Awful: Senate investigations into Trump's solicitation of $1 billion from Big Oil and Jared Kushner's financial dealings with Saudis will now hit a wall with GOP control, Dems tell me. We're headed for unchecked elite corruption under Trump.
For many reasons, conditions are ripe for right wing elites to loot the place from top to bottom. Remember when Trump vowed to give Big Oil execs what they want in exchange for $1 billion in campaign funds? Now we'll likely never get to the bottom of it.
“The next four years are going to be a smash and grab under Trump,” Sen Ron Wyden tells me, because “special interests who put Trump back in office expect a return on their investment."
His probe into Kushner's dealings will get much harder w/GOP control
Interesting suggestion from @NoahBookbinder: Trump's Truth Social gives wealthy investors a way of currying favor with him by buying stock, which would "quickly affect his net worth."
Needless to say, Trump won't divest, as he should.
Underappreciated point: Trump's plan to purge civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists will create new avenues for corruption. Special interests can hijack rulemaking more easily and career people will be in less of a position to blow whistle.
Trump is going to hoodwink pundits into writing that his presidency is "taking on the elite class," even as he sells off the government for parts to his right wing oligarchic elite cronies.
Horrific: One of the USAID programs Trump just terminated was set to deliver lifesaving treatment to hundreds of thousands of starving kids abroad. Much of it is now in a Georgia warehouse.
Rubio's promise to preserve urgent assistance was a lie.
This is one of hundreds of terminated USAID contracts. The full list is appalling: There's tons of the "lifesaving humanitarian assistance" that Rubio promised to protect.
Former USAID official Atul Gawande tells me we'll see a "a massive loss of life."
The cancellation of the lifesaving assistance for starving kids abroad is really a galling one. This stuff was grown by American farmers and manufactured by American workers. This spreading of American bounty and good will long had bipartisan support.
Awful news --> Delivery of therapeutic food assistance to nearly 400,000 severely malnourished kids is suddenly in doubt due to Trump-Musk firings at USAID, two manufacturers of the product tell me.
The product is called Ready to Use Therapeutic Food. It's a paste made mostly of peanuts, milk, and sugar, designed for children to ingest if they're on the edge of starving to death.
It's made in two US factories, one in Georgia, the other in RI.
Remarkable: Trump's own pollster just found that in swing House districts, Dems lead by 5 points and voters want tax policy to prioritize working people, per Politico.
Yet GOP is about to slash the safety net and give the rich huge tax cuts!
Trump's pollster found that in 18 swing House districts, 68% are unhappy about their financial situation. Majorities want ACA's expanded subsidies to continue and oppose corporate tax cuts.
Swing voters want the opposite of what Trump/Rs are set to do.
Next week, House Republicans will vote on a blueprint that could lead to $880 billion in Medicaid cuts, big cuts to spending on food stamps, and more big tax cuts for rich/corporations.
Trump's own pollster finds broad opposition to these priorities.
Scoop --> Trump-Musk cuts just resulted in the firing of numerous top researchers at NIH's center for combating Alzheimer's, sources tell me. They predict big setbacks to fighting dementias.
Republicans like Roy Blunt, Tom Cole, and Susan Collins have all powerfully championed public spending to combat Alzheimer's. NIH's center on this is named after Roy Blunt. Cole spoke at its opening.
Will any Rs step up and voice these sentiments now?
Awful: Internal USAID memo instructs employees to refrain from talking to the media about cuts in aid to the most vulnerable or they may get fired, WaPo reports.
Trumpworld knows this is a big political problem for them. Keep the focus on it.
Given this memo ordering USAID employees not to talk to the press, also recall that Trump fired USAID's IG for revealing that the freezes put $500 million in food aid at risk of spoiling.
Dem strategists warning against talking about this are wrong.
Trumpworld seems split on what they can get away with. For Tom Homan to "joke" on national TV about prosecuting Eric Adams if he displeases Trump on immigration while Fox sycophants giggle is someone who thinks he can get away with anything.
In December, NYT revealed that Elon Musk and SpaceX were failing to meet govt reporting protocol designed to protect state secrets while they haul in billions in Pentagon contracts.
This triggered three reviews, per NYT. One was from the Defense Department inspector general. 1/
It's time to ask: What's going on with those reviews into Musk/SpaceX's failure to meet basic reporting protocol linked to their billions in Pentagon contracts?
Dems tell me they fear these investigations might get killed under Trump. 2/
When Trump fired all those inspector generals, one of them was the IG for the Defense Department. He was examining whether Musk/ SpaceX were failing to meet reporting protocol to safeguard state secrets as huge beneficiaries of Pentagon contracts. 3/