Executive Branch

This week the Trump administration deepened its wildly corrupt and lucrative crypto grift, sought to further enrich wealthy supporters at the direct expense of working households, and continued to pardon white-collar criminals who don the red MAGA cap.

Trump started his second term in the White House by targeting law firms in retaliation for their past legal work and personnel decisions that displeased him. While some firms pushed back against these assaults on their independence, more than a few BigLaw firms caved. Within the first months of the year, they bowed to Trump’s demands, surrendering in order to avoid (potentially illegal) executive orders that could damage their business interests.

The Musk-damaged agency is unlikely to investigate whether Trump and his allies are profiting from advance knowledge about tariff changes or meme coin shenanigans.

Surprising no one, Trump’s 2026 budget proposal reads as a nakedly self-interested list of his priorities. It attacks his favorite targets—DEI and climate programs, social services, and non-billionaires—while directing funds to his favorite pet projects: building the border wall, violent mass deportation efforts, privatizing healthcare, enriching defense contractors, and making more and more data available to be mined by tech companies (see the VA section below), including Trump’s allies in Silicon Valley.

RDP Executive Director Jeff Hauser testified about the Trump family’s use of cryptocurrency as a vehicle for blatant corruption

We are tracking the Trump administration’s personnel cuts, reductions in force, and their impacts on food and drug safety. 

A longtime Democratic-aligned donor, Bill Ackman publicly backed Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the 2024 election cycle. He stands to gain a lot from the potential privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

An overview of Trump family ally, fundraiser, and business partner Omeed Malik. Malik was appointed to the board of Fannie Mae.

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:

Since returning to office, Donald Trump has been repeatedly blocked by judges ruling against his most extreme actions: unconstitutional impoundments of congressionally appropriated funds, illegal purges of civil servants, and executive orders attacking law firms that don’t accede to his arbitrary and capricious demands.

In unlucky number 13, we tackle more corruption and pay to play stories in the administration. From Zaslav to Zuckerberg to selling gold visas we have all of the stories.

The Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the Department of Education will leave millions of borrowers in limbo.

Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world, bought his way into Trump world and now leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). DOGE has illegally taken over the federal government, firing federal employees and canceling grants with little to no regard of any of the reprecussions.