Month: July 2026

Staggering corruption

During his first term Trump enriched himself (and his family) by cashing in on the presidency to an unprecedented degree, taking in $594 million in his first year in office, mostly from golf and real estate.

(All graphs in this section are from the New York Times report, “How Trump Is Getting Richer in Office.”)

Things looked dramatically different in the first year of his second go-round as president:

This came mostly from crypto deals:

The reporting from Andrea Fuller, Daniel Wood, and Ben Protess has all the dirty details. Fuller offers a video wrap up:

“Most other presidents in recent memory have gone out of their way to divest from anything that could pose a potential conflict of interest. But being back in the White House has brought a huge windfall for President Trump in a way that stands out from any other administration in recent history.”

It’s worse than a money grab

Senator Adam Schiff provided another take on Trump’s historic corruption (countdown from 10 to 1) in a speech on the Senate floor last week:

Schiff notes that the cost to the country is not just Trump lining his own (and his family’s) pockets: “When the president is fixated only on his family’s personal wealth, on the money he can make by abusing the power of his position, on his own vanity projects, gilding the White House, gilding statues and gilding a ballroom, he has very little time or inclination to address the problems facing ordinary Americans. They are mere afterthought, and the country suffers.”

Here’s a quick review of Schiff’s list:

Number 10: Trump licensing agreement overseas (and being beholden to foreign governments when making U.S. policy)

Number 9: Lawsuits against media (as the price of favorable policies, which don’t benefit the public)

Number 8: Suing social media platforms – Twitter, YouTube, Meta (collecting payoffs and squelching criticism)

Number 7: Handouts to the family, with Amazon’s multimillion dollar payment to Melania for a documentary about herself front and center (keeping Amazon in the good graces of the administration)

Number 6: The Trump memecoin, “a kind of a “joke” digital currency. But Trump still saw the opportunity for personal profit – about $635 million worth.
And the people on the other side of that trade? More than 810,000 of them have lost a combined two billion dollars. That’s 810,000 people that bought this memecoin, this Trump memecoin, mainly the president’s own supporters, lost money so the president could make hundreds of millions of dollars. ”

Worse yet: Trump auctions off presidential access to deep pocketed investors and calls off the law for fraudsters who funnel cash to Trump family businesses.

Number 5: “Number five is one of the most audacious schemes in presidential history: the gold-plated, gilded, and gaudy White House ballroom. The president has solicited ever-larger donations for this pet project – which now has a whopping price tag of $600 million.“

There are at least 37 big donors for the project. “Among them, Amazon and Apple and Google and Meta and Microsoft and Coinbase and Tether and Caterpillar and Lockheed Martin and T-Mobile. And more.
Of these corporate donors, two-thirds have been awarded federal contracts over the last five years – contracts worth $279 billion. And fourteen of them are either facing, or have had suspended, federal actions for violations of the law.“

And hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars as well. Unmentioned by Schiff: there’s a no-bid contract for this project. And Trump is raiding the National Parks funding to pay for his White House renovations.

In the before days, there would be Congressional oversight and pushback. Not under this regime.

Number 4: “A $400 million luxury jet, “gifted” by the government of Qatar, to serve as Air Force One through the end of Trump’s term. 
And then? Transferred to Trump’s own museum foundation. His to keep!“

Again: this deal with the Qataris implies a foreign policy quid pro quo at the expense of our national security. And: taxpayers will shell out $1 billion to renovate the “free” plane.

Number 3: The corrupt deal with the huge national law firms that lacked the conviction to oppose his authoritarian designs (barely two months into his second term). As Schiff relates, nine firms pledged nearly a billion dollars of pro bono work. “Nine hundred and forty million dollars, extracted under threat.” The money didn’t go into Trump’s pockets; instead it was “redirected to causes he favors, surrendered by law firms who were afraid of what he might do to them if they refused.”

Number 2: “World Liberty Financial. The Trump family cash cow.
…
A single deal tied to a state-backed fund in the United Arab Emirates funneled $500 million into this venture. A single deal, made by a wealthy sheik who is also head of that country’s intelligence service. What could go wrong? And in return, they just got American made advanced AI chips, just like they wanted.“

Biance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, was instrumental in “settling a $2 billion investment from an Abu Dhabi state fund in the Trump coin” and Biance’s founder, convicted of money-laundering received a presidential pardon.

“The cost of this corruption? Crooked deals to benefit convicted fraudsters. U.S. foreign policy for sale to the highest gulf bidder. Less time, attention and resources of the country focused on bringing down your costs, improving your quality of life, bringing back prosperity to America.“

Number 1: The IRS “settlement” with Trump giving him more than $1.776 billion for a slush fund to pay off his supporters (such as the January 6 insurrectionists) and the promise of immunity for Trump and his family from future IRS audits (estimated benefit to the Trump clan: $100 million)!

