Letters from an American - May 5, 2025

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

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May 5th, 2025. On a social media feed yesterday evening, President Donald J. Trump announced he was directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt Alcatraz to house America's most ruthless and violent offenders. The reopening of Alcatraz will serve as a symbol of law, order, and justice. We will make America great again. No one is reopening the island of Alcatraz as a federal prison. Officials closed it in 1963 after 29 years of operation because it was too expensive to operate, more than three times as expensive as any other federal prison. Since then it has become one of the most popular sites of the National Park Service, located as it is in San Francisco Bay, easily accessible by ferry.

It feels rather as if Trump is throwing any strong words he can at the wall to distract from a series of news stories that are not going his way. One of those stories is that Trump's popularity is falling in rural areas which make up his base. That popularity is unlikely to rebound quickly as rural areas are being hardest hit by the administration's cuts. It's possible Trump hopes that throwing the word Alcatraz in all caps at those voters will remind them that he is supposed to be the president who will crack down on the immigrants he insists are dangerous criminals. But seven journalists from the Washington Post reported yesterday that many of the men rendered from the US to El Salvador were in the US legally and were complying with US immigration rules. Furthermore, although the Trump administration said

it had to send the men to El Salvador because Venezuela would not take them back, the journalists reported that Venezuela refused the transfer only after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act. Trump's proclamation said that property belonging to those he deems enemies is subject to seizure and forfeiture, and Venezuela was not willing to send planes under those circumstances. Since then, the Washington Post journalists report, Venezuela has accepted at least two deportation flights a week.

When asked about the initial flights to El Salvador, the White House fell back on the argument that rendering the migrants to El Salvador was Trump's prerogative under the president's power to manage foreign affairs, a prerogative the Supreme Court protected in its 2024 Donald J. Trump v. United States decision, saying that the president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his official acts.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told the Washington Post journalists the administration would not detail counterterrorism operations and foreign policy negotiations with foreign countries for the press. Also commanding attention these days is the corruption in the Trump administration centering around Trump and the Trump family. In The Times yesterday, Dominic Lawson recalled that Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, wrote that Trump admired Russian President Vladimir Putin primarily for his ability to take over an entire nation and run it like it was his personal company, like the Trump Organization, in fact. Lawson observed that Trump was not fully able to realize

that dream in his first term, but now he is indeed running the US government as an extended arm of the Trump Organization. There is the easy-to-understand corruption, like Trump's exempting the products of his big oil donors from tariffs, slashing the division of the Internal Revenue Service that audits high-earning individuals and corporations, or offering businessmen a one-on-one meeting with him at Mar-a-Lago for $5 million, or a group dinner for $1 million. Then there is the more complicated corruption involving business deals with foreign governments. The Constitution spells out that no person

holding any office of profit or trust under the United States shall, without the consent of Congress, accept any present, emolument, office, or title of any kind whatever from any king, prince or foreign state. An emolument is a profit, fee, salary or advantage. On January 10th, 2025, shortly before the start of a second term, Judd Legum of Popular Information explains today, Trump simply released an ethics agreement that prohibited the Trump Organization from making deals with foreign governments. Already, Legum reports, the Trump Organization has violated that agreement.

Last Thursday, it cut a deal with Qatari DR, a company established by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund in 2005, to coordinate the country's real estate development priorities. Together with Saudi Arabian company Darglobal, which has close ties to the Saudi government, the Qatari company will build a $5.5 billion Trump International Golf Club in Qatar. And then there is the massive corruption of the Trump family's involvement in cryptocurrency. As Lawson points out, the Trumps control World Liberty Financial, which has its own cryptocurrency, dollar sign WLFI. Foreign nationals who are barred from donations to American political campaigns have

invested in that coin. One of them is China-born billionaire Justin Sun, who was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission when Trump took office, bought $75 million in the coins, and then successfully lobbied for a pause in the SEC case to negotiate a settlement. World Liberty Financial also produces a different cryptocurrency, USD1, which is known as a stablecoin because it is pegged to the dollar. Last Thursday, May 1st, a founder of World Liberty Financial announced that an investment firm backed by the government of the United Arab Emirates would use USD1 to complete a $2 billion deal with Binance. Binance is the world's biggest

