Corruption Calendar Week 14: The All-American Meme Coin Oligarchy Wants To Extract Oil and Gas At National Monuments 

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It’s week fourteen of the Revolving Door Project’s Corruption Calendar, where we highlight the latest slate of corporate corruption shaping the Trump Administration and the material impacts of that corruption on real people. Our first thirteen issues can be found here, and follow us on Bluesky and X for more updates on this work.

This week, Trump once again leveraged his office to boost the price of his meme coin, $Trump. Meanwhile, firms that donated to Trump’s campaign or lobbied aggressively seem to be securing exemptions to his tariffs. But as the oligarchs are finding clever ways to enrich themselves, the risks of public health and environmental crises have grown. Read below for the full overview of corruption this week:

THE WHITE HOUSE CRYPTO GUY BONANZA

•  Wine And Dine With Our Corruptioneer In Chief. The value of Trump’s memecoin surged nearly 71 percent in value after he announced the plan to dine with the top 25 coin holders on May 22nd. Investors have between April 23 and May 12 to compete for a spot in the top 25 – a groveling contest likely to drive its value up even further. While the coin’s value will continue to fluctuate, as is the norm in the crypto Wild West, revenues generated from trading fees will ensure it remains a lucrative grift. Just a couple weeks after the coin’s launch, Reuters found that, “$Trump token had generated between $86 million and $100 million in trading fees by Jan. 30.” According to reporting from Wired, the millions already generated in trading fees from the dinner announcement is likely to go to offshoots of a conglomerate owned by Trump. 

• Trumpworld Ventures Into Crypto Exchange Traded Funds. Trump Media & Technology Group, holding company of Truth Social, recently teamed up with Crypto.com and Yorkville America Digital to launch crypto-based exchange traded funds. The decision to partner with a firm, which was under investigation for “operating as an unregistered broker-dealer and securities clearing agency,” is layered with ethical concerns. First, the joint venture’s products will be approved and overseen by an SEC chaired by Trump appointee Paul Atkins. Additionally, it would likely place Davis Polk & Wardwell, the law firm advising the project, in a favorable position with the administration amidst Trump’s ongoing drive to place law firms under his thumb. 

• A New Report Summarized Trump’s Crypto-Based Conflicts Of Interest. The report, released by State Democracy Defenders Fund, shows that Trump has three distinct cryptocurrency projects which he can profit from. These are: (1)$Trump Meme coin, (2) World Liberty Financial’s USD1 Stablecoin, and (3) $WLFI, the “governance token” of World Liberty Financial. The report estimates that “the combined value of Trump’s crypto and non-crypto assets would be approximately $7.7 billion. If accurate, Trump’s crypto assets would therefore comprise approximately 37% of his total assets.” Last week, DWF Labs, a UAE-based investor and crypto trading firm credibly accused of market manipulation in the past, purchased $25 million of World Liberty Financial’s governance token.

FOSSIL FUEL FACILITIES, OUR NEW NATIONAL MONUMENTS

• Permission To Defile And Pollute Public Lands Granted. As part of Trump’s “drill baby, drill” policy, Interior plans to drastically speed up permit approvals for oil, gas and mineral extraction on public land. The department issued an announcement on Wednesday claiming its new measures “are designed to expedite the review and approval, if appropriate, of projects related to the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, or generation of energy within the United States.” Interior officials said they would only spend 14 days on reviews which previously took a full year, and 28 days on reviews which previously took multiple years. Last week, Interior considered shrinking the boundaries of six national monuments across Arizona, California, New Mexico and Utah to encourage energy development. These actions line up with our expectations of Doug Burgum, a long-time ally of the fossil fuel industry, who’s also recently turned the department to a free bakeshop for his pals. (Burgum isn’t only popular in Magaworld. Prominent Abundance booster Matt Yglesias is also a fan.)

