Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

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Trump Humiliated as Citizens Fail to Flock to His Free Event

The president spoke via video to a sea of empty seats.

Donald Trump’s recycled religious video message was broadcast to rows of empty seats at the president’s free event to “rededicate” America to God.

Rededicate 250

The event was organized by the White House-backed Freedom 250, which is holding several events to celebrate the nation’s anniversary over the coming months.

House Speaker Mike Johnson was the main Republican to appear in person, with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pre-recording video messages screened at the event.

Trump also only appeared on screen,

The video message from Trump aired on Sunday was also the same footage he recorded in April for an event called America Reads the Bible, according to the Associated Press.

The Daily Beast has contacted Freedom 250 and the White House for details on crowd figures.

Washington’s National Mall can hold over a million visitors. According to Politico, 1.2 million people were estimated to have attended Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidential inauguration in 1965, while 1 million attended the Bicentennial fireworks display in 1976. Meanwhile, the National Mall was the site of a large-scale demonstration for women’s reproductive rights with the March for Women’s Lives, which up to a million people attended in 2004.

The location hosts around

Ahead of Sunday, the Rededicate 250 website said they expected “several thousand attendees” throughout the day.

While no official crowd estimate was immediately available,

Although entry was free, the event’s website stated that all attendees, including children, had to register through an RSVP form.

The live-streamed event showed that crowd numbers fluctuated over the day, though empty seats at the front of the stage were a common sight during performances.

The crowd was sparse at the start of the event, around 10:30 a.m, as footage from the livestream shows.

While the crowd had filled out, empty seats were still visible hours later.

Trump supporters, meanwhile, called the day a huge success. Teenage pro-Trump influencer Bo Loudon claimed D.C. was “filled to the brim with patriots honoring God,” while Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka wrote on X that there was a “huge crowd.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-humiliated-as-citizens-fail-to-flock-to-his-free-event/?

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Trump Cashed In One Day After Handing Tech Firm Major Deal

The president’s own filings show him buying and selling bonds in a company to which his administration had just handed a major boost.

Donald Trump made a flurry of trades on a tech company just as his administration announced a major agreement with the same firm, according to the president’s own financial declarations.

The president bought bonds in an AI company in the days before it was announced that the firm had been selected for a government program. He then sold bonds in the same company one day after the announcement, which boosted the company’s share price, an investigation by the Daily Beast and i

Trump has pursued a massive overhaul of the AI sector since entering the White House for the second time, slashing back regulations and loosening oversight of major tech firms in what critics have slammed as a windfall for his billionaire backers. He and his family also hold sizable investments in the market, prompting widespread concern over possible conflicts of interest.

The president’s efforts have partly taken shape in the form of his so-called “Genesis Mission,” an initiative the White House says is designed to harness AI in the fields of scientific research and innovation. The Department of Energy

Trump’s accounts show he made two purchases of CoreWeave bonds worth between $250,001 and $500,000 each, for a max total of $1 million, in the week before the announcement, according to the president’s financial disclosures, compiled by ProPublica and reviewed by the Daily Beast and PunchUp.

The day after the news broke, he sold those bonds for a total of between $1 million and $5 million—a much higher bracket than he’d bought them in only days before.

It’s a complicated picture, with exact amounts impossible to pin down because the documents contain only estimated ranges for the value of the transactions. Trump could have made millions. He could have made nothing.

What’s clear is that whatever the upshot of the sale, it did nothing to dissuade the president from buying more bonds worth between $1 million and $5 million the same day, and worth up to a further $1.25 million the following month.

The Daily Beast contacted the White House for comment on this story, which referred questions to the Trump Organization. A spokesperson for the company said the president’s investment decisions are made by independent financial managers, rather than Trump himself.

“Neither President Trump, his family, nor The Trump Organization plays any role in selecting, directing, or approving specific investments,” the spokesperson said. “They receive no advance notice of trading activity and provide no input regarding investment decisions or portfolio management of any kind.”

Forbes reported earlier in January that Trump’s net worth now stands at $6.5 billion, marking a $1.4 billion increase over the course of his second presidency so far. Much of that gain has been driven by Trump’s expanding portfolio in tech, the same sector across which his administration has been gutting regulations and rolling back oversight.

His media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, announced a $6 billion merger in December with a nuclear fusion firm aimed at powering AI data centers. The deal landed just a week after the president signed an executive order effectively curbing state and local governments’ power to enact their own AI regulations.

Trump Media is also reported to have accumulated roughly $2 billion in digital assets alone between January and July last year, while Trump family members made roughly $1.55 billion from sales of tokens issued by World Liberty Financial, a crypto-venture set up by the president’s elder sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-cashed-in-one-day-after-handing-tech-firm-coreweave-a-major-deal/?

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One-Time Trump Adviser Sounds Alarm on ‘Tsunami Election’

The author of books praising Trump’s economy is now striking a more critical tone.

A one-time Trump choice for the Federal Reserve Board is cautioning Republicans that the weakened economy may become a midterm nightmare.

“Republicans could face a tsunami election in November if inflation continues to stay high,” economist and co-author of The Trump Economic Miracle, Stephen Moore, told The New York Times.Moore acknowledged that he was not “surprised” by the economic fallout from Trump’s war in Iran, as administration officials have reportedly been studying market data while bracing for the national average gas price to potentially reach $5 a gallon.The economist described gas prices as “the chief gauge people use to determine how the economy is doing,” a trend that appears to be reflected in recent polling, with rising prices eroding public confidence in the economy.

The latest CNN/SSRS poll found that Trump’s net approval rating on the economy had fallen to 30 percent, the worst level recorded for him on the issue.

“It’s one thing after another, and I think that is why people feel so bad,” Moore told The Times.

Moore’s comments are notable given his close association with Trump, having advised his first presidential campaign and authored Trumponomics, a book praised by the 79-year-old president. He was later unsuccessfully nominated for a position on the Federal Reserve Board and has not typically been critical of Trump’s economic policies.“It’s quite hard to point to things that people would feel great about that would inspire a lot of optimism,” the economist continued, adding that the only people who could currently benefit from the state of the economy are those at the “top of the income distribution.”Yet, despite growing criticism and clear signs of economic anxiety among Americans, Trump has not indicated that he fully grasps the urgency of the situation.When asked by a reporter on Tuesday, “When you’re negotiating with Iran, Mr. President, to what extent are Americans’ financial situation motivating you?” the commander in chief responded: “Not even a little bit,” adding, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”The president has also repeatedly described the affordability crisis facing Americans as a “hoax,” even as gas prices rise following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and grocery costs record their largest jump in four years.Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows grocery prices—an area Trump vowed to bring down during his 2024 campaign—are up 2.9 percent compared with a year ago.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump has told aides that he does not care about the outcome of the crucial November midterm elections and has blamed his party for failing to improve his political optics.

He is expected to hit the campaign trail as many as 30 times before November, with the White House hoping his presence can help sway voters who might otherwise stay home.

At the same time, voters in his home state of Florida have reacted sharply to his reported comments about their financial situation, with one calling the president a “pompous idiot” in an interview with MS NOW.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/one-time-trump-adviser-sounds-alarm-on-tsunami-election/?

