behalf in key swing states.

Outside of self-funded presidential candidates, no individual has donated more to shape federal contests in a single election cycle, said Brendan Glavin, research director of OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan organization that analyzes money in politics.

Trump’s donors “are not just getting these sort of plum ambassadorships on the side,” Glavin said. “Major donors are getting positions that affect policy.”

The CNN analysis researched the more than 90 people that Trump had announced for high-level positions in the administration through Tuesday, which marked five weeks since his election victory. More than 30 of them had donated to his campaign or to one of the leading Trump-aligned outside groups, the review of FEC records found.

IFrame Content

“Millions of Americans fed up with failure in the White House and federal government joined President Trump in the movement to restore our nation’s greatness. Some who will work with President Trump are among those millions of people who supported the campaign and helped the President win a decisive electoral victory,” Brian Hughes, a Trump transition team spokesman, said in a statement in response to CNN’s inquiry about donors joining the administration.

The total donations from Trump’s current Cabinet picks marks a surge from Trump’s first term. Five members of his original Cabinet had donated nearly $8 million to his committees or to the major outside groups supporting him, a review of campaign reports shows.

Donations from McMahon, who served as Trump’s SBA administrator in his first White House term, accounted for more than 90% of that total in the 2016 election.

The sums spent to aid Trump in 2024 far exceed the donations that President Joe Biden’s Cabinet members contributed to help him win the White House in 2020, FEC records show.

A dozen members of Biden’s Cabinet reported donations to his campaign or major super PACs involved in the 2020 election, giving less than $100,000 in total.

Billionaires in the administration

Musk’s spending dwarfed that of other supporters.

McMahon was the largest donor among Trump’s Cabinet picks and the second most generous contributor, after Musk, among the administration members announced through Tuesday, the review found.

Most of the $21.2 million she donated went to Make American Great Again, Inc., the main Trump-affiliated super PAC that spent heavily on advertising to aid his campaign.

Other seven-figure donors among Trump’s Cabinet picks include Cantor Fitzgerald chief Howard Lutnick, whom Trump has tapped to serve as Commerce secretary; Scott Bessent, the hedge fund executive Trump has selected to oversee the Treasury Department; and former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler, his choice to head the Small Business Administration.

Loeffler’s husband, Jeff Sprecher, also was a major donor, contributing more than $2 million to the pro-Trump MAGA Inc. super PAC and Trump’s joint fundraising committee.

Sprecher is the CEO of the Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, and was at Trump’s side when the president-elect rang the opening bell at the exchange Thursday.

In an email, Loeffler’s communication director Caitlin O’Dea said, “Senator Loeffler is proud to be one of President Trump’s strongest supporters for the same reason a historic landslide of Americans voted to put him back in the White House: he will restore American prosperity, security, and opportunity.”

The billionaire embrace marks a turnaround of sorts for Trump, who saw corporate America recoil from him after the violent January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. And he has seen new support from tech leaders who are pushing for fewer regulations from the federal government.

The staggering sums spent by Musk in this year’s election helped Trump close the financial advantage of his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, who swiftly raised $1 billion after becoming her party’s standard-bearer in late July.

Super PACs face no limit on the size of donations they can receive or spend, but technically are not allowed coordinate their advertising decisions with the candidates they support.

However, a ruling this year by the FEC granting campaigns the ability to coordinate with outside political action committees on paid canvassing efforts freed up Musk to guide a ground game for Trump.

“The campaign finance system is a joke,” said Fred Wertheimer, who heads the Democracy 21 watchdog group and is a longtime advocate for limits on money in politics. “Musk is the example now of how campaign finance laws have failed.”

He said he worries about government departments led by billionaires who have no “interest in doing the job that the agency was assigned.”

Musk did not respond to inquiries from CNN.

But Tom Davis, a former congressman from Virginia who chaired the House Republicans’ campaign arm for several years, argues “there is nothing inherently wrong about people who made a lot of money wanting to give back through government.”

“The fact that they have contributed shows a degree of loyalty,” he added.

Friends and family

Presidents often reward donors and allies with plum positions – often dispatching them to glamorous, low-conflict posts in Europe or the Caribbean.

Some of Trump’s early picks for ambassadorships follow that pattern and include billionaires who donated to his reelection effort. Among them: Arkansas investor Warren Stephens, named as the US’ envoy to the UK, and Charles Kushner, Trump’s choice for ambassador to France – one of several extended family members or close friends who has been chosen for diplomatic gigs.

Kushner, who donated $2 million to pro-Trump efforts and received a presidential pardon at the end of Trump’s first term, is the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter, Ivanka. Another donor, Tom Barrack, who oversaw the fundraising for Trump’s first inauguration, is his choice as ambassador to Turkey.

And incoming special envoy to the Middle East, real-estate tycoon Steve Witkoff, is a longtime Trump friend and a partner in the cryptocurrency businesses that Trump launched with his sons earlier this year.

He donated $250,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC.

//

White House billionaires have no idea how Americans live (and don’t seem to care)

---

no lnx

Trump staffed his Cabinet with wealthy advisers. Some stand to gain even more from recent policy shifts

By Isabelle Chapman, Curt Devine, Majlie de Puy Kamp, Casey Tolan and Kyung Lah, CNN

Thu April 24, 2025}:

CNN

After staffing the wealthiest presidential Cabinet in modern American history with energy and banking titans, President Donald Trump has spent his first three months in office boosting those industries while dismantling long-established guardrails against government corruption.

A CNN review of Trump’s actions as he approaches the 100-day mark of his presidency found that as his administration has slashed the federal workforce and shaken the global economy with tariffs, the president’s team has made changes that could also directly benefit his Cabinet members or their former companies.

At the same time, by gutting traditional oversight bodies and embracing historically lax ethics rules, Trump has enabled conflicts of interest and greased the revolving door between government and the private sector. At least eight nominees for executive branch positions would have been banned or had limited roles under previous administrations – including Trump’s first term – due to their recent work as lobbyists, according to an analysis by the watchdog Campaign Legal Center that was reviewed by CNN.

Some potential conflicts have played out in plain view – like when Trump used the White House lawn last month to produce what seemed like an elaborate ad for key adviser and top donor Elon Musk’s struggling Tesla brand. The Trump administration has also cleared the way for Musk’s Starlink business to win new government contracts.

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk depart after looking at Tesla vehicles on the South Lawn of the White House on March 11, in Washington, DC.:

But other examples of possible conflicts are found deep in Cabinet members’ ethics reports, such as Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s disclosure that he would receive a million-dollar bonus – after his swearing-in – from the fracking company he founded, led and now plays a role in regulating.

Even as they’ve agreed to divest, some Cabinet members have found a loophole: giving control of certain assets to their adult children. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick handed the reins of his financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald to his 27-year-old son, while Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he would give his interest in litigation against a vaccine maker – part of an industry he is now tasked with regulating – to his adult son.

Some of Trump’s policies also could help his own business interests. By establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve, the president is backstopping the value of the cryptocurrency, enriching existing holders of the asset, some of whom spent millions helping reelect the president. Meanwhile, Trump and his family have moved to expand their own crypto interests. And this week, Trump sent the value of his personal meme coin soaring by promising its top buyers a chance to dine with the president next month.

Many of the Trump administration’s early actions have pushed priorities that Republicans have sought for years, and the White House says its moves to slash regulations are needed to reduce spending and eliminate government inefficiency.

“The people elected me to do the job, and I’m doing it,” Trump said in March. “My administration will reclaim power from this unaccountable bureaucracy.”

But from cryptocurrency and energy policies to efforts as niche as rural internet access, some of the administration’s moves also closely align with the financial interests of his top advisers and the president himself.

“This administration seems entirely indifferent to ethics, and that contrasts certainly with the past several administrations, including Trump one,” said Richard Briffault, a Columbia University law professor who studies government ethics. “The level of complete indifference to it takes us back to before Watergate.”

‘Tearing down’ ethics rules

In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress passed sweeping ethics legislation to hold the executive branch more accountable.

Within weeks of beginning his second term, Trump flouted many of those decades-old protections – including by firing more than a dozen inspectors general and dismissing the head of the government’s ethics watchdog. He also signed an order making it easier for lobbyists to join agencies overseeing industries they used to represent.

The United States has spent years building up an “ethics infrastructure,” Briffault said. “In less than 90 days, this administration has been tearing (it) down.”

Trump’s unprecedented moves come as his Cabinet includes some of the richest people to ever hold the reins of power in the federal government. Many came straight from positions of power in key industries.

CNN analyzed dozens of financial disclosures and ethics statements filed by presidential appointees to track the wealth and potential conflicts of interest among Trump’s Cabinet members. The disclosures offer a limited picture of nominees’ finances: Officials are only required to list their assets in broad ranges.

Still, Trump’s leadership team appears to eclipse the wealth of any previous Cabinet going back decades. Of 21 Cabinet members, seven reported holding at least $10 million in assets, and some are even billionaires.

Lutnick – who has been a Wall Street power player since the mid-1990s – has an estimated net worth of $3.1 billion, according to Forbes. That’s roughly 15 times as much as the combined maximum reported net worth of former President Joe Biden’s entire outgoing Cabinet.

Five Trump Cabinet members reported holding individual assets worth more than $50 million, the highest range on disclosure forms. And that doesn’t include Musk, the world’s richest person with a net worth of about $371 billion, who as a special government employee is not required to publicly report anything about his wealth.

While Biden filled his Cabinet mostly with bureaucrats and politicians, Trump’s team also includes former CEOs who ran major energy and financial services companies before joining him in Washington.

“We’re seeing industry officials coming into the executive branch in a way that we’ve never seen in past administrations, including the first Trump administration,” said Danielle Caputo, senior ethics counsel for the Campaign Legal Center.

While supporters of Trump’s efforts say industry expertise helps officials better understand the fields they regulate, ethics watchdogs fear actions undertaken by highly-connected officials could benefit their former companies and colleagues instead of the American public.

Some moves could particularly benefit the super-wealthy. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, for instance, has taken a chainsaw to the Internal Revenue Service, which includes a unit that audits America’s ultrawealthy. Data obtained by CNN and first reported by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists revealed that the Global High Wealth unit was hit by layoffs at a far higher rate through March of this year than the IRS as a whole.

Trump has also rescinded a Biden-era executive order creating ethics requirements for political appointees.

Members of the past three administrations — including those who worked under Trump during his first term — previously had to commit not to accept gifts from lobbyists. They were also banned from working on issues they lobbied on in the two years before their appointment, and after leaving government, couldn’t lobby on behalf of industries they’d recently regulated.

Those rules would have banned or limited the roles of eight Trump nominees, including three officials tapped for Environmental Protection Agency roles who lobbied for fossil fuel groups in recent years, according to an analysis by Campaign Legal Center shared with CNN.

Additionally, CLC found Trump has named at least six political appointees to serve as senior ethics officials, a role normally held by nonpartisan career officials.

Inspectors general across more than a dozen different agencies were fired during Trump’s first week in office. The IGs act as independent watchdogs, and the president is supposed to provide a 30-day notice to Congress before removing them, which Trump failed to do. Trump defended the move by suggesting some IGs had been “unfair” and firing them was “a very standard thing to do.”

The crypto stakes

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to make America the “crypto capital of the planet.” He kicked off his second term with moves to boost the crypto industry such as establishing a national bitcoin reserve, dissolving a Biden-era task force that investigated crypto criminals, installing a Musk ally as “crypto czar” and revoking a banking rule that discouraged financial institutions from owning crypto.

At the same time, Trump and his family have gotten deep into crypto by launching a new firm and the president’s own meme coin, a digital asset that has no underlying value and trades largely on hype. Trump also installed Lutnick, a banker who before his swearing-in was overseeing more than $1.5 billion in crypto-related investments, as his commerce secretary.

Lutnick has long pushed to legitimize bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Last October, while he was still CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, he told a podcast host he had “hundreds and hundreds of millions” of exposure to bitcoin, presumably through crypto assets held by his firm.

Cantor Fitzgerald is now run by his son, which ethicists say leaves Lutnick with an improperly close tie to the firm’s success.

“By turning it over to a family member, you may not benefit directly, but you surely have an interest in the well-being of your child,” said Briffault.

Cantor Fitzgerald didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Howard Lutnick listens as President Donald Trump delivers remarks before Lutnick is sworn in as Commerce Secretary in February.

Meanwhile, Trump’s sons launched a digital currency company, World Liberty Financial, in 2024, and took an ownership stake in a bitcoin mining venture called American Bitcoin last month. Trump’s own media company announced plans earlier this year to potentially buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

At least eight top officials in the executive branch disclosed crypto holdings in their financial disclosures, although some agreed to divest the assets. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, HHS Secretary Kennedy and Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz each reported owning more than $500,000 in crypto assets.

An HHS spokesperson told CNN that “Secretary Kennedy continues to adhere to all ethical and legal requirements.”

So far, the Trump administration’s crypto moves haven’t led to a boom in valuations for digital assets. While the price of bitcoin, a bellwether for the $3 trillion crypto market, skyrocketed nearly 50% between Trump’s election victory and inauguration, it has fallen about 9% since then, mirroring broader stock market declines.

Still, Eric Talley, a Columbia University professor who studies corporate law, said he saw the Trump administration’s efforts to promote crypto, and specifically the strategic bitcoin reserve, as “particularly suspicious.”

“The economic stakes — if you were a heavy holder of crypto — would be huge and profoundly positive if you could cause the US government to essentially guarantee a big chunk of the stability of the market of at least some of the crypto issuances,” he said.

‘Energy dominance’

During his time in the private sector, former fracking executive Chris Wright was a zealous and vocal critic of government regulations meant to curb global warming. His company Liberty Energy filed a lawsuit that challenged a federal rule requiring companies to disclose details about greenhouse-gas emissions. In one video he posted on social media, Wright declared, “There is no climate crisis.”

Now, as energy secretary, Wright has authority to reverse some of the policies he railed against as Liberty’s CEO.

Wright has ordered the department to “build energy infrastructure and remove barriers to progress,” among other steps, to achieve US “energy dominance.” Under his leadership, the agency has ceased its pursuit of a net-zero carbon future, cut fossil fuel regulations and accelerated numerous natural gas export projects.

Inside the department, Wright has alarmed some staffers with his embrace of fracking over other energy projects. Four current Department of Energy employees, who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, described a general attitude of hostility toward most renewable energy. One staffer pointed to webpages that once promoted solar energy and have now been taken offline, and other employees described circulating lists of renewable energy programs that could be on the chopping block.

Having a former fracking executive run the energy department is “absolutely a conflict of interest,” one staffer said.

Some of Wright’s former Liberty colleagues have also followed him into the department, including his current scheduling director, one of his advisers and a Liberty board member who has been nominated to serve as an assistant energy secretary.

President Donald Trump holds an executive orders after signing a series of orders on American energy production during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on April 8 in Washington, DC.

:

In the short term, falling oil prices due to economic turmoil under Trump could hurt fracking companies. But leaders at Wright’s former company have applauded the policy shifts. “We have an administration now that is working hard to remove some of the impediments that have been challenges,” Liberty Energy CEO Ron Gusek said at the New York Stock Exchange in March. “Those things give us a path forward to invest in our business.”

According to his ethics documents, Wright owned about $54 million worth of Liberty stock as of February, though disclosures show he sold off Liberty shares in recent weeks and moved money into general investment funds. He also disclosed that he would receive a roughly $1 million performance bonus for his work last year from the fracking company in March, after his swearing-in. A Liberty filing last month stated he received his bonus.

A Liberty spokesperson said, “To our knowledge, there has been no communication with Secretary Wright or any representative from the Department of Energy regarding Liberty Energy business.”

While the fossil fuel industry cheers Wright’s successes, some communities that expected financial help from the Department of Energy have faced roadblocks. Under a program funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law, for example, the department planned to disperse $500 million in grants to help schools in disadvantaged regions across the US improve their energy efficiency.

But multiple school district administrators told CNN that since Wright took over, the department has largely stopped communicating with them about federal funding from the program. Now, some districts fear they won’t receive all the money they were promised.

Brent Foster, who heads a committee to upgrade infrastructure at Mosier Community School in Oregon, points to the school’s century-old heater.

Mosier Community School, a public charter school in a rural Oregon county that voted for Trump, was awarded a roughly $870,000 grant from the program. That money could help replace the school’s unreliable century-old heater and windows that are currently held closed with tape, said Brent Foster, who leads a committee to upgrade the school’s infrastructure.

This year, the DOE has canceled meetings with the school about the grant and has not been processing requests related to the project, according to Foster, who said he doesn’t know whether the funds will ever come through.

Winning the grant “felt like a miracle,” Foster said. “The idea that the federal government would sign a contract… then pull the rug out from under us, it’s difficult to understand.”

An Energy Department spokesperson said the agency is reviewing all activities to ensure they follow the law and align with the administration’s priorities. “President Trump’s administration is advancing a strategy of energy addition – embracing all forms of energy that are affordable, reliable, and secure,” said the spokesperson, who added that Wright has complied with department ethics requirements.

A change that could help SpaceX

The federal government has earmarked tens of billions of dollars to close the digital divide, connecting millions of rural Americans to fast, reliable internet. And for years, Musk’s SpaceX has tried to become eligible for the funds, at times without success.

In 2022, the Federal Communications Commission rejected a nearly $900 million grant application by Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet system, saying the company failed to show it could deliver on the promised service.

Similarly, the $42 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program was specifically designed to prioritize the gold standard of broadband internet – fiber-optic cables – over other technologies such as satellite service.

But that changed rapidly after Trump took office. Lutnick announced last month that the Commerce Department would end “woke mandates” and “favoritism towards certain technologies.” In practice, that means potentially opening up billions in funding for satellite internet companies.

Lutnick’s directive could enable Musk’s company to earn up to $20 billion from the amended BEAD program, according the Wall Street Journal. Today, Starlink is uniquely positioned to provide commercial satellite-based internet. However, other companies, including Amazon, may compete for BEAD grants in the future.

Musk has long criticized the federal government’s rural internet efforts, claiming that had the FCC not rejected Starlink’s grant application in 2022, “it would probably have saved lives in North Carolina” after Hurricane Helene decimated the area. The BEAD program, Musk said, is an “an outrageous waste of taxpayer money” that is “utterly failing to serve people in need.”

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

Experts say satellite-based internet service could play a useful role in connecting low-density remote areas. But many argue a fiber-optic connection is more reliable and weather resistant than what satellite service can offer today.

“Fiber can handle an almost unlimited amount of bandwidth. Fiber is scalable in terms of speed. Fiber is what we call ‘future proof,’” said Christopher Ali, a professor of telecommunications at Penn State University.

Lutnick’s move to change the program is now prolonging delays in getting shovels in the ground, even as the GOP has blasted the Biden administration over its failure to spend the money more quickly. Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune and 12 additional Republican senators, for example, have said the program has “onerous regulations” and moves slowly due to “unnecessary government interference.”

The Commerce Department didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Some states with approved BEAD proposals are waiting for the green light from the federal government before starting work while others are amending their proposals.

A final draft proposal dated March 2025 from West Virginia obtained by CNN details a plan to bring a fiber-optic internet connection to every resident in the state. But after Gov. Patrick Morrisey met with Lutnick later that month, he announced West Virginia would revise the proposal to “evaluate a broader range of technology options, including satellite.”

“The West Virginia Broadband Enhancement Council has always supported fiber deployment and continues to do so,” said Bill Bissett, who heads up the council.

“Every day we delay is another day that West Virginians who are underserved or unserved will not have access to this critical resource,” he added.

Because of Lutnick’s change, government officials will “re-run a process they’ve already completed solely to put satellite service in places that were going to get fiber,” said Evan Feinman, who until recently oversaw the rollout of the BEAD program. “That service will be dramatically slower, less reliable in bad weather … and will cost at least $800 more per year (per household) than the fiber connections would have been.”

The change in direction of the BEAD program is the “poster child for why people should be concerned about conflicts of interest” in this administration, said Briffault, the Columbia law professor, who spoke about how members of Trump’s inner circle could be putting a thumb on the scale.

“You cannot be confident that the decision is being made on the policy merits, as opposed to the influence of a self-interested individual who stands to make a ton of money on it,” he said.

CNN’s Yahya Abou-Ghazala and Anna-Maja Rappard contributed to this report.

---

---

meme coin spIke up to 2/7b on annouNCement? 25 to dinner at t resort; IT IS NOT EVEN CRYPTO, NO UNDERLYING VALUE MSNBC RUHLE 4 25 25

NOTE ACCESS KEY IN TARIFF BS

an 4 25

Busted: 'Serious questions' raised over Trump appointee's finances

//

Close

pro publ 12 24

Billy Long, Trump’s Nominee to Lead the IRS, Touts a Credential That Tax Experts Say Is Dubious

9 24

nyt

Cheney also explained](https://x.com/kyledcheney/status/1839703905837478036), "The Iranian operation got debate prep material, info on Trump's potential VPs and contacts with an official of another (suspended) GOP presidential campaign." And the Politico reporter tweeted descriptions of "the Trump campaign-related victims of the hacking/phishing operation."

CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere, meanwhile, tweeted, "among the people who inadvertently let hackers into their email accounts: a former homeland security advisor to a president, a former senior official at the CIA, a former deputy director of the CIA."

rww 4 24

Last week, various Christian nationalists and abortion abolitionists gathered for a discussion on Twitter about how they should respond to former President Donald Trump’s recent statements about abortion, specifically his criticism that a recent court ruling in Arizona went too far and his claim that he would not sign a national abortion ban if he’s reelected to the White House.

Among the participants was former Trump administration official and radical Christian nationalist William Wolfe, who made a two-fold argument in defense of voting for Trump.

The first part of Wolfe’s argument was that the Biden administration is “possessed by legion of demons, Marxist and radicals” who hate Christians, the preborn, children and even “humanity itself.”

“What we’re up against is one of the most lawless, hostile, and aggressive anti-Christian regimes that we have ever seen in our country to this point,” Wolfe said. “The Biden administration is ruthless. They will utilize the crushing and deadly power of the federal government, the national security apparatus, and the deep state to destroy you and your family without remorse. If you’re an outspoken, conservative Christian in this country, and you’re not walking around looking over your shoulder wondering when the FBI might be coming to roll you up for your group chats or for your memes or for your advocacy for Christian values and causes in the country, you need to be.”

“I think [Biden] poses a civilizational threat to our country and the world,” Wolfe added. “He’s staffed his administration with trannies and deviants of every kind, each worse than the next, and so I think the greatest threat to our lives and our livelihood is the regime.”

Later in the discussion, Wolfe made the case Trump is just “cloaking” his radical intentions and will, if reelected, fill his administration with hardliners who will help him “govern in a more extreme position.”

“I actually think there’s wisdom in cloaking some of your power levels and maybe some of the things that you’re trying to do, and then once you secure power, and you have it, you govern in a more extreme position,” Wolfe said. “I think Trump is one of the first Republican candidates I’ve ever seen in my lifetime who has done that.”

“I am confident with the people that I see lining up to be with Trump in a second term that regardless of what the rhetoric looks like during this campaign season, that he would actually govern in a more conservative and more aggressive fashion in the White House,” he concluded. “That’s something that I think we need to be comfortable with and maybe we should use; maybe even some other conservative Republicans out there who want to run for office and gain power and use it to do radical scary conservative things should consider doing.”

IFrame Content

Given that Wolfe is among those who are already openly plotting to infuse Christian nationalism into a second Trump administration, his contention that Trump will govern in a far “more aggressive fashion” if he’s returned to the White House than his current campaign rhetoric suggests ought to be taken seriously.

===

pro pub oct 2022? monopoly fail

...Roper told ProPublica that when he was developing the YieldStar software more than a decade ago, he was concerned about avoiding both issues. He also said he didn’t want to misuse private data in pricing.

“I was highly sensitized to: You just don’t do it,” Roper said.

Despite differences in the software’s design, RealPage acquired LRO in 2017 after months of scrutiny by the antitrust division of the justice department. Federal regulators review mergers above a certain size — right now, it is transactions valued at $101 million — and typically allow them to proceed after only a preliminary review. But some are flagged for a more extensive look. The government can challenge a merger in court if it believes it could substantially harm competition.

RealPage’s purchase of LRO received such a second look, but the DOJ allowed it to proceed in late 2017. The department did not respond to requests for comment.

The approval allowed RealPage to acquire its only significant competitor, Roper said, adding, “I was surprised the DOJ let that go through.”

RealPage was pricing 1.5 million units, and the acquisition of LRO would double that, Steve Winn, RealPage’s then-CEO, said at a mid-2017 investor conference. “I don’t think there’s any concentration, enough concentration, of buying or pricing power here” to warrant DOJ concerns, he said. A third company had a substantial footprint in the market, Winn said, but property managers’ own manual pricing processes or proprietary systems were RealPage’s largest competitor.

“We expect our combined platform to drive accelerated, sustained revenue growth,” Winn said in a media release announcing the deal.

RealPage’s influence was burgeoning. That year, the firm’s target market — multifamily buildings with five or more units — made up about 19 million of the nation’s 45 million rental units. A growing share of those buildings were owned by firms backed by Wall Street investors, who were among the most eager adopters of pricing software.

RealPage renamed its combined pricing software AI Revenue Management. By the end of 2020, the firm was reporting in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that its clients used its services and products to manage 19.7 million rental units of all types, including single-family homes. The private equity firm Thoma Bravo bought the public company a few months later for $10.2 billion.

Winn, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $1.7 billion, stepped aside. He did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Thoma Bravo declined to comment.

Who Uses the Software and How It Works

Somewhere around 2016, according to one trade group, the industry’s use of the pricing software began to achieve “critical mass.”

The more property managers who sign on to RealPage services, the more data flows into the company’s repository. That in turn aids its pricing service, which the company says “leverages multifamily’s largest lease transaction database.”

RealPage’s clients include some of the largest property managers in the country. Many favor cities where rent has been rising rapidly, according to a ProPublica analysis of five of the country’s top 10 property managers as of 2020. All five use RealPage pricing software in at least some buildings, and together they control thousands of apartments in metro areas such as Denver, Nashville, Atlanta and Seattle, where rents for a typical two-bedroom apartment rose 30% or more between 2014 and 2019.....

an 3 24

Trump's administration had plenty of turnover during his four years in the White House, but one person who stayed with Trump throughout most of his term was investment banker Steve Mnuchin. The former treasury secretary arrived in February 2017 — the month after Trump was sworn in as president — and stayed with him until January 2021.

Since leaving the White House, Mnuchin, now 61, has kept busy in the private sector — including, according to Bloomberg News reporters Hannah Levitt and Bre Bradham, a major banking deal in 2024.

Mnuchin, they report, has been "mining profits from a struggling U.S. bank": New York Community Bancorp (NYCB).

READ MORE:Lindsey Graham changes his tune on Saudi Arabia after a $37 billion South Carolina contract with Boeing

Levitt and Bradham explain, "Mnuchin's Liberty Strategic Capital led a group of investors that injected more than $1 billion into New York Community Bancorp while effectively taking control of the ailing lender to apartment landlords. The deal, announced Wednesday, (March 6), installed former Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting as chief executive officer."

That "intervention," according to Levitt and Bradham, "sent the troubled lender's stock soaring, giving their coalition an instant paper profit and a shot at earning billions more."

The reporters note that Mnuchin and Otting have "a track record of stirring up controversy as they chase returns."

"Before their posts in Trump's administration," according to the Bloomberg News journalists, "Mnuchin led an investor group that bought failed mortgage lender IndyMac after the 2008 financial crisis and, rebranding it OneWest, installed Otting as CEO. By the time they cashed out at more than double their purchase price, the lender was beset with accusations it had hurt communities as a 'foreclosure machine.'"

READ MORE:'That is the question': Trump ally admits campaign not sure how to attack Biden on economy

Levitt and Bradham add that Mnuchin "later irked his critics again after leaving the Treasury and raising money for Liberty from sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund."

"Now, his firm has landed this year's highest-profile U.S. regional bank deal," they report. "Unlike IndyMac, which got into trouble making residential mortgages, NYCB's woes stemmed from financing office buildings and apartment complexes. Last week, the lender's disclosure of 'material weaknesses' in its monitoring of loans pushed down its shares and credit ratings even further. As news emerged Wednesday that NYCB was seeking fresh equity, the stock dipped to $1.70 — from more than $13 last year."

READ MORE:Why Jamie Dimon loves Trump's policies

*Read Bloomberg's full report at this link (subscription needed).

---

an 2 24

one name that has been heard a lot in right-wing media outlets is Tony Bobulinski, an investor who House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky) and other Republicans have been touting as their greatest weapon against Hunter Biden.

Bobulinski, according to many MAGA Republicans, will be the downfall of Hunter Biden and, by extension, his father, President Joe Biden.

But in an article published on February 13, Daily Beast reporters William Bredderman and Roger Sollenberger lay out some reasons why Bobulinski's "ties" make him a problematic witness.

READ MORE:'You have no balls': Nancy Mace launches explosive in-person attack against Hunter Biden

:{":{As Republicans examine Hunter Biden's questionable business ties," the journalists explain, "it turns out Bobulinski is connected to one particular character perhaps more unsavory than any other figure in the inquiry's constellation: Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg…. a Ukrainian-born energy magnate who's been a close ally of Vladimir Putin for decades.}:"

Bredderman and Sollenberger note that in 2017, Vekselberg "reportedly funneled $500,000 to an LLC run by Donald Trump's former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, supposedly with the intention of influencing the new administration to let Russia illegally occupy parts of Eastern Ukraine."

"U.S. law enforcement has placed sanctions on Vekselberg multiple times, citing Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election, Moscow's aggression against Ukraine, and the oligarch's ties to Putin," the Daily Beast journalists explain. "Vekselberg tried to evade those sanctions with the help of an American attorney. But Republicans are trying to look past Bobulinski's ties to Vekselberg, as they paint Hunter Biden — dishonestly and without actual evidence — as a corrupt figure facilitating payments to his father."