• Death Knell For Federal Environmental Enforcement. Justine Calma at The Verge obtained a notice informing Environmental Protection Agency staff of reduction in force plans—staffing cuts which would come into effect by July 31st, in line with Musk’s attacks on the civil service. This follows EPA administrator Lee Zeldin’s previous proposal to shrink the agency’s budget by 65 percent. The cuts would severely limit the agency’s ability to monitor and check polluters like Tesla and SpaceX, key sources of Musk’s wealth. As the article notes, “Internal EPA records obtained by The Verge show repeated enforcement actions against Tesla over the Clean Air Act and federal hazardous waste law between 2015 and February of this year. The records also show multiple enforcement actions EPA has taken against SpaceX over the Clean Water Act since 2015.”  

• Who Needs Less Oversight? High-Risk Chemical Facilities In The View Of Trump’s EPA And Industry Lobbyists. Following explicit requests by chemical industry lobbyists, the EPA removed data showing the locations of chemical facilities at high risk of disaster. Per The Lever, the website which housed the data was taken down last Friday, “stripping away what advocates say was critical information on the secretive chemical plants at highest risk of disaster across the United States.” The webpage was part of the EPA’s Risk Management Program (RMP), which oversees facilities using hazardous chemicals to ensure that dangerous spills are prevented. The data, which was only public for a year before it was taken down, included the locations of high-risk facilities and details of the chemical stored there.

• Dangerous Chemicals In Our Air. Dangerous Chemicals In Our Food. Dangerous Chemicals Everywhere. Last Friday, reporting from CBS suggested that the Food and Drug Administration plans to end its routine food inspections, outsourcing the responsibility to state and local authorities. Although the agency already works with states and territories on food safety, at least seven states have no inspection contracts. And in all likelihood, the combination of cuts to inspections and staff at the FDA will engender a national food safety crisis. 

TARIFF EXEMPTIONS—MAGAWORLD’S LATEST PLOY TO PROP UP THE REPUBLICAN PARTY’S COFFERS

• Automakers Spared From TariffMania. For his latest tariff retreat, Trump moved to exempt automakers from the levies the President is imposing on China. The Financial Times described this as yet “another trade war climbdown following intense lobbying by industry executives over recent weeks.” Providing more color to the story, CNBC revealed that “six of the top policy groups representing the U.S. automotive industry,” made up of “franchised dealers, suppliers and nearly all major automakers” collaborated in lobbying the Trump administration. 

• Opaqueness—The Secret Sauce Of The Tariff Exemption Process. Immediately after throwing a wrench in global markets with his tariff shakedown plans, Trump’s White House revealed that over a thousand products would be exempted. ProPublica has since reviewed the list of items finding that there’s no rhyme or reason to the exemptions, a sign that “politically connected firms might be winning carve-outs behind closed doors.” 

One particularly suspicious case is the carve-out for PET resin, a material used to make plastic bottles. The thermoplastic is a key component of Coca-Cola bottler Reyes Holdings’ operations. The bottling company, which is “owned by a pair of brothers who have donated millions of dollars to Republican causes,” recently hired Ballard Partners to lobby Commerce on tariff policy. The lobby shop is intimately tied with the Trump administration having previously represented the President, and employed Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

As the White House continues to eschew a formal process for granting exemptions, it will be especially difficult to decipher carve-out patterns. But for now, it is likely a safe bet to wager that extensive donations to Republican causes would be a shared characteristic of most individuals and companies benefiting from exemptions.

• Price Gougers Let Loose On The American Public. As our friends at The Lever reported, there is a “cottage industry of ‘pricing optimization’ consultants who, using lessons learned from pandemic price increases, are advising companies across industries on how to hike prices in response to tariffs or even just the threat of tariffs — and then keep them high.” Former FTC Chair Lina Khan had opened a federal inquiry into price optimization software, which her successor Andrew Ferguson shut down following his ascension. Ferguson’s move “came just weeks after a handful of large companies subject to the inquiry contributed millions to President Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.”  