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Trump, 79, Regurgitates Crackpot Nuclear Slop in Wild Posting Spree

The president went off the rails with a series of posts depicting himself pressing the big red button from a space station and walking with an alien.

The president of the United States can’t stop posting AI slop.

Donald Trump spent his Sunday afternoon firing off a barrage of bizarre AI-manipulated videos and images on Truth Social, while peppering his feed with bitter jabs at his foes.

In a series of bonkers posts, the elderly president, whose cognitive health has come under mounting scrutiny, shared AI-generated images of himself as the commander of an imagined space station or spaceship, overseeing an imaginary war.

In one of them, he is depicted sitting at a futuristic command center overlooking Earth from space and pressing a red button.

One of the monitoring screens in the background shows a massive mushroom cloud towering into space, accompanied by the words “TARGET DESTROYED.”

The 79-year-old grandfather of 11 posted the AI image twice, the second time with the words “SPACE FORCE” superimposed over it, in a reference to the branch of the U.S. military established in 2019 during the first Trump administration.

Trump also posted an image of himself walking alongside a naked alien at what appears to be a military site.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s posting spree began shortly after 4 p.m., when he posted the first in a string of nearly identical AI-generated videos depicting a U.S. battleship shooting down an Iranian missile, coupled with a clip from Monday’s Oval Office event on maternal healthcare.

During the event, Trump acted out Navy sailors using a computer system to intercept incoming missiles.

“OK. We have it in our sight: Fire. Boom,” he said, pretending to type commands to execute the imaginary strike.

Next in his stream of posts, the president shared a clip of himself teeing off on the golf course, which abruptly cuts to a 2021 video of GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy explaining his vote to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack—before a golf ball strikes him in the head.

The Louisiana senator was ousted Saturday night by a Trump-endorsed challenger in his bid for re-election, to Trump’s delight.

Cassidy’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump then posted an AI rendering of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which he is currently renovating in a controversial project. The post appeared to mock criticism of the costly overhaul by superimposing an image of a screaming woman over the pool.

A few minutes later, Trump doubled down by posting an AI image of former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden with Rep. Nancy Pelosi swimming in the pool, filled with sewage.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Pelosi told the Daily Beast in a statement:

“Instead of working to lower costs for Americans, the President is spending his time golfing and posting deranged AI images. President Obama, President Biden and Speaker Pelosi live rent free in his head because they have actually delivered progress for America while his Administration has been a complete and total failure. Sad!”

Offices for Obama and Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump also set his sights on another Democrat foe, Gavin Newsom, posting an AI-generated photo of the California governor hunched in a padded white cell, with the word “Trump” surrounding him, as well as another image of the governor as a zombie.

Newsom, 58, fired back on X, writing about another AI post where Trump depicted the California governor as a zombie on a license plate, “Even a Zombie Newscum still looks healthier than our current President. #PrayersForGrandpa.” The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While Trump was rage-posting about space wars, aliens, and his political enemies, the White House hosted an event on the National Mall “rededicating” the nation to God.

Trump, who said in 2020 that he considers himself a non-denominational Christian but has not attended a service in more than a year, skipped attending the event in person to go to his golf club in Virginia.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-79-regurgitates-crackpot-nuclear-slop-in-wild-posting-spree/?

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Justice Department announces a $1.7B fund to compensate Trump allies in a deal to drop IRS suit

The Trump administration has announced the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies of the Republican president who believe they were mistreated by the Biden-era Justice Department. The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was announced by the Justice Department on Monday as part of a deal to resolve President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. Democrats and government watchdogs immediately pledged to fight what they called a “corrupt” and unprecedented resolution. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

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Trump Pushes the Button on Giant MAGA Grift

The president wants taxpayers to fund compensation packages for those prosecuted under the Biden administration.

Donald Trump has withdrawn his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service—paving the way for the president to set up a $1.7 billion slush fund for his allies.

The president filed the lawsuit against his own government, which the taxpayer would have

It was previously reported that Trump was considering shelving the lawsuit in order to create a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully persecuted by the Biden administration, including those charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Trump’s move to withdraw his lawsuit against the IRS was confirmed in a legal filing in a federal court in Florida.

The compensation fund against those claiming they were victims of the “weaponization” of the justice system under President Joe Biden is part of a host of demands Trump agreed to in order to drop his lawsuit against the IRS, ABC News reported.

This includes demanding a public apology from the IRS and no longer demanding that the DOJ pay him roughly $230 million in compensation over the investigation into alleged Russian collusion during the 2016 election and the 2022 FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago home over classified documents.

The information arrived from a rogue IRS employee who is currently serving a five-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to stealing Trump’s tax data and leaking the president’s tax returns. Trump claimed he and his family suffered “embarrassment” and that their family business was “unfairly tarnished” as a result of reporting based on the leaked tax returns.

Nearly 100 House Democrats have filed a legal challenge to stop Trump from creating the $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded pool to compensate his allies.

“This is pure fraud and highway robbery,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement. “No one can be both plaintiff and defendant in the same case. And no president can concoct a fake case for $10 billion in damages against the government so he can be plaintiff and defendant and then ‘settle’ his bogus case against himself as a judge.

“This case is nothing but a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021, and sycophant accomplices to his election-stealing schemes.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-pushes-the-button-on-giant-maga-grift/?

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Trumpworld's presidential gold rush

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios

Democrats erupted yesterday over President Trump's $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund for MAGA allies who claim political persecution, vowing to investigate what they called textbook corruption, Axios' Zachary Basu writes. Why it matters: With each passing month, Trump is weaving the financial interests of his family, his allies and his political movement more tightly than ever into the fabric of the American presidency. The weaponization fund grew out of an extraordinary legal conflict: Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion in January while simultaneously controlling the agencies and lawyers on the other side of the case. The taxpayer-backed fund will be overseen by a five-member commission appointed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal attorney. Bypassing Congress, the fund could pay Jan. 6 defendants, conservative activists, former Trump aides and other allies who have faced investigation. 🔎 Zoom in: The Justice Department's announcement came as Trump's latest financial disclosure revealed more than 3,700 individual stock trades last quarter. The trades — involving some companies heavily exposed to federal policy decisions — represented a staggering escalation from the previous quarter, when Trump disclosed just 380 transactions. Popular Information's Judd Legum reported that Trump publicly praised or promoted several companies, including Apple, Dell and Thermo Fisher, around the same time he was buying their stock. The Trump Organization says outside advisers control the president's investments. The big picture: Trump's first term generated recurring conflict-of-interest scandals around hotels, golf clubs and foreign patronage. His second has produced a far more sprawling ecosystem for enrichment. At the center of it is crypto: Trump-linked meme coins have minted billions for the family and its inner circle, with top holders unlocking dinners at Mar-a-Lago and private events with the president. World Liberty Financial has rapidly become one of the Trump family's most lucrative and controversial ventures, placing the president's political brand and influence at the center of a fast-growing crypto empire. 🔭 Zoom out: Since Trump took office, his sons have invested in a range of new industries, including AI, drones and critical minerals. Their overseas real estate portfolio has also expanded dramatically.