A district judge voided the agreement, though it could rise from the dead in the next two and a half years. Meanwhile, Senator John Cornyn (a lame duck who lost his primary to a crooked Texas AG after Trump opposed his reelection) has derailed for a time the confirmation of Todd Blanche (Trump’s personal attorney responsible for the sham settlement) as Attorney General until the senator gets something-something-something in writing. This is an ongoing story (and Blanche could continue to serve as acting AG even if the Senate rejects his nomination).

Schiff’s estimate of the cost of this top ten list: Six billion dollars. $6,000,000,000.00

The United States of America has never seen anything like this. Nothing this brazen. Nothing even approaching this scale. And no one before like the grifter who resides in the White House today.

Or like the political party in league with him. No Congress so deferential to presidential corruption. No Supreme Court so willing to trash the Constitution in order to enable a lawless regime.

The Trump regime has weaponized federal funding to reward allies and punish political opponents. This is not exactly news for folks who follow such things, but two recent examples prove the point. In each case, the flagrant corruption is without precedent in the history of the American presidency.

Clean Energy Grants

First, Trump’s lawyers have confirmed in federal court the lies they’ve told to prop up their autocratic maneuvers in cancelling research dollars.

The Trump administration acknowledged in writing in a federal courtroom that cancellation of $7.56 billion in clean energy grants was based solely on partisan grounds.

In October 2025, the Energy department announced, “Following a thorough, individualized financial review, DOE determined that these projects did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.” This was a lie.

Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, gloated over the cancellations on X.

Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda is being cancelled. More info to come from @ENERGY.

The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA

— Russ Vought (@russvought) October 1, 2025

Every state on Vought’s list was carried by Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, a fact that Vought undoubtedly wished to convey back in October. Trolling the opposition party and its constituents is a MAGA specialty. Nonetheless, Vought’s boast bolstered the Energy Department lie — that “a thorough, individualized financial review” led to the cancellations.

In testimony before a Congressional committee last month, Energy Secretary Chris Wright repeated the lie, denying in vulgar language that the cuts were political. “No decisions were made on politics. I keep hearing that charge. It’s bullshit. We’re going to say it a million times.”

But in a move that allowed DOJ to dodge discovery related to a class-action lawsuit filed by researchers at the University of California, the Trump folks changed their story last week. Government lawyers agreed in writing (with plaintiffs’ counsel) to a number of stipulations, among them:

9. DOE accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State. DOE will not contend that it looked beyond the prime grantee(s) to consider the political identity or geographic distribution of downstream beneficiaries of the grant funds.
10. DOE accepts that the differential treatment resulting in the October 2025 termination of Blue State grants and the non-termination of non-Blue State grants was not based on a rational connection between the recipient’s location and/or place of performance and DOE’s past or current agency priorities.

If the grantee was in a Blue state, the grant was cancelled. There was no rational connection tied to the decisions; they were based solely on the political identity of the state (that is, led by Democrats). This conflicts with respect for the rule of law, trashes institutional evenhandedness, and harms the national interest because multi-billion dollar decisions matter.

Disaster Relief

In a second case a pattern has emerged: there is a huge disparity between Trump’s approval of disaster aid for Red states and Blue states. This has been evident for quite a while, since requests by governors and approvals by the federal government are public. As with the early and emphatic denials of partisanship in the cancellation of clean energy grants, the Trump administration denies any bias regarding disaster funding. From a PBS report (“Trump is taking longer to approve disaster aid and denying Democratic states more frequently”) two weeks ago:

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement that “there is no politicization to the President’s decisions on disaster relief.”

A more recent report (from Politico) Jackson uses almost the same words and adds to them:

That’s the story, but the facts are clear. And the White House has failed to address the sharp partisan disparity.

Politico’s E&E News reviewed 2,500 natural disaster declarations resulting in approval of disaster funding going back to 1979, when FEMA was created. Their report concluded, “President Donald Trump has rejected disaster aid for Democratic-run states at the highest rate in the 47-year history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

No other administration came close to funding approvals that revealed such a flagrant partisan divide. In Trump’s second term, only twenty-three percent of Democratic requests have been approved (compared to not quite 90% of Republican requests). In the chart below, the blue line represents states with a Democratic governor and 2 Democratic senators; the red line, a Republican governor and 2 GOP senators.

Politico’s report also revealed that when Trump has granted assistance to Blue states, he has taken longer to do so. Furthermore, in several denials of aid, Trump overruled the determination of federal officials:

President Donald Trump overruled his own agencies when he denied disaster aid for four Democratic-led states this month.
…
Trump’s rejections came after regional offices of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and NOAA determined that the states met government thresholds for receiving aid following a record-breaking snowstorm in February.

It stretches credulity to believe that the disparity is not deliberate. As Politico E&E News noted: “Trump has been openly partisan on social media about using disaster funding for political purposes. He has linked his decisions to grant aid with his electoral victories in Republican-led states.”

Over the past eighteen months, we have seen Trump turn the levers of power at his command into a personal weapon of revenge and extortion.