cryptocurrency exchange. It's monitored by the U.S. government because in 2023 it admitted to money laundering. Binance's founder, Chang Peng Zhao, has asked Trump for a presidential pardon. As David Yoffie Bellamy reported in the New York Times, investors deposit money in stablecoins because their value is pegged to a state-backed currency and thus fluctuates very little. The stablecoin owner makes money by using that deposit to invest for returns that the stablecoin owner then keeps. Yoffie Bellany notes that although the details of the UAE World Liberty financial deal are opaque, it appears that World Liberty now has $2 billion in deposits to invest.

Those funds alone could generate tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue for the Trump family and its partners at World Liberty. Yoffie Bellany also notes that the partnership signals to investors around the world that working with a Trump-associated company can pay off. The dollar sign WLFI and USDICOINs are separate from the dollar sign Trump meme coin that the president launched on January 17, 2025, just before he took office, in which the Financial Times estimates had netted about $350 million by early March. By late April, it had fallen 88% from its high.

Trump then offered the top 220 holders of the coin an intimate private dinner with the president, bumping up sales and making an estimated $900,000 in trading fees. Trump is also getting hammered on his tariffs and his frustration is showing. The president appears to like monkeying with tariffs because unless Republicans take back Congress's power to manage tariffs, he can just make a decree and watch the world jump. But the economic effects have shocked Americans. That shock is encapsulated in

the news beginning to sink in that toys are highly dependent on trade with China. 80% of the toys sold in the U.S. come from there. 96% of U.S. toy manufacturers are small businesses, highly dependent on supply chains from other countries. Christmas orders should already be underway, but because of the tariffs, they are not. Trump has taken to arguing that girls need fewer dolls. Representative David Joyce, a Republican of Ohio, acknowledged this morning on CNN that Christmas trade is already slowing down, but added, "'I think American people will understand that

"'because American people understand shared sacrifice.'" Americans who didn't realize they were going to be asked to sacrifice, Trump promised that foreign countries would pay for tariffs after all have been pushing back against the tariffs. Apparently angry at being asked how trade negotiations are going Trump last night told reporters on Air Force One at the end of this I'll set my own deals because

I set the deal. They don't set the deal, I set the deal. They've been ripping us off for years. I set the deal. I'm going to be setting the deal. I'll be setting the tariff." Last night in a social media post Trump announced that foreign-made films are a national security threat and said he would institute a 100% tariff on any and all movies coming into our country that are produced in foreign lands. Today the White House walked the announcement back. And then there is the signal scandal which got even worse yesterday when Joseph Cox and Michael Lee of 404 media reported that a hacker was able to breach the TeleMessage app administration

officials have been using in about 15 to 20 minutes. TeleMessage is a clone of Signal that has the additional ability to archive messages. The hacker retrieved messages, usernames and passwords, and data related to customs and border protection and banking institutions. The hacker did not retrieve all it was possible to see, but could have done so, making the point that the system is not secure. This afternoon, the company that owns TeleMessage announced it was suspending service. Today, likely reacting to voter sentiment and looking to 2028, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp

announced he would not challenge Democratic Senator John Ossoff for Ossoff's seat in 2026. Also today, at a meeting to announce that Washington, D.C. will host the 2027 National Football League draft, Trump confirmed that he suddenly decided to announce he was reopening Alcatraz because the words sounded strong. It represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order. Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is I would say the ultimate, right? Alcatraz. Sing Sing and Alcatraz. The movies. Nobody's ever escaped from Alcatraz and just represented something strong having to do with law and order. We need law and order in this country and so we're going to

look at it. Some of the people up here are going to be working very hard on that, and we had a little conversation. I think it's going to be very interesting. We'll see if we can bring it back in large form, add a lot, but I think it represents something. Right now, it's a big hulk that's sitting there rusting and rotting. You look at it, it's sort of, you saw that picture that was put out, it's sort of amazing, but it sort of represents something that's both horrible

and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak. And it's got a lot of qualities that are interesting and I think they make a point. 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.