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🚁 1 for the road: Trump's next renovation

President Trump is planning to build a permanent helipad on the White House South Lawn to keep the powerful new Marine One helicopters from scorching the grass, The Wall Street Journal reports.

• The new VH-92A Patriot is much more powerful than the VH-3D Sea King it replaces. The old fleet has flown every president since Gerald Ford.
• Officials have known since 2018 that the new helicopter could damage the lawn.
• Presidents Biden and Trump have both flown on the new helicopters on trips outside of D.C., but never to and from the White House.

Trump is also expected to install a helipad at Mar-a-Lago while it's closed for the summer.

• Keep reading (gift link).

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Trump says he’s called off Iran strike planned for Tuesday at request of Gulf allies President Donald Trump said America’s allies in the Gulf asked him to wait for two to three days because they feel they are close to a deal with Iran. Read more.

Why this matters: Trump said the current pause for negotiations was a “very positive development.” However there is no evidence Iran is set to meet Trump’s demands — many of which it has long rejected.   Crucially, Iran still has a big bargaining chip — its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, even as the U.S. military has enforced its own blockade on Iranian ports. Trump’s stated top objectives are still unrealized: Iran has yet to agree to abandon its nuclear program or its ballistic missile development, or cease support for its proxies in the region, including those in Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Trump’s tough-talk foreign policy is hitting a wall with Iran as it grips Strait of Hormuz   WATCH: How do global events affect gas prices at the pump?   The UAE’s image as a Middle Eastern haven is tested by the Iran war   Blanche will face questions from lawmakers over a nearly $1.8B fund to compensate Trump allies   FACT FOCUS: Trump distorts recent revisions of scientific projections of global warming   Trump touts a major TrumpRx expansion, adding more than 600 generic drugs   Supreme Court sends closely watched Native American voting rights decision back to lower court   Federal judge bans most arrests by federal agents in immigration courts in New York   US Rep. Thomas Massie’s GOP primary in Kentucky is the latest test of Trump’s power over the party   Defense secretary steps into key Kentucky election to attack Trump critic   The New York Times sues the Pentagon a second time over Hegseth’s media restrictions   What to watch in Tuesday’s primaries as Trump’s endorsement is put to the test   Will White House correspondents’ dinner be rescheduled? Some say: ‘Let’s call the whole thing off’

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Trump’s Own Handpicked Lawyer Quits Treasury in Disgust at Massive $1.8B Grift

The president had only just brought the conservative lawyer back into his administration.

The Treasury’s most senior lawyer has dramatically quit, just hours after the Trump administration unveiled a vast $1.776 billion fund to enrich Jan. 6 rioters and other MAGA loyalists.

Brian Morrissey, the department’s general counsel,

His abrupt departure came on the same day that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

Morrissey, who also served in Trump’s first administration, is a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H. W. Bush appointee.

The vast payout pot, set up by the Justice Department, was created to settle Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leaking of his tax returns during his first term in the White House.

Trump dropped his original lawsuit on Monday after a judge cast doubt on the basic legality of a sitting president filing suit against a department he himself runs.

The Treasury, which now has to deposit the eye-watering sum into an account controlled by a five-member commission hand-picked by Blanche, declined to explain Morrissey’s exit.

Criticism has been widespread and visceral. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon branded the deal the “most brazen theft and abuse of taxpayer dollars by any president in American history.”

Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, 63, called it “pure fraud and highway robbery,” while nearly 100 House Democrats filed an amicus brief seeking to block the settlement. The Beast also reported Monday that recipients of the payouts—and the sums they pocket—

Morrissey used his resignation letter to thank Trump, 79, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 63, for the chance to serve, two sources who reviewed the note told the paper.

Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, will appoint every member of the commission and retain the power to remove any of them without cause.

Trump himself denied any role in setting up the deal during a White House healthcare cost event Monday, insisting the arrangement had been “very well received.”

Morrissey, a former Sidley Austin partner who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thomas, has not spoken publicly about his exit.

A Treasury spokesman said, “As General Counsel, Brian Morrissey has served the United States Treasury with both honor and integrity. We wish him all the best in his next endeavors.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House, the Justice Department, and Brian Morrissey for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-treasury-lawyer-quits-in-disgust-over-donald-trumps-massive-18b-theft/?

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Even MAGA Diehard Thinks Trump’s Gone Too Far

The president’s grifty settlement with the IRS has Scott Jennings squirming in his seat.

One of Donald Trump’s most loyal defenders is wincing at the outrageous $1.8 billion settlement the president just landed by effectively suing himself.

“All of this makes me a little uncomfortable because it’s a lot of money, and it didn’t go through the U.S. Congress,” Scott Jennings told his fellow CNN panelists Monday night.

“That’s number one,” he went on. “Number two, I don’t want to see a president necessarily handpicking people to get payments where he could be accused of just picking people out who are political allies.”

Jennings’ somewhat late awakening to potential conflicts of interest under Trump comes as his settlement agreement with the Internal Revenue Service, announced on Monday, prompts a major backlash.

Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion in January, alleging the agency failed to prevent a former contractor from leaking his tax returns to the New York Times in 2020. The IRS was under Trump’s control as president at the time of the leak, as it has been since he brought the suit.

That historically unprecedented action created something of a legal conundrum for an administration tasked with effectively defending itself from itself. The off-ramp has proven just as novel, with the Justice Department now agreeing to put together a $1.776 billion fund to pay MAGA allies who claim prosecutors unjustly targeted them under the Biden administration.

Appointing the commission that determines the recipients of those payments will fall to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal defense attorney.

Jennings expressed concern Monday night that this could potentially allow people who were previously convicted of egregious crimes during the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill, including those who assaulted law enforcement officials, to receive handsome payouts from the second Trump administration.

“My personal view is that anybody who committed documented violence against the government or against police officers has not been unfairly treated if they ended up being convicted of a crime because of the violence they committed,” Jennings told CNN.

“I got no real sympathy for them,” he said.

Trump has pardoned thousands of participants in those riots, some of whom have gone on to reoffend.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/even-maga-boot-licker-scott-jennings-thinks-donald-trumps-gone-too-far-with-irs-grift/?

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Trump’s Golden Age Has Arrived—It’s a Golden Age of Grift

The president has been robbing our country blind, in plain sight, and in ways no one else would dare to attempt.

The golden age our president promised us has arrived.

Never in the long history of our country have we seen a period of such innovation, boldness, and growth in any area of our economic, social, or political lives.

Today, Trump’s name will take its place alongside others that history will never forget.

It is an achievement that is almost impossible to comprehend. That is due in part to the fact that what is now happening was supposed to be impossible. Obstacle after obstacle stood in the way. For centuries, other men have sought to achieve what Trump has accomplished—and yet, he has outshone them all.

Indeed, I am reminded of the famous Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, in which he tells an apocryphal tale he asserts occurred when he was a young boy.

Cellini, a famed Renaissance-era goldsmith and sculptor, wrote that he witnessed a small lizard run into his family’s hearth, directly into the fire, and then emerge unscathed. Immediately afterward, his father slapped him across the face and explained that he did so so his son would always remember what he had just seen.