READ MORE:'Excuse me!' Marjorie Taylor Greene fumes as Hunter Biden walks out on her speech

Read the Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).}}:

---

---

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/7/28/global_heat_climate_crisis_july_2023

...

DAVID WALLACE-WELLS: Well, I mean, the short answer is, to limit all of these impacts, we need to reduce carbon emissions very rapidly. And while we have had an incredibly impressive renewable rollout over the last couple of years, all of the graphs are pointing way up. The next decade looks much more promising for renewable energy than most advocates even believed was possible just a few years ago. Nevertheless, they’ve barely dented, if they’ve dented at all, the emissions that we’re producing from fossil fuel generation. So we haven’t actually reduced the share of global power production that comes from fossil fuels from this remarkable renewable rollout. We’re just using those renewables to add to our power capacity.

And that’s really, you know, the change that we need to make. We need to be producing so much renewables now that we can actually draw down fossil fuels, and draw them down relatively rapidly, rather than simply using them to supplement our consumption patterns and power production. And unfortunately, we haven’t really seen a sign of that. At best, it looks like we’re going to be looking at sort of a plateau for emissions over the rest of this decade. And we know from all of the scientific warnings that that’s simply inadequate if we have any hope of meeting some of our more ambitious climate targets.

AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, David, I want to ask you about what would be the most effective legislation in the United States to deal with climate change. But, Dharna Noor, I wanted to first go to your piece. If you can explain what Project 2025 is and what you found in your investigation?

DHARNA NOOR: Absolutely. So, Project 2025 is, essentially, a group of dozens of right-wing organizations. We’re talking about think tanks, publications and the like. And it was convened by the Heritage Foundation, which is, I think, in the climate world, very well known for promoting climate denial for decades, and for even longer promoting this sort of anti-regulatory stance. So, these groups came together in an attempt, essentially, to advise whoever the next president is, if that person is a Republican, so any Republican who takes office in next year’s presidential election.

This is the second time that the Heritage Foundation has led the creation of a sort of transition plan aimed at a Republican president. In the early ’80s, we saw the Heritage Foundation create one of these plans, that actually went on to have a huge influence on the Reagan administration and was framed as a sort of way of taking on the out-of-control regulatory state.

And in this particular iteration, there’s a lot of focus in their new transition plan on unmaking environmental regulations. I’m happy to talk more about this, but there’s a number of previous Trump appointees who have written, essentially, proposals to undo the many powers of the federal administration, from the EPA to the Department of the Interior, all in an attempt to sort of lessen the federal authority to regulate fossil fuels and, essentially, to boost those polluting industries.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting. Polls show now that Biden and Trump, even though he was indicted again yesterday, are neck and neck in the polls for president. You talk about the Department of the Interior part of the plan, in this 2025 plan, being written byWilliam Perry Pendley.You note he controversially led the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump and worked to eliminate drilling regulations. Talk more specifically, and name names.

DHARNA NOOR: Absolutely. So, as you mentioned, William Perry Pendley very controversially led the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump, controversially because he was actually never confirmed by the Senate. This was the case for a number of Trump appointees. And he also was known, before he had a role in the Trump administration, for writing this book called Sagebrush Rebel, that was really in praise of Ronald Reagan, of Ronald Reagan’s anti-regulatory sort of agenda. It’s, I think, unsurprising to see his name in a sort of proposal that’s aimed at, you know, ending the ability for federal regulations to have any real impact on the environment.

Previous reporting from E&E News, from Scott Waldman there, found that Mandy Gunasekara had written another chapter focused on remaking theEPA, really focused on shrinking its authority both by laying off staff, by cutting budgets, with an especially big focus on sort of cutting environmental programs, like environmental justice programming and public outreach programming.

Another name that was in the proposal was Bernard McNamee, who wrote a chapter on the Department of Energy, again sort of in an attempt to say we should shrink the authority of the Department of Energy. He previously served as an adviser to Ted Cruz. And before that, he led this far-right organization called the Texas Public Policy Institute — or,Texas Public Policy Foundation, rather, that really aims to undo environmental regulation and fight renewable energy at the state level.

And so, we’re really seeing, I think, a who’s who of the far right in this attempt to, you know, not only sort of be in the next president’s ear if they’re a Republican, but also, you know, sort of recommend personnel and say, “Hey, here’s who you should staff up with.”

AMY GOODMAN: What role does billionaire Charles Koch play in this project, Dharna?

DHARNA NOOR: So, the Heritage Foundation, who, again, are the far-right foundation that sort of convened this group, Project 2025, has historically had ties, financial ties, to the Koch brothers, who are, of course, billionaires who made their fortune in fossil fuels and related industries. The Heritage Foundation is also a member of the State Policy Network, which is a sort of coalition of these extreme right-wing groups that have targeted regulation, especially climate-focused regulation, in states for many years. And I think, you know, I would just say, I guess, it’s no surprise that an organization with ties to people who have made such a great fortune in the industries that must be regulated in order to take on the climate crisis, you know, have historically been tied to a group that is trying to push that agenda to the presidential level.

AMY GOODMAN: As we begin to wrap up, I wanted to ask David Wallace-Wells to respond to what Dharna is describing right now, and also talk about what needs exactly to be done. I mean, we’re speaking today, the day after the Supreme Court has just OK’d, cleared the way for construction of the contested Mountain Valley Pipeline to resume, lifting a halt on a section of the project that had been issued by a lower court earlier this month after a challenge by environmental groups....

---

ref

GUK

https://yyytheguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/27/project-2025-dismantle-us-climate-policy-next-republican-president

‘Project 2025’: plan to dismantle US climate policy for next Republican president

Rightwing groups penned a conservative wish list of proposals for the next conservative Dharna Noor

Thu 27 Jul 2023 

An alliance of rightwing groups has crafted an extensive presidential proposal to bolster the planet-heating oil and gas industry and hamstring the energy transition, it has emerged.

Against a backdrop of record-breaking heat and floods this year, the $22m endeavor, Project 2025, was convened by the notorious rightwing, climate-denying thinktank the Heritage Foundation, which has ties to fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch.

[A burned-out car against a background of charred trees and hills

Deadly global heatwaves undeniably result of climate crisis, scientists show

Read more]

Called the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, it is meant to guide the first 180 days of presidency for an incoming Republican president. Climate experts and advocates criticized planning that would dismantle US climate policy.

The nearly 1,000-page transition guide was written by more than 350 rightwingers and is full of sweeping recommendations to deconstruct all sectors of the federal government– – including environmental policy.

“Heritage is convening the conservative movement behind the policies to ensure that the next president has the right policy and personnel necessary to dismantle the administrative state and restore self-governance to the American people,” the foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, said in an April statement.

The guide’s chapter on the US Department of Energy proposes eliminating three agency offices that are crucial for the energy transition, and also calls to slash funding to the agency’s grid deployment office in an effort to stymie renewable energy deployment, E&E News reported this week.

The plan, which would hugely expand gas infrastructure, was authored byBernard McNamee, a former official at the agency. McNamee was also a Trump appointee to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He previously led the far-right Texas Public Policy Foundation, which fights environmental regulation, and served as a senior adviser to the Republican senator Ted Cruz.

Another chapter focuses on gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and moving it away from its focus on the climate crisis. It proposes cutting the agency’s environmental justice and public engagement functions, while shrinking it as a whole by terminating new hires in “low-value programs”, E&E News reported. The proposal was writtenMandy Gunasekara, who was the former chief of staff at the EPA under Trump.

The guide also features a chapter on the Department of the Interior written by William Perry Pendley, who controversially led the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump and worked to eliminate drilling regulations.

[Republicans in Congress continue to show they will stop at nothing to undermine environmental protections

David Shadburn of the League of Conservation Voters]

Before his time in the Trump administration, Pendley headed the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm where he advocated for selling off public lands. He also authored a book, Sagebrush Rebel, praising Reagan’s anti-regulatory policies.

“He did a bunch of terrible things,” saidKert Davies, director of special investigations at the Center for Climate Integrity, about Pendley’s time at the Department of the Interior. “He worked to dismantle [the Bureau of Land Management] while he was in it.”

The Heritage Foundation has enjoyed a longstanding influence in GOP politics, even helping Ronald Reagan win the presidency, authors Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway detail in their 2023 book, The Big Myth. Many of Reagan’s policy proposals were cribbed from the pages of the thinktank’s first Mandate for Leadership, published in 1980, which asserted that the US was in the middle of a “crisis of overregulation”.

“It doesn’t trouble me that any individual or institution would develop advisory plans for politicians. What troubles me is the Heritage Foundation’s long history … of working to undermine environmental protection at the expense of health and wellbeing of the American people, at the expense of life on Earth,” said Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard.

[Protesters in October 2021 demanding that the Biden administration to do more to curb climate change and ban fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, House GOP members are also continuing to attack federal climate funding in their spending bill proposals, putting governmental functions at risk.

Earlier this month, the Clean Budget Coalition– – composed of more than 250 advocacy groups – warned that Republican representatives were slipping restrictions on climate spending into the government’s annual spending bills, bills that must be passed before current funding expires on 30 September to avoid a government shutdown. This week, the coalition found that House Republicans had added additional “poison pills” to spending bills, including ones that target environmental funding.

The spending bills are currently in the House appropriations committee, which is chaired by theTexas Republican Kay Granger, who is a top recipient of campaign funding from the oil and gas industry, the Lever reported this week. They will go to a full vote in the House, and then the finalized proposals will move into negotiations with the Senate. If Biden vetoes them, a government shutdown could be on the way.

“Republicans in Congress continue to show they will stop at nothing to undermine environmental protections and attack anything that would help addressing the climate crisis,” said David Shadburn, a senior government affairs advocate at the League of Conservation Voters.

Some of the provisions would hamstring the EPA’s powers, blocking the agency from enforcing new pollution limits on power plants and tailpipe emissions or from implementing controls on mercury and other toxic air pollution, and effectively shuttering a critical program for deploying carbon-free energy.

“House appropriations Republicans are abusing the appropriations process to impose a cycle of environmental injustice,” said Deanna Noël, climate campaigns director for the consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen.

Other “poison pills” would prohibit listing the dunes sagebrush lizard under the Endangered Species Act, remove protections for the greater Yellowstone ecosystem’s population of grizzly bears, and bar the Department of the Interior from creating a working group to help restore bison populations. Still others wouldrequire the energy secretary to sell 1m barrels of refined petroleum from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and block the implementation of a rule forcing federal defense contractors to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and create emission reductions plans.

These disgraceful poison pill riders are nothing short of corporate giveaways to the corrupt fossil fuel industry

Deanna Noël of Public Citizen

Every GOP representative can submit proposals to the House appropriations committee, and since no member is required to sign off on specific proposals, it is not clear who exactly is responsible for each “poison pill”. But as the Lever reported, many Republican representatives who have effectively championed the provisions are recipients of funding from polluting industries.

For instance, a proposal to halt climate-related fisheries research funding was written by a subcommittee led by Representative Hal Rogers of Kentucky, whose top campaign contributors include mining and fossil fuel interests. Another proposal would bar funding for theUN’s Green Climate Fund; it was buried in a bill being overseen by major energy funding recipient Representative Mario Díaz-Balartof Florida, the Lever reported.

“These disgraceful poison pill riders are nothing short of corporate giveaways to the corrupt fossil fuel industry,” said Noël.

The proposals come as waters off the Florida coast reach levels of heat more commonly found in hot tubs, and as much of the nation continues to swelter under triple-digit temperatures. 

---

---

no lnx many

Trump’s Pro-Abstinence HHS Appointee Fits an Unnerving ‘Pattern’

Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy·Contributing Writer

June 7, 2017

On Tuesday, the Trump administration quietly appointed Valerie J. Huber as chief of staff for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Huber most recently served as president and CEO of Ascend, an organization focused on promoting abstinence-only education in schools. She was previously the abstinence-education coordinator for the state of Ohio, where she oversaw abstinence programs for more than 100,000 students per year.

Valerie J. Huber

In a memo to HHS staffers by Acting Health Secretary Doug Wright, he called Ascend “a Washington DC-based professional association that champions youth to make healthy life and relationship decisions.”

But abstinence-only education — or what many on the far right call “sexual risk avoidance” — is seen by many health advocates as ineffective, and frequently leave out certain demographics of young people that are especially vulnerable, including LGBTQ teens and pregnant and parenting teens.

Why Experts Are Concerned

Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, the director of public policy for Advocates for Youth, says there is a pattern not only of Trump appointees being named to offices whose very mission they seem to oppose, but also one emerging among HHS appointees specifically who are united in their opposition to contraception.

“There is definitely in HHS and the Trump administration a focus on rolling back birth control coverage and access to contraception in general,” Thu-Thao Rhodes says. “And yet another pattern of this administration is that they don’t see contraception as a preventative service and integral to women’s health. There’s a pattern here of people being appointed to key positions by the administration who think this way.”

Echoes Leslie Kantor, PhD, MPH, and the Vice President of Education at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, “At Planned Parenthood, we are very concerned about an increasing number of anti-women’s health, anti-sex education, anti-science appointments in the Trump administration.”

.

Last month, Teresa Manning was tapped as deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at HHS, the role that oversees the administration of Title X, the national family planning program. In a 2003 interview, Manning stated on the record that she believes that contraception doesn’t work. Manning has also criticized the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for recommending that prescribers offer advance prescriptions of the morning-after pill and has called emergency contraception “medically irresponsible” and “anti-family.”

Charmaine Yoest, Trump’s appointee to serve as assistant secretary of public affairs for HHS, is opposed to intrauterine devices (IUDs) as a form of birth control and has falsely said that they have “life-ending properties.” As noted in a memo circulated to Senate Democrats from the staff of the minority members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee earlier this week, “IUDs do not work after implantation and therefore cannot end pregnancies. Additionally, recent data from the Guttmacher Institute found that unplanned pregnancies are at a 30-year low, largely a result of an increase in the use of long-acting reversible contraceptives like IUDs. The [Affordable Care Act] has been critical in increasing access to IUDs by removing cost barriers for women seeking contraceptive services.”

HHS Secretary Tom Price has also spoken on the record about his opposition to the contraception mandate of the ACA, telling a reporter in 2012 that “there’s not one woman” who does not have access to birth control — and thus does not need it guaranteed as part of her insurance coverage at no cost. Price is also vehemently outspoken on his opposition to federal funding for Planned Parenthood and his support of seeing the organization dropped as not just a Medicaid provider, but also a Title X provider. Planned Parenthood serves more than 40 percent of Title X patients, including teens, despite making up just 13 percent of all Title X health centers.

And Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s appointee to head the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has repeatedly insisted in his own words that the contraception mandate of the ACA harms women’s health.

“These appointments have an enormous impact on the lives and future success of young people in our nation,” Ginny Ehrlich, CEO of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, tells Yahoo Beauty in a statement. “We hope these officials will exercise their responsibilities in a way that builds on past successes in reducing teen and unplanned pregnancy, rather than going backwards.”

Bipartisan Support for Comprehensive Sex Ed

According to the Guttmacher Institute, research “suggests that strategies that promote abstinence-only outside of marriage while withholding information about contraceptives do not stop or even delay sex. Moreover, abstinence-only programs can actually place young people at increased risk of pregnancy and STIs.”

“The point of sex education is that you want to get to young people before they become sexually active. You don’t want them to get critical information after the fact,” Kantor says. “Good sex ed lays the groundwork throughout childhood and the teen years so that when you’re in the situation when you’re in a relationship and navigating and negotiating having sex for the first time, you are well prepared and have all the information you need to protect yourself.”

Adds Kantor, “There was a very, very important change in the country in2010 when for the first time, rather than pouring money into abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, money started to be appropriated for evidence-based approaches — approaches found to help young people change their behavior either by delaying sex or by using condoms and contraception when having sex. We don’t want to see things roll backwards to the bad old days of abstinence-only-until-marriage education.”

January 2017 polling by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that 85 percent of American adults — including 89 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of Republicans — favor maintaining federal funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program and the Personal Responsibility Education Program, both of which utilize evidence-based, comprehensive sex education curricula.

Furthermore, the National Campaign’s polling found that 79 percent of Americans — including 81 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of Republicans — believe that teens should receive more information about abstinence and birth control and sexually transmitted infection protection.

Read more in Yahoo Beauty + Style:

Trump’s ‘Religious Liberty’ Order Threatens Women’s Health, Experts Say

6 Threats to Women’s Health Baked Into Trump’s New Budget

Better Birth Control Access Could Drop Abortion Rate by 67%, Save $12 Billion

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty.

---

---

an 5 23

michael Pack, the Chief Executive Officer of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees Voice of America, was recently found responsible for several instances of misconduct, according to a federal inquiry, Rolling Stone reports.

Per NPR, the former President Donald Trump appointed leader, in 2020, "met with a career employee to discuss which senior leaders at the agency and the Voice of America should be forced out due to their perceived political beliefs," and "firing someone over political affiliation is typically a violation of federal civil service law."

Rolling Stone reports:

The Office of Special Counsel found that 'during his less-than-eight-month tenure CEO [Michael] Pack was responsible for numerous improper activities,' including 'abuse of authority, gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, or a violation of law, rule, or regulation.' The OSC's report concluded that Pack 'abused his authority and retaliated against career USAGM executives who engaged in whistleblowing.'

READ MORE:'A ton of weirdness' is ripping apart the Republican Party: conservative

Furthermore, according to Rolling Stone "the OSC found thatPack interfered with independent journalism at Voice of America and other outlets he oversaw; retaliated against executives who filed whistleblower complaints; and mismanaged and wasted funds by paying $1.6 million in a confidential, no-bid contract to a Virginia law firm to investigate USAGM executives. Pack also 'restricted employee communications with outside parties [and] failed to exempt legally protected disclosures.'"

Regarding what was said about employees' political beliefs, NPR reports an employee wrote "Hates Republicans" in a memo, while another said, "Openly despises Trump and Republicans."

David Seide, a lawyer "with the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit public interest law firm which has represented more than 30 whistleblowers at USAGM, VOA and its sister networks since Pack took office," according to NPR, said, "This report is remarkable in its breadth and depth and detail of the wrongdoing that was underway at these agencies in the last six months of the Trump administration."

---

https://www.desmog.com/2019/05/30/trump-federal-railroad-administration-crew-staffing-self-regulation-rail-industry/

---

---

an 3 23

Trump's White House ethics lawyer is looking at seeing his livelihood taken away over accusations that he tried to influence staffer Cassidy Hutchinson from giving truthful testimony to House Jan. 6 investigators.

According to a report from the Washington Post, Stefan Passantino is facing an onslaught of accusations from multiple sources that could lead to his disbarment if not worse.

It was previously reported that Passantino tried to get Hutchinson to withhold information about what was going on behind the scenes at the White House up to and after the Capitol insurrection.

Speaking to the House select committee, she was upfront about her belief that she felt he was more interested in protecting the former president before she retained her own counsel.

Her claims have come home to roost for the attorney in a new legal filing.

According to the Post, "a 22-page complaint filed on Monday with D.C.’s Board on Professional Responsibility, prominent lawyers accused Mr. Passantino of the crimes of subornation of perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and bribery. The latter referred in part to Ms. Cassidy’s allegation that his advice to say little to the panel was accompanied by assurances that she would get a 'really good job in ‘Trump world.'"

The complaint alleges, "The Office of Disciplinary Counsel should promptly initiate an investigation of Mr. Passantino’s conduct and, if the facts described above are confirmed, seek his disbarment.”

The report adds that the former White House staffer told investigators, "when Mr. Passantino announced he was her lawyer, he would not initially disclose who was paying him. He then sought to influence her testimony, she said, like by advising her to say she did not remember incidents even if she did remember some facts about them."[raed more]

---

---

CRC HIT TOUTED BY ZINKE:

https://capitalresearch.org/article/arabellas-long-war-part-1

“Keep It in the Ground” | Web of “Pop-Up” Groups

Anatomy of an Arabella Campaign | Harried Until the End

Summary: For years “dark money” activists ran a coordinated campaign to sabotage and undermine the Trump administration from the offices of Arabella Advisors in Washington, DC. The campaign culminated in the most extreme environmentalist regime in American history under President Joseph Biden.This report goes inside that campaign to destroy Trump’s Department of the Interior and promote the Left’s war on affordable energy.

In 2019, the Capital Research Center’s groundbreaking report on Arabella Advisors exposed the half-billion-dollar network for the first time, dragging Arabella into the limelight as the posterchild of the Left’s “dark money.” Since then we’ve continued to uncover this now $730 million **activist empire, tracing its shadowy campaigns on everything from abortion on demand to packing the Supreme Court to its war on the Trump administration.

This report on the Arabella network examines theprofessional Left’s years-long campaign to undermine President Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior, laying the groundwork for the Biden administration’s crusade against oil and the most radical environmentalist policies in American history.

“Keep It in the Ground”

The U.S. Department of the Interior is primarily responsible for managing roughly 450 million acres of federal land and conservation of their natural resources, most critically the nation’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas. It manages hundreds of dams and reservoirs, regulates drilling on public lands, runs the National Park Service, and maintains public monuments, including dozens attacked by radical Black Lives Matter activists in 2020.

The department also plays a role in foreign diplomacy and national security. Under President Trump that includedinternational wildlife trafficking bans, encouraging trade of precious metals and rare earths, and promoting his Indo-Pacific security and economic strategy.

But the department’s openness to expanding oil and gas production brought the sharpest attacks from the Left. Since the department is entirely under the president’s purview, halting all drilling on public land is far easier than attempting to halt private oil and gas production nationwide—the radical Left’s ultimate goal.

“The natural place to start phasing out supply is on our public lands and oceans where a ban on new leasing will keep up to 450 billion tons of carbon pollution in the ground,” Center for Biological Diversity director Kieran Suckling said in 2015. Bill McKibben, founder of the ultra-leftist 350.org, has also stated that “public lands are one of the easiest places for us to control the flow of carbon into the atmosphere.”

Unsurprisingly, that’s been the policy of Democratic presidents and their activist allies for years. President Barack Obama canceled lease sales in the Artic and Atlantic offshore sites and banned the leasing of coal on federal lands. Phasing down “extraction of fossil fuels from our public lands” was in the Democratic Party’s 2016 platform. That same year a 350.org activist asked Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton what she meant by “extraction on public lands is a done deal?” Clinton replied, “That’s where [President Obama] is moving: No future extraction. I agree with that.” Her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, later assured another 350.org activist that “I actually am now in that position.”

But even “phasing down” is too conservative for today’s “keep it in the ground” Left. No less than 20 Democratic presidential hopefuls vowed to ban drilling on public lands outright during their party’s 2020 primary. Ever the pawn of the radical Left, on January 27, 2021—exactly one week after his inauguration—President Biden indefinitely suspended development of new oil and gas wells on public lands, which the left-leaning San Francisco Chronicle cheered as “a first step to halting the granting of federal drilling leases permanently.”

Why does this matter? Federal lands account for roughly 24 percent of America’s oil, natural gas, and coal production. In 2019, total crude oil production reached an all-time high of 4.471 billion barrels, with a significant chunk of that growth coming from oil drilled on federal lands. Biden’s ban blocks future development of these key resources, removing them from the supply stream and hampering the energy independence the United States struggled to achieve in recent years. This means higher gasoline and household electricity prices, an estimated $11.3 billion in lost federal royalties and rental fees, and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs across the economy.

With a single executive order, the Left could advance its crusade to “keep it in the ground” for years in the name of global warming. The stakes couldn’t be higher—all that stood in its way was the Trump administration.

In the next installment, watch Arabella Advisors target the Interior Department with two “pop-up” groups.

Tags: 350.org, Accountable.US, Arabella Advisors, Center for American Progress, Center for Biological Diversity, climate change, Department of the Interior, global warming, Hopewell Fund, natural gas, new vent, oil, public lands, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Western Values Project   Hayden Ludwig

Hayden Ludwig is a Senior Investigative Researcher at Capital Research Center. He is also a columnist at the Washington Free Beacon and writes regularly for the American Conservative. Ludwig is…+ MORE BY HAYDEN LUDWIG

---

pt 2

Web of “Pop-Up” Groups

Enter Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm based in Washington, DC, that quietly runs arguably the most powerful activist and lobbying network in politics. Arabella manages four in-house nonprofits collectively called the “sisters,” each of which controls a small army of activists and a legion of “pop-up” groups. And each pop-up group is made to look like a slick, stand-alone website. These pop-ups target virtually every issue in politics—control of the courts, abortion access, gun control, and voter registration and mobilization, even the Trump-Russia collusion hoax—pushing left-wing policies in every corner. What makes Arabella so powerful is how these “pop-ups” deceive individuals into believing they represent genuine local grassroots interests, such as one pop-up in Alaska created to oppose creation of the Pebble Mine run from Arabella’s plush offices in DC.

Arabella’s network is extraordinarily well-funded. In 2019 alone, the four “sisters” reported total revenues exceeding $730 million and poured out $648 million. Between the network’s creation in 2006 and its Form 990 filing for 2019 (the latest available), Arabella’s empire has received more than $3 billion and spent nearly $2.5 billion. Most of that funding was directed to the network’s flagship 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the New Venture Fund, whose largest known donors include the Gates, Ford, Hewlett, Packard, andBuffettFoundations.

Beginning in 2017, Arabella turned its guns on Trump’s Department of the Interior using a pop-up pair: Western Values Project (WVP) and its “sister,” Western Values Project Action (WVPA).

According to their websites, WVP and WVPA were created in 2013 in Helena, Montana, to expose corrupt corporate lobbyists preying on public lands in the West. In reality, WVP is run by the 501(c)(3) New Venture Fund while WVPA is run by the 501(c)(4) Sixteen Thirty Fund, Arabella’s in-house lobbying shop. Whatever staff the groups actually have would have been paid by one of Arabella’s nonprofits or possibly by Arabella Advisors itself; we’ll likely never know. But in its 2018 Form 990, New Venture Fund revealed that it is the “paymaster” for Sixteen Thirty Fund (which reported zero employees on its own 2018 Form 990) and “pays the salary and immediately invoices Sixteen Thirty Fund, which reimburses the full amount.”

It’s common for groups to use both kinds of nonprofit to maximize their ability to lobby through the 501(c)(4) and raise non-lobbying funds through the 501(c)(3), since donors may deduct donations to the 501(c)(3) from their taxes. But Arabella takes that tactic to another level, using pop-up fronts for its nonprofits that can take advantage of the New Venture and Sixteen Thirty Fund’s respective tax advantages without disclosing their relationship to one another. Donations to WVP and WVPA in fact benefitted the Arabella-run nonprofits behind the projects, as an archived version of WVP’s website from October 2019 reveals.

Until late 2019 the website for WVP and WVPA revealed a handful of staffers, including Chris Saeger, ex-communications director for the Montana Democratic Party and former Service Employees International Union (SEIU)staffer; Jayson O’Neill, a Democratic staffer for Montana’s legislature and Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D); and Yetta Stein, a staffer for the left-wing political action committee End Citizens United and staffer for the 2018 reelection campaign Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT). The archived website also showed a small advisory board consisting of:

• Kjersten Forseth, a former chief of state for Colorado State Senate Democrats, former director of the left-wing strategy group ProgressNow Colorado, political director for the Colorado AFL-CIO, and chief political strategist for Rocky Mountain Voter Outreach, a Denver-based get-out-the-vote and ballot initiative firm.
• Kent Salazar, an environmental health manager for Albuquerque, New Mexico, former New Mexico State game commissioner for Gov. Bill Richardson (D), and a board member for the left-wing National Wildlife Federation.
• Pat Smith, a lawyer representing Indian tribes in Montana, member of the 2010 Montana Redistricting Commission, and appointee of Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.

WVP’s advisory board also included Caroline Ciccone, who in 2019 was executive director of the New Venture Fund pop-up and anti-Trump “oversight” group Restore Public Trust. Ciccone is a former communications director for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Obama appointee to the U.S. Small Business Administration, and Democratic strategist. From 2014 to 2017 she led Americans United for Change (AUFC), a top left-wing strategy group whose national field director Scott Foval was recorded in late 2016 by undercover journalists from Project Veritasbragging that AUFC had paid mentally ill and homeless people to instigate violence at Trump campaign rallies. “We know that Trump’s people will [tend to] freak the f— out,” Foval said in the video. “It is not hard to get some of these assholes to ‘pop off.’” The scandal ultimately led back to Robert Creamer, co-founder of the powerful consulting firm Democracy Partners and a former general consultant to AUFC who directed parts of a vast network of advocacy groups all aligned in support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. This led to speculation that his firm helped Clinton’s campaign violate collusion laws. Foval described Creamer’s role in the scandal as the “kingpin” who is “diabolical, and I love him for it.” Within days of the video’s release Creamer resigned, and Foval was fired.

Also present was Kyle Herrig, a New Venture Fund board member who sat on the advisory boards of at least five New Venture Fund projects, including American Oversight, a judicial activist and litigation group; Allied Progress, which attacked Trump cabinet officials; and the Ciccone-run Restore Public Trust.

In early 2020 it was announced that Western Values Project and these three Arabella “pop-ups” were being rolled into a new organization: Accountable.US, itself a former New Venture Fund project fully established as an independent nonprofit sometime later that year, headed by president Kyle Herrig and executive director Caroline Ciccone. (It appears that Western Values Project Action remains a project of Sixteen Thirty Fund, but that remains unclear as of writing.)

This reveals that Western Values Project, far from being a grassroots group, is enmeshed in a deeply networked, highly coordinated cabal of professional activists—and it always was.

In the next installment, break down the Arabella campaign against the Interior Department and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

---

pt 3 zinke ad cartoon overturned boat

anatomy of anArabella Campaign

From 2017 to 2018, WVP ran an all-out attack against Trump administration Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke,publishing post after post savaging Zinke and his staff. WVP even published a massive website, DepartmentofInfluence.org, which compiled boatloads of data on nearly every appointee to the Trump administration’s Department of the Interior. The group’s goal was clear: Drive Ryan Zinke out of office and undermine the department’s policies. They finally succeeded in December 2018, and Zinke resigned in early January 2019 amid ethics complaints alleging he had misused public funds during official travel and spent large sums on frivolous things.

