Letters from an American - April 27, 2025

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

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April 27th, 2025. Last night, a new club opened in the wealthy Georgetown neighborhood in Washington, D.C. It's called Executive Branch and it's an invitation-only club backed by Donald Trump Jr. and mega-donor Omid Malik. Dasha Burns of Politico reported that it costs more than half a million dollars to join. The exclusive club is designed to allow top business executives to talk privately with Trump advisors and cabinet members.

Burns reported that the club already has a waiting list. When then candidate Donald Trump celebrated the administration of President William McKinley, it was always clear he saw it as the triumphant marriage of the very rich to the US government. It was the era of so-called robber barons, industrialists and financiers who flooded political campaigns with money to convince voters that those trying to rein them in were socialists or anarchists, then called upon the politicians they put into power to pass laws that benefited their businesses. Behind every one of half the portly

well-dressed members of the Senate can be seen the outlines of some corporation interested in getting or preventing legislation," the Chicago Tribune wrote in 1884, or of some syndicate that has invaluable contracts or patents to defend or push. Last Sunday, a new filing with the Federal Election Commission revealed that donors delivered an astounding $239 million for Trump's inauguration. Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times notes that Trump's 2017 inaugural committee raised $107 million. The $346 million raised by Trump's two inaugural committees is more than the monies raised by all other inaugural committees since Richard Nixon's committee raised four million dollars in 1973. While Trump's allies have said the money that

wasn't spent on festivities will go to other projects Trump is behind, including his presidential library, there is no oversight on how Trump uses that money. Spending on the election was even more dramatic. Earlier this month, Americans for Tax Fairness analyzed spending in 2024 and discovered that just 100 billionaire families donated a record-breaking $2.6 billion to federal campaigns, up by 160 times from billionaire spending in elections before the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision. 70% of that money went to Republican candidates or causes. In the three races that determined control of the Senate, Montana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, outside money from billionaires made up 58.1%, 56.8%, and 44.5% of the outside

money coming in. Elon Musk donated about $290 million, giving four times as much money to political campaigns in 2024 as he paid in income taxes between 2013 and 2018. Those investments in a Trump administration are paying off. The US Department of Agriculture or USDA is withdrawing a Biden-era rule requiring poultry companies to keep the levels of salmonella bacteria below a certain level in their meats to prevent illnesses commonly known as food poisoning. When the Biden administration proposed the rule, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explained that Salmonella causes 1.35 million infections a year and kills 420 people.

The USDA said that about 125,000 of those infections came from chicken and another 43,000 from turkey. Officials estimated that the new rule would reduce salmonella illnesses by 25%. The National Chicken Council celebrated the Trump administration's reversal of the rule, saying it would have no meaningful impact on public health. On Friday, Charisma Madharang of Rolling Stone pointed out that the poultry company Pilgrim's Pride gave five million dollars to Trump's inaugural committee, making it the largest donor to that effort. Two of the company's executives, Chief Executive Officer Fabio Sandri and head of the company's Food Safety and Quality Assurance Kendra Waldbusser, serve on the board of the

National Chicken Council. Last month, Rick Claypool of the consumer rights organization Public Citizen noted that the Trump administration has dropped federal investigations and lawsuits against 89 corporations, many of whose leaders donated heavily to Trump's inaugural fund. Another of those who has benefited significantly from the new policies is Elon Musk. Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, told Lawrence D'Armiento of the Los Angeles Times, I think the overall goals of Donald Trump and Elon Musk are to slash regulations, to slash budgets, and to cut positions, all with this claim they are going to increase efficiency

and fight fraud. But corporate ties to the government are not just about avoiding oversight, they're also about snagging lucrative federal contracts. Gilbert noted, I would say it's a smokescreen and cover for personal profit and corporate power. And that's where Musk's personal conflicts of interest come into play, as well as the other corporate actors across this government. On Friday, Andrew Perez and Azoen Soob Sang of Rolling Stone reported that staffers for billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency have been working on a

multi-million dollar communications project called Project Lift at the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA. The plan appears to be to insert Musk's Starlink into the $4.2 billion contract Verizon currently holds to upgrade the FAA's systems, but doggy staff have made FAA employees sign non-disclosure agreements, so details are scarce. An FAA spokesperson told Perez and Soob Sang, the federal employees running Project Lift are exploring a variety of solutions to modernize the FAA's telecommunications network. Current contractors are part of the discussion. In the Trump administration,

the connections between the government and business include the president's family members. Zach Everson of Forbes has been following the story of the Trump family's involvement in artificial intelligence company Dominarri Holdings Inc. In February, Everson reported that just weeks after Trump announced the administration's push to loosen regulations and expand infrastructure for AI, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric invested in Dominarie and joined its brand new advisory board for which they received 750,000 shares each in the company, although they had no official duties. The company then launched another company, American Data Center Inc., in which the Trumps

also invested. That company focused on the high-performance computing infrastructure to support AI, cloud computing, and cryptocurrency. According to Amber Jackson of the UK's Data Center magazine, Domonari stock leaped more than a thousand percent after the Trump sons joined the advisory board. On Friday, Everson reported on a Securities and Exchange Commission filing revealing that Domonari has applied for conditions that would enable the shareholders, including Don and Eric Trump, to sell their stocks earlier than a normal timeline would allow. Each Trump brother now controls 1.2 million shares of Dominarie, each holding now worth

$5.8 million. On Wednesday, Trump made the pay-to-play nature of his administration explicit when he announced that the top 220 holders of his dollar sign Trump cryptocurrency token would be invited to a dinner with Trump at his private club and that they would be offered a VIP White House tour the next day Mackenzie Sigalos and Kevin Collier of CNBC Mackenzie Sigalos and Kevin Collier of CNBC reported the meme coin jumped more than 50% on the news, netting Trump and his allies nearly $900,000 in trading fees. Just before sunrise this morning, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat of New

York, and Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat of New Jersey, began a live streamed sit-in protest and discussion on the steps of the US Capitol to call attention to the Republicans' budget bill. On Friday, Alan Rappaport and Tony Rahm of the New York Times reported that the Republicans proposed 2026 budget would slash federal support for childcare, health research, education, housing

assistance, community development, and the elderly, and for foreign aid. Attacking woke programs, it appears to implement much of project 2025. Russell Vogt, who was the director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump's first term and has returned to that position in his second, was a key author of that playbook. Cuts to programs that protect ordinary Americans will help to fund the extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Extending those tax cuts will cost at least $4 trillion over the next decade. Congress returns to session tomorrow and it will take up the budget. In a statement, Jeffries and Booker said, Republican leaders have made clear their intention to use the coming weeks

to advance a reckless budget scheme to President Trump's desk that seeks to gut Medicaid, food assistance, and basic needs programs that help people, all to give tax breaks to billionaires. Throughout the day, Democratic lawmakers, activists, and passers-by join Jeffries and Booker's 12-hour sit-in. An AP-NORork poll released yesterday showed that Trump's approval rating has dropped to 39%. Today a Washington Post, ABC News, Ipsos poll confirmed that number. Trump's approval rating at almost a hundred days in office is the lowest of any president in 80 years. For his part, Trump announced today that he is bringing Columbus Day

back from the ashes. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.