Consider yourself slapped across the face.

Consider that your country has run into the fire. Thanks to Trump, however, it seems unlikely it will emerge unscathed. Indeed, it is unclear whether it will survive the ordeal at all.

No work of Cellini or any other artist or craftsman matches the genius of what Trump is achieving in the area of his greatest gifts.

When it comes to corruption, Donald Trump is Michelangelo and da Vinci plus Bach and Mozart combined. He is a genius. He is creative in ways that make past generations of American grifters, robber barons, and mafia bosses seem like pikers.

Day in and day out, he has been robbing our country blind, in plain sight, and in ways no one else would dare to attempt.

Indeed, it is fair to suggest that if you took every other corrupt figure who stole from our public coffers from the first days of the republic until now and multiplied their larceny times that of every Gambino family capo di tutti capi, they still would not match the billions Trump has absconded with.

Monday’s news that somehow Trump and his family had reached a “deal” with the U.S. Department of Justice that follows his commands like a dutiful beagle to take $1.776 billion in tax dollars out of the U.S. Treasury and give it to his supporters and friends and co-conspirators and indeed, perhaps—because we do not have any information to the contrary—to his family and himself, is only his most recent achievement in criming, though certainly one of the most stunning.

With this bold stroke, Trump may well use taxpayer dollars—your money and mine, precious dollars from government accounts too depleted to allow us to pay for the care of our most needy citizens—to pay off members of the mob of thugs that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

That’s right, Trump may well have found a way, with the help of Todd Blanche and other DOJ officials—who all ought to swiftly be disbarred—to arrange what almost certainly is the first taxpayer-funded domestic coup attempt in the history of the United States. (In the interest of fairness, we need to acknowledge that we have conducted many taxpayer-underwritten foreign coup attempts throughout our history.)

The move is eye-wateringly audacious. Had Trump walked into Fort Knox with a shopping cart and walked out with it filled with gold bullion, the theft would not be more obvious or outrageous.

Yet Trump—and here is what is certainly part of his genius—has orchestrated a chorus of acceptance, support, and enabling from many of America’s most powerful leaders.

The hijacking of the DOJ to serve his personal interests would not have been possible without the six right-wing activist members of the Supreme Court, three of whom he appointed personally. The GOP “leadership” in Congress has remained supine, while the Republican Party nationwide has stood up and sought to be counted as his accomplices in this extraordinary heist.

Further, what makes the achievement of our grandmaster of malfeasance so exceptional is that it is just a single act in a comprehensive, sweeping, complex, stunningly lucrative campaign of corruption that started when he first took office and has turned the White House into a toll booth collecting cash and prizes for Trump enterprises.

Just days ago, we learned that the president has, throughout his time in office, engaged in thousands upon thousands of stock trades that appear to cash in on unique knowledge he had as president or of actions he intended to take. His sons run companies doing multimillion-dollar deals with the Pentagon and with governments worldwide seeking Trump’s favor.

Trump has accepted aircraft, donations to projects designed to glorify him, golden statues, bitcoins, and cash from suckers eager to buy up Trump swag. Trump phones, Trump watches, and the branding rights to Trump Airport in West Palm Beach are part of his scheme. It looks like the “Trump Presidential Library” may well include a hotel where people can pay to honor Trump in the way that means the most to him: with cash that ends up in his bank account.

Where is the money that the U.S. made from selling oil we stole from Venezuela? Who controls the billions that have been allocated from the U.S. Treasury and governments worldwide to the Board of Peace for Gaza? How many times has Trump sold pardons or lifted regulations or prosecuted or persecuted the innocent in exchange for campaign contributions?

Estimates suggest that Trump and his family have made billions as a direct result of actions he has taken since he returned to the White House. And of course, we live in the world of crypto and dark money accounts, where transactions can take place and we will likely never know their sources, nor will we know in whose pocket the ill-gotten gains finally ended up.

Yes, this is it. This is the golden age of corruption. And Trump is the Einstein of the science of scamming, grabbing, grifting, snatching, hijacking, purloining, and plundering our national assets, selling government services to the highest bidder, selling out the country, and helping his family and friends to do the same.

Who’s the s--thole country now, folks?

Our patrimony is being sold off—natural resources, fundamental freedoms, national security, our children’s futures, and the futures of generations of Americans to come—all to line the pockets of a bunch of immoral gangsters who, let’s be honest, do not even need the money in the first place.

Why are they destroying democracy? Because it is the only way to both keep their criminal enterprises alive and to stay out of jail at the same time.

We have lived through robber barons and the Teapot Dome and Tammany Hall and a country run to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of everyone else. Hell, we invented vulture capitalism and the “greed is good” of Gordon Gekkoism.

But to mark the 250^th anniversary of the founding of the United States, Donald Trump has taken us someplace new. He has worked every day since he resumed the presidency to lead a different kind of American revolution.

He has achieved his goal of becoming a world historical figure by becoming the founding father of a new kind of American nation, created of, by, and for him and his buddies and their bank accounts. Thanks to Trump, his family, MAGA, the GOP, the Federalist Society, and decades of rigging our systems in favor of the richest Americans, we are no longer a shining city on the hill.

We are instead a stinking cesspool of corruption, a republic for the rapacious. And the time we have to put an end to the stealing and to reclaim our nation for the benefit of its people is running out.

Tick tock, brothers and sisters. How much longer will we allow this crime spree to continue?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-golden-age-has-arrivedits-a-golden-age-of-grift/?

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How Trump Turned the Law Upside Down in $1.7 Billion Heist

The president has manipulated the system to act as plaintiff, defendant, and judge in his own lawsuit.

It is a sick joke on America’s history that Donald Trump chose the amount of $1.776 billion to bilk from taxpayers to pay his MAGA friends.

He has already picked a sport with a fragile hold on the rules—UFC—to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary with a cage fight at the White House on June 14.

Now the president is using 1776—the year the thirteen colonies declared independence from Great Britain—to frame an unprecedented challenge to the U.S. Constitution, which has been the nation’s guiding light for 237 of those 250 years.

By forcing through a self-serving settlement in his $10 billion case against the Internal Revenue Service, Trump has dangerously blurred the separation of powers that has governed the United States through 46 presidencies, including his own first term.

The blatancy leaves you breathless, because in Trump’s IRS lawsuit, he was effectively both the plaintiff and the defendant.

And by manipulating the proceedings, he ended up being the judge.

The sordid tale began with Trump once again breaking with presidential tradition and refusing to release his tax returns, right back in 2015. When the documents were leaked to the New York Times in 2019, Trump, his sons, Don Jr. and Eric, and the family organization complained that the IRS was negligent for allowing a former contractor to leak them.The Trumps were not the only billionaires who were annoyed that their taxes were made public.

Billionaire Ken Griffin was among the wealthy taxpayers, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, whose taxes were also leaked. Griffin sued the government in December 2022 for failing to prevent the leak. The DoJ initially fought the case, insisting the lawsuit should be dismissed because the contractor was not a federal employee.

Griffin won an apology from the IRS in June, 2024.