CRC has counted nine Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases filed by WVP between April 2017 and Zinke’s resignation, all sporting WVP’s supposed address: aUPS store in Whitefish, Montana (704C 13th St. E., #568, Whitefish, MT 59937). As investigative reporter Dave Skinner points out, “‘Suite 568’ is actually a $150-per-year private mail box, snugged next to a sales placard touting a ‘street address, not a P.O. box number.’”

In these complaints WVP describes itself as “a not-for-profit public interest organization” and “a tax-exempt organization within the meaning of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code,” never mentioning its status as a project of the New Venture Fund or its connection to Arabella Advisors. At least one FOIA request was co-filed with American Oversight, another former New Venture Fund pop-up run by Kyle Herrig that also used a UPS Store address in its filings (1030 15th St., NW, Suite B255, Washington, DC 20005) and describes itself as “a nonpartisan, non-profit section 501(c)(3) organization.”

These FOIA complaints exclusively targeted the Department of the Interior. Highlights include:

• Requests for Zinke’s travel receipts, “a daily schedule of the Secretary’s events, meetings and activities including locations and attendees”;
• Seeking correspondence between department heads and members of various oil and gas interests, such as the American Petroleum Institute, Colorado Oil and Gas Association, and Independent Petroleum Association of America;
• Demanding access to all records, emails, and expenditures pertaining to Lolita Zinke, Ryan Zinke’s wife;
• Asserting that Zinke threatened Alaska Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan for voting against the 2017 effort to repeal Obamacare; and
• Multiple FOIA complaints complaining that department had not complied with prior FOIA complaints.

On October 22, 2018, the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General released its investigative report into Zinke’s alleged ethics abuses and recommended it to the Department of Justice. The office noted that it “initiated this investigation” in December 2017 “based on information we received while investigating [Zinke’s] use of noncommercial aircraft for U.S. Governmental travel.” The source of that information isn’t named, but it isn’t a stretch to believe it originated with Western Values Project.

Eight days later on October 30, WVP released its statement on the probe calling on Zinke to resign. It launched a website (HasRyanZinkeBeenFiredYet.com) demanding the same. On November 9, WVPA released a $30,000 attack ad in seven Montana newspapers accusing Zinke’s “priorities” of being “upside down” and calling for his resignation—presumably paid for by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which controls WVPA’s finances. One month later Zinke resigned.

INSERT IMAGE: https://www.influencewatch.org/app/uploads/2021/02/Western-Values-Project-Zinke-Attack-Ad-2019.pdf

Big Green’s Campaign Rolls On

Joining WVP and WVPA was the Center for Western Priorities (CWP), a front for the California mega-activist group Resources Legacy Fund—by my count the 16th-largest environmentalist group in the country, spending over $42 million in 2018 alone. CWP painted Zinke as a feckless tool of the oil and gas industry, accusing him of “following President Trump’s marching orders to attack our public lands” and fomenting an “illegal attack on America’s national monuments.” When Zinke resigned in January 2019, CWP labeled him “the most anti-conservation Interior Secretary of all time.”

Almost immediately after Ryan Zinke resigned in December 2018, CWP and WVP turned their guns on undermining Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, who became acting secretary on January 2, 2019, and was officially confirmed in April.

Bernhardt served in the George W. Bush administration’s Department of the Interior, leaving in 2009 as the department’s solicitor. After that he led the Denver firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s natural resources law practice, where his clients included Halliburton Energy Services and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, and he lobbied for Cobalt International Energy and Samson Resources. Before his appointment to the Trump administration, Bernhardt was also registered as a lobbyist for the Westlands Water District in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

On December 17, CWP policy director Jesse Prentice-Dunn published a long hit piece calling Bernhardt a “walking conflict of interest” who would continue “Ryan Zinke’s culture of corruption” and accusing the department of shilling for Big Oil. That same day WVP published the website DavidBernhardt.org, calling Bernhardt “the ultimate DC swamp creature” and an “ex-lobbyist who is too conflicted to be Interior Secretary,” while detailing a laundry list of ethics charges in an attempt to derail his confirmation to the post. Memos about Bernhardt’s background and conflicts of interest and more FOIA requests followed from WVP and CWP, including one from Democracy Forward, a leftist litigation group created by Clinton crony Marc Elias (of Perkins Coie fame) in 2017 to target the Trump administration.

In February, the Campaign for Accountability (CFA), a former “pop-up” of the Arabella-run Hopewell Fund, petitioned the Interior Department inspector general to investigate Bernhardt’s ties to Westlands Water District as a conflict of interest and urged the Senate to reject his confirmation. CFA, which specialized in targeting Trump political appointees, was founded by alumni of another left-wing litigation group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and has been represented by the ex-Arabella pop-up American Oversight in past lawsuits.

The Center for American Progress joined in, labeling Bernhardt “the most conflicted Trump Cabinet nominee.” Greenpeace and the Center for Biological Diversity urged the department’s inspector general to investigate those conflicts of interest, melodramatically declaring him “the most dangerous man in America for endangered species and public lands.” The Sierra Club demanded the Senate reject his confirmation, as did the National Parks Conservation Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

In March, WVPA launched a six-figure television ad buy targeting Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich (NM) and moderate Republican Sens. Cory Gardner (CO) and Martha McSally (AZ) to oppose Bernhardt’s confirmation. The assault continued until the Senate confirmed Bernhardt in April 2019. From then on the group’s crusade against Trump’s Department of the Interior focused on thwarting its agenda.

In the next installment, the professional Left’s years-long campaign culminates in the Biden Administration’s rush toward radical “green” policies.

----

pt 4

Harried Until the End

WVP filed another five FOIA requests against the Department of the Interior between 2019 and 2020, almost certainly with the intent of discovering ammo for future ethics complaints. Among its requests were all communications between the department and Bernhardt’s former clients from Brownstein Hyatt and the Westlands Water District as well as copies of “all text messages sent by Secretary David Benhardt from July 1, 2017,” through February 2020. The leftist website Outside Online even set up a “David Bernhardt Scandal Tracker” days after his confirmation.

But much of the Left’s campaign shifted to halting Trump’s supposed war on public lands until he left office in January 2021. “Yes, Trump really is coming to take your public lands,” WVP howled in late 2019, claiming the administration was selling off federal land to oil interests bent on pillaging it. In reality, the Bureau of Land Management (which is part of the Interior Department) continued tolease lands to drilling companies in 5–10 year options, a decades-old practice. As a result, oil and gas production soared in 2019, particularly in New Mexico and Wyoming, which sit atop massive deposits.

The Department of the Interior disbursed a staggering $11.69 billion to the states in 2019 alone from energy production on federal and Indian-owned lands, a $2.76 billion increase over 2018. Gasoline prices dropped from a nationwide average of $2.813 in 2018 to $2.691 in 2019 to $2.258 in 2020. [NO MENTION OF EPIC PANDEMIC FAIL] And the United States achieved energy independence in 2019, with energy production exceeding consumption for thefirst timesince 1957. In a single year, energy production increased by an impressive 5.7 percent, with so-called fossil fuels accounting for 80 percent of all energy production and consumption that year.

WVP harried Trump and his cabinet out of office, blasting “Secretary David Bernhardt’s Wildly Destructive Track Record” in December 2020—which included such silliness as staging Trump’s May 2020 Fox News town hall inside the Lincoln Memorial, allowing national parks to be used as “centerpieces” for his reelection campaign, and holding “expensive military-infused Independence Day rallies on the National Mall” (the horror!).

Targeting Trump’s energy and environmental policies were among Biden’s first moves in office. Biden cancelled a planned expansion to the Keystone oil pipeline (Keystone XL or “export limited”), pledged to protect 30 percent of U.S. land and water by 2030, and froze new leases for oil and gas development on federal land.

Biden’s nominee for the department, Rep. Debra Haaland (D-NM), was confirmed in March 2021 on a nearly party line vote (four Republicans joined with every Democrat in the Senate). Haaland has been criticized by conservatives as a far-left extremist with a perfect 2020 score and 98 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters,which ranks politicians for their fidelity to leftist environmental legislation. (Incidentally, Haaland received a 100 percent score from the pro-abortion groups Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America.) While Haaland told Congress during her confirmation process that fossil fuels “will continue to play a major role in America for years to come,” she’s a global warming ideologue who trumpeted “keep fossil fuels in the ground,” voting “against all new fossil fuel infrastructure,” and transitioning to “100% clean energy” in her 2018 reelection campaign.

In May, the Biden administration proposed ramping up the Interior Department’s 2022 budget by $2.5 billion (17 percent) to $17.6 billion in order to “address the climate crisis” and create “good-paying union jobs.” Biden wants to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 (it’s currently about 26 percent), a plan proposed by liberal groups in the states as “30 by 30” largely as a measure to “slow climate change” by storing carbon dioxide in plants and soil. He also wants to spend $86 million on the “Civilian Climate Corps,” a reboot of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal–era Civilian Conservation Corps. He also wants to spend $300 million “plugging orphan oil and gas wells” and $249 million to boost renewable energy production on public lands.

With pressure from the far Left and willing enablers embedded in the executive branch, the Biden administration will undoubtedly continue down the road toward ever more radical “green” policies—with Arabella’s support. Only one question remains: How much does Biden owe to Arabella’s long war against the Trump Department of the Interior?

end

---

---

{{  ===

U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva and committee member Rep. Katie Porter are investigating an alleged bribery scheme in which they believe a real estate developer donated to a super PAC aligned in support of former President Donald Trump in exchange for pardons for two other men.

The two Democrats wroteto Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Friday, calling on her department to release all documents related to the pardons of Dwight and Steven Hammond, who had been convicted in 2012 of setting fires on public lands they had leased after illegally killing deer on the land.The two men were sentenced to five years in prison with time served in 2015, sparking right-wing protests including a 40-day armed occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.

Grijalva (Ariz.) and Porter (Calif.) believe real estate developer Mike Ingram—who was the subject of the Natural Resources Committee's first-ever criminal referral regarding another potential bribery case involving a clean water permit for one of his developments—secured the Hammonds' pardons in 2018 with a $10,000 donation to the America First Action, Inc. Super PAC.

According to the letter, Ingram's assistant emailed a Trump Interior Department official on May 25, 2018, attaching two articles arguing for the Hammonds to be pardoned. On July 1, a Republican lawmaker who supported the Hammonds tweeted that Trump was "seriously considering" pardoning them.

One day later, Ingram made his donation, and just over a week after that Trump announced he was pardoning the Hammonds.

"Mr. Ingram made only one other $10,000 donation during the 2017-2018 nonpresidential election cycle," wrote Grijalva and Porter. "That donation was the subject of the committee's criminal referral regarding the Villages at Vigneto development [in Arizona]. In that case, Ingram and 12 other individuals, many of whom maintained personal or professional relationships with Ingram, donated nearly a quarter of a million dollars to the Trump Victory Fund and the Republican National Committeeon the same day or within just a few days that a major federal action regarding Vigneto was made in Ingram's favor."

"The parallels between the Vigneto case and the Hammonds' pardons raise significant concerns about another potential case of bribery under the Trump administration and warrant further investigation," they added.

On social media, Porter noted that she and Grijalva uncovered the evidence of Ingram's alleged bribe "while investigating a possible $240,000 quid pro quo scheme between the Trump administration and a developer."

"We're requesting documents to help us get to the bottom of [the Ingram case]," Porter said. "I have zero tolerance for corruption."

ref 1 ltr

december 2, 2022 The Honorable Deb Haaland Secretary U.S. Department of the Interior 1849 C Street NW Washington, D.C. 20240

Dear Secretary Haaland: On May 11, 2022, the House Committee on Natural Resources (Committee) presented evidence of likely bribery involving former U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) Secretary David Bernhardt and Villages at Vigneto developer Mike Ingram, in the Committee’s first-ever criminal referral to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). 1 The Committee has now uncovered another potential incident of bribery involving Ingram and senior Trump administration officials through its review of documents obtained in that investigation. In 2012, ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond were convicted of arson on federal lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). 2

According to DOJ, the Hammonds informed BLM that a fire they had started on Hammond's private property to burn off invasive species had inadvertently spread to public lands. However, witnesses, including a relative, later came forward and testified that Steven Hammond had instructed companions to drop lit matches on the ground, with the effect of destroying evidence that a Hammond hunting party had illegally slaughtered deer on the BLM lands. By law, arson on federal lands carries a five-year mandatory minimum sentence.3 The district court in the Hammonds’ case ordered sentences far below this requirement, citing Eighth Amendment concerns, but a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated the illegal sentences and ordered the district court to resentence the Hammonds in compliance with the law.4 The U.S. Supreme Court denied cert, 5 and on October 7, 2015, the district court imposed five-year prison terms on each of the Hammonds,...

p2

credit for time already served.6

On July 10, 2018, President Trump signed Executive Grants of Clemency

(Full Pardons) for both Hammonds.7

Documents obtained in the Committee’s Vigneto investigation indicate that Mike Ingram used his unique

access to high-ranking Trump administration officials to advocate for these pardons. In an email dated

May 25, 2018, Mr. Ingram’s executive assistant sentBen Cassidy, DOI’s Senior Deputy Director for

External and Intergovernmental Affairs, two articles on the topic, including an op-ed arguing for pardons

for the Hammonds (see Attachment 1).

On Sunday, July 1, 2018, a vocal proponent for pardoning the Hammonds shared in a tweet that

“President Trump called me to say he is 'seriously considering' pardoning Dwight and Steven

Hammond.”9

This was the first public acknowledgement that a pardon was under consideration.10

On Monday, July 2, 2018, the next business day, the Federal Election Commission database shows that

Mr. Ingram made a $10,000 out-of-cycle donation to the America First Action, Inc. Super PAC.11 The

America First Action, Inc. Super PAC describes itself as “dedicated to supporting President Trump | We

are the only Official Pro-Trump Super PAC.”12 On Tuesday, July 10, 2018, President Trump signed

Executive Grants of Clemency (Full Pardons) for both Hammonds.13

Mr. Ingram made only one other $10,000 donation during the 2017–2018 non-presidential election

cycle.14 That donation was the subject of the Committee’s criminal referral regarding the Villages at

Vigneto development. In that case, Ingram and 12 other individuals, many of whom maintained personal

or professional relationships with Ingram, donated nearly a quarter of a million dollars to the Trump

Victory Fund and the Republican National Committee on the same day or within just a few days that a

major federal action regarding Vigneto was made in Ingram’s favor.All other donations from Ingram

during this election cycle were $5,400 or less.

House Rule X(1)(m) provides the Committee with jurisdiction over the subject matters within DOI’s

authority. The parallels between the Vigneto case and the Hammonds’ pardons raise significant concerns

about another potential case of bribery under the Trump administration and warrant further investigation.

notes

6 Department of Justice. (2015, October 7). Eastern Oregon Ranchers Convicted of Arson Resentenced to Five Years in Prison

[Press Release]. https://www.justice.gov/usao-or/pr/eastern-oregon-ranchers-convicted-arson-resentenced-five-years-prison

7

“Statement from the Press Secretary Regarding Executive Clemency for Dwight and Steven Hammond” Trump White House

Archives. July 10, 2018. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-regardingexecutive-clemency-dwight-steven-hammond/

8 Attachment 1 is also included as Attachment 59 in the Committee's referral to the Department of Justice regarding the Villages

at Vigneto incident, available here: https://naturalresources house.gov/media/press-releases/chair-grijalva-rep-porter-referformer-interior-secretary-bernhardt-villages-at-vigneto-developer-to-justice-department-alleging-criminal-bribery

9 Walden, G. [repgregwalden]. (2018, July 1) Late Saturday afternoon, President Trump called me to say he is ‘seriously

considering’ pardoning Dwight and Steven Hammond. [Tweet]. Retrieved from

https://twitter.com/repgregwalden/status/1013455435502964738.

10 The Congressional Research Service (CRS) completed a search on November 9, 2022 for news reports that indicated the White

House was seriously considering a pardon for the Hammonds before July 2, 2018. They found none.

11 United States. (2018) U.S. Federal Election Commission FEC. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individualcontributions/?contributor name=Ingram%2C+Michael&contributor name=Mike+ingram&two year transaction period=2018

12 America First [AmericaFirstPAC]. (n.d.). Tweets [Twitter profile]. Twitter. Retrieved November 15, 2022, from

https://twitter.com/AmericaFirstPAC

13 “Statement from the Press Secretary Regarding Executive Clemency for Dwight and Steven Hammond” Trump White House

Archives. July 10, 2018. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-regardingexecutive-clemency-dwight-steven-hammond/

14 United States. (2018) U.S. Federal Election Commission FEC. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individualcontributions/?contributor name=Ingram%2C+Michael&contributor name=Mike+ingram&two year transaction period=2018

To assist the Committee’s investigation of this issue, please provide the following documents and

information as soon as possible, but no later than December 15, 2022:

1. All documents and communications relating to Dwight or Steven Hammond between all

presidential appointees requiring the advice and consent of the Senate (PAS), presidential

appointees not requiring appointments (PA), noncareer Senior Executive Service (SES), or

Schedule C appointees at DOI or the Bureau of Land Management for any part of 2017 or 2018

and

a. Mike Ingram or Michael Ingram;

b. Any representative ofEl Dorado Holdings,including but not limited to ,

Michael (Mike) Reinbold, Jim Kenny, Dennis Krahn, Eric Hollensbe, Deb Bricker, Chris

Grogan, Linda Cheney, and June Prinz.

c. Any person representing the America First Action Inc. and America First Policies, Inc.

PACs, including but not limited to:

i. Brian O Walsh;

ii. Thomas O Hicks, Jr.;

iii. Roy W Bailey;

iv. Harold Hamm;

v. Jonathan T Proch;

vi. Joseph Ahearn;

vii. Erin Montgomery;

viii. Sean Spicer;

d. Any White House Office personnel;

e. Dwight Hammond;

f. Steven Hammond;

g. Anyone from Lawrence Matasar PC;

h. Anyone from Ransom & Blackman LLP; and

2. All documents relating to a pardon for Dwight or Steven Hammond.

Please contact the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee staff at (202) 225-6065 with any questions

about this request. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Raúl M. Grijalva Katie Porter

Chair Chair

Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and

Investigations

Committee on Natural Resources

ref 2

12.02.22

Chair Grijalva, Rep. Porter Seek Documents on Another Incident of Potential Bribery under the Trump Administration

Washington, D.C. – House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chair Katie Porter (D-Calif.) today sent a letter to U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) Secretary Deb Haaland requesting documents regarding a second incident of potential bribery between senior officials in the Trump administration and real estate developer Mike Ingram. Previously, the lawmakers sent the Committee’s first-ever criminal referral to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) alleging potential bribery regarding a Trump administration decision about Ingram’s proposed real estate development, the Villages at Vigneto in Benson, Arizona.

The full letter to DOI is available :{here:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:700"):}:.

In their letter, Chair Grijalva and Rep. Porter describe evidence that Ingram, a businessman with unique access to high-ranking Trump administration officials, may have unduly influenced former President Trump’s decision to pardon convicted public lands arsonists Dwight and Steven Hammond in exchange for a sizeable donation to a pro-Trump Super PAC.

The letter lays out the following timeline of events:

• May 25, 2018 – Ingram’s executive assistant sends an email to Ben Cassidy, DOI’s Senior Deputy Director for External and Intergovernmental Affairs, with two articles arguing for pardons for the Hammonds, including anop-ed by Trump-era Bureau of Land Management Director William Perry Pendley.
• July 1, 2018 – A proponent for pardoning the Hammonds tweets that President Trump is “seriously considering a pardon.
• July 2, 2018 – Ingram makes a $10,000 out-of-cycle donation to the America First Action, Inc. Super PAC.
• July 10, 2018 – President Trump pardons the Hammonds.

Ingram’s only other $10,000 donation during the 2017–2018 non-presidential election cycle was the donation that triggered the Committee’s investigation into—and subsequent criminal referral about—the Villages at Vigneto development. As the letter points out, “The parallels between the Vigneto case and the Hammonds’ pardons raise significant concerns about another potential case of bribery under the Trump administration and warrant further investigation.”

Background on the Villages at Vigneto Criminal Referral

On May 11, 2022, after a years-long investigation, Chair Grijalva and Rep. Porter sent the Committee’s first-ever criminal referral to DOJ outlining evidence of potential bribery between Trump administration officials, including then-DOI Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, and Ingram regarding the Villages at Vigneto (Vigneto) real estate development.

The Committee’s investigation began in April 2019 when the Arizona Daily Star reported that Steve Spangle, a now-retired Field Supervisor at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) Arizona office, claimed he was directed by a “high level politico” to reverse the agency’s decision about Vigneto in late 2017. Later reporting revealed that then–DOI Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt was the “politico.”

The investigation found that—shortly after holding asecret breakfast meeting with Dep. Secretary Bernhardt—Ingram and 12 other individuals, many of whom maintained personal or professional relationships with him, donated nearly a quarter of a million dollars to the Trump Victory Fund and the Republican National Committee. All of the donations occurred on or near Oct. 6, 2017, the same day that a major federal action regarding Vigneto was made in Ingram’s favor.

Weeks later, on Oct. 26, 2017, Spangle officially reversed FWS’ decision on Vigneto, marking the final greenlight for the development.

Concurrent with standard practice, DOJ has not yet commented on whether they have pursued the investigation.

Press Contact

Media Contact: Lindsay Gressard

202-225-6065 | cell: 202-740-4715

===}}

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/bill-barr-should-be-disciplined/

Legal experts are reviewing a legal memo that served as the basis for Attorney General Bill Barr deciding to not charge then-President Donald Trump with obstruction of justice, and they are calling it “garbage,” “disingenuous,” a “total whitewash,” and “ass-covering.”

The memo, published Wednesday afternoon by The New York Times, is dated March 24, 2019.

“For the reasons stated below,” it reads in part, “we conclude that the evidence described in Volume II of the Report is not, in our judgment, sufficient to support a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the President violated the obstruction-of-justice statutes. In addition, we believe that certain of the conduct examined by the Special Counsel could not, as a matter of law, support an obstruction charge under the circumstances. Accordingly, were there no constitutional barrier, we would recommend, under the Principles of Federal Prosecution, that you decline to commence such a prosecution.”

Norm Eisen, a well-known Harvard-educated attorney, former U.S. Ambassador, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, and a CNN legal analyst calls the legal memo “garbage.”

“No wonder a series of judges have slammed Barr for dishonesty in connection with all this,” Eisen writes. “It’s garbage. Anyone else woulda been prosecuted. Barr should be disciplined.”

Attorney Andrew Weissman calls the memo “disingenuous” and a “total whitewash.”

He adds: “note no discussion of Barr telling Special Counsel Mueller that he should make the decision whether Trump obstructed justice. Why? Because new DOJ memo reveals they thought Mueller Report could be read to say he did obstruct! So Barr shd say the opposite.”

CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig calls the memo “ass-covering.”

“To recap,” he writes, detailing these bullet points:

:{

“Mueller failed by refusing to state a conclusion,” “Barr publicly distorted Mueller’s findings,” “DOJ drafted this flimsy, ass-covering memo,” “Barr misled a federal court about this bogus memo,” “Garland appealed on Barr’s behalf, and lost.”}:

This is a breaking news and developing story.

https://www.nrdc.org/trump-watch

anti-environment

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/magazine/trump-government-heritage-foundation-think-tank.html

nyt

heritage, demint dunlop:

Today it is clear that for all the chaos and churn of the current administration, Heritage has achieved a huge strategic victory. Those who worked on the project estimate that hundreds of the people the think tank put forward landed jobs, in just about every government agency. Heritage’s recommendations included some of the most prominent members of Trump’s cabinet: Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos (whose in-laws endowed Heritage’s Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society), Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry, Jeff Sessionsand many more. Dozens of Heritage employees and alumni also joined the Trump administration — at last count 66 of them, according to Heritage, with two more still awaiting Senate confirmation. It is a kind of critical mass that Heritage had been working toward for nearly a half-century.

“Feulner’s first law is people are policy,”Ed Feulner, Heritage’s founder and former president, told me recently. Feulner was the head of domestic policy for the Trump transition, charting the direction of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and several other agencies. We met late on a Friday afternoon, in a sitting room at the Metropolitan Club in Washington, a private social club founded by a group of Treasury Department officials during the Civil War. At his feet as we spoke sat a small box of table cards for a dinner he was hosting at the club that evening for the newly appointed director of Trump’s National Economic Council, the television personalityLarry Kudlow— another name on Heritage’s Project to Restore America list. Now 76, ruddy, white-haired and content, almost jovial, Feulner founded Heritage decades ago as an ambitious young legislative aide with a radical dream built on a simple concept. As he put it, sinking deeper into his club chair: “First, you have to have the right people.”

// RR mandate for leadership?!

ref 2 martens

https://kochdocs.org/2019/06/06/freedom-partners-roadmap-repeal/

2017 Koch Freedom Partners: A “Roadmap” for the Trump Administration to Repeal Environmental Rules

This 2017 document titled “A Roadmap to Repeal: Removing Regulatory Barriers to Opportunity” was created by Freedom Partners,a donor group Politico has called the “secret bank” of the Koch Brothers.

This memo from Charles Koch’s network to its funders details changes in the law sought by what was then called the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, which was controlled by Koch and his operatives.

That group is now operating under the name “Stand Together.” Whatever the name, the concept is the same: this is the political agenda of the Koch empire in coordination with the CEOs and corporations that help fund Charles Koch’s agenda through a non-profit trade group–organized under 501(c)(5) of the IRS Code–which has operated under different brand names.

This kind of memo is one of the organizing tools deployed by Koch to get his billionaire and millionaire funder allies, who are part of what is also sometimes called the “Koch Network,” on the same page about the agenda for the year ahead. Koch’s political hq circulates these kinds of memos to attendees of the semi-annual retreats Charles Koch has been hosting for years to advance his personal and corporate agenda.

This particular memo is focused on Koch’s agenda to have the Trump Administration changes the laws to suit his goals. This “Roadmap” includes a list of “what can be repealed in the first 100 days” of the Trump administration such as:

• “Executive order putting a moratorium on new federal coal leases;”
• “Paris climate agreement requiring greenhouse gas emission reductions;”
• “Proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) programs incidental to the Clean Power Plan;”
• “Final Stream Protection Rule regarding coal mine permitting;”
• “Bureau of Land Management (BLM) federal lands Methane Rule;”
• “Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS): 2017 and 2018 obligations;”
• “EPA Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards: Medium- and Heavy-Duty Engines and Vehicles.”

It also lists “longer-term opportunities” such as the:

• EPA Rule defining The Waters of the United States;
• Reversing the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.
• [doc]

https://kochdocs.org/2019/06/06/freedom-partners-roadmap-repeal/

A ROADMAP TO REPEAL:

REMOVING REGULATORY

BARRIERS TO OPPORTUNITY

President Obama has imposed an unprecedented onslaught of regulatory costs on the U.S. economy. Since 2009, federal

agencies have issued more than 600 major regulations with a total cost exceeding $700 billion. These regulations have erected

barriers to opportunity for millions of American families, resulting in the weakest workforce in nearly 40 years.

Freedom Partners strongly supports efforts by President-elect Trump and the new Congress to repeal as many of President

Obama’s executive actions and regulations as possible. Removing these barriers to opportunity is among the surest ways to

jumpstart the U.S. economy and create more opportunity for all.

Unfortunately, repealing federal regulations is not as simple as it sounds. A successful strategy must be considered in three steps

and will require action from the administration, Congress, and the courts. Additionally, Freedom Partners urges Congress

to put lawmakers on record on as many of these regulations as possible so that voters can see where they stand and hold them

accountable in 2018.

STEP 1. WHAT CAN BE REPEALED IN THE FIRST 100 DAYS

Executive actions, proposed regulations, and recently finalized regulations.

Executive Actions and Proposed Regulations: President-elect Trump can unilaterally rescind any executive

action signed by President Obama or proposed regulations that have yet to be finalized, including, but not limited to:

Executive order establishing a task force on commercial advocacy [?]

Executive order putting a moratorium on new federal coal leases

Presidential memorandum requiring new federal overtime rule promulgation

Paris Climate Agreement requiring greenhouse gas emissions reductions

Proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) programs incidental to the Clean Power Plan

Proposed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) payday and vehicle title loan rules

Proposed CFPB arbitration rules

Regulations Finalized On or After June 13, 2016: Under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), Congress can

avoid a Senate filibuster to repeal all regulations finalized during the last 60 legislative days, with June 13, 2016, being the

cutoff date. Congress should prioritize the following:

Final Stream Protection Rule regarding coal mine permitting

Bureau of Land Management (BLM) federal lands Methane Rule

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS): 2017 and 2018 obligations

EPA Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards: Medium- and Heavy-Duty Engines and Vehicles

STEP 2. LONGER-TERM OPPORTUNITIES

All other regulations passed before June 13, 2016 can be repealed in at least one of three ways.

Executive Rulemaking, Legislation to Rescind or Defund, and Judicial Challenges. These are time-consuming

processes that should begin immediately. President-elect Trump and Congress should prioritize the following:

EPA Rule defining The Waters of the United States

EPA Clean Power Plan

HHS Electronic Health Record Incentive Program

HHS Establishment of Exchanges and Qualified Health

DOL Overtime Rule

DOL Fiduciary Rule

FCC “Net Neutrality” Rule

USDA Calorie Labeling for Vending Machines

STEP 3. POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY

Freedom Partners will hold lawmakers who oppose regulatory relief accountable for their positions.

Floor Time: Congressional leaders should devote sufficient floor time to voting on finalized regulations and putting

lawmakers on record on President Obama’s most harmful regulations.

Voter Education: Network organizations will educate voters about their elected representatives’ positions on regulations

that impose barriers to opportunity for hardworking families.

This document was created by Freedom Partners, an organization which Politico called the “secret bank” of the Koch Brothers. https://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/behind-the-curtain-exclusive-the-koch-brothers-secret-bank-096669#ixzz2hj4y5I8o

Original Document (PDF) »

Contributed by Casey (Climate Investigations Center)

Plain Text

an 6 22

The outgoing United Nations climate chief warned Monday that a victory by Donald Trump—or any other Republican ally of the fossil fuel industry—in the 2024 U.S. presidential election would represent a fatal setback for efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century.