Red states are rewarded with federal funds, while Blue states are denied funding even when these decisions conflict with the laws passed by Congress. Trump has swept aside the rules and regulations in place to ensure the integrity of federal funding decisions in order to punish states that Kamala Harris won in 2024.

The outcome of such partisan corruption is outrageous — undemocratic and contrary to the rule of law. Moreover, this outrage is amplified by another disparity, as noted by a number of commentators.

“Trump has rejected disaster aid for Democratic-run states at the highest rate in the 47-year history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”Right now people in blue states are basically paying federal taxes as if they’re colonized territories of red states. www.politico.com/news/2026/03…

— Murshed Zaheed (@murshedz.bsky.social) 2026-07-29T23:05:34.566Z

Blue states, primarily through the income tax, collectively pay more in taxes than Red states. This MAGA president is exacting revenge against the Blue states by denying them funding, while channeling their dollars to Red states. (California, home of more Democrats than any other state, which has the biggest gap between funds sent to the feds and funding sent back to the state, is still waiting for wildfire relief.

Corruption erodes democracy

The Trump regime is intent on imposing authoritarian rule on a nation with a rich democratic history. Before 2016, both major political parties were more or less in step regarding a range of guardrails that kept democratic governance on track. Both parties, for instance, respected election results even when faced with a loss.

No longer. And that change is among a host of additional changes inimical to democracy. In their analysis of democratic backsliding, Levitsky and Ziblatt focused on mutual toleration and institutional forbearance as critical to maintaining democracy.

Donald Trump has trashed both of these guardrails. Intolerant of dissent, he disparages his opponents as illegitimate. And rejecting forbearance, he has sought to wield power without restraint. We see this in the decisions canceling grants and approving disaster aid.

Anything goes. Or anything that he thinks he can get away with.

This is a threat to American democracy.

Less than a week after killing Lorenzo Araujo, ICE agents have killed another man. Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year old Colombian immigrant working two jobs to support his partner and 3-year old daughter, was gunned down by ICE agents in Biddeford, ME.

Guerrero was in the U.S. legally; like Araujo, he was not being sought by ICE agents when they encountered him. Apart from a practice — shooting into moving vehicles — that is forbidden by most police forces (and by federal agencies), there is evidence that armed ICE agents lack the training and temperament to be patrolling American city streets. But they have been goaded on by a president, his most influential senior domestic advisor, and others in the Trump administration and in MAGA media into a crusade to rid the country of immigrants — legal or not. Trump and company have demeaned and slandered Immigrants, while glorifying militarized agents acting with impunity.

Lies come easily to these apologists of state violence. In the immediate aftermath of the Renee Good shooting, JD Vance posted on X that the agent who fired the fatal shot was protecting his own life “against a deranged leftist who tried to run him over.”

Every congressional democrat and every democrat who's running for president should be asked a simple question:

Do you think this officer was wrong in defending his life against a deranged leftist who tried to run him over?

These people are going to try to arrest our law…

— JD Vance (@JDVance) January 8, 2026

On the same day, the White House quoted Vance saying:

I want every ICE officer to know that their president, vice president, & the entire administration stands behind them.
To the radical assaulting them, doxxing them, & threatening them: congratulations, we’re going to work even harder to enforce the law.

STAND WITH ICE. pic.twitter.com/apkF4QC7bC

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 8, 2026

Enforce, that is, a twisted version of the law by a regime that despises constitutional limits, the preservation of individual liberty, and a nation that is enriched by immigrants and their children.

ICE agents in Houston shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo last week as he drove to work. They shot him by firing into his van, describing him as an “illegal alien” who had “weaponized his vehicle.”

Araujo had lived and worked in the United States for 35 years, raising three sons with his wife. He ran a construction company and had no criminal record. Yes, he was undocumented. Is that grounds for being gunned down on a city street by masked federal agents?

We have heard the “weaponized his vehicle” rationale before. If true, it might justify shooting into a car. But past experience suggests that this is a lie. “In several instances … video evidence and testimony from witnesses contradicted the agency’s initial accounts, establishing that the officers were not in danger and, in some cases, acted as the aggressors.” No immigration agents have been charged in any of the previous fatal shootings.

The other three men in the vehicle have disputed the account given by federal authorities.

This is the tenth person to be shot and killed by ICE and Border Patrol in Trump’s second term “and the 17th Mexican to either be fatally shot by ICE or to die in ICE detention.” The latest shooting occurred as the Trump administration has doubled immigration arrest numbers (often by making arrests at immigration check-ins, nabbing folks following the law).

Third-country removals continue apace, while Americans who protest Trump policies are subject to threats and harassment in violation of the First Amendment.

There is no place for this in a free country. Judge for yourself.

Meanwhile, the number of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital has surged and the Pentagon announced that the troops would remain through the 2029 inauguration.

This ain’t the America most of us grew up with. Day by day, city by city, a federal occupying army is put into place, as our country creeps closer to being a police state at the hands of Donald Trump.