Ethical questions were raised the moment Trump filed his $10 billion lawsuit in January under the same code that Griffin cited, which allows taxpayers to seek redress from the government if their private records are illegally made public.

The Trumps argued in their suit that the IRS’s failure caused “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”

The contractor who leaked Trump’s taxes, Charles Littlejohn, was jailed for five years in 2023.

But the judge appointed to oversee the Trump lawsuit had a more fundamental decision to make, even before she could decide on whether the president and his family had been wronged by the leak.

Judge Kathleen M. Williams, of the Southern District of Florida—an Obama appointee—was reportedly considering dismissing Trump’s lawsuit for the simple reason that his personal lawyers were bringing the case, and his government lawyers were responding to it.

According to the New York Times, she had given both teams of Trump lawyers—personal and government—until this Wednesday to explain how it was all supposed to work when they were all reporting to the same person.

But the judge was rendered helpless on Monday when Trump announced he was withdrawing his lawsuit. At the same time, Todd Blanche, the president’s hand-picked acting attorney general—and his former defense attorney—announced that a settlement in the case had been agreed to create an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to feed money to allies of the president who feel they have been wronged by the (Biden) government.

It is, of course, a cause close to Trump’s heart. He remains bitter over being targeted on multiple criminal and civil counts after his first term.

“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” said Blanche, in a statement. “As part of this settlement, we are setting up a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.”

Democrats jumped on the arrangement, describing it as “highway robbery” and accusing the DoJ of “colluding” with the president.

“Never in the history of the United States has a sitting president sought a monetary settlement from the government he leads, let alone sought many billions of dollars in taxpayer funds,” they wrote in a lawsuit seeking to block the deal.

Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden said if the creation of the fund was allowed to move forward, it would be the “most brazen theft and abuse of taxpayer dollars by any president in American history.”

As for Trump, he will receive an apology but no compensation from the fund, the Justice Department said.

We have become all too used to the president’s grifting. He makes no secret of the ways he has enriched himself and his family during his years in office.

But if he can take the rule of law and turn it upside down, we are in real trouble.

Trump has already shown his disdain for elections he doesn’t win and Supreme Court decisions he doesn’t agree with. Now he is running roughshod through the legal system.

The question must be asked. If we cannot rely on America’s rule of law, what do we have left?

1,776 reasons why Trump should be impeached.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-trump-turned-the-law-upside-down-in-17-billion-heist/?

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Trump Goon Helped Fugitive Foreign Leader Flee to the U.S.

Christopher Landau reportedly told State Department staff to grant a visa to a Polish ex-minister facing 26 criminal charges.

Donald Trump’s deputy secretary of state personally pulled strings to land a U.S. visa for a fugitive Polish ex-minister wanted on 26 criminal charges back home, according to a report.

Christopher Landau, 62, the State Department’s second-in-command, intervened on behalf of Zbigniew Ziobro, 55, the politician who reshaped Poland’s judiciary in ways the European Union later condemned as a hammer-blow to the rule of law.

Landau justified rushing Ziobro’s paperwork through as “a national security issue,” three sources told Reuters, although the newswire could not establish why. The Harvard-trained appellate lawyer leaned on top brass inside the Consular Affairs Bureau, telling them to instruct the U.S. embassy in Budapest to cut Ziobro a journalist visa, according to one source.

The case had been flagged to Landau earlier this year by Tom Rose, America’s envoy in Warsaw, who cast the ex-minister as the victim of an unfair prosecution, a fourth source told the newswire.

In December, Trump granted a “full and complete pardon” to former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had been sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison for helping smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine into America, as the Daily Beast reported.

The Hernandez decision drew a public shredding even from the Murdoch-owned The Wall Street Journal, which questioned whether Trump had been swayed by a fawning letter from the disgraced Central American leader.

Trump has also gone to bat for Brazilian ally Jair Bolsonaro, who faces trial over an alleged coup plot, demanding in a Truth Social rant that Brazil “LEAVE BOLSONARO ALONE!”

Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, fled to the U.S. last year, claiming he was avoiding “political persecution” at home.

In Ziobro’s case, the visa was the final step in an extraordinary escape. The former minister had been holed up in Hungary, where strongman Viktor Orban granted him asylum in January. But Orban was unseated in April by pro-EU challenger Peter Magyar, leaving Ziobro exposed. Magyar had campaigned on a pledge to send him back to face the music on day one.

Magyar took office on May 9. Thanks to Landau’s intervention, Ziobro had already secured his U.S. visa and slipped out of Hungary before Magyar even arrived at his desk, Reuters reported.

What he is wanted for in Poland is serious. Ziobro faces 26 criminal charges, mostly tied to allegations he misused money from a fund supposed to help crime victims, funneling cash into political projects backing the Law and Justice–led right-wing coalition. He denies wrongdoing and claims he is the target of a politically motivated campaign by Poland’s pro-EU government.

The White House referred the Daily Beast to the State Department when reached for comment.

A State Department spokesperson refused to address detailed queries, including about Secretary of State Marco Rubio or Rose’s involvement, telling the Beast only: “Due to visa record confidentiality, we have nothing to share on this matter.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-goon-helped-fugitive-foreign-leader-christopher-landau-flee-to-the-us/?

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Trump Revives Bonkers Greenland Power Grab With New Demand

President Trump has repeatedly argued that the U.S. should acquire or control Greenland.

President Donald Trump has reignited his long-running push to bring Greenland under U.S. control, demanding new powers over the Arctic territory’s foreign deals.

Trump is reportedly pushing for the U.S. to gain sweeping influence over Greenland by demanding the power to block future Chinese or Russian investments on the Arctic island, according to The Telegraph.

Under the proposal, the U.S. would gain the ability to block companies linked to China and Russia from striking infrastructure or mining deals in Greenland.

American negotiators previously pushed for similar provisions in a trade agreement with Britain, giving Washington a mechanism to raise objections over Chinese-linked acquisitions or investments.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

President Trump has repeatedly argued that the U.S. should acquire or control Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, claiming it is vital for American national security and for countering Russia and China.

“If we don’t take Greenland, Russia or China will,” Trump said on Air Force One in January. “And I’m not letting that happen.”

The proposal has strained relations with Denmark — a fellow NATO member — and sparked broader concern across Europe.

Earlier this year, the U.S., Denmark and Greenland agreed to begin high-level talks aimed at easing tensions.

No final agreement has been announced, but officials have reportedly held roughly five rounds of discussions focused on increasing the U.S. military footprint in Greenland.

In those talks, U.S. officials are said to be especially focused on Greenland’s vast untapped reserves of rare earth minerals, oil, uranium and other strategic resources buried beneath the ice, The Telegraph reported.

The materials are considered crucial for products ranging from electric vehicles to missiles and fighter jets.

But the concern inside Washington is that China already dominates the global rare earth market, controlling around 70 percent of mining supply and about 90 percent of processing capacity, and American officials fear Beijing could weaponize that dominance during a future conflict, particularly over Taiwan.

Some diplomatic sources told The Telegraph they believe the Trump administration is using concerns about China as a way to secure a larger strategic foothold in Greenland.