"Well, yes," Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told Politico when asked whether Trump or another Republican president similarly hostile to climate action would spell doom for the Paris Agreement's lower-end warming target.

"Leadership was not there" on climate during Trump's four years in office, Espinosa said in an interview on the sidelines of the ongoing climate conference in Bonn, Germany.

"We didn't manage to get the same level of traction in the process," she added.

The prospect of a Republican win 2024 is highly unnerving for climate advocates, given the party's fealty to the fossil fuel industry and opposition to even the most basic emissions-reduction policies. It's not clear how other potential Republican presidential contenders—from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)—would substantively differ from Trump on climate.

"The climate's always been changing," Trump said in a Fox News interview in March, pushing several denialist talking points.

During his four years in the White House, Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from the legally binding Paris accord, opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other pristine lands and waters to drilling, and went on a sprawling deregulatory frenzy that rewarded the fossil fuel industry at the expense of the environment and public health.

The former president also packed his cabinet and other key posts with close friends of the fossil fuel industry.

Given his disastrous climate record, it's no surprise that the planetary consequences of another Trump term were a major topic ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist, warned months ahead of the contest that "a second Trump term is game over for the climate."

"If we are going to avert ever more catastrophic climate change impacts, we need to limit warming below a degree and a half Celsius, a little less than three degrees Fahrenheit," Mann said. "Another four years of what we've seen under Trump, which is to outsource environmental and energy policy to the polluters and dismantle protections put in place by the previous administration... would make that essentially impossible.”

President Joe Biden ultimately defeated Trump in 2020 and—within hours of being sworn in—moved to return the U.S. to the Paris Agreement. Scientists have been sounding the alarm for years that a breach of the treaty's 1.5°C threshold would mean even more devastating extreme weather, flooding, displacement, a mass coral reef die-off, and other harmful impacts.

While he won praise for rejoining the Paris accord, Biden's overall climate record has not exactly stoked activists who were—and still are—expecting bold action from the administration.

Just last week, Biden boasted that under his leadership "the United States is on track to produce a record amount of oil next year," adding that he is "working with the industry to accelerate this output" in an effort to rein in soaring prices at the pump.

Climate advocates have also voiced alarm at federal data showing that the Biden administration approved more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands during its first year in power than the Trump administration did in 2017.

Meanwhile, the billions of dollars in renewable energy investments that Biden campaigned on remain stalled in the U.S. Senate largely due to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a top ally of the fossil fuel industry.

"He can't be the Climate President when he refuses to play hardball with Joe Manchin and corporate politicians who have prevented the passage of a historic climate bill that will save lives across the country," Sunrise Movement executive director Varshini Prakash said in a January assessment of Biden's first year in the White House.

"Put simply, he needs to act with the urgency and courage that the climate crisis demands," said Prakash. "Doing anything less risks young people's support, and Democrats' already slim majorities in the House and Senate."

https://www.alternet.org/**2022/05**/trump-administration-meat-industry-covid/

former President Donald Trump's administration colluded with top-level meatpacking industry executives to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic in order to drive up prices and downplay the severity of the emergency, according to an exhaustive investigation released on Thursday by the United States House Select Oversight Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

Representative Jim Clyburn (D-South Carolina), the House Majority Whip and chairman of the Subcommittee, said in a statement that "the shameful conduct of corporate executives pursuing profit at any cost during a crisis and government officials eager to do their bidding regardless of resulting harm to the public must never be repeated."

The probe began last year and uncovered a spider web of corruption and flagrant disregard for human life involving American corporate titans and individuals in the highest ranks of the federal government.

Officials at the Department of Agriculture – including Secretary Sonny Purdue and Under Secretary for Food Safety Mindy Brashears – "collaborated" with corporate bigwigs to prioritize profits and production over the safety of employees and the public despite being fully aware of the hazards.

"Infections and deaths among workers for five of the largest meatpacking companies—Tyson Foods, Inc. (Tyson), JBS USA Holdings, Inc. (JBS), Smithfield Foods (Smithfield), Cargill, Inc. (Cargill), and National Beef Packing Company LLC (National Beef)—were significantly higher than previously estimated, with over 59,000 workers for these companies being infected with the coronavirus andat least 269 dying," the report states.

The powerful cadre also "engaged in a concerted effort with Trump Administration political officials to insulate themselves from coronavirus-related oversight," it explains.

In one instance, the chief executive officers of the conglomerates told Purdue on a phone call that their workers “should not be entitled to unemployment benefitsif they are otherwise able to work through the pandemic” and cautioned against “creat[ing] an incentive, much less a path, for food industry workers to choose unemployment overproducing food.”

In that same conversation, they "implicitly acknowledged how dangerous plants were, asking for liability protection against lawsuits if workers were infected on the job."

There was also an aggressive campaign to skirt "pesky" local, state, and federal regulations that would have kept workers and their products safe and healthy.

"Companies lobbied the White House to make clear that—despite concerns by state and local health departments—meatpacking companies should not have to address coronavirus risks if it would impact productivity," the investigation revealed.

Alarmingly, the CEOs managed to successfully lobby Trump to draft and sign an executive order in April of 2020 that "would insulate meatpacking companies from oversight by state and local health departments and provide legal protection against lawsuits for worker illnesses and deaths."

The edict led to Trump "invoking the Defense Production Act to ensure meatpacking plants 'continue operations.'"

Shortly thereafter, records handed over to the Subcommittee show that "meatpacking industry representatives and companies—Smithfield and Tyson in particular—engaged in constant communications with Trump appointees at USDA, the National Economic Council, and the White House, including calls between Smithfield CEO Ken Sullivan and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; a joint call with Sullivan, Meadows, and Tyson CEO Noel White;a call between White and Vice President Pence’s Chief of Staff Marc Short; and a call from Meadows to White asking if White would be willing to meet with President Trump."

Trump subsequently "held a call with officers of the meatpacking companies who had lobbied for it on the morning the order was issued."

After Trump granted their wish, an effort was undertaken between the administration and the industry to "coordinate closely on messaging concerning the order and its effects, apparently hoping to generate positive press coverage" for the ex-commander in chief.

Worker fatalities, meanwhile, were swept under the rug.

In a particularly egregious example, an outbreak at Foster Farms in Livingston,California that infected "at least" 392 workers and killed eight in August of 2020 prompted the company to "intimidate" the Merced County Department of Public Health from shutting down the plant.

"Foster Farms attempts to obfuscate the death count by labeling fatalities as 'resolutions,'" investigators learned. "MCPH officials told the Select Subcommittee that an unidentified person on the call from either Foster Farms or USDA said these cases could be considered 'toe tag resolutions,' referring to the toe tag that is often put on a corpse at the morgue. MCPH said that Brashears asked this individual to 'stop' and said they would 'talk about this separately.'"

Operations at Foster Farms in Livingston were eventually temporarily suspended on August 31st.

Read the full report here.

wheeler and bernhardt lobby rev dr 360?!

brownstein?

https://www.citizen.org/article/third-conflict-of-interest-complaint-against-interior-secretary-david-bernhardt/

august 19, 2020

Heather Gottry

Designated Agency Ethics Official

U.S. Department of Interior

1849 C Street, NW, Mail Stop 7352

Washington, D.C.  20240

Dear Ms. Gottry:

On March 20, 2018, and again on February 12, 2019, Public Citizen wrote to your office expressing concern that David Bernhardt, now Secretary of Interior, worked on particular issues on behalf of specific parties as part of his previous occupation as an energy lobbyist that seem to pose serious conflicts of interest with his official duties. Public Citizen requested that your office investigate whether such conflicts of interest may present violations of paragraphs 6 and 7 of President Donald Trump’s ethics Executive Order No. 13770 and perhaps the conflict of interest code itself.

Both requests for an investigation went unanswered and so, presumably, were dismissed.

Last week, the independent Office of Inspector General for the Interior Department found that department staff deliberately withheld 253 pages of documents from the Senate and House Natural Resources Committees as well as the public that may have provided further insight into Bernhardt’s potential conflicts of interest.[[1]](https://www.citizen.org/article/third-conflict-of-interest-complaint-against-interior-secretary-david-bernhardt/#_ftn1)

 Following Bernhardt’s confirmation as Secretary of the Interior in April 2019, the department staff eventually released redacted versions of all but 38 pages of these documents. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, called for a criminal investigation as to whether Interior Department staff orchestrated a cover-up to protect Bernhardt during his confirmation hearing.[[2]](https://www.citizen.org/article/third-conflict-of-interest-complaint-against-interior-secretary-david-bernhardt/#_ftn2)

The withholding of these documents from congressional and public view may well have unduly influenced the confirmation of Bernhardt as Interior Secretary. In the same vein, if these documents were kept from your office, the withholding of pertinent information related to Bernhardt may also have unduly influenced the decision by the Interior Designated Agency Ethics Official (DAEO) notto carry through with an investigation of potential conflicts of interest.

In light of these recent revelations of withheld information regarding Bernhardt, Public Citizen requests that the ethics office of the Department of Interior scrutinize these recently-released documents and other relevant information and investigate whether David Bernhardt’s previous occupation as a lobbyist on energy affairs and other natural resources issues[[3]](https://www.citizen.org/article/third-conflict-of-interest-complaint-against-interior-secretary-david-bernhardt/#_ftn3) involves sufficient conflicts of interest to cause violations of paragraphs 6 and 7 of Trump’s ethics Executive Order or the conflict of interest code (18 U.S.C. §208).

Public Citizen’s previous complaints are attached on the .pdf.

Respectfully Submitted,

Craig Holman, Ph.D.

Government affairs lobbyist

Public Citizen

215 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE

Washington, D.C.  20003

(202) 454-5182

'No shame': how the Trump administration granted big oil's ...https://www.theguardian.com › us-news › dec › big-oil-...

Dec 12, 2017 — The EPA has fulfilled almost all major demands made by the American Petroleum ... On March 22, Pruitt met with API executives at the Trump ...

Missing: zinke ‎| Must include: zinke

guk no lnx

https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/12/big-oil-lobby-get-what-it-wants-epa-trump-pruitt

This article is more than 3 years old

'No shame': how the Trump administration granted big oil's wishlist

This article is more than 3 years old

The EPA has fulfilled almost all major demands made by the American Petroleum Institute within its first year under Trump

Demonstrators in California protest against Donald Trump’s executive order fast-tracking the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines. ]

Tue 12 Dec 2017

The Trump administration’s zeal for environmental rollbacks has enabled it to fulfill almost all of the top priorities in a “wishlist” drawn up by the American Petroleum Institute (API), the leading lobby group for US oil and gas companies.

[API White house

How big oil is tightening its grip on Donald Trump's White House

Read more]

In a document called “comments on specific regulations” sent to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in May, API highlighted eight key changes it wanted to ease the regulation of air and water pollution. An analysis shows that theEPA has now so far either partially or wholly delivered on six out of these eight key demands within the first year of the Trump administration,which solicited input on government rules from a number of trade groups.

This comes as the Guardian and the Center for Public Integrity publish an investigation into the way the oil lobby has worked for decades to influence US government policy – and is tightening its hold.

Earlier this year a letter penned by Howard Feldman, senior director of regulatory affairs at API, accompanied the lobby group’s wish list for government, and it stated that fossil fuel companies are thriving “despite the unprecedented level of federal regulatory actions targeting our industry”.

Timeline

Big oil and the US government]

Feldman called for the federal government to alter regulations in a way that “promotes access to domestic oil and natural gas resources, streamlined permitting and cost-effective regulations”.

The letter is addressed to Samantha Dravis, an EPA associate administratorwho previously held a senior role at the Republican Attorneys General Association and was counsel to Freedom Partners, one of the groups in the Koch brothers network.

Donald Trump displays one of five executive orders he signed related to the oil pipeline industry on 24 January 2017.]

The 25-page list of API’s suggested regulatory changes places particular emphasis on eight key demands that peel away standards primarily imposed under Barack Obama’s administration.The EPA’s administrator, Scott Pruitt, previously a harsh critic of the agency who has pledged to rein in its “out of control, anti-energy agenda”, has overseen the delay or repeal moves in line with six of API’s eight highest priorities.

“There’s no question that energy lobbyists are calling the shots in this administration, which has been all too willing to roll back public health protections,” said Jeremy Symons, vice-president of Environmental Defense Fund. “Anyone who doubts that can just look at their record.”

Pruitt and his team have made it clear that oil, gas and coal industries trump science

Liz Purchia Gannon, former EPA communications head]

:{

}:

On March 22, Pruitt met with API executives at the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC.Less than a month later, Pruitt wrote to Feldman, as well as three other oil and gas industry representatives, to tell them he was temporarily suspending regulations that curb leaks from drilling operations while the EPA reconsiders the rule.

In June, the EPA proposed a two-year pause to the rule, which was drawn up under the Obama administration in 2016 and aimed to reduce “fugitive” emissions such as methane, a potent greenhouse gas. In July, a federal court blocked the attempted suspension of the rule.

The EPA has fared better in fulfilling other top API priorities. In June, Pruitt signed a two-year delay to regulations designed to improve the safety of chemical facilities. API argued that the rule, which followed several disastrous incidents at chemical plants, would be burdensome and do little to improve safety.

API said the EPA “should reverse” a separate regulation requiring power plants to follow air pollution rules when they are starting up, shutting down or undergoing maintenance. Pruitt, who previously sued the EPA to halt the rule, is now reassessing it.

Implementation of new standards to reduce ozone, a pollutant that helps form smog, was delayed by a year at Pruitt’s behest in June, a month after the API called for the EPA to reconsider the rule. Several states and health groups have launched legal action against the EPA after it missed a deadline to designate which areas of the country are failing to meet the tightened standards on smog.

:{

}:

API also secured an early victory in February, when Donald Trump issued an executive order to scrap the “waters of the United States” rule, which was put in place under the Obama administration to protect streams and rivers that provide drinking water to around a third of Americans. The regulation has been opposed by some farmers and owners of golf courses and industrial plants as being too stringent.

[Donald Trump has ditched the world in favor of big oil's titans

Jill Abramson

Read more]

Several of API’s lower priority proposals have also been fulfilled, with Pruitt introducing new rules for members of the EPA’s scientific boardswhich open the way for more industry involvement and, separately, deciding to not introduce new financial responsibility requirements that API feared may have impacted the petroleum industry.

“Pruitt and his team have no shame,”said Liz Purchia Gannon, former head of communications at the EPA under the Obama administration. “They have made it clear from the start that oil, gas and coal industries trump science, the American people and public health and environmental organizations.

“What we can see from his schedule is an alarming pattern of meeting with special interest groups before making policy decisions favoring their bottom line at the expense of Americans’ health and the environment.”

When contacted for comment, the API said it was happy for its previous statements to speak for themselves. The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.

WAPO

Climate and Environment

EPA to unveil Scott Pruitt’s portrait Friday

Family, friends and former colleagues will gather to see the artwork, which cost taxpayers $4,513

Scott Pruitt, then administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, at the EPA in 2017. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis

January 12, 2021

The Environmental Protection Agency will host the official portrait unveiling Friday of former chief Scott Pruitt, who resigned in 2018 after coming under scrutiny for his lavish travel and treatment of staff, along with his ties to lobbyists and outside groups.

A small group of family, friends and former colleagues will attend the ceremony, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in an interview Tuesday.

The portrait, which consists of a framed photo transferred to canvas, cost taxpayers $4,513. EPA officials noted that the total bill is less than what it cost to frame the photographic portrait of Pruitt’s predecessor, Gina McCarthy, who served in the Obama administration and is slated to join the incoming Biden administration as the first-ever national climate adviser.

“You know, Gina McCarthy, she had a big event for hers,” Wheeler said. “It’s up to each administrator, what kind of event that they want for the portrait unveiling.”

Pruitt could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

E&E News reported some details about the unveiling ceremony Tuesday afternoon.

Trump's rolled back more than 125 environmental policies. Here's how.

Asked how he would define the mark Pruitt left on the agency, Wheeler said: “You know, Scott and I only overlapped eight weeks. So I think it’s too soon to speak to his overall legacy.”

But he added that Pruitt — who set in motion several of the Trump administration’s highest-profile environmental rollbacks on issues ranging from climate pollution to toxic waste from power plants before leaving in 2018 under a cloud of ethics inquiries — did elevate the importance of Superfund cleanups and pushed to more quickly finalize national air quality standards.

The portrait will not be the only lasting physical reminder of Pruitt’s legacy. Nearby, just steps from the EPA administrator’s office, stands the secure phone booth he installed, which violated federal spending laws and cost taxpayers $43,000. Pruitt ultimately made a single call to the White House from the private booth.

Wheeler said that at this point, it would make sense to keep the well-publicized booth in place, given the amount of money spent to reinforce the floor to support it.

“So I think when they started the project they had no idea what they were getting into. … You know, once you start a project you can’t bail in the middle because you have all these sunk costs,” he explained. “It may be expensive to remove it at this point.”

Instead, when Pruitt took action, it was always to protect himself and the industry-connected donors who had fueled his political rise. According to a since-deleted tweet Pruitt sent in January 2018, Trump’s deregulatory agenda, carried out at the EPA by Pruitt, saved industry $300 million in regulatory costs. That the repealed regulations would have prevented thousands of premature deaths, heart attacks, and asthma attacks received no mention in Pruitt’s tweet.

When Pruitt tried to defend his first-class plane trips, he blamed “a very toxic environment, politically.” His concern over toxicity apparently did not extend to children and farmworkers sickened by pesticides. In March 2017, in one of his first acts as EPA administrator, Pruitt rejected the recommendation of EPA scientists to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos on farms. Scientists cited studies connecting use of chlorpyrifos to declines in cognitive health, particularly among young children. Pruitt cited the need for “regulatory certainty.” He did not mention that, 20 days earlier, he had met with the CEO of Dow Chemical, who had also contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.

omg

• VA's Republican Gov.-Elect Youngkin taps Trump's EPA chief:
  • **VA Governor-Elect Taps Trump EPA Chief For Key Post** (E&E News)
  • **Youngkin nominates Trump EPA chief Andrew Wheeler for secretary of natural resources** (Washington Post/MSN):

Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R) on Wednesday nominatedAndrew Wheelera former coal lobbyist who led a rollback of Obama-era environmental regulations as President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency chief ” as his secretary of natural resources.

• • **Trump EPA Chief Andrew Wheeler Tapped For Virginia's Top Environmental Post** (Huffington Post/Yahoo News)

• New solar plants planned for Virginia's former coal fields:

recycled pension plan:

https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/amid-public-debate-about-facebook-and-its-harms-company-has-spent-millions-misleading-ads

no lnx many

doc

Fox’s local Virginia “parent” is a former Trump administration staffer — with connections to Republican campaigns and Fox News

Ian Prior served with a top Youngkin staffer and two current Fox staffers in the same Trump DOJ press office

WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD

PUBLISHED 10/28/21

Fox News has avidly promoted former Trump administration officials as seemingly being just concerned local parents in the network’s coverage of the upcoming Virginia gubernatorial election. And in the case of one guest who has frequently appeared or been cited by the network’s hosts, his political connections go far and wide through both political campaigns and even Fox News itself.

Ian Prior is one of many Republican activists, political staffers, and Trump administration alumni who have appeared on Fox News as part of its campaign against “critical race theory.” The network has used the term as a “catch-all” phrase for any right-wing culture war grievances, especially over racial diversity and civil rights, in an effort to mobilize Republican voters for this year’s Virginia elections and the midterms next year.

Prior now leads Fight for Schools, a political action committee launched this year to support “common sense candidates” who oppose “critical race theory.” In addition to his many years in communications for Republican campaigns, he has his own political communications consulting firm and political newsletter.He also worked in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2018, as deputy director of public affairs at the Justice Department under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

And the world of both conservative media and Republican political operatives is a small one indeed. During Prior’s time as deputy director of the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs under Sessions, his coworkers in public affairs included media affairs coordinator Devin O’Malley — who is now the campaign spokesman for Republican gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin. In addition, two other colleagues were media affairs specialist Kerri Kupec, who this year became Fox News’ Washington, D.C., editor after serving the rest of former President Donald Trump’s term at DOJ under both Sessions and his successor, Bill Barr; and press assistant Kelly Laco, who is now a news and politics editor for Fox News digital content — and who has quoted Prior in at least one article. (The article noted Prior’s DOJ experience, but not the fact that he and Laco were former colleagues.)

screen grab

On Wednesday’s edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy read a statement from Prior, responding to former President Barack Obama’s recent campaign rally for former Virginia governor and current Democratic nominee Terry McAullife — while presenting Prior as simply a concerned local parent who has come to prominence recently.

“Ian Prior, who’s been on this program, he’s one of the parents who’s very concerned about what's going on out in Loudoun County,” Doocysaid, before reading a statement that concluded with the accusation: “It is clear that all the star power coming in for Terry McAuliffe is reading off the same deceptive page of sheet music with talking points designed to deceive people as to what’s really happening in Virginia public schools.”

Co-host Brian Kilmeade then added: “This is real, this is organic, this is not scripted. These are people standing up, Democrats and Republicans standing up for what's happening in their schools.”

Video file

CitationFrom the October 27, 2021, edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends

The problem is, that wasn’t how Doocy and Kilmeade described Prior even just last week. On the October 19 edition of the show, the Fox & Friends crew highlighted Virginia’s gubernatorial race — and mentioned some of Prior’s other political credentials

“Here’s the thing, what’s going on in Virginia right now, you know, we’ve had Ian Prior on. He used to be at the DOJ during the Trump administration.”

“They messed with the wrong parent,” Kilmeade responded with a smile.

“He’s on the leading edge of the CRT thing out in Loudoun County,” Doocy added. “And he says it’s not just Republicans, it’s Democrats, it’s independents — there are a lot of parents who are very interested in what their kids are being taught in schools.”

Video file

Citation From the October 19, 2021, edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends

Kilmeade later hosted Prior on Monday night’s edition of Fox News Primetime in response to the Obama rally with McAuliffe, but at no time did the program acknowledge Prior’s background in the Trump administration. Instead, he was simply introduced as a “Loudon County parent,” with the chyron also referring to him as “Fight for Schools executive director.” (Kilmeade also made some brief references to Prior’s legal background, remarking that “you tried the cases, you know the legal system,” but no further details were given.)

Video file

Citation From the October 25, 2021, edition of Fox News Primetime

Prior also appeared last Thursday with Fox News host Sean Hannity,during which his background as a Trump administration staffer was also not disclosed. By contrast, Prior had also appeared twice this month on The Story with Martha MacCallum, during which both MacCallum and guest anchor Trace Gallagher cited his experience in the Trump administration. (Though earlier this year, MacCallum had also failed to disclose Prior’s background.)

So it appears that as the Virginia election gets closer, Prior has become less and less of a former Trump DOJ official and more of being just a concerned local parent whose attacks on Democrats are “organic” and “not scripted.”

==

franta says same pts and economists used to ~ kyoto NERA

Statement by President Trump on the Paris Climate Accord

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT

Issued on: June 1, 2017

...

PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  (Applause.)  Thank you.  I would like to begin by addressing the terrorist attack in Manila.  We’re closely monitoring the situation, and I will continue to give updates if anything happens during this period of time.  But it is really very sad as to what’s going on throughout the world with terror.  Our thoughts and our prayers are with all of those affected.

Before we discuss the Paris Accord, I’d like to begin with an update on our tremendous — absolutely tremendous — economic progress since Election Day on November 8th.  The economy is starting to come back, and very, very rapidly.  We’ve added $3.3 trillion in stock market value to our economy, and more than a million private sector jobs.

I have just returned from a trip overseas where we concluded nearly $350 billion of military and economic development for the United States, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.  It was a very, very successful trip, believe me.  (Applause.)  Thank you.  Thank you.

In my meetings at the G7, we have taken historic steps to demand fair and reciprocal trade that gives Americans a level playing field against other nations.  We’re also working very hard for peace in the Middle East, and perhaps even peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  Our attacks on terrorism are greatly stepped up — and you see that, you see it all over — from the previous administration, including getting many other countries to make major contributions to the fight against terror.  Big, big contributions are being made by countries that weren’t doing so much in the form of contribution.

One by one, we are keeping the promises I made to the American people during my campaign for President –- whether it’s cutting job-killing regulations; appointing and confirming a tremendous Supreme Court justice; putting in place tough new ethics rules; achieving a record reduction in illegal immigration on our southern border; or bringing jobs, plants, and factories back into the United States at numbers which no one until this point thought even possible.  And believe me, we’ve just begun.  The fruits of our labor will be seen very shortly even more so.

On these issues and so many more, we’re following through on our commitments.  And I don’t want anything to get in our way.  I am fighting every day for the great people of this country.  Therefore, in order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord — (applause) — thank you, thank you — but begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris Accord or a really entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers.  So we’re getting out.  But we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair.  And if we can, that’s great.  And if we can’t, that’s fine.  (Applause.)

As President, I can put no other consideration before the wellbeing of American citizens.  The Paris Climate Accord is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers — who I love — and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.

Thus, as of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country.  This includes ending the implementation of the nationally determined contribution and, very importantly, the Green Climate Fund which is costing the United States a vast fortune.

Compliance with the terms of the Paris Accord and the onerous energy restrictions it has placed on the United States could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025 according to the National Economic Research Associates.  This includes 440,000 fewer manufacturing jobs — not what we need — believe me, this is not what we need — including automobile jobs, and the further decimation of vital American industries on which countless communities rely.  They rely for so much, and we would be giving them so little.

According to this same study, by 2040, compliance with the commitments put into place by the previous administration would cut production for the following sectors:  paper down 12 percent; cement down 23 percent; iron and steel down 38 percent; coal — and I happen to love the coal miners — down 86 percent; natural gas down 31 percent.  The cost to the economy at this time would be close to $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs, while households would have $7,000 less income and, in many cases, much worse than that.

Not only does this deal subject our citizens to harsh economic restrictions, it fails to live up to our environmental ideals.  As someone who cares deeply about the environment, which I do, I cannot in good conscience support a deal that punishes the United States — which is what it does -– the world’s leader in environmental protection, while imposing no meaningful obligations on the world’s leading polluters.

For example, under the agreement, China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years — 13.  They can do whatever they want for 13 years.  Not us.  India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries.  There are many other examples.  But the bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States.

Further, while the current agreement effectively blocks the development of clean coal in America — which it does, and the mines are starting to open up.  We’re having a big opening in two weeks.  Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, so many places.  A big opening of a brand-new mine.  It’s unheard of.  For many, many years, that hasn’t happened.  They asked me if I’d go.  I’m going to try.

China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants.  So we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement.  India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020.  Think of it:  India can double their coal production.  We’re supposed to get rid of ours.  Even Europe is allowed to continue construction of coal plants.

In short, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States, and ships them to foreign countries.

This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States.  The rest of the world applauded when we signed the Paris Agreement — they went wild; they were so happy — for the simple reason that it put our country, the United States of America, which we all love, at a very, very big economic disadvantage.  A cynic would say the obvious reason for economic competitors and their wish to see us remain in the agreement is so that we continue to suffer this self-inflicted major economic wound.  We would find it very hard to compete with other countries from other parts of the world.

We have among the most abundant energy reserves on the planet, sufficient to lift millions of America’s poorest workers out of poverty.  Yet, under this agreement, we are effectively putting these reserves under lock and key, taking away the great wealth of our nation — it’s great wealth, it’s phenomenal wealth; not so long ago, we had no idea we had such wealth — and leaving millions and millions of families trapped in poverty and joblessness.

The agreement is a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries.  At 1 percent growth, renewable sources of energy can meet some of our domestic demand, but at 3 or 4 percent growth, which I expect, we need all forms of available American energy, or our country — (applause) — will be at grave risk of brownouts and blackouts, our businesses will come to a halt in many cases, and the American family will suffer the consequences in the form of lost jobs and a very diminished quality of life.

Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree — think of that; this much — Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100.  Tiny, tiny amount.  In fact, 14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America — and this is an incredible statistic — would totally wipe out the gains from America’s expected reductions in the year 2030, after we have had to spend billions and billions of dollars, lost jobs, closed factories, and suffered much higher energy costs for our businesses and for our homes.

As the Wall Street Journal wrote this morning:  “The reality is that withdrawing is in America’s economic interest and won’t matter much to the climate.”  The United States, under the Trump administration, will continue to be the cleanest and most environmentally friendly country on Earth.  We’ll be the cleanest.  We’re going to have the cleanest air.  We’re going to have the cleanest water.  We will be environmentally friendly, but we’re not going to put our businesses out of work and we’re not going to lose our jobs.  We’re going to grow; we’re going to grow rapidly.  (Applause.)

And I think you just read — it just came out minutes ago, the small business report — small businesses as of just now are booming, hiring people.  One of the best reports they’ve seen in many years.

I’m willing to immediately work with Democratic leaders to either negotiate our way back into Paris, under the terms that are fair to the United States and its workers, or to negotiate a new deal that protects our country and its taxpayers.  (Applause.)

So if the obstructionists want to get together with me, let’s make them non-obstructionists.  We will all sit down, and we will get back into the deal.  And we’ll make it good, and we won’t be closing up our factories, and we won’t be losing our jobs.  And we’ll sit down with the Democrats and all of the people that represent either the Paris Accord or something that we can do that’s much better than the Paris Accord.  And I think the people of our country will be thrilled, and I think then the people of the world will be thrilled.  But until we do that, we’re out of the agreement.

I will work to ensure that America remains the world’s leader on environmental issues, but under a framework that is fair and where the burdens and responsibilities are equally shared among the many nations all around the world.

No responsible leader can put the workers — and the people — of their country at this debilitating and tremendous disadvantage.  The fact that the Paris deal hamstrings the United States, while empowering some of the world’s top polluting countries, should dispel any doubt as to the real reason why foreign lobbyists wish to keep our magnificent country tied up and bound down by this agreement:  It’s to give their country an economic edge over the United States.  That’s not going to happen while I’m President.  I’m sorry.  (Applause.)

