Oligarchs Auction Off Our First Amendment Rights To Our Aspiring King
This newsletter was originally published on Watchdog Weekly.
Welcome to Revolving Door Project’s Corruption Calendar, where we provide in-depth explanations of the material consequences—real and potential—of the Trump administration’s corrupt policymaking, with an emphasis on tangible harms to working people. Read our first thirty-two issues here, and follow us on Bluesky and X for more updates on this work.
The last two weeks have been devastating for free speech, and Trump’s DOGE cuts continue to have major ramifications for people’s lives.
Who Wants To Be The Next Propaganda Mill?
Unencumbered by norms, antitrust law or accountability from Congress, Trump is seizing control of the media.
The latest scheme originated when Paramount, the owner of CBS, handed the president $16 million to settle a lawsuit, in which Trump claimed the network had edited a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris to “tip the scales in favor of the Democratic Party.” What has since become abundantly clear is that the payout greased the merger approval wheel, allowing Paramount to merge with Skydance Media, which is owned by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden called it “a bribe.”
From there emerged a playbook for any other corporation looking to consolidate its industry: give Trump something he wants, and get your merger rubber-stamped.
Skydance now plans to add Warner Bros Discovery, which owns HBO and CNN, to its growing media empire. That development was reported after news that Dave Ellison is looking to make Bari Weiss “editor in chief or co-president of the network,” a move that would cement CBS as a “right wing propaganda mill.”
This week, Disney took late night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air after FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened to “revoke ABC affiliate licenses as a way to force Disney to punish Kimmel” for comments on Charlie Kirk that Carr didn’t like. It appears Nexstar Media Group, which owns or partners with more than 200 television stations, saw an opportunity in Carr’s threat: the group said it would stop ABC affiliate stations from airing his show, which tipped the scales for Kimmel’s cancellation. Nexstar has plenty of reasons to curry favor with Trump’s FCC, as it is seeking regulatory approval to merge with media company Tegna in a $6.2 billion deal. Disney has its own mergers to defend, as the company is in the midst of acquiring a sports streaming site Fubo for the ABC network while also nearing completion of a complex deal with the NFL.
Carr’s threats are likely illegal, but that didn’t stop Disney and other corporations from acquiescing to Trump’s will. The temptation of greased wheels for roll-ups seems to be too great. The concept of “fair and balanced media” seems to be totally defunct.
And Trump’s friends are getting additional rewards for their complicity: Ellison and fellow Trump ally Marc Andreessen are reportedly closing in on a deal to take over TikTok’s US operations. As Trump and his friends make deals, ordinary Americans are on the menu – to be divvied up proportionately to how well different oligarchs serve Trump.
Trump Chose DOGE Cuts Over Saving Americans From Weather Emergencies
Another week, another set of victims of DOGE’s slashes to critical public services are revealed.
In 2023, a National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist embedded in Virginia Beach, Virginia, helped spot a tornado – “the strongest ever to strike the coastal town” – in time to evacuate a music festival occurring that day. While the tornado damaged 100 homes, no lives were lost.
In early 2025, the director of the National Weather Service, Ken Graham, announced a plan to replicate that possibly life-saving measure across the country, by embedding NWS specialists in up to 69 locations across the country. The plan would bolster the ability of states and localities to predict and respond to potentially deadly weather events, as Virginia Beach did that day in 2023.
But Trump’s DOGE had other ideas. Not only did NWS face the government-wide hiring freeze Trump announced on his first day in office, the Trump administration “culled around 600 staff members from the National Weather Service through layoffs and early retirement plans.” The DOGE cuts derailed Graham’s plan to embed NWS specialists across the country. NWS is currently scrambling to fill “hundreds of vacant positions while some forecast offices remain critically understaffed” now that they’ve been authorized to hire again, and it’s not clear how hires for the embedment program factor into the rush to staff up.
The dismissal of career experts at NWS who were actively working to bolster the country’s ability to save lives during weather emergencies is yet another reminder that this administration’s approach to governance will kill many Americans.
Lucrative At Whose Expense?
Donald Trump is enjoying “the most lucrative year of his life.” His net worth jumped from $4.3 billion in 2024 to a record $7.3 billion this year, gains that he largely owes to World Liberty Financial, his primary vehicle for corruption.
In one of the biggest stories of this week, the New York Times reported that Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, allowed the United Arab Emirates to access advanced computer chips despite national security concerns. The deal followed Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s $2 billion investment World Liberty Financial, which Witkoff co-founded with the Trump family. It’s perhaps the most blatant story of what Trump and his lackeys are willing to give up in their pay-to-play schemes.