Trump has also floated the idea of expanding the American military presence on the island by opening at least three new bases.

Both Denmark and Greenland have repeatedly rejected any suggestion that the territory could be sold or brought under U.S. control, warning that military pressure would risk destabilizing NATO relations.

“We do not want to be Americans, we do not want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders. The future of Greenland must be decided by the Greenlandic people,” Greenland’s government and the opposition said in a joint statement in January.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-revives-bonkers-greenland-power-grab-with-new-demand/?

ps:Beyond pathetic!!!!!

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Trump Plots His Next War After Scare Tactic Fails

Officials say the “mood has definitely changed” with regard to Cuba.

Donald Trump is preparing to start a war against Cuba after growing frustrated that his intimidation tactics against the country’s communist regime aren’t working, according to a report.

The president, who is already in the midst of a deeply unpopular conflict in Iran, is weighing whether to launch military action against Havana to force through his hopes for regime change in Cuba, according to Politico.

The Trump administration has long toyed with the idea of attacking Cuba. Discussions have intensified as the economic pressure the U.S. piled on the country—including cutting off oil supplies from Venezuela following the capture of the South American country’s former leader Nicolás Maduro—is not having the desired effect.

“The mood has definitely changed,” a source told Politico. “The initial idea on Cuba was that the leadership was weak and that the combination of stepped-up sanctions enforcement, really an oil blockade, and clear U.S. military wins in Venezuela and Iran would scare the Cubans into making a deal.

“Now Iran has gone sideways, and the Cubans are proving much tougher than originally thought. So now military action is on the table in a way that it wasn’t before.”

It remains unclear what any military operation against Cuba might look like. It has been reported that the U.S. is planning steps to indict Raúl Castro, the former president of Cuba and brother of Fidel Castro, over allegations surrounding the shooting down of two aircraft three decades ago.

This has raised speculation that the U.S. could carry out another smash-and-grab raid to detain the 94-year-old former Cuban leader in a military operation similar to the abduction of Maduro in January.

Other options on the table include the U.S. launching a single airstrike against Cuba as a sort of warning shot or carrying out a full-scale invasion, Politico reported.

On Monday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel warned that any military action from the U.S. would “provoke a bloodbath of incalculable consequences.”

“Cuba poses no threat, nor does it have aggressive plans or intentions against any country,” Díaz-Canel posted on X. “It has none against the U.S., nor has it ever had any—something the government of that nation knows full well, particularly its defense and national security agencies.”

Earlier this month, it was reported that Senate Republicans were warning Trump not to start a fresh conflict with Cuba while the war in Iran continues.

Trump blasted the claim while continuing his inflammatory rhetoric against Cuba in a raging Truth Social post.

“No Republican has ever spoken to me about Cuba, which is a failed country and only heading in one direction—down!” Trump wrote. “Cuba is asking for help, and we are going to talk!!!”

In a statement to Politico, a White House official reiterated Trump’s claims that Cuba will soon “fall” and that “we will be there to help them out.”

“It’s the job of the Pentagon to make preparations in order to give the commander-in-chief maximum optionality. It does not mean the president has made a decision,” the official added.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Pentagon for further comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-plots-his-next-war-after-scare-tactic-fails/?

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Major Hole in Trump’s Deportation Strategy Exposed

Donald Trump’s mass deportation push has been linked to job losses.

A major gap has emerged in President Donald Trump’s deportation strategy, according to a new report.

The Trump administration has repeatedly argued that mass deportations would boost wages and create more jobs for American-born workers by reducing competition from undocumented labor.

But a new study from the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research finds the opposite effect: recent deportation surges have been linked to job losses for both immigrant and American-born workers, with wages largely unchanged.

The impact has been most pronounced in agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and wholesale trade, where enforcement actions appear to have cooled hiring across the board.

Men were especially affected, making up more than 90 percent of immigration arrests in the data, with employment among male undocumented workers falling by 5 percent and dropping 1.3 percent for American-born men without college degrees.

But it is the construction industry—where researchers estimate that around 15 percent of the industry’s workforce is undocumented—that has been hardest hit by Trump’s mass deportation program.

At his February State of the Union address, Trump claimed that the economy had created thousands of new construction jobs, declaring: “More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country.”

But the report found that employment fell by 7.5 percent for undocumented workers and 3 percent for American-born men without college degrees in the construction sector.

The study suggests that for every undocumented worker arrested, roughly six American-born workers also lost jobs in the construction industry.

Overall, construction employment declined, down 1.5 percent in April compared with the previous year, according to federal data, while residential building permits fell 7.4 percent year-over-year in March 2026.

Researchers also found no evidence that employers raised wages to attract American workers to the construction industry, concluding instead that overall activity simply slowed.

“Construction companies view it as easier to reduce production, reduce the construction of new homes and new buildings in general, rather than try to increase wages for U.S.-born workers,” Chloe East, an author and economics professor at the University of Colorado, told The New York Times.

It is not the first time a report has found that Trump’s immigration policy could lead to job losses.

Projections from the Washington D.C.-based think tank National Foundation for American Policy previously indicated that Trump’s mass deportation policy could slash the workforce by 15.7 million by 2035.

Meanwhile, an Axios report from October 2025 found that Trump’s immigration crackdown could reduce “GDP growth by about half a percentage point between fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2035” due to employment deficits.

The report found that there could be 6.8 million fewer jobs as soon as 2028, with 2.8 million lost through legal immigration policy and 4 million through illegal immigration crackdowns.

It comes as businesses are already feeling the strain from the effects of Trump’s tariffs, and his war with Iran, which has seen energy prices spike.

An analysis by Democratic staff on the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee this month found that firms with fewer than 10 employees have cut jobs for 13 straight months, with small “mom-and-pop” businesses shedding about 292,200 jobs in 2025 — the steepest annual decline in a decade and far worse than the 87,800 jobs lost in 2024.

“Small businesses are getting frustrated. They can’t make ends meet, and some are going out of business,” manufacturing business owner Shirley Modlin told CNN. “Stop the game-playing. This is not a game. This is people’s lives.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/major-hole-in-trumps-deportation-strategy-exposed/?

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📈 Trader-in-chief

Illustration: Lazaro Gamio/Axios President Trump recently disclosed more than 3,500 stock trades made on his behalf in the first quarter, Axios' Emily Peck writes. At least $1 million each was purchased in shares of Nvidia, Oracle, Microsoft, Boeing and more. 💸 All told, there were hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of transactions, the Financial Times reports (🔐). It's unclear how much money the president earned (or lost). 🤳 Trump critics pounced on the disclosure as an indication of wrongdoing — pointing to the timing of certain trades around key announcements or social media posts. A Trump Organization spokesperson tells Axios: "President Trump's investment holdings are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial institutions with sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions." Go deeper.