My job as President is to do everything within my power to give America a level playing field and to create the economic, regulatory and tax structures that make America the most prosperous and productive country on Earth, and with the highest standard of living and the highest standard of environmental protection.

Our tax bill is moving along in Congress, and I believe it’s doing very well.  I think a lot of people will be very pleasantly surprised.  The Republicans are working very, very hard.  We’d love to have support from the Democrats, but we may have to go it alone.  But it’s going very well.

The Paris Agreement handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country’s expense.  They don’t put America first.  I do, and I always will.  (Applause.)

The same nations asking us to stay in the agreement are the countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and, in many cases, lax contributions to our critical military alliance.  You see what’s happening.  It’s pretty obvious to those that want to keep an open mind.

At what point does America get demeaned?  At what point do they start laughing at us as a country?   We want fair treatment for its citizens, and we want fair treatment for our taxpayers.  We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore.  And they won’t be.  They won’t be.

I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.  (Applause.)  I promised I would exit or renegotiate any deal which fails to serve America’s interests.  Many trade deals will soon be under renegotiation.  Very rarely do we have a deal that works for this country, but they’ll soon be under renegotiation.  The process has begun from day one.  But now we’re down to business.

Beyond the severe energy restrictions inflicted by the Paris Accord, it includes yet another scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States through the so-called Green Climate Fund — nice name — which calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America’s existing and massive foreign aid payments.  So we’re going to be paying billions and billions and billions of dollars, and we’re already way ahead of anybody else.  Many of the other countries haven’t spent anything, and many of them will never pay one dime.

The Green Fund would likely obligate the United States to commit potentially tens of billions of dollars of which the United States has already handed over $1 billion — nobody else is even close; most of them haven’t even paid anything — including funds raided out of America’s budget for the war against terrorism.  That’s where they came.  Believe me, they didn’t come from me.  They came just before I came into office.  Not good.  And not good the way they took the money.

In 2015, the United Nation’s departing top climate officials reportedly described the $100 billion per year as “peanuts,” and stated that “the $100 billion is the tail that wags the dog.”  In 2015, the Green Climate Fund’s executive director reportedly stated that estimated funding needed would increase to $450 billion per year after 2020.  And nobody even knows where the money is going to.  Nobody has been able to say, where is it going to?

Of course, the world’s top polluters have no affirmative obligations under the Green Fund, which we terminated.  America is $20 trillion in debt.  Cash-strapped cities cannot hire enough police officers or fix vital infrastructure.  Millions of our citizens are out of work.  And yet, under the Paris Accord, billions of dollars that ought to be invested right here in America will be sent to the very countries that have taken our factories and our jobs away from us.  So think of that.

There are serious legal and constitutional issues as well.  Foreign leaders in Europe, Asia, and across the world should not have more to say with respect to the U.S. economy than our own citizens and their elected representatives.  Thus, our withdrawal from the agreement represents a reassertion of America’s sovereignty.  (Applause.)  Our Constitution is unique among all the nations of the world, and it is my highest obligation and greatest honor to protect it.  And I will.

Staying in the agreement could also pose serious obstacles for the United States as we begin the process of unlocking the restrictions on America’s abundant energy reserves, which we have started very strongly.  It would once have been unthinkable that an international agreement could prevent the United States from conducting its own domestic economic affairs, but this is the new reality we face if we do not leave the agreement or if we do not negotiate a far better deal.

The risks grow as historically these agreements only tend to become more and more ambitious over time.  In other words, the Paris framework is a starting point — as bad as it is — not an end point.  And exiting the agreement protects the United States from future intrusions on the United States’ sovereignty and massive future legal liability.  Believe me, we have massive legal liability if we stay in.

As President, I have one obligation, and that obligation is to the American people.  The Paris Accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risks, and put us at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world.  It is time to exit the Paris Accord — (applause) — and time to pursue a new deal that protects the environment, our companies, our citizens, and our country.

It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — along with many, many other locations within our great country — before Paris, France.  It is time to make America great again.  (Applause.)  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.  Very important.  I’d like to ask Scott Pruitt, who most of you know and respect, as I do, just to say a few words.

Scott, please.  (Applause.)

ADMINISTRATOR PRUITT:  Thank you, Mr. President.  Your decision today to exit the Paris Accord reflects your unflinching commitment to put America first.

And by exiting, you’re fulfilling yet one more campaign promise to the American people.  Please know that I am thankful for your fortitude, your courage, and your steadfastness as you serve and lead our country.

America finally has a leader who answers only to the people — not to the special interests who have had their way for way too long.  In everything you do, Mr. President, you’re fighting for the forgotten men and women across this country.  You’re a champion for the hardworking citizens all across this land who just want a government that listens to them and represents their interest.

You have promised to put America First in all that you do, and you’ve done that in any number of ways — from trade, to national security, to protecting our border, to rightsizing Washington, D.C.  And today you’ve put America first with regard to international agreements and the environment.

This is an historic restoration of American economic independence — one that will benefit the working class, the working poor, and working people of all stripes.  With this action, you have declared that the people are rulers of this country once again.  And it should be noted that we as a nation do it better than anyone in the world in striking the balance between growing our economy, growing jobs while also being a good steward of our environment.

We owe no apologies to other nations for our environmental stewardship.  After all, before the Paris Accord was ever signed, America had reduced its CO2 footprint to levels from the early 1990s.  In fact, between the years 2000 and 2014, the United States reduced its carbon emissions by 18-plus percent.  And this was accomplished not through government mandate, but accomplished through innovation and technology of the American private sector.

For that reason, Mr. President, you have corrected a view that was paramount in Paris that somehow the United States should penalize its own economy, be apologetic, lead with our chin, while the rest of world does little.  Other nations talk a good game; we lead with action — not words.  (Applause.)

Our efforts, Mr. President, as you know, should be on exporting our technology, our innovation to nations who seek to reduce their CO2 footprint to learn from us.  That should be our focus versus agreeing to unachievable targets that harm our economy and the American people.

Mr. President, it takes courage, it takes commitment to say no to the plaudits of men while doing what’s right by the American people.  You have that courage, and the American people can take comfort because you have their backs.

Thank you, Mr. President.

END

an 10 21

no lnx

Now that former President Donald Trump's reign is over, the members of his administration have been forced to take their careers in different directions. So, where are the members of the Trump administration now? According to The Intelligencer, many are doing an array of different things; some of which are synonymous with the questionable activities that long-haunted the Trump administration.

Here's where the top Trump White House officials are now:

1. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is still trying to distance himself from the kidnapping of Julian Assange. According to Pompeo, he had nothing to do with it.

Pompeo is adamantly denying any involvement in the plot to kidnap Assange. A report published by Yahoo! News back in September, suggested that Pompeo was livid when he learned Assange divulged U.S. national-security secrets. In fact, the report also claimed that he participated in discussions with members of the Trump administration on how to get retribution.

However, Pompeo is still suggesting the reports are not true. "There's pieces of it that are true," Pompeo said during an appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show. "We tried to protect American information from Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, absolutely, yes … We're not permitted by U.S. law to conduct assassinations. We never acted in a way that was inconsistent with that."

2. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has been milking his access to the Secret Service.

Thanks to Trump's order extending the use of the Secret Service to members of his administration, Mnuchin has used the professional perk to his benefit. The publication reports that in his first six months out of office, Mnuchin has racked up the highest Secret Service tab. The Washington Post detailed how Mnuchin managed to rack up more than $150,000 in Secret Service expenses.

The receipts showed that agents spent $114,000 over the six months to rent rooms at a W Hotel in Los Angeles, where Mnuchin has a home. They also followed Mnuchin on three trips to the Middle East, where Mnuchin is reportedly seeking to raise money from sovereign wealth funds for a new venture called Liberty Strategic Capital…

Mnuchin's travels with the Secret Service weren't all business, however. Over the six months, the records show three separate trips to Cabo San Lucas — the Mexican resort, where Mnuchin had also vacationed during Trump's presidency.

To guard Mnuchin during those three trips, the records show, the Secret Service paid $56,000 for hotel rooms and $2,000 to rent golf carts.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mnuchin is planning to use the $2.5 billion he has raised traveling so he can invest in technology and cybersecurity investments, along with "new forms of content." It remains unclear what Mnuchin specifically describes as "new forms of content" but "many big tech companies are pushing virtual- and augmented-reality hardware and content products and digital gaming."

3. Wilbur Ross is reportedly fantasizing about putting "Trump condos on the moon."

Back in February after the Trump administration transitioned out of the White House, Ross spoke with Bloomberg and shared his upcoming post-government plans; which involve "Trump condos on the moon."

On this particular afternoon, he's sitting in the living room of his 80-year-old home filled with Magrittes and Picassos, sipping a cappuccino, dressed in cashmere sweater, slacks and velvet slippers embroidered with octopuses.

Ironically, it's while ensconced in this paradise of earthly delights that Ross is gearing up to invest in space, among other possibilities. He sees opportunity in extraterrestrial tourism, manufacturing, research and habitation.

Habitation? When asked whether space would be a gold-plated real estate opportunity for Trump, Ross didn't disagree.

"Why not Trump condos on the moon?" he quipped back.

Ross' remarks came just months after the U.S. Commerce Department's inspector general released a scathing report about the former Trump official's behavior. According to The Washington Post, the IG's report "concluded that Ross had made many inaccurate statements to federal officials about his assets before taking office, though he did not willfully violate conflict-of-interest laws."

4. Ben Carson is launching a venture similar to Boy Scouts of America.

After departing Washington, D.C., Ben Carson —the former Housing and Urban Development Secretary— launched an organization called the American Cornerstone Institute.Carson's new think tank reportedly places an emphasis on discovering "commonsense solutions to some of our nation's biggest problems."

The American Cornerstone Institute

youtu.be

Carson has also created the Little Patriots program, which is described as a partisan organization for children. Speaking to The Washington Post, Carson explained the organization's initiative. "It will be something like the Boy Scouts," Carson told the publication. "But heavily exposed to the real history of America.

"You probably notice when ISIS goes into a place, they destroy the history, they destroy the monuments," Carson explained. "History is what gives you identity."

5. Elaine Chao contributed to calls for Kroger to be boycotted.

Chao —wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and former transportation secretary— worked for several of the country's top corporations prior to her role with the Trump administration. But Intelligencer reports that "she and other Trump Cabinet alums were having a hard time finding cushy landing spots after exiting the administration. 'The feedback was 'It's too soon,' said one of the headhunters involved in an unsuccessful effort to find companies willing to work with Chao."

:{

}:

Despite her struggles to re-enter the corporate world, Chao was appointed to Kroger's board of directors. But given her history of abusing her power and position with the government, social media users quickly expressed outrage and urged Kroger to drop the former Trump cabinet member from its board.

6. Alex Azar is reportedly conspiring against his former colleagues.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is at odds with many of his former colleagues. In fact, several of them including —former FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Robert Redfield, former Medicare chief Seema Verma, and former White House COVID coordinator Deborah Birx— have reportedly joined forces to prepare their statements regarding the Trump administration's handling of COVID-19.

According to Politico, they've done so out of caution and concern about Azar possibly using them as "scapegoats" to clear themselves.

"I know the way this goes — everyone has a different perspective," Hahn said in an interview. "I wanted to tell what it was that happened and why it happened and the perspective that we had."

In calls and text messages, members of the group have swapped notes, compared recollections, and sent updates on media requests and interview opportunities, four people with knowledge of the matter said …

And in a nod to their individual battles with Azar, some have jokingly referred to the group in private as "AAA," or Alex Azar Anonymous, according to a person in direct contact with multiple members.

From the looks of it, many Trump administration officials are still conducting shady business as they did while in office.

not doing well in ct (trump apttees did not help in kraken BS suits?]

1021 an

According to an analysis by the Washington Post's Aaron Blake, ongoing lawsuits and investigations into members of Donald Trump's inner circle -- as well as conspiracy-mongering conservatives -- are bringing them down to earth as the legal system takes a look at their claims and they lose court case after court case and, in some cases, face financial ruin.

Noting that the Donald Trump years coincided with the rise "... of the kind of extremist purveyors of conspiracy theories who were once given the cold shoulder in polite society," Blake claimed what was once on the fringes is now part of the mainstream where it receives greater scrutiny.

Writing, "Increasingly, though, a bit of a reckoning is taking place. Trump allies spouting wild, baseless theories and otherwise taking our political discourse down misinformation rabbit holes are confronting consequences in court or otherwise facing bona fide legal penalties for their actions," Blake used conservative provocateur Alex Jones as a prime example of a conservative pushing the envelope so far that it ends up in the courts with devastating results.

As the WaPo reported on Friday, " ....a judge ruled Jones was liable for all damages in lawsuits over his claims that the massacre of 20 schoolchildren and six others at Sandy Hook Elementary was a 'false flag" and a 'giant hoax.' The conspiracy theory has led to the harassment of the victims' families," adding, "Jones and his Infowars website's parent company were found to have 'intentionally disobeyed' the court by not turning over documents in such lawsuits. The ruling is what's known as a 'death penalty sanction,' which is highly unusual. The penalty is expected to be determined either by a hearing or a jury."

Add to that, is the parade of pro-Trump lawyers who attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election with unfounded claims that it was "stolen."

"Penalties have also increased in recent months for pro-Trump lawyers who launched ill-fated and specious claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election. Two pro-Trump lawyers in Colorado were ordered to pay the court costs for those they sued, with a judge labeling their case 'the stuff of which violent insurrections are made,'" Blake explained. "Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and other lawyers were also ordered to pay the other side's legal fees by a federal judge in Michigan — the requested amount is $204,000 — and could face other disciplinary measures too. The judge said the lawsuit they brought never bothered with the facts but instead "was about undermining the people's faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so.'"

Adding, "Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani had his law license suspended in New York and by the D.C. Court of Appeals for making similar allegations," he suggested, "Giuliani has shown few signs of slowing his roll on voter fraud allegations — despite his personal financial and legal problems. Jones too has continued to flood the Internet with his very distinct brand of entertainment even as the Sandy Hook lawsuits have dragged out over the years."

"The legal fees that the likes of Powell et al have been or will be forced to fork over will probably be relative drops in the bucket for them," he conceded before admitting, "...even as Powell has yet to make good on any of her promises and has effectively admitted in court to being a fabulist, there's still a media ecosystem and a constituency eager to lap up whatever she has to say. You might think at some point it would be sore about being sold a bill of goods; you'd be wrong."

You can read more here.

arpa

more information email: admin@gopappointees.org

http://www.gopappointees.org/

omg

Mission

To assist appointees with community, education, and other forms of support, and to provide transition, personnel, governing, and other resources to our next Republican president, thereby optimizing their tenure and the success of his administration.

Our Beliefs

Planning is essential.

Personnel is policy.

Appointees are political.

Loyalty matters.

Support is critical.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/trumps-lawyers/

aldous pennyfarthing kos

BREAKING NEWS: Saruman's orcs are having a hard time finding jobs in the new post-Mordor economy. Several Uruk-hai have applied for au pair positions in the Shire and been flatly refused. Who knows why? Might have something to do with their brazen attempt to sack Gondor, but it could be anything, really.

Won't someone think of the orcs? They need to eat, too!

By all rights, having worked for the Trump administration should essentially bar you from any kind of work—with the possible exception of squeegeeing the ex-pr*sident's kingly moobs once a fortnight ... or whenever he orders a 12-piece Chicken McNugget with extra sauces. And while that's certainly more than a one-person job, unfortunately it's not going to help the dozens of traitors who stuck with this doofus through thousands of lies, two impeachments, dozens of outrages, and one full-blown insurrection against the legitimate government of the United States.

According to a recent Bloomberg story, lawyers who served in the Trump administration are facing higher hurdles than members of past administrations when it comes to securing employment.

Bloomberg:

Trump lawyers have been more difficult to place than those who served in previous administrations, particularly if they were closely connected to his most controversial policies or if they lacked the experience past alumni had, said Lauren Drake, a partner at search firm Macrae.

Several companies and law firms distanced themselves from Trump after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Corporate law firm Crowell & Moring called for Trump's removal from office and urged others to make the same demand. Law firms Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and Seyfarth Shaw dropped Trump and his businesses as clients.

"I don't think anyone coming out of the George W. Bush administration was told, 'We can't hire this person,'" [former Trump administration Homeland Security attorney Ken] Cuccinelli said. "I'm sure Jan. 6 made it that much worse than it ever would have been."

Gee, ya think? Jan. 6 made it much worse? You'd think lawyers for the Trump administration would have about as much chance of being hired elsewhere as Capt. Hazelwood did of getting another oil tanker gig, but that's an unfair comparison ... because the Exxon Valdez spill was a fucking accident.

Cuccinelli, the deputy secretary of Homeland Security from late 2019 to early 2021, has personally discovered just how radioactive Trump was and is. After being considered for one particular corporate job, and being turned down, Cuccinelli told Bloomberg, "They just decided they didn't want Trump people. It was just flat out—you can call it Trump discrimination."

Sure, you can call it Trump discrimination. You could also call it common decency. The latter rings more true to me.

Of course, there are competing theories as to why major law firms are showing such a reluctance to soil their pantaloons in public.

Reed D. Rubinstein, who worked for the Trump Education Department, said the lack of interest in Trump's henchmen has to do with "the extent to which Big Law has been captured by the political left."

"To protect the middle and working class, we directly challenged the control, legitimacy, and power of the credentialed managerial class and their corporate institutions," Rubinstein told Bloomberg. "So it's not a surprise to me that they are hostile to Trump administration alumni."

Sure, Reed. Whatever helps you sleep, my man.

Of course, this dynamic could change as Republicans proceed in their campaign to flush Jan. 6 down the memory hole. But for now, I'll relish this limited—and perhaps temporary—comeuppance.

As far as I'm concerned, most Trump lackeys should be shunned from polite society altogether. Or impolite society, for that matter. Send them to Snake Island. They'd fit in better there anyway.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

• Trump officials used secret terrorism unit to question lawyers at the ... ›
• Trump lawyer David Schoen briefly quit on Thursday night: report ... ›
• Trump's lawyers make a mockery of Republican senators - Alternet.org ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

• Trump Enraged by Defense Lawyers' Performance - The New York ... ›
• Meet the legal team defending Trump in his impeachment trial - CBS ... ›
• Trump's Top Impeachment Lawyers Leave Team Days Before Trial ... ›

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/a-vote-for-trump-and-the-gop-is-a-vote-to-destroy-unions

no lnx

Republican Party and President Trump have declared war on unions. The two prongs of their crusade include stacking the deck against unions by selecting anti-union/pro-corporate ideologues to key positions in each branch of government and, second, revamping federal laws, rules and regulations to rig the system in favor of corporations and against unions.

A second Trump term would be like the first term – except on steroids. The administration will fully subvert the rights of workers to organize; bargain collectively; improve their wages, benefits and working conditions; and improve the quality of life of all workers. Conversely, the power of corporations will be expanded. The ability of unions to represent the interests of workers may never recover from such an onslaught. Union supporters and leaders must do all they can to ensure that Trump and the Republicans running for the Senate are defeated in the coming election and prepare a massive mobilization response to any attempt by Trump to steal a close election.

PART ONE: STACKING THE DECK - ANTI-UNION REPUBLICANS DOMINATE ALL THREE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT

The famous saying "personnel is policy" is quite relevant to the Trump administration. Trump and the Republican majorities in the Senate and Supreme Court have combined to stack the deck against unions and rig the system in favor of Big Business. Anti-union appointees now dominate all three branches of the federal government: the executive branch (the White House and federal administrative agencies); the legislative branch (Senate); and the judicial branch including majorities on the Supreme Court and federal appellate courts.

EXECUTIVE BRANCH – Anti-Union/Pro-Corporate Appointees Are in Charge

All the major executive branch agencies dealing with labor related issues are led by appointees who had proven anti-union/pro-corporate records as illustrated below.

White House Staff. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was a member of Congress from 2013-2020. He was given an 8% lifetime rating by the AFL-CIO and 0% by the Communications Workers of America. Conversely, Meadows was given a lifetime rating of 77% by the US Chamber of Commerce and 95% by Freedom Works(a notoriously conservative, libertarian and anti-union group that was associated with the Tea Party and later Donald Trump).

Department of Labor (DOL) The DOL enforces 180 federal laws and thousands of regulations covering 10 million employers and 150 million workers.

Secretary of Labor. Eugene Scalia had a 20-year history of working for Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, a prominent corporate law firm, where he fought against worker protections such as health and safety, retirement security and collective bargaining rights.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA is being temporarily run by Loren Sweatt who has dutifully implemented the administration's anti-worker policies and expressed the desire to stay in her position if there is a second Trump term.

:{

}:

Wage and Hour Division head administrator, Cheryl Stanton, spent her career defending employers in wage and hour cases.

Mine Safety and Health Administration is headed by David Zatezalo who was chief executive of Rhino Resources, a coal company that had numerous clashes with MSHA officials during the Obama administration over many health and safety violations which he is now responsible for enforcing.

National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB is a New Deal agency established to enforce the National Labor Relations Act which gave most private sector workers the right to join a union and take action to protect and improve their wages, benefits and working conditions.

:{

}:

Chair and Board Member John Ring previously served as a partner with the notoriously anti-union law firm of Jackson, Lewis whose website stated that he specialized in representing management interests, "most notably in the context of workforce restructuring [layoffs] and multiemployer bargaining."

Board member William Emanuel was a partner at the union-busting law firm of Little, Mendelson.

Board Member Marvin Kaplan was a government lawyer working for anti-union members of Congress helping them draft legislation to weaken worker protections.

General Counsel Peter Robb spent much of his career as a management-side labor and employment lawyer. Robb was a key figure at the NLRB under President Reagan defending the administration's 1981 firing of more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers and legitimizing the "permanent replacement" of striking workers.

Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA's regulation of pollutants directly impacts workers in the workplace and in their communities.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. According to opensecrets.org, Andrew Wheeler was a former energy industry lobbyist where he lobbied against mine safety regulations, opposed the Obama administration's attempt to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, and fought for federal subsidies for coal plants.

Susan Bodine, the EPA's assistant administrator, formerly worked for Barnes & Thornburg, a law and lobbying firm that represented the American Forest & Paper Association. Many other EPA appointees at EPA have corporate ties.

United States Postal Service.The Trump administration has chosen clearly anti-union, pro-corporate individuals to key positions.

USPS Board of Governors is dominated by Trump appointed pro-corporate members. The board chair Robert Duncan was CEO of Inez Deposit Bank; CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (a lobbying group representing coal and utility corporations infamous for its denial of the climate crisis); and former chair of the Republican National Committee.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was CEO and is still a major investor in XPO Logistics, a company that does business with USPS. DeJoy received $1.7 to $7 million from the company last year. USPS has increased its business with XPO since DeJoy became Postmaster General.

Department of Education. Secretary Betsy DeVos is a very rich and prolific Republican party funder. Her father was a billionaire industrialist and her husband was the billionaire founder and CEO of Amway. She has a long history of supporting, funding and founding anti-union and pro-privatization groups.

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH: Anti-Union/Pro Corporate Republicans Control the Senate

Anti-union/pro-corporate Republicans dominate the Senate. The Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has enormous power. For example, he alone determines whether bills can even be considered and what amendments can be offered in the Senate. McConnell has a lifetime AFL-CIO rating of just 12% and a US Chamber of Commerce rating of 91%. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee has significant power over labor related issues. The HELP committee is chaired by Lamar Alexander (R-TN). Alexander has a lifetime AFL-CIO rating of 19% and a US Chamber of Commerce rating of 93%.

The core of the Republican Party strength is concentrated in the 27 Right to Work states.As discussed in a previous article, Right to Work laws are designed to weaken unions by cutting their revenue and membership. Unions represent just 7.5% of the workforce in right to work states but almost 16% in "fair share" states. The 27 "right to work" states account for 83% of the currently seated Republican Senators and 70% of their Representatives. In 2016, Trump carried 25 of the 27 these states.

JUDICIAL BRANCH – Anti-Union/Pro Business Judges Dominate the Supreme Court and Appellate Courts

The Republican Party has worked for a long time to ensure that the federal court system is dominated by conservative, pro-business/anti-union judges over the long term. Indeed, Republicans basically packed the court system when Senate Majority Leader McConnell refused to allow the Senate to vote on 105 judicial vacancies during the Obama administration which were later filled by Trump appointees.

Supreme Court. The Supreme Court now has 6 Republican appointed justices and 3 Democratic Justices. Each of the three Trump appointees had a proven anti-union/pro-corporate bias before being nominated.

Amy Coney Barrett. During her term on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Barrett ruled in favor of corporate interest more than 75% of the time. She ruled that corporations are entitled to set job requirements that exclude older workers and that they may segregate workers at different locations by race. She has also expressed support for striking the entire Affordable Care Act which would deprive health insurance for 20 million people and end protections for 100 million people with pre-existing conditions.

Neil Gorsuch. During his term on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, Gorsuch repeatedly ruled against workers and in favor of corporations. For example, Gorsuch dissented from a majority ruling upholding a National Labor Relations Board decision that an employer must give full back pay to workers it illegally fired for union activity. Gorsuch dissented in cases in which the circuit court majority supported pro-worker NLRB decisions stating that the NLRB exceeded the scope of its authority. However, Gorsuch made no such dissent when the court ruled in favor of NLRB decisions that supported management.

Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh served on the extremely important US District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. This court is second only to the Supreme Court in terms of prestige and power because it has jurisdiction over Congress and most federal regulations and agencies. The People for the American Way compiled a list of rulings showing that Kavanaugh consistently ruled against workers and for corporations during his 12½ years on the DC Circuit Court. Examples include Kavanaugh's opinions that would "entirely eviscerate collective bargaining;" his support for corporations seeking criminal citations for lawful union protests; and support for corporations that failed to protect workers health and safety.

Other Federal Courts. In almost 4 years Trump and the Republican Senate have appointed 24% of all active federal judges (194 of 792). There are 35 more nominations currently pending. Trump has appointed 30% of all active federal appeals court judges (54 of 179). This is more than any other president over the last 40 years. Overall, Republican appointees now account for 54% of all federal circuit court judges. The circuit courts are especially powerful because they function as final arbiter for the vast majority of cases since the Supreme Court accepts fewer than 2% of the 7-8,000 cases filed with it annually. These courts ultimately determine what the federal government can and cannot regulate – this is especially important to unions in relation to the right to organize and collectively bargain for wages, benefits and working conditions as well as the relative power of unions and corporations.

PART TWO: REPUBLICANS & TRUMP RIG THE RULES AGAINST UNIONS AND FOR CORPORATIONS

The Republican dominated executive, legislative and judicial branches have conspired to rig the laws, rules and regulations governing our political economy against unions and for corporations. The Brookings Institute maintains an up-to-date compilation of the Trump administration's deregulatory actions in a number of areas including labor, health, covid-19, education and environment. The Economic Policy Institute has itemized 50 anti-union actions taken by these branches of government against workers and provided an even more detailed analysis in another article. Here are some of the highlights.

Dismantling the Right to Join a Union and Collectively Bargain

Stripping the right to organize a union and collectively bargain from millions of workers at companies like Uber and Lyft (NLRB), graduate students (NLRB) and federal government workers including the determination that unionizing 750,000 Department of Defense workers would be a threat to national security.

Expanded management rights to undermine unions by granting management the power to determine which group of workers will be eligible to vote in an organizing election and be covered by a negotiated contract (NLRB).

Defunded unions by preventing public sector unions from requiring workers to help pay for the costs the union incurs for representing them in collective bargaining, arbitration and grievance procedures (Supreme Court)

Initiated the process to privatize government services that are heavily unionized including the US Postal Service (USPS) and public schools (Department of Education).

Reduced Good Paying Union Jobs. Trump's policies that were supposed to create jobs, actually eliminated jobs.

His 2017 tax cut provided incentives for corporations to offshore jobs by applying a 21% corporate tax rate for income earned domestically, but a 10.5% tax rate for profits earned offshore.

His China trade policy led to a 21% increase in our trade deficit with China and a resulting loss or displacement of 700,000 US jobs.

Reduced Wages. The Trump NLRB pushed through rules that prevented 8.2 million workers from obtaining overtime and cut $1 billion in wages by ruling that Lyft and Uber workers are individual contractors not subject to federal protections. The Republican Senate refused to consider a bill passed by the House to establish a $15 an hour minimum wage which would have increased wages for 33 million workers. The Trump administration stated that it would veto such a bill even if passed by the Senate.

Eroding Pension Security by Defunding Social Security. President Trump issued an executive order permitting companies to stop withholding payroll taxes. Trump also promised that "If I'm victorious on Nov 3, I plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax." The Social Security Administration stated that the Trump plan would deplete the Social Security retirement trust by 2023 at which time it would stop paying out benefits.

Denying and Reducing Health Insurance. Congressional Republicans and Trump have repeatedly attempted to pass legislation to eliminate Obamacare. The Trump administration also joined Republican state officials in suits contending that Obamacare is unconstitutional (a contention upheld by a Republican dominated appeals court). More than twenty million people will lose health insurance if these attempts are successful and 100 million would lose protections for previous conditions.

Eroded Workplace Safety and Health. Examples include OSHA's refusal to issue any required measures—via an emergency temporary infectious disease standard—to protect workers from the coronavirus; the Department of Labor's exclusion of millions of workers from paid leave provisions in the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act (FFCRA), including 9 million health care workers and 4.4 million first responders; and significant reductions in OSHA and Mine Safety inspections.

PART THREE: TRUMP MUST BE DEFEATED TO SAVE UNIONS AND BLUNT THE ANTI-UNION REPUBLICAN OFFENSIVE

A vote for Trump, a 3rd party candidate or not voting at all is a vote to irredeemably harm unions. This is not to say that Biden and the Democratic Party are the second coming of FDR and the New Deal. However, Biden and the Democrats are not out to destroy unions and, at the very least, will blunt the corporate/Republican anti-union crusade. And, at best, Biden and the Democrats will enact pro-worker legislation to the degree that unions and progressive groups are mobilized and activated. While the Democrats represent the possibility of pro-worker legislation especially if pushed by mass mobilization, Trump and the Republicans are out to destroy unions no matter what we do.

