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Welcome to Week 30 of our Corruption Calendar newsletter: the weekly roundup where we highlight new and egregious examples of corporate corruption in the Trump administration. Read our first 29 issues here and follow us on Bluesky and X for updates.
With the National Guard haunting the streets of Washington, D.C., it’s been an ominous week. DC takeover aside, the most immediately visible expressions of Trump’s efforts to consolidate and expand his power are: the administration’s ongoing multi-pronged efforts to let corporations break the law with impunity while raking in record profits; a new shakedown tactic to secure a cut of technology sales to China; and an attack on the research grant process, which is critical to scientific pursuits across the country.
Putting a number to Trump’s monetization of the presidency—$3.4 billion, to be precise. The New Yorker reported this week that the Trump family has made $3.4 billion from the presidency so far, across Trump’s two terms. Their meticulous research tallies profits from Trump’s promotion of his Mar-a-Lago resort and DC hotel; his use of campaign political-action committees (PACs) to pay his legal fees; his investment in real estate in the Persian Gulf, alongside other deals with Saudi Arabian companies; and his family’s crypto ventures, among other schemes. The breadth, consistency, and audacity of Trump’s efforts to profit from his position—culminating in the recent release of the $TRUMP meme coin—are truly staggering.
A new report from Public Citizen summarizes the Trump administration’s efforts to let technology companies off the hook. A new report from our friend Rick Claypool at Public Citizen details the multiple lawsuits against technology companies that the Trump administration has opted to drop, despite their (clearly performative) rhetoric about corporate accountability. The report highlights the many tech firms facing federal enforcement (or sometimes their CEOs) that “gave $1 million or more to Trump’s inaugural fund,” which include: Amazon, Apple (CEO), Coinbase, Crypto.com, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI (CEO), Uber, and X, among others. This cut-and-dried example of tit-for-tat corruption feels increasingly urgent to highlight, as the Trump administration seemingly expands its surveillance state every day.
Police state contractors with Trump admin connections continue to boast about their record profits. Surveillance and private prison companies—prominently Palantir, GEO Group, and CoreCivic—have continued to commit and enable egregious human rights abuses while scooping up record profits. As The Guardian reported this week, “Private prison company executives, during their respective [earnings calls with shareholders], could barely contain their excitement, flagging to investors opportunities for ‘unprecedented growth’ in the realm of immigration detention.” This shameless celebration of profiting from surveilling and warehousing people, particularly from companies with close connections to the Trump administration, as I highlighted with respect to Palantir and GEO Group in a recent installment of this newsletter, is blatantly corrupt and morally abhorrent.
Trump’s deal with Nvidia on export licensing fees draws bipartisan condemnation. Trump proudly announced this week that he had reached a “deal” with microchip manufacturer Nvidia to charge the company a 15% fee on revenue from sales to China. As Reason reported, this kind of deal “appear[s] to be a constitutionally prohibited export tax and reek of “bribery or blackmail, or both,” according to a former export control official,” drawing criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike. It’s no surprise that Trump brought his signature deal-making rhetoric to the announcement of this arrangement, as his comfort overstepping the boundaries of legal executive power seems to increase every day of his second term.
Trump’s attacks on the grant process corrupt decision-making at federal agencies around use of federal funds for crucial, lifesaving research. Trump issued an executive order on August 8th that directs heads of federal agencies to develop a grant-review process that will “advance the President’s policy priorities.” Experts have decried the executive order, describing it as antithetical to the goal of open inquiry that is intended to characterize the research process. The order could immediately impact grants awarded to researchers, including those working on projects Trump has attacked, like those supporting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Its impacts could be broad and devastating for vulnerable groups, including, as Nature reported, cutting research funding to children’s hospitals—organizations with some of the highest indirect cost rates, a metric the EO names, which also do lifesaving research work. (This is not the first time the Trump administration has put sick children in its crosshairs; ICE has deported juvenile US citizens with immigrant mothers, including at least two instances of children fighting or recovering from cancer and the administration has cut funding for pediatric cancer research.)
Image: “P20250430JB-0891.jpg” is in the public domain. “NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang delivers remarks as President Donald Trump looks on during an ‘Investing in America’ event, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in the Cross Hall of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)”