$75,000 FOR AN EASTER EGG AND $4 MILLION FOR THE WINFIELD HOUSE MASTER BEDROOM

• Trump Solicited Corporate Donations For His “Easter Egg Roll” Event. The White House historical association listed YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, and Meta as sponsors of the event. Donations reportedly ranged from $75,000 to $200,000. While the Easter Egg Roll is an annual tradition, this is the first time the White House has solicited corporations to sponsor the event. 

• How Much Are Ambassadorships Going For Nowadays? Investment banker Warren Stephens donated $4 million to Trump’s inauguration fund the same day he was nominated as ambassador to the United Kingdom. Stephens was the third largest contributor to Trump’s inauguration fund. For more on the longstanding transactional relationships between campaign donations and diplomatic postings, see Diplomacy by Donors.

JUSTICE IS AN AFTERTHOUGHT IN MAGAWORLD

• Trump’s New Defense Team. In a late Thursday night scoop, The Prospect’s David Dayen shared the Justice Department’s plans to “dissolve its Consumer Protection Branch, a part of the Civil Division that prosecutes cases involving tobacco marketing, fraud against seniors and servicemembers, and entities involved in the opioid crisis.” The plan, likely to take effect by the end of September, would reassign several attorneys to the Federal Programs Branch, where their new priority would be defending the Trump administration. The White House faces well over 100 lawsuits over its nakedly authoritarian approach to governance these past 100 or so days. That number is certainly going to keep rising if the current Oval office occupant continues to laugh in the face of the rule of law.

• Three More Prosecutors Resign Over Dismissal Of Eric Adams’ Fraud Case The Trump Justice Department had initially placed the Manhattan federal prosecutors on leave due to their refusal to abide with the orders to dismiss the charges. As is the norm in Magaworld, deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche mandated that they “express regret and admit some wrongdoing by the office in connection with the refusal to move to dismiss the case” before they are reinstated. In their resignation email, the prosecutors said “we will not confess wrongdoing when there was none,” and “now, the Department has decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington.” 

• Surprise, Surprise. Newly Appointed Sycophant At The Office Of Special Counsel Turns A Blind Eye To Trump’s Gutting Of The Civil Service.The office had been sifting through over “2,000 complaints that the Trump administration had improperly fired probationary employees,” when Trump replaced the former head Hampton Dellinger with Doug Collins. Following Collins’ appointment, the office informed affected employees that it “could not pursue the claims of unlawful termination in part because they were fired not for individual cause, but en masse as part of President Trump’s ‘governmentwide effort to reduce the federal service.’”

• Peter Thiel’s Palantir Scored A Deal With ICE To Develop “ImmigrationOs,” A Surveillance Tool That ICE Would Use To Decide Who To Deport. Palantir won a nearly $30 million award from the agency to build a “case management system,” which would “include ‘near real-time visibility into instances of self-deportation.’” The surveillance tool will also keep track of immigrants who overstay their visas. Peter Thiel is deeply connected to the Trump admin, with long-time ties to JD Vance.  

• Musk’s Spacex, Thiel’s Palantir, And Andressen-Backed Anduril Are Leading A Bid To Build The American “Golden Dome” Project. SpaceX, Palantir and Anduril have joined forces to become the “frontrunners to win a crucial part of President Donald Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense shield, six people familiar with the matter said.” The new tech right remains well positioned to mop up federal contracts in Magaworld. 

Major resources updates this week include:

Mapping the Home Insurance Crisis, a resource co-published with Public Citizen, contains a series of interactive maps and tables to help people make sense of the climate change-fueled home insurance crisis.

U.S. Attorneys Under Trump, our latest tracker monitoring the Trump administration’s reckless appointments of conspiracy theorists and corporate hacks to US Attorney positions across the country.

Polling Tracker: Americans’ Opinions of Oligarchy and Corruption tracks how ordinary people view the fascist takeover of American institutions and the corrupt public-private entanglements that got us here.

For more on our work tracking the Trump-Musk administration, visit DogeWatch. 

And if you’ve got any tips on DOGE personnel, updates to any of our Trump-Musk Admin trackers, or companies seeking exemptions from Trump’s tariffs? Reach out to us at [email protected].