Progressives must ensure that Trump is not reelected: A second Trump term would be like his first term but on steroids – unions may not recover. If Trump is reelected, he will take all the anti-union policies of his first term to a new level. He will do this especially because a second Trump term will be characterized by its vindictiveness. Trump has an established pattern of viciously attacking any of his supporters who he considered to have been disloyal. And it is even worse for any groups and individuals he perceives as enemies – and he definitely perceives unions as enemies because they have almost universally endorsed Biden. Thus, Trump and the Republicans will extend, expand and institutionalize their efforts to eviscerate workers' rights to organize and collectively bargain and erode wages, benefits and working conditions for millions of Americans. In addition, they will expand management rights and further increase the inequitable concentration of income, wealth and power in the hands of the corporate and billionaire elite. A second Trump term will irreversibly debilitate unions and their ability to countervail the power of corporations.

Trump will be able to implement his anti-union crusade even if the Democrats maintain control of the House and obtain a majority in the Senate. He has proven that Congress is basically toothless when confronted by a president who does not play by the established rules and norms of government. He has proven that he can effectively rule by executive order – and that the anti-union judiciary will sustain his policies. The big business/Republican party attack on unions will be even worse if the Republicans continue to control the Senate and, thus, the court system.

Mass mobilization and civil disobedience must defeat any attempt by Trump and the Republicans to steal the election. All progressive groups should be prepared to engage in mass civil disobedience in response to any attempt by Trump and Republicans to steal the election if Biden wins. There are many articles that examine such scenarios including Vox, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and many more. Possibilities include lawsuits that wind their way to the Supreme Court where a 6-3 Republican majority hands Trump a victory. Another scenario is for Republican controlled state governments to use their power to override voters in a narrow election. There could be significant attempts to invalidate mail-in votes.

Yet another strategy is to delay results, create chaos in the electoral college and then throw the election to the House of Representatives where Republicans control more state delegations. We must be prepared for any of these possibilities. The stakes are too high. Unions – and the entire progressive movement - may not survive another Trump term. All progressive groups should call for mass civil disobedience. Unions – and progressive groups in general – should call for and implement a a range of mass action including a general strike, a range of rolling strikes or a mass slowdown. A number of local/regional labor councils have already passed resolutions supporting mass worker mobilizations. Such a strategy would entail a vast amount of educating, organizing and resources in a short period of time. It would also be risky – what if most workers failed to heed the call? Wouldn't that reveal a basic weakness in the labor movement and make its leaders unpopular with their membership? These are risks that pale in comparison to the gutting of unions that would occur with a second Trump term. Major crises call for significant and courageous actions.

Kenneth R. Peres retired as chief economist of the Communications Workers of America. Formerly, he served as economist for the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, the Montana House Select Committee on Economic Development, and the Montana Alliance for Progressive Policy. Ken has held teaching positions at the University of Montana, St. John's University, Chief Dull Knife College, and the City University of New York. He obtained a PhD in economics from the New School in New York City.

... At least 6 Trump cabinet secretaries are accused or under investigation for violating federal law" ...An Additional Eight or More Administration Officials Also Accused or Under Investigation

At least six Trump Cabinet secretaries are under investigation for violating federal law or are accused of violating federal law, as are an additional eight or more administration officials.

The Cabinet secretaries include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Bill Barr, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, and Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf.

In recent days White House officials have been assisting President Donald Trump's re-election efforts so intensely that at least one has been officially named a campaign advisor – in addition to being paid by the taxpayers for their day job inside the executive branch.

It's causing a great deal of outrage in some quarters.

An NCRM investigation finds more than a dozen White House officials are either under investigation or according to a government ethics watchdog or others, should be under investigation for appearing to be in violation of the federal law known as the Hatch Act.

Take White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who is now traveling with the president and appearing on Fox News as a Trump 2020 campaign "senior advisor."

CNN White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins pointed out the startling "title" addition on Tuesday:...Maggie Haberman on Thursday described this as "further blurring the lines between government and political activity."

In one appearance earlier this week, in which she was announced as both a campaign senior adviser and the White House press secretary, Ms. McEnany talked up the president's political rallies.

“At each of our rallies yesterday, I was with the president, we made three stops on Lancaster and all across the state," she said in the interview. “And in each of those stops we played a video for the public. Joe Biden said roll the tape, President Trump. When did I say ban fracking? Well, we rolled it."

McEnany is far from the only one "blurring" the lines.

Senior advisor to the president Stephen Miller, the Trump White House white nationalist who is the architect of its child separation policy, held a Trump campaign call with reporters on Wednesday.&nbs... https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2020/10/basically-describing-the-plot-of-the-purge-stephen-miller-spins-stunning-lies-about-biden-on-trump-campaign-call/" ...It was a disaster, with Miller spewing lies about Joe Biden, leading one reporter to describe his attacks this way: "Stephen Miller basically describing to reporters the plot of the Purge if Joe Biden wins the election."

Today, top Trump White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow will hold another Trump campaign call with reporters.... And then there's White House senior advisor and First Daughter, Ivanka Trump:

Some other Trump Cabinet Secretaries, including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, are raising eyebrows for travel that appears to be campaign-adjacent.

So is any or all of this illegal?

Here's what CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, has to say:...called for McEnany to be investigated for apparent Hatch Act violations. They also called for investigations into Pence chief of staff Marc Short and Trump National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien.)

There's of course also White House trade advisor Peter Navarro:

It's not just McEnany, Miller, Navarro, Ivanka, and Kudlow.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is under investigation for several "potential" Hatch Act violations.

The nation's top law enforcement officer, Attorney General Bill Barr, is accused by CREW of violating the Hatch Act:

Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt caused some to accuse him of a Hartch Act violastion over this video:

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is under investigation:

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue is accused of a Hatch Act violation by a sitting U.S. Congressman:

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf is also under investigation:

And then there's the Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Mark Morgan, in another apparent Hatch Act violation:

These are all recent potential violations or investigations.

CREW back in July also said White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows should be investigated for Hatch Act violstions:

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

• 'It's all crazy stuff!': Mike Pompeo tried to defend his shady ouster of a ... ›
• House Demcorats launch investigation into Mike Pompeo's RNC ... ›
• Parnas says Trump, Pence, Pompeo, Bolton and Giuliani all knew ... ›
• Pompeo facing investigation after alluding to the possible release of ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

• Pompeo's RNC speech under investigation for possible Hatch Act ... ›
• Pompeo being investigated for potentiallybreaking the law with ... ›

aha: i got that this was transactional before, but now i see also extraction/extortion; capitalism, he is ultimate / apotheosis of me vs we.

grifter libtards decry gubmint but 1st to line up to suck off taxpyer resouces/ buffer/commons

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/donald-trump-hunger-games-meme/

truscott 4

Remember this number: $3.

That's how much Trump charged the federal government for a glass of water in April of 2018 when he and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. _{According to the Washington Pos}_t, Trump's company also charged the government "$13,700 for guest rooms, $16,500 for food and wine and $6,000 for the roses and other floral arrangements," over the two days he held meetings with Abe at the resort. But one day, Trump was scheduled to meet with Abe without aides and advisers, with no meal service or cocktails or any other celebratory nonsense. Just the two leaders, alone in a room, talking. According to the Post, the bill for that day contained a line item reading, "Bilateral meeting. Water. $3.00 each."

Donald Trump has been paid "at least $2.5 million by the U.S. government," since taking office, according to official documents obtained by the Post. Trump has made more than 280 visits to his own hotels and golf clubs over the last four years, and the payments covered costs for "hotel rooms, ballrooms, cottages, rental houses, golf carts, votive candles, floating candles, candelabras, furniture moving, resort fees, decorative palm trees, strip steak, chocolate cake, breakfast buffets, $88 bottles of wine and $1,000 worth of liquor for White House aides." according to the Post.

And water. A total of six bucks for water, no charge being too small to make it onto a bill to the government for a payment going straight into the pocket of the man who owns the Trump Organization and everything it comprises, including his resort in Palm Beach.

It's apparently a good part of what the Trump base likes about him — his appetites, his pure, unadulterated, money-grubbing-right-down-to-$3-for-water greed. Trump has wanted more his entire life. He wants more money, of course. He has spent a lifetime in pursuit of more money, and then some more, and more and more. He borrowed so much money in pursuit of even more money that it drove him into bankruptcy, several bankruptcies in fact. Today, as president, he is said to be in debt for nearly $1 billion to banks and other lenders, a debt that will come due within the next few years, according to the New York Times and other reports.

Trump wants more fame, a drive that started off with mentions in gossip columns like the New York Post's "Page Six," during the years he was coming into his own as a builder in New York City. He used to call gossip columnists and plant items about himself, posing as a PR person, and then he would call the columnists the next day and comment on their mention of him in order to gain yet another column inch or two in the tabloids. Some said he ran for president back in 2016 to "burnish his brand," to achieve even more fame and use it to make even more money. Since he became president, he has been relentless in his pursuit of attention, tweeting at all hours, criticizing cable networks who don't give him enough coverage, calling in to shows like "Fox & Friends" and "Hannity" both to reward them for the coverage they've already given him, and to get more coverage.

He wants more women, from wife No. 1, Ivana, when he was just starting out, to wife No. 2, Marla Maples, after he jettisoned Ivana, and now wife No. 3, Melania, who replaced No. 2 when he determined she had a few too many miles on her. And then there were all the women in between, in and among his marriages, the women he groped on airplanes and at bars and during parties, the women he (allegedly) raped in places like a Bergdorf's dressing room or a hotel room or a bathroom during a party, the women whose mouths he forced his tongue down, the women he pushed up against walls and pressed himself against, the women whose bodies he commented on in offices or across rooms, the women whose skirts he put his hand up at restaurant tables, the women whose breasts he grabbed at tennis tournaments and beauty pageants, the women whose rear ends he grabbed in green rooms before television show tapings, the women he dragged behind curtains at New Year's Eve parties and forcibly kissed and groped. All of those women. Trump wanted their bodies and their mouths and he took them without asking permission because he was Donald Trump, and he took what he wanted.

He wanted more golf, so he played more golf more frequently than any president before him. He wanted so much golf that he went around the world buying and building his own golf courses, and then he played them, because he owned them, and because he owned the golf carts, as president he could charge the government for his own Secret Service agents. He could even charge the government for the hotel rooms the agents stayed in while they protected him. He charged the government $17,000 a month for a cottage at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf course, which the Secret Service had to rent month after month just in case he had a mind to play a round of golf.

Trump wants more adulation, more love from the "base," and when he feels he isn't getting enough, he tweets. There aren't enough hours in the day for Donald Trump. He was up at 3 a.m. this week, tweeting about the Supreme Court, the court to which he has appointed three arch-conservative justices, yelling at them for their recent decisions allowing mail-in votes to be counted after Election Day, because of course, he wants more votes. He's been up at 3 a.m. tweeting before, taunting a Miss Universe contestant for a "sex tape," taunting CNN as "low rated," bragging about his debate performance, yelling at polls that show him losing.

And now Trump is making his final campaign swing through the "battleground states," feeding the insatiable need of his base for more of himself. "Four more years" has become "12 more years." Somehow Trump is owed more years of the presidency because "they" took two or three years away from him during the Russia investigation, because "they" spied on his 2016 campaign, because "they" don't deserve to win. The red-hat-wearing mobs of un-masked fans at his rallies want more of the America they think Trump is bringing back to them. It's an America that is more white, has more guns, has more churches, more of "us," less of "them."

That's what they like about him. They want it all, the same way he does. That's what opposition to affirmative action has always been. They don't want some of the college admissions, they want them all. That's what Shelby County v. Holder was about, that's what voter IDs and all the restrictive rules about voting by mail are about. They want all the votes.

For the Trump base, making America great again means making America ours again, but he's going to make sure he puts it on their tab, right there with $3 for water and $546 for rooms and $50 for decorative palm trees for table decorations and $1,005.60 for 26 servings of Patron and Don Julio tequila, 22 Chopin vodkas, and six glasses of Woodford Reserve bourbon consumed by White House staffers at the Mar-a-Lago bar. It's going to cost us more than votes to get our country back. We're going to be paying for Trump's insatiable greed long after he's gone. More than 228,000 of us have already paid with our lives. If the Friday totals keep up — 98,500 new cases and more than 900 dead — a half million of us may perish by the time Trump walks out of the White House for the last time.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-corruption-2648564184/

it's been a long, difficult week in Trumpworld with all of the incriminating reports of corruption surrounding President Donald Trump and his administration. With Election Day less than five days away, Trump is likely feeling the pressure as the opposing forces work over time to state their case and prove that he is unfit for the office of the presidency.

Many of the stories raise more questions about Trump's leadership and the hidden agendas of his White House officials and other members of his administration.

Here's a breakdown of the stories circulating this week:

1. Trump, Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Turkish Bank A new report by the New York Times has uncovered details about Trump and U.S. Attorney Bill Barr questionable handling of possible violations of U.S. sanctions involving billions of dollars worth of gold and cash that was funneled to Iran.

When Geoffrey S. Berman, a top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, traveled to the White House to speak with Barr and some of his top administrative officials about the criminal investigation into the state-owned Turkish bank, Halkbank, Barr suggested that the bank be allowed to avoid indictment by paying only a fine and admitting that some wrong was done. Barr's sentiments also echoed Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's words as he had reportedly asked Trump repeatedly to stop the investigation. Trump's presumed eagerness to please Erdogan has also raised questions about where the president truly stands. For Berman, Barr's request raised red flags and questions about whether or not Barr was colluding with foreign operatives.

"This is completely wrong," Berman later told lawyers in the U.S. Department of Justice, according to people who received intel about the proposal and Barr's reaction. "You don't grant immunity to individuals unless you are getting something from them — and we wouldn't be here."

This report is yet another cloud over Trump and his administration regarding where their loyalty lies.

2. Pompeo Family Email ScandalU.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was caught in the middle of an email scandal when it was revealed that he and his wife, Susan Pompeo had conducted official White House business using personal email addresses. Now, the couple is being investigated by both Congress and the State Department's inspector generals for "potential misuse of government resources." On multiple occasions, Susan Pompeo is said to have regularly utilized her personal email address for business matters, according to email correspondence.

"The emails show that Susan Pompeo routinely gives instructions to State Department officials from her personal email address about everything from travel plans and restaurant reservations to the elite Madison Dinners," according to NBC News.

Below is an example of the types of messages Susan Pompeo sent to a State Department official. The message captures a conversation between her and a State Department official whose name was redacted from the record.

"The dryer isn't hooked up... I think you told me someone was coming to fix that?" Susan Pompeo said via text message to a State Department official. "Ma'am – On it, I was told it was fixed. Let me get you an answer," the official responded by email hours later.

3. Rick Perry's Dirty DealingA new report centers on former United States Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and his involvement in an attempted scheme to help some of his friends profit off a massive gas deal. Although Perry has denied the allegations, there are multiple details that highlight Perry's ties to Ukraine, according to Pro Republica.

During a six-month investigation, reporters from Time magazine, WNYC and ProPublica discovered that "Perry and his staff at the Energy Department worked to advance energy deals that were potentially worth billions of dollars to Perry's friends and political donors."

Two of these deals seemed set to benefit Energy Transfer, the Texas company on whose board Perry served immediately before and after his stint in Washington. The biggest was worth an estimated $20 billion, according to U.S. and Ukrainian energy executives involved in negotiating them.

4. Wilbur Ross' Chinese Conflict of InterestLike Perry, Ross found himself at the center of controversy when he failed to separate from his business ties while serving as the U.S. Commerce Secretary. According to ForeignPolicy.com, documents appear to suggest that Ross' potential conflicts of interest surrounding Chinese business are much more evident than previously thought.

Here is a breakdown of the conflicts surrounding Perry, his business ties, and government affiliation.

In Chinese corporate documents obtained by Foreign Policy, Ross is listed as serving on the board of a Chinese joint venture until January 2019—nearly two years into his term as commerce secretary. That joint venture, now called Huaneng Invesco WLR (Beijing) Investment Fund Management Co., is an investment partnership formed in September 2008 between Huaneng Capital Services, the U.S. management company Invesco, and a firm Ross founded, WL Ross & Co. Huaneng Capital Services is an arm of China Huaneng Group, a major state-owned power producer.

As Election Day approaches, more incriminating reports are circulating and raising more questions about the integrity of the Trump administration.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

• Republican corruption and carelessness led to devastation in ... ›
• Did Donald Trump help kill an anti-corruption probe in Guatemala to ... ›
• GOP senator caught on tape in angry tirade against Trump's ... ›
• Ivanka Trump could be targeted for multiple corruption investigations ... ›
• Donald Trump's reign of corruption has left the federal government ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

• Opinion | Trump's corrupt schemes to save himself keep blowing up ... ›
• Trump-Linked Corruption Is as Global as the Ultra-Rich He Parties ... ›
• Opinion | How Trump's epic corruption reveals hidden weaknesses ... ›
• Confronting the Cost of Trump's Corruption to American Families ... ›
• The art of the self-deal - Donald Trump's record on corruption and ... ›

https://prospect.org/mapping-corruption-interactive (no lnx in cabinet)

agriculture Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

• Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue was the subject of multiple ethics complaints and investigations during two terms as governor of Georgia. In one headline-making case, he approved a tax bill with a little-noticed provision that retroactively saved him $100,000 on a land sale.
• Perdue has filled the department’s top ranks with former agribusiness executives and lobbyists, along with an unusual number of Trump campaign workers without other obvious qualifications.
• The Agriculture Department has OK’d sharply higher line speeds for hog and poultry slaughterhouses and cut back on USDA meat-safety inspections, letting some big employers hand that responsibility off to low-wage workers.
• While in Wisconsin for a conference of dairy farmers at a time of widespread distress and a surge in farmer suicides, Perdue implied that they should just get used to it, telling reporters, “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out.”
• The department has proposed taking three million people off food stamps.
• The department has loosened many environmental and health and safety regulations and dismissed concerns over climate change.

WHAT AM I DOING HERE?

• As governor of Georgia, after issuing an order prohibiting gifts worth more than $25 to state employees, Perdue accepted sports tickets, airplane flights, and other gratuities valued at over $25,000.
• He signed a tax bill with a last-minute tweak that saved him $100,000 on an already-completed land sale. One of the legislators backing that bill had worked part time for Perdue on his personal legal business.
• As a founder or part-owner of more than a dozen agribusiness companies, Perdue collected $278,000 in federal farm subsidies between 1996 and 2004.
• In his campaigns for political office, Perdue received large contributions from the likes of Monsanto and Coca-Cola.
• In a 2014 article, Perdue dismissed efforts by “some on the left or in the mainstream media” to connect extreme weather events to climate change. “Liberals,” he wrote, “have lost all credibility when it comes to climate science because their arguments have become so ridiculous and so obviously disconnected from reality.”

HANDOUTS TO THE UNDESERVING

• The department has authorized much higher line speeds for giant poultry and hog slaughtering companies, and in some cases let them turn the job of safety inspection over to low-paid slaughterhouse workers, typically earning a couple of dollars over minimum wage.
• In his confirmation hearings, Sonny Perdue emphasized his commitment to “customer service.” The customers who have received the best service from his department are giant multinational food and pesticide companies. “They have his ear, he’s hired their lobbyists as top staffers, and pretty much down the line he’s been fulfilling their requests,” says Ben Lilliston of the Minnesota-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
• With relatively little public notice, oversight, or hard data, Perdue’s department has distributed more than $28 billion in emergency relief to farmers injured by the administration’s trade war with China. This program has been massively tilted toward multinational agribusiness companies. More than $62 million, for example, has gone to the world’s largest meat processor, JBS, owned by a pair of billionaire brothers who have served prison time for bribing hundreds of government officials in their native country of Brazil.
• Midwestern dairy and corn farmers and Maine blueberry growers, among others, have complained bitterly about the way the subsidies have been distributed. Perdue has belittled their protests. “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out,” he said in a speech delivered at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin.
• Perdue undid a set of newly adopted rules meant to keep agribusiness giants from engaging in price-fixing and other forms of collusion at the expense of farmers or consumers. He effectively eliminated the unit (known as GIPSA) responsible for enforcing the anti-fraud regulations that remained, making it part of an office dedicated to marketing and public relations.
• Working with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Perdue’s department pressured Mexico to weaken new nutrition disclosure rules for processed food, intended to combat obesity.
• The Agriculture Department went to bat for Dow Chemical in pressing China to accept its genetically modified, herbicide-resistant corn seeds. With that victory secured, Dow spun off its agriculture business into a new subsidiary, Corteva, which is now the top corn seed producer in the Asia-Pacific region.
• The department reinterpreted the Clean Water Act to let farmers use previously forbidden chemical pesticides and fertilizers at the risk of contaminating local waterways.

UNDUE INFLUENCE

• The number of former industry lobbyists and executives tapped for key jobs at the Department of Agriculture has been extraordinary, even by Trump administration standards, and ethical concerns do not seem to worry very many of them.
• A former pesticide industry executive, Rebeckah Adcock, was put in charge of a deregulation team and took part in the effort to get China to accept Dow’s genetically modified corn seeds. Before one high-level meeting on the issue, Dow lobbyist Hunt Shipman emailed Adcock: “Do you know who will staff the secretary?” Adcock treated the question as a joke: “Yes and u do too.” “Roger,” Shipman replied. Then, alluding to the potential conflict of a public servant helping former colleagues, he added: “Maybe you can have a chair on both sides of the table … Maybe you can staff them both?”
• Throughout Perdue’s tenure, chemical companies have enjoyed unprecedented physical and email access to top department officials. “A Wide-Open Door for Pesticide Lobbyists at the Agriculture Department,” is how ProPublica summed it up.
• Deputy Secretary Steve Censky came to the department after 21 years as CEO of the American Soybean Association, which has lobbied against disclosure rules for products containing genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Censky had helped win passage of a 2016 law that repealed GMO labeling requirements.
• Brooke Appleton, Censky’s chief of staff, had been a lobbyist for the National Corn Growers Association and National Association of Wheat Growers. In February 2019, after two years at USDA, Appleton left to become vice president of public policy for the corn growers’ group.
• Kailee Tkacz, tapped to serve on a nutritional policy advisory panel, had been a lobbyist for the Corn Refiners Association, the National Grocers Association, and the Snack Food Association, battling against federal efforts to discourage excessive sugar and salt consumption.
• Maggie Lyons, chief of staff to the acting deputy undersecretary of Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, was a former lobbyist for the National Grocers Association.
• Kristi Boswell, hired to advise Secretary Perdue on policies related to visas for seasonal farmworkers, had spent five years as a lobbyist for the American Farm Bureau Federation.
• The department has a trade policy advisory panel loaded with representatives of such agribusiness groups as the Livestock Export Association of the USA, the International Dairy Foods Association, the U.S. Meat Export Federation, Archer Daniels Midland, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Cargill, the National Pork Producers Council, Sunkist Growers, and Corteva Agriscience.

APPARATCHIKS

• Politico reviewed 42 resumes of the department’s political appointees. Twenty-two had worked on the Trump presidential campaign.
• The list of appointees included a long-haul truck driver, a clerk at AT&T, a meter reader for a gas company, a country club cabana attendant, the owner of a scented-candle company, a Republican National Committee intern, and a former Washington state senator who mentioned on his résumé that he was the first elected official in his state to back Trump’s candidacy.
• The truck driver, Nick Brusky, received a GS-12 job, paying nearly $80,000 a year, at the department’s Foreign Agricultural Service. Although he had never been involved in developing international markets for farm products, Brusky pointed out that he had experience “hauling and shipping agricultural commodities.”

WE DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT

• The department’s economic research office concluded that the 2017 Republican tax cuts had given “the biggest benefits to the wealthiest farmers.” After that finding, Perdue decided to move the research office from Washington to Kansas City, even though some staff members had been working and living in Washington for years. Given 33 days to say yes or no to relocating, most of the affected employees decided they couldn’t move and lost their jobs.
• Perdue has done the same with the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which supports research at land grant colleges across the country. Here, too, a majority of the employees left rather than make the move. Addressing a Republican Party gala in South Carolina, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney described relocation as a “wonderful way” to shrink the size of government, bemoaning that it’s usually difficult to fire federal workers.
• Perdue’s disdain for broadly accepted climate science has helped spur an exodus of USDA professionals. “You get the sense that … this is not a place for you to be exploring things that don’t agree with someone’s political views,” says Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist who worked at USDA for more than two decades. “That’s so sad. I can’t even begin to tell you how sad that is.” Ziska was appalled by the department’s lack of interest in a study of the future of rice-growing and the 600 million people who depend on it. “It feels like something out of a bad sci-fi movie,” he says.

FURTHER REFERENCE

• A Wide-Open Door for Pesticide Lobbyists at the Agriculture Department (ProPublica)
• The state of the USDA: A quiet dismantling (Ben Lilliston, IATP)
• ‘They literally take food off their table’: Trump’s Department of Agriculture seeks to cut programs without knowing how many people will be hurt (Politico)
• Trump hires campaign workers instead of farm experts at USDA (Politico)
• Leveraging the revolving door: lobbying forms show how agriculture group targets officials with industry ties for advocacy (CREW)
• The Snack Food and Corn Syrup Lobbyist Shaping Trump’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans (POGO)
• A Lesson From the USDA: Want to Make Workers Unhappy? Move Their Office to Another State (Politico)
• USDA relocation has delayed key studies and millions in funding, employees say (Washington Post)
• Official says USDA departures ‘wonderful’ way to drain the swamp (Federal Times)
• House Democrats Are Failing to Protect Farmers from Trump (Washington Monthly)
• What’s Up With Trump Bailout Money And JBS? (Drovers)
• JBS: The Brazilian butchers who took over the world (Bureau of Investigative Journalism)
• Trump farm secretary: No guarantee small farms will survive (Associated Press)
• Soybean CEO named No. 2 at USDA (Successful Farming)
• We Found a “Staggering” 281 Lobbyists Who’ve Worked in the Trump Administration (ProPublica)
• Kailee Tkacz profile (ProPublica)
• Revolving Door: Lobbyists-Turned-USDA-Officials Work With Junk Food Industry to Keep Soda, Candy in SNAP Program (Sludge)
• ‘It feels like something out of a bad sci-fi movie’ (Politico)
• Agriculture Department buries studies showing dangers of climate change (Politico)
• Sonny Perdue’s School Lunch Bait-and-Switch (Union of Concerned Scientists)

Back to Map

Commerce Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

• Forbes magazine described Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross as “one of the biggest grifters in American history,” finding a career total of more than $120 million siphoned from business associates.
• The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Ross with pocketing $10.4 million that rightly belonged to investment partners.
• Ross held official meetings with the CEOs of Chevron and Boeing while his wife owned shares in those companies valued at $400,000 and $2 million.
• He failed to divest holdings in the world’s third-largest auto parts maker until October 2017, after official dealings with top people at BMW, Toyota, GM, and Ford, among other major customers of the parts company.
• For nearly a year after his confirmation, Ross held onto his stake in Navigator Holdings, a natural-gas shipping company tied to Russian oligarchs and members of Vladimir Putin’s family. Before divesting, Ross personally negotiated a deal to facilitate the export of American-produced liquefied natural gas to China. The ethics officer who OK’d Ross’s actions got a promotion.
• Ross came up with a phony legal pretext for the White House’s plan to discourage Latino voting by putting a citizenship question into the 2020 census. Citizenship information would be critical to enforcing the Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial discrimination, the Commerce Department claimed. The Supreme Court found Ross’s justification beyond belief. The decision had actually been made at the behest of a Republican strategist after analyzing its likely impact on racial voting patterns; the anti-immigration zealot and onetime Trump strategist Steve Bannon was one of the people using backdoor connections to get Ross to act.

WHAT AM I DOING HERE?

• Secretary Wilbur Ross is a banker and investor known as the “King of Bankruptcy” for his history of gaining control of financially shaky companies, clearing their debts for pennies on the dollar, and squeezing the remaining assets for a quick profit, sometimes after walking away from worker health and pension obligations.
• In addition to the many episodes that caused Forbes to call him a grifter on an epic scale, Ross is the former part-owner and vice chairman of a Cyprus bank known as a top money laundry for Russian oligarchs.

SELF-AND-CRONY-ENRICHMENT

• Ross played a leading role in U.S.-China trade matters despite his joint investment in a shipping company with a Chinese state fund.
• Ross conferred with leaders of state-controlled funds in Qatar, Japan, and Singapore which had previously placed money with his private equity firm.
• He sold his interest in a railcar company after lunch with the CEO, who told Ross that Trump tariffs would hurt the business.
• Ross made short sales of Navigator stock a few days after learning that the company would be the subject of a damaging story in The New York Times. The share price promptly fell 3.9 percent.

WE DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT

• The Commerce Department eliminated a committee of 15 scientists helping local officials understand the implications of climate change.
• It shut down the chief economist’s office, which had done studies of natural disasters and their economic consequences.