Trump’s sons are apparently happy to keep their crypto cash cows going however they can, even if it means investing in green energy their dad detests: Mother Jones reported on Eric Trump’s deal with a bitcoin mining operation powered by a wind farm.
Corporate Exploitation Set To Flourish Under This Regime
Most of us are all too familiar with corporations’ dogged determination to keep consumers hooked to their services. It’s extremely common for consumers to be inundated with a maze of forms or multiple phone calls when attempting to cancel a subscription. Another frustration we all share is our collective powerlessness when dealing with flight cancellations and delays, which derail plans we’ve already paid for. This feeling of powerlessness follows us even when we shift roles from consumer to worker, especially when we find ourselves at a workplace which has trapped us in a non-compete clause.
During the Biden years, the Department of Transportation and the Federal Trade Commission were dedicated to addressing these issues, which plague millions of Americans everyday. But the Trump administration isn’t interested in using the executive branch to put guardrails on corporations. Its only interest is ripping any guardrails out.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration quietly announced its rolling back a Department of Transportation rule that would have required airlines to compensate passengers for significantly delayed or canceled flights. As Popular Information reported, “travelers in the United States would receive $200 to $775 for significant flight delays or cancellations caused by the airline. In 2023, 93,897 domestic flights were canceled and 95,024 were delayed more than three hours.” The big airlines threw everything they had at the Trump administration, including donating to Trump’s inauguration (United and Delta, to the tune of $1 million each) and spending tens of thousands lobbying through Airlines for America. It likely also helps that Trump chose a former airline lobbyist to run the DOT in the first place.
Over at the Federal Trade Commission, illegally fired commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter got back to work in what turned out to be a temporary reinstatement. But she used her time wisely – first, she requested a vote to revive the FTC’s “click to cancel” rule, which would have required companies to make canceling a subscription as easy as signing up for one.
Then, she “issued a dissent in the FTC’s decision to stop defending its ban on employee noncompete agreements in federal court.” In her dissent, Slaughter wrote that by refusing to defend the non-compete rule, “the FTC is choosing the side of controlling bosses over American workers.”
In two swift moves, she reminded the public what the FTC is supposed to be doing – protecting workers and consumers from deceptive, unfair and anti-competitive practices.
Corporate Tax Evasion On Easy Mode
Trump’s attacks on the Internal Revenue Service have given corporations a leg up in their battles with the agency. Bloomberg reported that the “IRS and Justice Department are bleeding tax lawyers,” leading to more time taken to resolve disputes and less money recovered from tax dodgers. That is inefficiency in action—a complete opposite of the purported promise of DOGE. Over 170 tax lawyers have withdrawn from tax cases, some leaving the agency altogether. The cases left in the lurch include probes into Coca Cola, Meta (Facebook), and 3M, totaling “billions of dollars at stake.”
According to Bloomberg, the lawyers have been pushed out for a variety of reasons, including staff cuts, hollowing out of leadership, and DOGE restricting necessary work costs, including “travel, expert witnesses, even parking, from people who knew little about their work.”
Meanwhile in the House, Republican lawmakers proposed slashing the IRS budget by $2.8 billion, which is a deeper cut than even Russell Vought’s Office of Management and Budget requested. The move includes a gift for companies like tax filing giant Intuit, who will benefit from the cessation of funding for the IRS’s Free File public tax filing program.
As critical programs that protect ordinary Americans are cut in the name of “the deficit,” we must keep in mind how much of that deficit is caused by not only Trump’s tax cuts, but tax evasion predictably enabled by Trump’s evisceration of the IRS.
ICE Raids Threatens Workers’ Livelihoods And Safety
The unanticipated consequences of Trump’s raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia are continuing to unfold. In addition to South Korea’s investigation into the inhumane conditions ICE subjected the workers to, new reporting shows that the plant has a long history of unsafe working conditions. The Trump administration is forcing workers to choose between staying quiet about hazardous workplaces and risking their lives, or speaking up and risking deportation.
Quick Corruption Hits
- ICE’s new budget means the agency has $3.6 billion to spend a year on transportation for deportations, creating even more potential conflicts of interest as private airline contractors jockey for ICE’s business.
- FHFA director and Trump attack dog Bill Pulte has been ringing the alarm on Fed governor Lisa Cook’s purported mortgage fraud (which it seems clear was no such thing!) – but Reuters found that Pulte’s own parents have made similar claims on their mortgages. So has his colleague, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Maybe that explains their recent spat!
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we have published or contributed research or thoughts to this week:
Trump Doesn’t Need DOGE to Kneecap Independent Agencies