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US government agrees to drop tax claims against Trump in broadening of IRS lawsuit settlement

The U.S. government will permanently drop tax claims against President Donald Trump, according to a settlement document that is part of a deal to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. The settlement, which marks an extraordinary use of executive power, goes beyond resolving litigation and effectively helps shield the president from further examination of his finances and legal conduct. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

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Tails, Trump Still Wins

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Yesterday, the Department of Justice announced plans to settle Donald Trump’s personal lawsuit against the IRS over allegations that it had mishandled his tax information. The president, two of his sons, and their family business had been seeking at least $10 billion from the American government, all of which would have come directly from taxpayers. Now Trump is withdrawing the suit—but taxpayers are still footing the bill.

In exchange for Trump dropping this lawsuit and his two other pending claims against the government, the Justice Department will create a $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund to compensate people who say they’ve been wrongfully targeted by the federal government. According to an addendum published this morning, the IRS is also “forever barred” from pursuing “any and all claims” against Trump, his family, and his companies over previously filed taxes. (A DOJ spokesperson told me that this applies “only with respect to existing audits, not future.”)

The money for the new project will come from the Judgment Fund, an uncapped source of taxpayer dollars that’s used to pay out judgments against the government. As precedent, a department memo cites a Barack Obama–era settlement that tapped those same reserves to compensate Native American farmers and ranchers who’d been deprived of access to federal loans. Now that same fund might end up benefiting the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6.

Testifying before a Senate subcommittee today, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed that the Anti-Weaponization Fund could potentially funnel taxpayers’ money to people convicted of crimes connected to the Capitol riot—most of whom Trump pardoned early last year. Blanche also said that claimants could include GOP lawmakers whose phone records were seized by Special Counsel Jack Smith in 2023 during his January 6 investigation, and that Trump-campaign donors “are not excluded from seeking compensation.” (The IRS declined to comment.) Yesterday, when asked by a reporter why taxpayer dollars should be directed to J6ers, Trump said that the payments would be a way of “reimbursing” people who had been “horribly treated.” Recall that some of those people advocated for the vice president to be hanged, and violently attacked Capitol Police officers. If money does end up flowing their way, Trump’s settlement would function as a financial reward for participating in a violent insurrection.

The Anti-Weaponization Fund represents a massive commitment of federal resources to one of the president’s long-standing fixations. Trump, who has cast the four criminal prosecutions he faced during the Joe Biden era as examples of unfair targeting, routinely claims that he and his political allies were singled out by the previous administration. Early last year, Attorney General Pam Bondi created the Weaponization Working Group, intended to root out purported “abuses of the criminal justice process” under Biden. But Trump and his team have weaponized the Justice Department far more than past administrations did. Take, for example, the flimsy legal attacks against two of Trump’s perennial enemies, James Comey and Letitia James. The new fund likely won’t pay their legal fees, as my colleague Jonathan Chait observed this morning: “To ensure that it will never be used for a deserving victim, the fund is scheduled for termination on December 15, 2028.”

Part of the issue with Trump’s claim against the IRS was that both sides of the lawsuit ultimately answer to him. “I’m supposed to work out a settlement with myself,” he told reporters at the time. The judge overseeing the case indicated last month that she was considering dismissing it for that reason. With this settlement, Trump has effectively turned his uphill legal battle into an allocation of funds for his own political and personal aims. Today’s revelation that the past tax filings of the president, his family, and his businesses are now shielded from IRS audits underscores just how much this arrangement will benefit Trump’s inner circle. Danny Werfel, who led the IRS under Biden, told me that he couldn’t envision any scenario in which granting that kind of immunity “would be an appropriate settlement term or remedy.”

Trump has said that he was not involved in the creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund—which is odd, given that his personal lawyers negotiated the settlement. The fund will be overseen by a committee of five members, all of whom will be appointed by the acting attorney general, and any of whom can be removed by Trump. In his testimony earlier today, Blanche said that information about claimants and their payouts “will for sure be made public along the way,” but the White House hasn’t provided details about how that will happen. Pulling money from the Judgement Fund doesn’t require congressional approval, meaning that the committee will have little oversight. Hours after DOJ announced the settlement, the top lawyer at the Treasury Department—the agency that oversees the Judgment Fund and is therefore responsible for providing this money—resigned.

Throughout his time in office, the president has used the power of the federal government to enrich himself and his allies, and settlements have at times played a role in that effort. Earlier this year, Trump signed off on $1.25 million payouts for one of his former lawyers, Michael Flynn (as part of a settlement for a case in which Flynn pleaded guilty), and for his campaign adviser Carter Page (whose lawsuit against the government was dismissed twice). It’s in line with what my colleague David A. Graham has identified as a newly “shameless” stage in the president’s corruption: Trump is more and more open about his interest in rewarding the people in his orbit. Since taking office again last year, he has pardoned a cryptocurrency billionaire whose company facilitated a lucrative deal with his family, a tax cheat whose mother attended a $1-million-per-person fundraiser for his campaign, and a pair of reality-TV stars whose daughter advocated for his reelection at the 2024 Republican National Convention. The New Yorker estimated in January that Trump and his family had made $4 billion during his second term.

Another example of this approach arrived just yesterday. On the same day that DOJ announced the Anti-Weaponization Fund, federal prosecutors asked a judge to drop all charges against Gautam Adani, the Indian shipping-and-manufacturing magnate accused of running a bribery scheme (he has denied the allegations). The New York Times reported that the Justice Department planned to drop the charges after Adani hired one of Trump’s personal lawyers. As part of his pitch for Adani’s freedom, that lawyer reportedly told the Justice Department that Adani would invest $10 billion in the American economy.

Whether Trump and his allies are directing money toward themselves, their circle, or their supporters, they are sending a message about how this administration understands the work of governance. The rewards always seem to accrue to a favored few; the rest of us just pay for it.

Related:

• Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund is worse than stealing.
• Trump is suing his own government. (From February)

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Trump's early AI access

The White House plans to release its much-discussed executive order on cybersecurity and AI safety as soon as this week, sources familiar with the matter told Axios' Ashley Gold.

• Why it matters: The order aims to bolster cybersecurity around advanced AI models and outlines a voluntary framework for AI developers to inform the government about new releases.

🖼️ The big picture: The cyber-capabilities of Anthropic's Mythos softened the Trump administration's full-speed-ahead approach to AI. But the convoluted drafting process has exposed how conflicted the administration is on the matter.

• The measures described to Axios fall far short of what some more hardline voices in Washington and across the country have been pushing at a time when anti-AI sentiment is rising.
• "Happy Talk," Steve Bannon, a first-term Trump official pushing for mandatory testing and regulatory approval, texted Mike. Bannon told us the big AI labs "will get there but it's going to be a fight."

What's inside: The executive order, as described in its current form, has at least two sections, the sources say — cybersecurity and "covered frontier models."

1. The cybersecurity component aims to secure the Pentagon and other national security agencies, boost cyber hiring, shore up cybersecurity systems at places like hospitals and banks, and encourage threat-sharing about breaches between the AI industry and government.
2. The frontier model component would involve multiple layers of government review to determine what qualifies as a "covered frontier model" and then assess such models before their public release.

👀 The intrigue: The draft calls for a "voluntary framework" for AI labs to share their models with the government at least 90 days before public release and also give access to certain critical infrastructure providers.