FURTHER REFERENCE

• New Details About Wilbur Ross’ Business Point To Pattern Of Grifting (Forbes)
• SEC fines Wilbur Ross’ firm $2.3 million over fees (CNBC)
• Wilbur Ross (Revolving Door Project Swamp Tour)
• The Wilbur Ross Scandal Isn’t About Russia, It’s About Corruption (Intercept)
• The Case Of Wilbur Ross’ Phantom $2 Billion (Forbes)
• Wilbur Ross Scheduled Meetings With Chevron, Boeing Despite Conflicts Of Interest (Forbes)
• Ross shorted Russian-linked shipping company ahead of Paradise Papers (ICIJ)
• Commerce Secretary’s Offshore Ties to Putin ‘Cronies’ (New York Times)
• How Wilbur Ross made money from a story exposing his business ties to the Kremlin (Quartz)
• New Memo Reveals the Census Question Was Added to Boost White Voting Power (Slate)
• The company linking Wilbur Ross to Putin cronies has a key role in Trump’s energy plan (Quartz)
• Trump just gave China a ‘sledgehammer’ to smash the LNG monopoly (CNBC)
• The Trump Administration’s Census Cover Up (ACLU)

Back to Map

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

QUICK AND DIRTY

• Former Acting Director Mick Mulvaney opposed the agency’s creation and called it “a sick, sad joke.”
• The payday lending industry’s main lobbying arm, the Community Financial Services Association of America, spent roughly $1 million holding its 2018 and 2019 annual conferences at the Trump-owned Doral golf resort. Collectively, payday groups and companies gave $2.2 million to the Trump campaign and inaugural committees during the 2016 election cycle.
• In May 2018, Mulvaney’s agency took the remarkable step of siding with the payday industry in its legal efforts to delay implementation of a CFPB rule intended to block lenders from manipulating customers into unmanageable long-term debt.
• Three weeks later, payday moguls Mike and Tina Hodges contributed $250,000 to the main super PAC working for Trump’s re-election. The Washington Post caught Mike Hodges, CEO of the mega-chain lender Advance Financial, telling his peers that money invested in the Trump cause would mean access to top administration officials. “I’ve gone to [Republican National Committee Chair] Ronna McDaniel and said, ‘Ronna, I need help on something,’” Hodges explained during an industry webinar. “She’s been able to call over to the White House and say, ‘Hey, we have one of our large givers. They need an audience … They need to be heard and you need to listen to them.’”
• After lenders poured money into the Trump campaign and inauguration, Mulvaney terminated multiple investigations of payday companies over “rent-a-tribe” arrangements and other circumventions of law.
• The bureau has cut back sharply on enforcement and financial relief for defrauded consumers.
• The bureau wants to make it easier for debt collectors to barrage people with text and email messages.

WHAT AM I DOING HERE?

• Mick Mulvaney, the CFPB’s acting director from late 2017 until late 2019, had been a congressman representing the city of Spartanburg, South Carolina, where the nation’s biggest payday lending company, Advance America, is based. Al Simpson, now a top lobbyist for Advance Financial, was Mulvaney’s chief of staff during his time in Congress.
• Mulvaney is a longtime defender of the payday industry and an ideological opponent of efforts to regulate financial companies and their products.
• Mulvaney’s appointment appeared to violate the succession provisions of the legislation creating the bureau. The White House took care of that problem by having its Office of Legal Counsel provide a supportive memo. The memo’s author, Steven Engel, had been the lead attorney for a payday lender in a dispute over charges that the CFPB would eventually drop—after Mulvaney took charge.
• Current director Kathy Kraninger was an aide to Mulvaney at OMB with no consumer-protection experience.

HANDOUTS TO THE UNDESERVING

• Upon assuming the director’s job in November 2017, Mulvaney suspended hiring, rule-making, and fine collection.
• In January 2018, Mulvaney canceled an investigation of a South Carolina payday lender that had donated $4,500 to his congressional campaigns. Those contributions were irrelevant, he said, “because I am not in elected office anymore.”
• He dropped a CFPB lawsuit against an online lender that had charged up to 950 percent interest while falsely claiming to be run by a Native American tribe in order to dodge state usury laws.
• Mulvaney called off efforts to regulate auto lenders accused of cheating vulnerable consumers.
• In May 2019, the bureau proposed a rule that would let debt collectors barrage consumers with phone calls, text messages, and voice mails, immunizing them against liability for causing someone’s confidential financial information to be disclosed to a third party.

FURTHER REFERENCE

• Mick Mulvaney’s Master Class in Destroying a Bureaucracy From Within (New York Times)
• Mick Mulvaney just said the swampiest thing ever (The Point)
• Top Questions CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger Must Answer (AFR)
• This Is What Trump Quietly Screwing the Poor Looks Like (Vice)
• Trump appointee, whose past blogs on race sparked backlash, resigns (Washington Post)
• Waters, CFPB chief clash over fair lending enforcement in first showdown (Politico)
• Profile of Tom Pahl (Allied Progress)
• How Payday Lenders Spent $1 Million at a Trump Resort—and Cashed In (ProPublica)
• Payday Rules Relax on Trump’s Watch After Lobbying by Lenders (New York Times)
• A payday lender is accused of stealing millions from customers. Trump’s CFPB is now letting them off the hook. (Vox)
• Payday lenders discussed raising money for Trump’s campaign to fend off regulation, audio reveals (Washington Post)
• Mick Mulvaney: Payday lending campaign contributions pose no conflicts of interest (USA Today)
• Read this blistering takedown of a rule that would let debt collectors blast you with text messages (Fast Company)
• White House Memo Justifying CFPB Takeover Was Written By Payday Lender Attorney (Intercept)

Back to Map

Education Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

• Secretary Betsy DeVos is a multimillionaire and top Republican Party fundraiser who has poured money into private Christian schools and campaigns for “school choice” while referring to public education as “a monopoly” and “a dead end.”
• Under her leadership, the Department of Education has continued to collect loan payments from former students of Corinthian, ITT, and other fraud-ridden for-profit college chains.
• She has filled key jobs with ex-lobbyists and execs of for-profit colleges.
• Her department has failed to deliver financial relief to tens of thousands of teachers, nurses, and police officers, etc., who qualified for public-service loan forgiveness.
• The department has rolled back an Obama administration plan to withhold federal funds from for-profit schools whose students consistently fail to gain valuable skills or land decent jobs, leaving them unable to repay their debts.
• At the time of her confirmation, DeVos held stakes in a debt collection company and the country’s biggest chain of for-profit charter schools. After she announced the sale of her interest in the debt collection company, it received a Department of Education contract potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
• DeVos has all but ignored a presidential directive calling for measures to ease the impact of $1.5 trillion in ballooning student debt on millions of recent college attendees and the state of the economy. Trump, whose re-election could hang on DeVos’s financial support and Michigan campaign ties, has failed to force the issue.

WHAT AM I DOING HERE?

• Secretary Betsy DeVos inherited money and married money. She has had almost no personal experience with the public schools.
• Her brother, Erik Prince, founded the private military company originally known as Blackwater but renamed Xe Services after its involvement in a notorious 2007 mass killing of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.
• Her father-in-law, Richard M. DeVos, founded the multilevel marketing giant Amway and used Republican Party connections to throttle a federal investigation depicting his company as a pyramid scheme.
• DeVos has been a leading bundler of campaign money for Republican candidates in her native Michigan and across the country.
• Her family has poured millions of dollars into private Christian schools and campaigns for “school choice.” The goal of her educational activism, she has said, is to “advance God’s kingdom.”
• She refers to education as an “industry” and has called public education “a closed market,” “a monopoly,” and “a dead end.”

UNDUE INFLUENCE

• Diane Auer Jones, principal deputy under secretary, is one many former lobbyists or execs of for-profit college companies tapped for positions of authority by DeVos. Jones was an executive at Career Education Company, one of the country’s biggest for-profit college chains and the target of multiple lawsuits and investigations, including a case brought by New York state in which the company paid $10 million over inflated job placement statistics. (In her new job, Auer Jones has been tasked with developing a less confrontational approach to such offenses.)
• Robert Eitel, deputy general counsel, was the chief compliance officer at Bridgepoint, which got into legal trouble for deceiving students about loan costs and using taxpayer dollars to shower money on its executives and shareholders while most students wound up as dropouts. At the Education Department, Eitel has played a part in efforts to block a rule that would help defrauded borrowers gain relief.
• Chief Enforcement Officer Julian Schmoke is a former dean at DeVry (aka Adtalem Global Education), which paid $100 million to settle charges of deceptive marketing. In his current role, Schmoke has helped shrink the special Department of Ed team that investigates such abuses, while canceling investigations of Bridgepoint and CEC.
• James Manning, former acting under secretary, was a longtime consultant to loan servicers (such as Performant) accused of overcharging borrowers and using bullying collection tactics. At the Education Department, Manning ran the office of federal student aid and oversaw compliance issues involving taxpayer-funded grants and loans. He left in June 2019 to resume his lobbying career.

FURTHER REFERENCE

• Corruption Needs To Be A Kitchen Table Issue In 2020. Start With Betsy DeVos. (CEPR)
• Trump administration let nearly $11 million in student aid go to unaccredited for-profit colleges (Washington Post)
• Education Department explains why only 1% of people who applied for public-loan forgiveness were accepted (MarketWatch)
• Education Department awards debt collection contract to company once tied to DeVos (Chicago Tribune)
• DeVos Sued Amid New Evidence About Whether Her Agency Aided For-Profit Operator (U.S. News)
• Education for Sale? (The Nation)
• For-Profit Colleges Gain Beachhead in Trump Administration (ProPublica)
• Federal judge holds DeVos in contempt in loan case, slaps Education Department with $100,000 fine (Washington Post)
• Betsy DeVos Lost More on Theranos than the Average American Will Make in 100 Lifetimes (Vanity Fair)
• Betsy DeVos Throws Favors to For-Profit Schools (NEPC)
• Trump administration let nearly $11 million in student aid go to unaccredited for-profit colleges (Washington Post)
• Eyeing populist challenge from the left, Trump seeks plan to tackle student debt (Washington Post)
• Education Dept. awards debt-collection contract to company with ties to DeVos (Washington Post)
• She Left the Education Dept. for Groups It Curbed. Now She’s Back, With Plans. (New York Times)
• DeVos Department Stacks Negotiations Deck With For-Profit College Lawyers (Republic Report)

Back to Map

Energy Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

• Former Secretary Rick Perry received $14 million in oil and gas industry campaign contributions over the years.
• He filled the top ranks of the department with former fossil fuel industry lobbyists and executives, and fought to keep dirty coal plants in business.
• Perry was one of the “Three Amigos” assigned by the White House to work with Rudy Giuliani on the task of pressuring the Ukraine government to help whip up a scandal involving former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
• While in Ukraine for the inauguration of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Perry recommended several Americans as energy advisers to the new government. One of them was a Texas backer of Perry’s political career; he and another Texan later struck a 50-year oil and gas exploration deal with Ukraine’s government, winning out over a competing company that offered millions of dollars more.

WHAT AM I DOING HERE?

• Campaigning for president in 2011, Perry promised to eliminate three cabinet departments. During a debate, he was unable to remember one of them—the Energy Department. That “oops” moment helped sink his candidacy.
• Before becoming energy secretary, Perry served on the board of a company, Energy Transfer Partners, whose major client was the Dakota Access Pipeline. He was also on the board of a Sunoco oil subsidiary.
• Perry’s successor, Dan Brouillette, had held an assistant secretary position at the Department of Energy under President George W. Bush, and went on to become an auto industry lobbyist before being tapped to join the Trump administration.

SELF-AND-CRONY-ENRICHMENT

• In April 2017, Perry arranged an invitation for his wife, Anita, to a reception and a “cultural program” for G7 ministers in Rome, with her travel expenses to be paid for by the Department of Energy, according to a spokesperson.
• In September 2019, Perry announced the creation of a new Office for Artificial Intelligence and Technology. His wife Anita held stock in three potentially affected companies—Verizon, AT&T, and Splunk. Under Perry’s leadership, the Energy Department’s overall budget shrank, with especially sharp declines in spending on renewable energy, to the dismay of some in Congress. Meanwhile, Perry called for $119 million to be spent on the AI initiative in 2020.

UNDUE INFLUENCE

• Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary Angelos Kokkinos previously served as a top executive at Babcock Power, a supplier of steam generation and environmental-control equipment.
• Chief of Staff Brian McCormack lobbied against rooftop solar power on behalf of the Edison Electric Institute.
• Under Secretary Mark Menezes was a lobbyist for electrical utility companies and trade groups, including American Electric Power, Duke Energy, Edison Electric Institute, Southern Company, and Koch Mineral Services.
• Deputy Assistant Secretary Mark Maddox had been at the Energy Department during the George W. Bush administration; more recently, he was a lobbyist for petroleum, coal, and utility companies.
• Under Secretary for Science Paul Dabbar came to his job after overseeing mergers and acquisitions for J.P. Morgan & Co. He had also worked as an adviser to TransCanada, Allete, AES, and Dynegy, among other fossil fuel companies and utilities.
• Sean Cunningham, head of the Office of Energy Policy and Systems Analysis, previously worked for the corporate law firms of Balch & Bingham and Hunton & Williams, representing energy and mineral interests.
• Cathy Tripodi, director of the Laboratory Operations Board, came to the department from a job with the consulting firm of Faegre Baker Daniels, where she represented energy clients.
• Senior adviser Theodore Garrish previously worked for the Nuclear Energy Institute and Bechtel.

FURTHER REFERENCE

• Rick Perry created AI office within Energy Dept. despite wife’s investments (CREW)
• How a Coal Baron’s Wish List Became President Trump’s To-Do List (New York Times)
• Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming From Inside the White House (Vanity Fair)
• Energy Dept. Nominee Rick Perry: Fossil Fuel’s $14 Million Man (Food & Water Watch)
• After push from Rick Perry, his backers got huge gas deal in Ukraine (NBC)
• Rick Perry says he’s not giving up on struggling coal plants (Axios)
• Oil and Gas Ties Run Deep in Trump Administration (Pacific Standard)

Back to Map

Environmental Protection Agency

QUICK AND DIRTY

• Secretary Andrew Wheeler is a former coal lobbyist whose top client was Murray Energy. That company’s CEO, Robert Murray, is a climate change denier and a major backer of Donald Trump.
• While under consideration for his current post, Wheeler hosted campaign fundraising events for Senators John Barrasso (R-WY) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK), two members of the committee that would do the first review of his fitness. Both senators received campaign donations from a PAC associated with Wheeler’s law firm.
• Murray prepared a policy wish list and hand-delivered it to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. The EPA has so far acted on at least several of Murray’s recommendations. They include abandoning an Obama administration rule barring coal companies from dumping waste into streams and waterways; making it easier to open new coal plants; and allowing higher levels of mercury pollution.
• Nancy Beck, named deputy assistant administrator for Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (and recently nominated to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission), is a former industry lobbyist who, before coming to the EPA, battled against an agency proposal to halt the sale of three chemicals linked to birth defects, nerve damage, and deaths. Within weeks of her arrival, Beck was leading the charge against that proposal, using the same arguments she had developed as a lobbyist, to the dismay of agency professionals who had long been working on the issue. Seeking to dispel any ethical concerns, the EPA had its legal counsel compose a pair of “impartiality determination” memos citing Beck’s “unique expertise, knowledge and past experience” and the need to consider “all perspectives.”
• Wheeler has absolved his agency of any duty to address global warming, the biggest and clearest environmental threat facing our country and the world.

UNDUE INFLUENCE

• David Dunlap, deputy assistant administrator for research and development, is a former policy director for Koch Industries. At EPA, Dunlap has had a role in regulating formaldehyde despite the fact that one of the country’s largest producers of formaldehyde, Georgia-Pacific Chemicals, is a Koch subsidiary.
• David Fischer, deputy assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention, is a former industry lawyer and senior director of the American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical companies.
• Alexandra Dunn, assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention, was also employed by the American Chemistry Council.
• As an industry lawyer, Susan Bodine, now assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance, had defended polluting companies against Superfund cleanup responsibilities.
• Peter Wright, assistant administrator for land and emergency management, oversees toxic waste site cleanup. He used to work for DowDuPont, which has been implicated in problems affecting roughly one-seventh of all toxic waste cleanup sites.
• Senior Deputy Counsel Erik Baptist, the EPA’s top lawyer for chemical safety, came from the American Petroleum Institute.
• Steven Cook, chair of the Superfund toxic cleanup task force, spent more than two decades as a lawyer for LyondellBasell Industries, self-described as “one of the largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies in the world.”
• David Ross, assistant administrator for water, is a former lobbyist with Crowell and Moring, representing Peabody Energy, among other clients.
• Dennis Forsgren, deputy assistant administrator for water, was a lobbyist for GE and Exxon, among others.
• Troy Lyons, associate administrator for congressional and intergovernmental relations, previously worked for Hess and British Petroleum.
• Senior Adviser George Sugiyama came over from the lobbying firm of Troutman Sanders, with the National Mining Association as one of his clients.

IGNOMINIOUS DEPARTURES

• Scott Pruitt, Wheeler’s predecessor. In addition to spending more than $124,000 on unjustified first-class air travel and $43,000 on a soundproof phone booth, Pruitt used EPA staff to help land a job for his wife, rented a condominium apartment on Capitol Hill at a bargain rate from a lobbyist’s wife, asked aides to purchase an old mattress from the Trump Hotel, and had his security detail drive him around on drugstore errands.
• Bill Wehrum, former assistant administrator for air and radiation, had been a lawyer/lobbyist representing clients in more than 30 pollution-related lawsuits against the EPA. He resigned in June 2019, while under investigation by a House committee for conflicts of interest, after the announcement of a weak EPA replacement rule for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan.

WE DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT

• The agency has moved to limit the use of scientific research to cases in which all raw data is publicly accessible. This would exclude numerous studies that rely on confidential personal-health data.
• EPA has left many vacancies unfilled in the office responsible for air pollution and toxics research. Remaining staff feel pressured to keep quiet on sensitive topics like climate change, according to one veteran of the unit who left in 2017.
• After a scientific advisory board questioned the basis for a proposed rewrite of Obama administration rules on waterways and vehicle tailpipe emissions, more than a quarter of the panel members were dismissed or resigned, many of them to be replaced by scientists with industry ties.
• In 2019, the EPA terminated its funding of 13 health centers around the country that studied the effects of pollution on the growth and development of children, among other things.
• In 2017, aides to Administrator Scott Pruitt told EPA economists to re-evaluate the effects of the Obama administration’s clean-water rule. Their initial study had found more than half a billion dollars in economic benefits; now they were ordered to say the benefits could not be quantified, according to a 30-year veteran of the agency who left around this time—part of an exodus of professional staff.

FURTHER REFERENCE

• Andrew Wheeler (Revolving Door Project Swamp Tour)
• Coal Lobbyist Hosted Fundraisers for Senators Evaluating His Nomination for Top EPA Post (Intercept)
• EPA’s Pruitt Racked Up $3.1 Million Bill for Security in First Year (Bloomberg)
• Carl Icahn’s Failed Raid on Washington (New Yorker)
• US EPA grants biofuels waiver to billionaire Carl Icahn’s oil refinery (Reuters)
• Trump’s Chemical Romance (Public Citizen)
• Senate confirms a former coal lobbyist as Scott Pruitt’s second-in-command at EPA (Washington Post)
• Trump may appoint former chemical industry executive to lead Consumer Product Safety Commission (Washington Post)
• Why Has the E.P.A. Shifted on Toxic Chemicals? An Industry Insider Helps Call the Shots. (New York Times)
• How the Trump Administration Pulled Back on Regulating Toxic Chemicals (Yale Environment)
• Trump’s Move Against Landmark Environmental Law Caps a Relentless Agenda (New York Times)
• Leveraging the revolving door: lobbying forms show how agriculture group targets officials with industry ties for advocacy (CREW)
• EPA Rejects Ban On Common Pesticide Linked to Brain Damage in Children (Forbes)
• Directory of Lobbyists in Trump Administration (ProPublica)
• Chemical Industry Executive Nominated to Lead Consumer Watchdog Agency (New York Times)
• Former chemical industry attorney takes over EPA’s Superfund task force (ThinkProgress)
• EPA plan to end funding for children’s health research leaves scientists scrambling (Science)

Back to Map

Health and Human Services Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

• Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was a pharma lobbyist and later a top executive and president of the multinational drug company Eli Lilly.
• Prices for the company’s drugs shot up during Azar’s tenure at Lilly; the cost of insulin tripled.
• HHS has so far failed to follow through on Trump promises to reduce drug prices.
• As alarm over the COVID-19 virus spread, Azar refused to promise that a vaccine would be broadly affordable.
• His department has systematically worked to undermine the Affordable Care Act, sometimes diverting funds designated for promoting that law into the campaign against it.
• HHS policies have helped push millions of low-income families off Medicaid.
• Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, spent over $2 million on a personal public-relations campaign while boasting of her efforts to “end waste, fraud and abuse” in the Medicaid program. The goals of her PR campaign including getting Verma listed as one of the country’s top “Power Women,” gaining coverage in places like Glamour magazine, and securing invitations to high-profile events such as the Kennedy Center Honors. Some of the consultants on the receiving end of these payments had worked on the Trump presidential campaign.

IGNOMINIOUS DEPARTURES

• Former Secretary Tom Price had to resign after spending close to a million dollars on chartered jets and government aircraft rather than using commercial flights.
• As a Georgia congressman, Price bought and sold hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of shares in health care companies while sitting on the House Ways and Means Committee and working on legislation and regulations affecting that industry.
• During an official trip to Australia, Price pressured officials to let drug companies keep clinical-trial data confidential for 12 years instead of five years. Price held shares in an Australian pharmaceutical firm; afterward, he bought an additional $84,000 stake in the company, which gave him a discount price.

DERELICTION OF DUTY

• Under Price and Azar, the department has systematically discouraged Affordable Care Act sign-ups by deleting enrollment links and references to the law from government web pages; ordering a nearly 90 percent cut in spending on ACA promotion; slashing grants to nongovernment groups helping people enroll; canceling billions in payments meant to reduce deductibles and co-pays; and encouraging insurance companies to market junk health plans as an ACA alternative.
• HHS has failed to follow through on Donald Trump’s promises to reduce drug prices by, for example, using Medicare’s clout to negotiate discounts with pharmaceutical companies.
• Through spending cuts and the approval of state-level work requirements, HHS has helped push millions of low-income families off Medicaid.
• From the time Donald Trump became president until March 2020, nearly three million Americans have been added to the ranks of the uninsured.

UNDUE INFLUENCE

• In March 2019, Laura Kemper left a senior position at HHS to become vice president for government affairs at Fresenius, a giant lobbying firm with multiple health care clients. Since that time, she has held meetings with congressional, White House, and HHS staff over reimbursement practices for dialysis services, among other issues. Fresenius reported more than $2.2 million in lobbying expenditures during the first half of 2019.
• In January 2019, Colin Roskey became HHS’s deputy secretary for legislation for mandatory health, after a 20-year lobbying career in which he represented private companies on many of the issues he would oversee for the government.
• Erin Estey Hertzog, an attorney at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was previously a top lobbyist for the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
• Chief of Staff Lance Leggitt was a lobbyist for Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz, working for health care clients.
• Timothy Clark, former senior Adviser to the secretary was president and founder of Clark Strategy Group, which represented pharmaceutical companies. Clark resigned in July 2018 after he was revealed to have sent out pro-Trump tweets under a hashtag linked to the theory that Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta was involved in satanic practices.

FURTHER REFERENCE

• Erasing the Affordable Care Act (Sunlight Foundation)
• Trump Takes His Sabotage of Obamacare to a New Level(New York)
• The Same Agency That Runs Obamacare Is Using Taxpayer Money to Undermine It (New York Times)
• The Trump Administration Cracked Down on Medicaid. Kids Lost Insurance. (ProPublica)
• Three million more people are uninsured. Thanks, President Trump.(Washington Post)
• HHS Chief Of Staff Last Year Lobbied Very Agency He Now Helps Run, Ethics Waivers Reveal. (Kaiser Health News)
• A Staggering Number of Lobbyists Have Worked in the Trump Administration. (Truthdig)
• For Big Pharma, the revolving door keeps spinning (The Hill)
• Eli Lilly tripled the price of insulin under Trump’s pick for HHS and Democrats are pouncing on that (Business Insider)
• The Trump administration reportedly paid a PR firm more than $2 million to get a top healthcare official on ‘Power Women’ lists and magazine covers (Business Insider)
• Key Trump health official spends millions on GOP-connected consultants (Politico)
• Trump’s HHS Pick Alex Azar Is the Worst Pharma Bro of All (OurFuture)
• He Raised Drug Prices at Eli Lilly. Can He Lower Them for the U.S.? (New York Times)
• Trump Admin’s Pharma Connections (Public Citizen)
• Tom Price Bought Drug Stocks. Then He Pushed Pharma’s Agenda in Australia. (ProPublica)
• Health secretary Alex Azar won’t promise that a coronavirus vaccine would be affordable (The Verge)
• Comedian triggered rain of profane texts on senior official (Energy Wire)
• HHS staffers depart after controversial social media posts (The Hill)

Homeland Security Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

• With the shift from fighting terrorists to fighting immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security has become a major funder of the private prison industry, which has reciprocated by sending a torrent of money to the Trump re-election effort and the Republican Party.
• The two giants in the field, GEO Group and CoreCivic, run a combined 41 facilities housing more than half of the detainees held in custody by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit, known as ICE. As of mid-2019, the two companies had received an estimated $2.9 billion in federal contract revenues, $1.7 billion for GEO and $1.2 billion for CoreCivic. Executives and PACs associated with those companies have so far made roughly $1 million in reported contributions to the Trump 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
• GEO Group has found other ways to send money to the president and his family. In 2017, the company moved the site of its annual conference to the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort. GEO Group Vice President Dave Venturella has been a regular guest at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, staying there at least ten times by his count.
• During the 2016 election cycle, the industry as a whole made an unprecedented $1.7 million in contributions to federal candidates, mostly Republicans. It set another record with $1.9 million in reported contributions during the 2018 cycle. In all, Donald Trump has received nearly $1 million in private-prison money—more than 25 times the contributions the industry made to President Barack Obama over two terms in office.
• The latest secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf, was a lobbyist working for Indian and U.S. companies that found jobs for H-1B foreign workers, often displacing American workers in the process.

GOVERNMENT FOR SALE

• State and local corrections departments, which make up much of the private-prison industry’s client base, generally pay between $35 and $65 a day per inmate. By contrast, ICE reimbursement rates run as high as $300 a day. “These people are profitable,” says Alex Friedmann of the nonprofit Human Rights Defense Center.
• But that profit stream was at risk before Donald Trump’s election. In August 2016, after a series of investigations and scandals involving substandard medical care, deaths, suicides, sexual abuse, and exploitative labor practices, the Obama administration announced plans to phase out the use of private companies in immigrant detention.
• One day after that announcement, a GEO subsidiary gave $100,000 to Rebuilding America Now, a pro-Trump Super PAC led by a pair of former Trump staffers. About a month later, GEO boosted its contribution to $225,000. GEO Group’s PAC and its CEO gave the same amount to another committee, Trump Victory, for distribution to the Trump campaign and other Republican efforts.
• GEO and CoreCivic (formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America) each went on to donate $250,000 to the Trump inaugural committee.
• When Jeff Sessions got tapped for attorney general, GEO Group hired two former Sessions Senate aides, David Stewart and Ryan Robichaux, to lobby on its behalf. A month after Inauguration Day, Sessions revoked the Obama-era guidance.
• By that time, GEO’s stock market value had doubled, while CoreCivic’s was up 140 percent. “Thanks to President Donald Trump,” CNN observed, “America’s private prisons appear to be entering a golden age.”
• And thank President Trump they did, in the form of roughly $1 million in contributions to his election and re-election campaigns at last count.
• The war on immigration has produced windfall profits for companies hired to handle a set of ancillary tasks. Major awardees include Comprehensive Health Services, which collected more than $400 million for work performed between January 2018 and June 2019. Large sums also flowed to tech companies like Unisys ($619,409,627 for the same period) and consulting firms like Deloitte ($400,500,000). McKinsey & Co., as part of an overall ICE contract from which it received $20 million, gave advice on how to fund the hiring of 10,000 new immigration officers; among other proposed means, McKinsey proposed cutting DHS expenditures on food and medical care for detainees.
• The construction of President Trump’s border wall has been a corporate windfall in its own right. The overall price tag has passed the $11 billion mark, close to the cost of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
• One of the companies in line to profit is Fisher Sand & Gravel. Its CEO, Tommy Fisher, has been a major financial backer of North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer, who has taken up the company’s cause. President Trump also became a fan after Fisher went on Fox News to claim he could do a faster and cheaper job. Fisher Sand & Gravel subsequently won a $400 million wall contract through the Army Corps of Engineers.

THE BOSS’S BIDDING

• Secretary Wolf has been a cheerleader for the border wall project, participating in promotional events that effectively double as commercials for Donald Trump’s re-election.
• The Trump family has realized huge financial benefits from the operations of the Secret Service, a unit of DHS. Candidate Trump promised to “rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done,” making his administration a bargain for the taxpayers. President Trump has spent nearly a third of his days at one of his resort properties, causing the Secret Service to spend vast, unprecedented sums providing security at those sites, with much of the money winding up in Trump pockets. Since 2017, golf cart rentals (through third-party vendors, not the Trump organization) have cost the government at least $588,000, according to federal spending data posted online.
• In a one-month period in early 2017, U.S. taxpayers spent roughly $13.6 million on just four Trump trips to his Mar-a-Lago property in South Florida, according to the Government Accountability Office. That works out to an average of $3.4 million per trip, $1.3 million of that amount attributable to the Secret Service.
• Trump has made 22 more trips to Mar-a-Lago since then, according to a Washington Post If the Secret Service’s costs remained constant, that would mean more than $28 million in further spending by that agency alone, and $75 million by the government as a whole—on a small fraction of Trump’s total travel. Recent data is unavailable, however: The White House has refused multiple requests, and the Secret Service has fallen far behind in its reporting.
• Another snapshot came in March 2017. With the Secret Service still adjusting to Trump’s large family and frequent golfing trips, the agency asked Congress to add $60 million to its budget just to handle Trump’s travel, according to internal agency documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
• President Trump has visited family-owned properties outside the Washington area more than 50 times, by the Post’s count. His sons Eric and Donald Jr. have traveled to Dubai, Ireland, and India. A single visit in 2017 by Eric Trump to a Trump property under construction in Uruguay cost taxpayers nearly $100,000 just in hotel bills for Secret Service agents and embassy staff members.
• It took President Barack Obama two terms to run up a total travel bill of $97 million. Based on the Government Accountability Office’s estimates, Trump spending exceeded that amount long ago.

UNDUE INFLUENCE

• Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf came to the job after 12 years as a lobbyist for the firm of Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates, working for Indian and U.S. companies that placed H-1B foreign workers, often displacing American workers.
• David Stewart, a former aide to Senator Jeff Sessions, left in October 2016 to become a lobbyist for GEO Group, the private-prison giant.
• Ryan Robichaux, another member of Jeff Sessions’s Senate staff, went on to the lobbying firm of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, working on federal government contracts. Sessions, as was widely anticipated, was then tapped for a top administration job (attorney general); since that time, Robichaux’s firm has been paid upwards of $390,000 by GEO Group.
• Scott Sutterfield, now an executive at LaSalle Corrections, previously ran ICE’s field office in New Orleans, focused on overseeing the immigration deportation process and detention facilities across the South. During his time in the job, ICE began using eight new for-profit detention centers in Louisiana and Mississippi. Sutterfield then went to work for LaSalle, the company operating six of the new jails. While he claimed to have recused himself from the contracting process, LaSalle’s Director of Operations, Kevin Sumrall, didn’t seem so sure. “Not extremely a lot,” he said when asked if Sutterfield had been involved in decisions affecting LaSalle.
• Mary Loiselle, now a GEO Group executive, is another former ICE official.
• Daniel Ragsdale, another GEO Group executive, had been ICE’s second-in-command and briefly its acting director.
• Dave Venturella. GEO’s senior vice president of business development, previously ran the ICE unit responsible for arresting and detaining undocumented immigrants.
• John Kelly, former secretary of homeland security and White House chief of staff, currently serves on the board of Caliburn International, whose subsidiary Comprehensive Health Services operates four shelters for unaccompanied migrant children.

FURTHER REFERENCE

• ‘These people are profitable’: Under Trump, private prisons are cashing in on ICE detainees (USA Today)
• How Private Prisons Are Profiting Under the Trump Administration (Center for American Progress)
• Private prisons back Trump and could see big payoffs with new policies (USA Today)
• Follow the Money: Former Sessions Aides are Lobbyists for Private Prisons Group (Nonprofit Quarterly)
• ICE Contracts Are Booming. See Which Vendors Are in Your State. (American Prospect)
• Private Contractors Made Billions From Immigration and Corrections Contracts Under Trump, Obama (Public Citizen)
• The Secret Service has spent almost $590,000 on golf carts to protect Donald Trump (GolfNewsNet)
• Below the Surface of ICE: The Corporations Profiting From Immigrant Detention (In These Times)
• How McKinsey Helped the Trump Administration Detain and Deport Immigrants (ProPublica)
• Memo Restoring Use of Private Prisons Is Good News for One Company (The Nation)
• Secret Service has paid rates as high as $650 a night for rooms at Trump’s properties (Washington Post)
• Nearly a third of the days he’s been president, Trump has visited a Trump-branded property (Washington Post)
• Trump spent 1 of every 5 days in 2019 at a golf club (CNN)
• S. to Phase Out Use of Private Prisons for Federal Inmates (New York Times)
• Lawsuit: Trump Super PAC Took Illegal Donation From Private Prison Company (International Business Times)
• Trump administration installs plaque marking finish of 100 miles of border wall (The Hill)
• ICE’s second-in-command reportedly hired by private prison group facing lawsuit over forced labor (Daily Kos)

Housing and Urban Development Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

• HUD Secretary Ben Carson had no experience in government and questioned his own fitness for a Cabinet appointment.
• After his confirmation, he gave top jobs and rapid pay raises to a roster of friends and associates.
• Ignoring a $5,000 limit on office expenditures, Carson ordered a $31,000 dining set. When word got out, he canceled the order and seemed to blame his wife for the idea. In a whistleblower complaint, a career HUD official, Helen Foster, said she was told to “find money” for the purchase and then demoted for raising objections.
• Carson has called for drastic cuts to his own department, outside of the decorating budget. An anti-government ideologue, he says he puts his faith in private-sector remedies such as the administration’s Opportunity Zone program, which relies on tax incentives to spur development in low-income communities.
• Under Carson’s oversight, that program has been tweaked again and again to produce greater benefits for billionaires and Trump friends and supporters.
• Carson’s son and daughter-in-law have HUD-related business activities. Carson has created opportunities for them to participate in official events and use their family ties to try to make deals for themselves.
• Ben Carson Jr. runs a Maryland-based construction firm and a private equity fund. His wife Merlynn is a management consultant. In 2017, Carson Jr. organized a “listening tour” in Baltimore for his father. One of the people invited to participate was Seema Verma, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Although she did not attend, Merlynn Carson subsequently obtained a half-million-dollar consulting contract from Verma’s agency.

SELF-AND-CRONY-ENRICHMENT

• Deputy Chief of Staff Alfonso Costa Jr. is the son of a man described by the secretary as “my very best friend.” Carson and Al Costa Sr., a dentist turned commercial real-estate investor, were partners in a lucrative deal involving an office building in Pittsburgh—a property that has netted Carson as much as $2 million a year. Carson has been a frequent guest at Costa’s villa in Tuscany, which rents for upwards of $20,000 a month. In 2017, Costa Sr. was convicted of health care fraud after billing insurance companies for $44,000 in fictitious dental work. He escaped a prison sentence thanks partly to a supportive letter from Carson.
• The Opportunity Zone program, entrusted to Carson’s leadership, has become a boondoggle for billionaires and Trump associates. In Baltimore, Under Armour founder Kevin Plank (another recipient of an invitation to the secretary’s listening tour) won an Opportunity Zone designation for a project located in an area initially rejected as too wealthy. In Florida, the beneficiaries include a Republican donor developing a luxury housing project and superyacht marina near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. In Detroit, Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert has several Opportunity Zone projects in the works after extensive lobbying.

DUTIES BETRAYED

• At the behest of the White House and anti-immigration zealot Stephen Miller, Carson has pushed ahead with plans to oust “mixed-status” immigrant families from public-housing projects. Children and U.S. citizens could be evicted if HUD and the administration get their way.
• Carson has been a mouthpiece for the White House’s repeated threats to withhold funds as a way of punishing cities, such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas, that resist the administration’s immigration policies.
• With public-housing projects across the country in acute disrepair, Carson’s department has proposed a series of budgets that would slash spending on maintenance. He has urged local housing agencies to find private sources of funding, or, failing that, to sell or demolish properties and leave tenants to fend for themselves.
• Echoing the rhetoric of Wall Streeters and right-wing ideologues, Carson likes to blame the problems of the housing market on excessive regulation, and especially on fair-lending policies. On that theory, HUD has abandoned its Obama-era policy of prodding local jurisdictions to address long-standing patterns of racial discrimination in housing.

FURTHER REFERENCE

• What you should know about Ben Carson (Revolving Door Project)
• Ben Carson’s Family Involvement at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (American Oversight)
• Emails show Carson family fingerprints at HUD despite warnings (CNN)
• Billionaires Keep Benefiting From a Tax Break to Help the Poor. Now, Congress Wants to Investigate. (ProPublica)
• A Trump Tax Break To Help The Poor Went To a Rich GOP Donor’s Superyacht Marina (ProPublica)
• Ben Carson Wants To Put Thousands Of Children On The Streets (DCReport)
• HUD Secretary Ben Carson to be sued for suspending Obama-era fair-housing rule (Washington Post)
• ‘Using his position for private gain’: Ben Carson was warned he might run afoul of ethics rules by enlisting his son. (Washington Post)
• Ben Carson’s family ethics drama, explained (Vox)
• Did HUD really need to spend $31,000 of taxpayer money on that dining furniture for Ben Carson? (USA Today)
• Ben Carson stands by ‘best friend’ who pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud (Guardian)

Back to Map

Interior Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

• Secretary David Bernhardt spent years representing mining and oil and gas interests, including Rosemont Copper, the National Mining Association, Cadiz, Inc. (a water project developer), Cobalt International Energy, Halliburton Energy, the Independent Petroleum Association, and the U.S. Oil and Gas Association.
• As a lobbyist, Bernhardt earned $1.2 million from mining clients, $2.1 million from oil and gas clients, and $1.5 million from other energy companies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He entered office with more declared conflicts of interest than any other Trump Cabinet member.
• His former firm, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, has quadrupled its revenues since Bernhardt came to Interior, while past Bernhardt clients have won a series of moneymaking policy breaks.
• Bernhardt has filled the top ranks of his department with former extractive-industry employees and lobbyists—some 60 in all.
• Permits for drilling on public land and under the seas have been approved at a record rate. In March 2020, as the COVID-19 epidemic spread, Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management sold more than 14,000 oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico over the little-heard objections of environmental groups.
• Interior has moved to grant a long-term water supply contract to the Fresno-based Westlands Water District, one of Bernhardt’s former clients, which attends to the water needs of large almond growers and other agribusiness companies in Northern California, potentially at the expense of Bay Area residents who depend on the same source of supply. Bernhardt has acknowledged that, as deputy secretary in 2017, he pushed to weaken protections for fish in order to justify giving more water to Westlands—an issue on which he had previously lobbied.
• Documents released by Friends of the Earth show Bernhardt taking part in numerous meetings on the issue, even when ethics rules barred his involvement. “Everything I do, I go to our ethics officers first,” he told The New York Times.

SELF-AND-CRONY-ENRICHMENT

• During the Trump presidency, Interior Department officials have held more than 250 meeting with oil, gas, electricity, coal, and mining executives—12 times the number of meetings with conservation or renewal-energy advocates.
• This total includes at least ten conversations with offshore drilling interests; nine with oil industry groups; six with executives of Shell, BP, ExxonMobil or ConocoPhillips; and five with the National Mining Association.
• The list of meetings also includes at least 70 with former Bernhardt clients or employers, including the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, the National Ocean Industries Association, and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.
• In all, the Interior Department has taken favorable action on 25 measures sought or supported by at least 16 of Bernhardt’s former clients, according to the Center for Western Priorities.

UNDUE INFLUENCE

• Under Bernhardt’s leadership, Interior has hired at least 25 former industry lobbyists and 35 former employees of mining and fossil fuel companies. Eleven officials of the Trump Interior Department have already gone out the revolving door to jobs with industry groups or lobbying firms, including BP and the American Petroleum Institute.
• William Perry Pendley, deputy director in charge of the Bureau of Land Management, headed the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which sued federal agencies over conservation policies and rejected the whole idea of federally owned land. Pendley’s group took up the cause of anti-government ranchers such as Cliven Bundy, whose son led a group of armed militants in seizing control of a national wildlife refuge facility in Oregon in early 2016.
• Scott Angelle, tapped to oversee safety and environmental enforcement, earned roughly $1.5 million serving on the board of an oil and gas pipeline company. Previously, as Louisiana’s secretary of natural resources, he fought to end the moratorium on Gulf Coast drilling established in the wake of the BP spill. He resigned his state job in 2012, after a brine company he was in charge of regulating created a giant sinkhole. Addressing an oil-industry audience in 2017, Angelle gave out his cellphone number and advised listeners to communicate with him by phone, avoiding the creation of a paper trail.
• Assistant Secretary Doug Domenech is a former oil and gas lobbyist who ran an industry-financed foundation dedicated to making the “forgotten moral case for fossil fuels.” At Interior, Domenech met with officials of his former foundation in violation of conflict-of-interest rules, according to the department’s inspector general.
• Deputy Secretary Katharine MacGregor, Bernhardt’s second-in-command, is a former lobbyist who, in a previous role at Interior, held multiple meetings with industry players while leading the charge to terminate a study of the health effects of mountaintop removal coal mining. As a Republican staffer on the House Natural Resources Committee, MacGregor was seen as an important ally by the Independent Petroleum Institute. After she joined the Interior Department, one top official of that group joked that “We’ll call Kate” would become its standard response to unwanted regulation.
• James Cason, associate deputy secretary, is a former oil and gas lobbyist who held a high-ranking Interior Department post in the Reagan administration. In 1989, Cason had to withdraw from consideration for a top Agriculture Department job over charges that he had broken rules and suppressed research data in order to permit oil shale land to be sold for $2.50 an acre.
• Solicitor Daniel Jorjani started out as an energy industry lawyer before serving in the George W. Bush administration. He went on to work for a series of Koch family–funded advocacy groups, becoming one of the highest-paid employees in the Koch network.
• Scott Cameron, deputy assistant secretary, was a lobbyist for the firm of Dawson and Associates, representing a list of clients that included Marcellus Shale Coalition and Shell Oil. He also worked for a government contractor, the Tuknik Corporation, which has received at least $3.7 million in Interior Department business during Cameron’s time in office. There is no record of Tuknik winning any such contracts before then.
• Susan Combs, assistant secretary, was a figure in Texas politics and a member of Governor Rick Perry’s administration, regularly siding with oil and gas interests against enforcement of the Endangered Species Act. Combs, now overseeing an agency-wide reorganization plan, has been the beneficiary of an estimated $2.1 million in campaign contributions from oil companies that support that plan.
• Karen Budd-Falen, deputy solicitor for parks and wildlife, previously worked with William Perry Pendley at the Mountain States League Foundation, where she supported the Bundy family and other anti-government ranchers.
• Kathleen Benedetto, special assistant, spent two decades working for mining companies, helping build a coalition that aimed to “completely throw out” the Endangered Species Act. After 13 years in a staff job at the House Natural Resources Committee, Benedetto returned to lobbying, this time for Bioxy Research, which provides “services for the oil and gas, refining and chemicals, mining, agriculture and construction industries.”

HANDOUTS TO THE UNDESERVING

• The department has relaxed offshore-drilling safety rules imposed after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
• Interior has moved to allow oil drilling in the formerly off-limits Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, after Congress authorized that action in the 2017 tax bill.
• The department has weakened the Endangered Species Act by making it harder to consider the impact of climate change and giving new weight to the law’s effects on corporate interests.
• A rule intended to increase fracking safety and transparency has been rescinded.
• Interior has overturned a ban on African trophy imports.
• The department has relaxed oil and gas industry safeguards meant to reduce leaks of methane, a devastating greenhouse gas.

WE DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT

• The Interior Department sidelined its own legal and environmental analyses in order to advance a proposal to raise the height of the Shasta Dam in California.
• It shut down its Invasive Species Advisory Committee.
• The department has withdrawn funding for a network of regional research centers that studied habitat loss and wildfire management, among other problems.
• In 2019, the National Park Service’s top climate change scientist, Patrick Gonzalez, received a “cease and desist” letter from supervisors after testifying before Congress (in his separate capacity as a University of California faculty member) about the risks of global warming.

IGNOMINIOUS DEPARTURES

• Ryan Zinke, the first Trump-named interior secretary, was the target of at least eight inspector-general inquiries before his dismissal. He spent large sums of money on charter flights (one of them to deliver a speech to a hockey team owned by a former campaign contributor), censored a National Park Service report on climate change, blocked a casino project after visits from a potential competitor’s lobbyists, and awarded a Puerto Rico electricity restoration contract to a tiny, family-connected firm in his Montana hometown that turned out to lack basic staff, equipment, and experience for such a job. Zinke finally became too much of an embarrassment by trying to spend $139,000 on six new office doors.

FURTHER REFERENCE

• Bernhardt Buddies: Conflicts of Interest Abound at Trump’s Interior Department (Public Citizen)
• Zinke’s #2 has so many potential conflicts of interest he has to carry a list of them all (Washington Post)
• Oil and mining lobbyist David Bernhardt nominated to be Secretary of Interior (OpenSecrets)
• Interior’s Bernhardt worked closely on matters he promised to avoid (Politico)
• Interior Secretary Bernhardt’s previous job raises questions about a deal for his ex-client (L.A. Times)
• Interior Chief’s Lobbying Past Has Challenged the Agency’s Ethics Referees (New York Times)
• Department of Influence (Western Values Project)
• Sinkhole spurs evacuations, lawsuits and an official resignation (Louisiana Weekly)
• *Last Week Tonight* Called Trump’s Head of Oil Rig Safety, Who Gives His Cellphone Number to Industry Executives (Slate)
• The Interior Secretary Wants to Enlarge a Dam. An Old Lobbying Client Would Benefit. (New York Times)
• David Bernhardt’s Ex-Lobbying Clients Met 70 Times with Interior Department Appointees (Documented)
• How The Interior Department Got Swamped (HuffPost)
• The firm that once employed Trump’s pick to run Interior is making millions lobbying it (Washington Post)
• Interior’s watchdog opens investigations into Bernhardt (Politico)
• Cason withdraws name from nomination (UPI)
• Ryan Zinke is the new Scott Pruitt (Washington Post)
• Domenech broke ethics rules, government watchdog concludes (Idaho Statesman)
• Doors to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s office are getting a nearly $139,000 upgrade (USA Today)
• Scott Angelle profile (Department of Influence)
• Daniel Jorjani profile (Department of Influence)
• Corporate Calendars: Dirty Energy Dominates Bernhardt, MacGregor Meetings at Interior Dept. (Public Citizen)
• Trump Interior nominee fast-tracked a ‘deficient’ drilling permit (Reveal)
• With The Public Distracted, Interior Department Moves Full Speed Ahead On Oil & Gas Leases (CleanTechnica)
• Science Under Attack: How Trump is Sidelining Researchers and Their Work (New York Times)
• Watchdog Releases Documents Relevant to Ethics Investigation into Interior Secretary Bernhardt (Daily Kos)
• Interior’s Rollback Includes Surprise Gift to Oil Industry (POGO)

Back to Map

Justice Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

• In a job traditionally defined as “the nation’s chief law enforcement officer,” William Barr has often seemed to act as the president’s defense lawyer and legal errand-runner. He has shown his loyalty to the chief executive by, among other things, writing and releasing a deceptive “summary” of the Mueller report before the actual contents were made public.
• Barr also bypassed Senate confirmation to install acting U.S. attorneys in New York and New Jersey—offices crucial to the fate of corruption charges against the Trump administration or family.
• He has repeatedly kept evidence of Trump misdeeds from reaching agencies or officials who might pursue them.
• Barr has advanced a series of extreme legal arguments for noncooperation with congressional requests and inquiries.
• He has gone out of his way to denigrate the president’s critics and lend credibility to his conspiracy theories.
• After Trump complained about the DOJ’s sentencing recommendations for Roger Stone (convicted of lying to Congress and obstructing justice), Barr overruled prosecutors and softened their recommendation. Trump tweeted his “congratulations to Attorney General Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought.”
• Barr was also a key figure in granting additional pardons to white-collar criminals with influence at the White House or in the inner circles of the Republican Party.
• Although best known for his fervent defense of President Trump, Barr has a history of lucrative legal work for telecoms and other giant companies, along with a recent record of action and inaction that has given corporate America cause to be extremely grateful for his service at the Justice Department.
• Since Trump became president, the number of federal prosecutions of white-collar criminals (over price-fixing, tax fraud, and environmental offenses, for example) has fallen to its lowest level in decades. When it comes to the resolution of such cases, Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski (see below) has told prosecutors to weigh the “financial burden” of ordering a company to be supervised by an independent monitor. Benczkowski’s directive appears to be intended to help corporate criminals avoid even that comparatively modest sanction.

WHAT AM I DOING HERE?

• In July 2018, Barr composed an unsolicited memo to the Department of Justice and President Trump’s defense team. His memo condemned the Mueller investigation as a legal travesty and effectively asserted the president’s right to terminate any inquiry into his activities or fire any executive-branch official who displeased him. Although Barr said the memo was not intended as a job application, it served that purpose nicely. “Mueller’s core premise—that the President acts ‘corruptly’ if he attempts to influence a proceeding in which his own conduct is being scrutinized—is untenable,” Barr wrote. Five months later, he was tapped to succeed Jeff Sessions as attorney general.
• Barr’s views on presidential power appear to shift with the political winds. When Bill Clinton asserted lawyer-client privilege to avoid turning documents over to the Senate committee investigating Whitewater, Barr dismissed that claim as “preposterous.” When George W. Bush declared “war on terrorism” and ordered the invasion of Iraq, Barr once again became a champion of the president’s “maximum power.”
• From 1994 to 2008, Barr served as general counsel first to GTE and later to Verizon, the product of its merger with Bell Atlantic. That merger wound up making Barr a millionaire many times over; after taking early retirement from Verizon in 2008, he received a $28 million payout—cited as an example of overcompensation and sloppy corporate governance in a watchdog group’s complaint.
• Barr is also a former director of the Och-Ziff Capital Management Group, a hedge fund involved in the purchase of 14 ski resort properties across the country. Not long after he resigned from that board in 2018, the company paid a $412 million fine to settle charges of offering bribes in several African nations; some of the bribe money reportedly went to the son of former Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi.

HANDOUTS TO THE UNDESERVING

• During Barr’s time as attorney general, DOJ has given the green light to mergers, such as the one between T-Mobile and Sprint, that promised to be politically helpful to Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The attorneys general of 13 states and the District of Columbia sued to block that deal, warning that it would lead to less competition and higher prices. In most such cases, the states and the federal government craft a united response; this time the Justice Department took the extraordinary step of filing a legal brief in favor of the merger (and against the position of the states), while the head of its antitrust division became actively involved in negotiations to bring the deal to fruition.
• While the government was considering the deal, T-Mobile and Sprint executives spent approximately $195,000 staying at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. That hotel has become a favorite roosting place for many other corporate leaders as well as foreign government officials seeking policy concessions from the Trump administration. Barr could have asked his department to investigate this practice as a potential violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause. Instead, he has not only failed to launch such an inquiry; he has personally adopted the practice of holding an annual holiday party at the Trump Hotel, paying $30,000 for the privilege.
• Antitrust, like presidential power, is an area of policy where Barr’s views have tended to follow his partisan and financial interests. Recently, his department has been criticized for selective enforcement as a result of its much-publicized announcement of plans to launch an antitrust investigation of Google, a company whose power is seen as a threat to the telecoms and traditional media interests.

UNDUE INFLUENCE

• Brian Benczkowski, assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, previously represented a series of large and morally tainted corporations including BP, HSBC, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, and Volkswagen.
• Before becoming assistant attorney general for antitrust, Makan Delrahim helped Google win FTC and DOJ approval for its 2007 acquisition of the online advertising giant DoubleClick.
• Solicitor General Noel Francisco, now charged with representing the executive branch in cases before the Supreme Court, spent ten years working for the corporate law firm of Jones Day. Handling the appeal of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s corruption conviction, Francisco persuaded the court to narrow the scope of a federal bribery law in a way that, according to Bloomberg News, could mean the reversal of many “high-profile public corruption cases.”
• Rachel Brand, who preceded Francisco as solicitor general, was a lawyer or lobbyist for Google, T-Mobile, and the United States Chamber of Commerce, among other corporate clients. During her time in private practice, she filed a friend-of-the-court brief that helped Citigroup dodge an admission of wrongdoing for its role in the sale and promotion of mortgage bonds of the kind that had driven the U.S. financial system to the edge of collapse. In February 2018, Brand left government to become a top executive at Walmart.

FURTHER REFERENCE

• William Barr’s $30k Trump hotel party illustrates how corruption is becoming more brazen and blatant (Vox)
• Trump’s Government Lawyers Don’t Know Who Their Real Client Is (Atlantic)
• Trump’s Ukraine Scandal Is Also Attorney General Bill Barr’s Scandal (Vice)
• Google’s onetime hired gun could now be its antitrust nightmare (Politico)
• Barr’s Past Disqualifies Him From Serving As Attorney General (Restore Public Trust)
• Barr Confirms DOJ has ‘Established an Intake Process’ to Review Giuliani’s Biden-Ukraine Info (National Review)
• William Barr, Trump’s Sword And Shield (New Yorker)
• Trump’s Justice Department Has an Antitrust Problem Too (Bloomberg)
• Preventing the Politicization of Antitrust Enforcement (New America)
• With a Regulator Like This, Who Needs an Investment Banker? (Bloomberg)
• Corporate Impunity: “Tough on Crime” Trump Is Weak on Corporate Crime and Wrongdoing (Public Citizen)
• Justice Department’s Google inquiry loses top antitrust official (The Verge)
• S. Scrutiny of Banks Could Fall to Business Lobby Lawyer (Bloomberg)
• Attorney General Barr to Testify In House Amid Criticism Over Roger Stone Case (NPR)
• William Barr and the Corruption of the Justice Department (American Prospect)
• How Bill Barr Turned the Justice Department Into a Cover-up Operation for Trump (GQ.com)

Labor Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

• Under Trump, the Labor Department killed the so-called “fiduciary” rule requiring retirement investment advisers to put clients’ financial interests ahead of their own interests. Thanks to that reversal, brokers and insurance company salespeople remain free to recommend needlessly expensive financial products, chiseling workers and retirees out of as much as $17 billion a year in excessive fees.
• Bowing to pressure from big restaurant chains like Olive Garden, IHOP, Applebee’s, and Denny’s—and parroting their talking points—the Labor Department decided that they don’t always have to let workers keep the tips customers leave for them.
• In a move sought by restaurant and hotel franchisers, the Trump Labor Department issued a regulation to make it easier for such companies to avoid paying for certain kinds of overtime.
• Under Alexander Acosta and Eugene Scalia, there has been a sharp decline in OSHA enforcement actions, and half of the agency’s top jobs have been left vacant.

WHAT AM I DOING HERE?

• Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia built a reputation as a “go-to” lawyer for big corporations challenging worker rights and safety rules. Clients included Boeing, Chevron, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, United States Chamber of Commerce, American Petroleum Institute, United Parcel Service, Anheuser-Busch, and Facebook.
• Scalia helped Walmart do away with a Maryland law requiring large employers to either contribute to worker health plans or help the state cover Medicaid costs.
• He represented UPS and Anheuser-Busch in opposing a requirement that employers track repetitive-stress injuries and musculoskeletal disorders and look for ways to prevent them.
• He unsuccessfully sought to have SeaWorld declared exempt from the Occupational Safety and Health Act because that legislation had failed to specifically mention the marine-animal entertainment business.
• Scalia argued that a law requiring employers to “provide” items of safety equipment such as gloves and mesh aprons in a meat-packing plant did not prevent companies from making workers pay for such gear.
• He was a lynchpin of Wall Street’s campaign to undo post-crisis financial regulations, filing six major lawsuits on behalf of banks.

IGNOMINIOUS DEPARTURES

• Scalia’s predecessor, Alexander Acosta, was forced to resign over his role in the sweetheart plea agreement with serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

FURTHER REFERENCE

• Eugene Scalia, Trump’s Labor nominee, earned millions while working for big business, disclosure shows (CNBC)
• 5 things to know about Eugene Scalia, Trump’s new labor secretary with a famous dad (Vox)
• New York, 16 Other States Sue Over DOL Joint-Employer Rule (Bloomberg)
• The DOL’s New Fiduciary Rule: What Are Some Likely Outcomes? (Lexology)
• The new US labor secretary has a history of opposing workers’ rights (Quartz)
• Acosta to Resign as Labor Secretary Over Jeffrey Epstein Plea Deal (New York Times)

State Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

• The U.S. has a long tradition of bestowing ambassadorships on wealthy friends of the president and his party. Donald Trump has taken it to new extremes, making more crony appointments than any past president and giving them to people with weaker qualifications in return for bigger sums of money.
• His picks have included, as ambassador to Iceland, a dermatologist who had never even visited the country; as ambassador to the Bahamas, a real-estate developer who in his Senate confirmation testimony incorrectly described his assignment as a former U.S. rather than British protectorate; and as ambassador to Slovenia, the founder of an evangelical charity known for sharing bizarre right-wing social media posts such as “The Clinton ‘Body Count’ EXPANDS—5 Mysterious DEATHS in the last 6 weeks.”
• Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was actively involved in the Trump-directed campaign to discredit former Vice President Biden. In addition, Pompeo refused to defend the career ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, against baseless accusations promoted by Rudy Giuliani in order to facilitate deals for himself and his cronies and carry out the plan to have Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky announce an investigation into the business activities of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son.
• Yovanovitch is just one of many high-ranking State Department professionals who have been unfairly demoted, reassigned, or disparaged by the White House and pro-Trump forces. Pompeo is not known to have stood up for any of them.
• After participating in a key phone call between President Trump and Zelensky, Pompeo failed to acknowledge being on the line until evidence of his involvement surfaced.
• During the House impeachment hearings, Pompeo tried to keep State Department officials from testifying and refused to supply investigators with requested documents.
• One former White House official has described Pompeo as “among the most sycophantic and obsequious people around Trump.” An ex-ambassador has likened him to “a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass.”

WHAT AM I DOING HERE?

• Pompeo was a Kansas congressman known for his strong relationship with the Koch brothers. Koch Industries and Koch employees donated more than $200,000 to Pompeo’s first two election campaigns.
• He gained national attention as one of the Republican firebrands driving the Benghazi investigation—an obsessively partisan effort to blame Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the death of a U.S. ambassador.
• Questions have been raised about the tasks assigned to Pompeo’s security detail, which, according to a whistleblower’s complaint, have included picking up Chinese food and bringing the family dog back from a grooming appointment. One agent is said to have described the job as “Uber Eats with guns.”
• Pompeo’s wife Susan has sat in on planning meetings, accompanied the secretary on trips, and is said to regard herself as a de facto State Department employee. Susan Pompeo has her own security detail, reportedly ordered for her without any threat assessment and for reasons not apparent to some of the officials who normally decide such things.
• Pompeo’s predecessor, Rex Tillerson, had been the CEO and a longtime executive at Exxon, raising huge conflict-of-interest questions involving America’s energy policies and relations with oil-and-gas-buying or -selling countries around the world.

GOVERNMENT FOR SALE

The long list of big-money ambassadors includes:

fURTHER REFERENCE

• Donors to the Trump inaugural committee got ambassador nominations. But are they qualified? (NBC)

• The Ukraine scandal exposes the Trump crony Pompeo really is (Vox)
• Echoes of Benghazi Criticism and Anger Confront Pompeo in Ukraine Inquiry (New York Times)
• Mike Pompeo, The Secretary of Trump (New Yorker)
• Democrats investigating whistleblower claims Pompeo’s security picked up Chinese food and his dog (CNN)
• At Embassies Abroad, Trump Envoys Are Quietly Pushing Out Career Diplomats (Foreign Policy)