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🗳️ Latino voters slip away from Trump

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Latino voters have soured on President Trump after powering his 2024 comeback, Axios' Justin Green writes. Why it matters: Republicans hoped Trump's gains represented a realignment, but poll after poll suggests Latino voters are up for grabs in the midterms. 🧮 By the numbers: Latino registered voters in 17 House swing districts remain fluid after Trump's 2024 breakthrough, according to a TelevisaUnivision/Harris poll out this morning. 52% say they are undecided or could still change their minds in the midterms. 73% say they are merely "surviving" financially. Neither party can escape cost-of-living frustration, including among Latinos. Keep reading.

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IRS immunity

The Internal Revenue Service is now barred from auditing President Trump and his family for past tax issues. On Tuesday, the Justice Department unveiled this new language and other terms as part of a settlement with Trump to resolve his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. Read more.

MORE: Democrats denounce $1.8 billion fund that could pay Trump allies

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Trump Lets Slip Eyebrow-Raising Admission on His Failing Economy

He didn’t mean to, but the president revealed his true fear.

Donald Trump set out to boast about his economy before accidentally revealing one of its biggest problems.

During remarks at Tuesday’s Congressional Picnic event at the White House, the president delivered a lengthy victory lap on the state of the U.S. economy, touting record stock market highs, falling inflation, and what he claimed were historic jobs numbers.

“America’s thriving, America’s winning,” Trump said. “Today we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world.”

Trump cast his administration as the architect of an economic rebound, crediting it with bringing down prices and restoring growth.

“We inherited high prices and we got the prices down, and we got them down to numbers that in some cases people have not seen before,” the president said.

But in the middle of his economic celebration, Trump appeared to acknowledge a problem hanging over his message.

“We have an economy, people aren’t seeing it yet,” he said.

The remark stood out as a striking admission from a president who had spent the previous several minutes insisting America was “winning” and that the economy had never been stronger.

“Two and a half months ago, we hit the best numbers that we’ve ever hit as a country,” he said. “Jobs, the best. Everything was the best. Stock market, the highest.”

Trump then shifted from bragging about the economy to explaining why the “best numbers ever” suddenly needed an asterisk.

“I called my people in. I called them in and I said, ‘Congratulations, everybody, but we’re going to have to make a little journey down to a place called Iran,’” he said.

Trump framed the intervention as a necessary step to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“We have to stop them,” he said. “They have nuclear on their mind, and we’re not going to let them have a nuclear weapon.”

The president then predicted the war would be short-lived, repeating a promise he has made since the earliest days of the war.

In March, Trump claimed U.S. forces could be out of Iran in “two to three weeks.” The war has now stretched into its third month, with ceasefire efforts repeatedly stalling even as Trump has continued to insist an end is just around the corner.

“I think we’re going to be finished with that very quickly, and they won’t have a nuclear weapon, and hopefully we’re going to get it done in a very nice manner,” Trump said on Tuesday.

But the economic turbulence Trump blamed on the war has already begun showing up in the numbers.

Thirty-year Treasury yields have climbed to their highest point since 2007 as investors grow increasingly anxious that higher oil prices and continued turmoil in the Middle East could fuel another wave of inflation.

While the stock market has remained near record highs and unemployment has stayed relatively low, inflation last month hit 3.8 percent, its highest level for three years, driven by sharply higher fuel prices.

Consumer confidence has also weakened as Americans continue grappling with cost-of-living pressures and uncertainty over the broader economic impact of the Iran war.

For Trump, whose political appeal has long been tied to promises of economic strength, the stakes now extend beyond market highs.

With midterm elections approaching, the administration will have to convince voters that the economy doesn’t just look strong on paper.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-makes-eyebrow-raising-admission-on-his-failing-economy/?

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MAGA Civil War Erupts Over Soaring Cost of Trump’s Ballroom

And it’s fueled by the sprawling underground military fortress Trump wants.

A MAGA civil war is erupting over the prospect of taxpayer money being used to fund Donald Trump’s ever-expanding White House ballroom project.

As new details emerge about a sprawling underground military fortress that Trump has been quietly building beneath the ballroom, a growing number of Republicans have raised concerns over a bill proposing up to $1 billion in taxpayer-funded security upgrades tied to the controversial development.

The opposition comes ahead of an expected vote this week, with Republican senators such as Rand Paul, Thom Tillis, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Bill Cassidy all balking at the cost.

“One billion in ballroom funding is just not going to fly, right? It’s just not going to fly,” said Murkowski.

Cassidy, the Louisiana Senator who was defeated in a GOP primary on Saturday by a Trump-endorsed candidate and another opponent, has also vowed not to vote for the ballroom project.

“I think this is just a spit in the eye insult to all my taxpayers in Louisiana to spend a billion on the ballroom when we should be doing something about the high price of gas, groceries, and healthcare,” he told his local network, WWLTV.

Trump has been stepping up pressure on Senate Republicans to pass funding for the ballroom, despite initially insisting that “not one dime” would be spent by taxpayers.

On Tuesday, he escorted reporters through the construction site where the East Wing once stood, describing the planned building as “potentially the most beautiful building in all of Washington.”

But in a jaw-dropping disclosure, the 79-year-old president also revealed that the ballroom was, in fact, just a “shield” for a massive, multi-level subterranean bunker being built below.

Other features of the project included titanium fencing so strong that “a bulldozer cannot knock it over”, he said, windows four inches thick, and “9000 pound concrete.”

There would also be a hardened roof constructed of “impenetrable steel” able ⁠to withstand a direct attack and enough space to accommodate what he described as a “drone empire.”

“We went down six stories. It’s actually far more complex,” Trump said.

“They’re building a hospital—it’s a military hospital—they’re building all sorts of research facilities, they’re building meeting rooms.

“The ballroom is really a shield and protecting all of the things that are being built here,” he added, pointing to the giant hole in the ground where construction was taking place behind him.

The comments are the first time the president has discussed how expansive the project will be, far beyond the scope of the Mar-a-Lago-style event space initially pitched.

But the revelations have fueled broader criticism that the ballroom is becoming less a ceremonial venue than a heavily fortified monument to Trump himself.

Preservation groups continue to challenge the demolition of the East Wing in court, while some observers have raised fears that Trump is building the facility to cling to power.

“Trump is going to use the ballroom as a bunker. He’s not planning to leave the White House even after the 2028 presidential election,” Democrat and strategic consultant Sergio Grant wrote on X.

Republicans, including Lindsey Graham, Katie Britt and Eric Schmitt began pushing for additional funding for the ballroom after the shooting at the White House Correspondent’s Association dinner last month, tying it with a bill that is otherwise focused on immigration enforcement.

But as MAGA divisions emerge over the funding package, some Republicans have pushed to reduce the $1 billion figure, while others are privately pushing to simply remove the provision from the bill altogether.

Asked if he was worried about the project’s funding, Trump on Wednesday told reporters: “No. The ballroom is being built. I’m building the ballroom... It’s actually a military complex. The roof of the ballroom is a drone port and it gives great safety to everything below.

“We’re building a really great ballroom but it’s also a strong military position for our people,” he said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-civil-war-erupts-over-growing-cost-of-trumps-ballroom/?