Letters from an American - Pay-To-Play

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

September 23, 2026When Trump returned to the White House in 2025, he fired the investigators in the anti-corruption group of the FBI who were investigating Sen. Susan Collins for engaging in a pay-to-play scheme, He largely stopped investigating public corruption, The Gilded Age was known for lawmakers rewarding business followers with government contracts and political office, The relationship between MAGA Republicans and the misuse of tax dollars is becoming more obvious, HHS Secretary Kennedy has taken funds from his department’s Office of Minority Health to fund security for himself, Kennedy has accepted gifts and his wife has accepted consulting fees from allies, Tax dollars are being used to pay authoritarian governments for imprisoning immigrants from the US, The administration is reversing its previous emphasis on resettling refugees, focusing instead on expelling them, often to places where they will be tortured, and all with little oversight, In Texas, an ICE agent shot a Venezuelan food delivery driver who had a valid work permit, The ICE agent was a recent hire, among those hired when the workforce was doubled after billions of dollars were provided by Congress, The NSF, NOAA, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality are all running far behind in funding for the fiscal year, Trump’s ballroom will cost taxpayers more than $300 million, in spite of his early promises, And the ballroom’s design does not meet fire codes, a concern that Trump dismissed.To read this letter, click here.Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyGet full, free access to Letters from an American here.You can also find Heather:YouTubeBlueskyInstagramFacebookThreadsTikTok Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

Hello, this is Michael Moss. Heather Cox Richardson is unable to read the letter today, so I will be reading it in her place. September 23, 26. Yesterday, William Turton, Avi Asher Shapiro, Molly Redden, and Kristen Berg of ProPublica published a blockbuster story reporting that the Anti-Corruption Group of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating Senator Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine, for engaging in a pay-to-play scheme in which defense contractor Navitech made illegal donations to her 2020 campaign and later got multi-million dollar contracts from the government. Collins is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. And yet, the story continues, when he returned to the White House in 2025,

Trump fired the investigators building the case and largely stopped investigating public corruption. While the primary witness in the case was Martin Cow, the man who allegedly engaged in the bribery, the pro-Publica journalists corroborated much of Cow's account through public records, FBI evidence, and interviews with people who worked with Navitech and the FBI. Collins' deputy chief of staff, Annie Clark, said Collins's office vigorously denies allegations of bribery and pay-to-play, but she did admit that the Collins campaign disgorged the illegal contributions that Martin Cow had made without our knowledge. Emails suggest that, in fact, her office did know about the deal. After a $150,000 donation,

nation, a staff member from her office emailed a lobbyist for Navitech to ask for Cow's phone number, writing, Senator Collins would like to call Martin to thank him. Although the story's authors report that Navitech never produced a product the military needed, it did in fact receive millions in defense contracts. The bribery angle of this story is huge. So too is that the stories suggest that Trump, at least, might perceive that he has something to hold over Collins's head to keep her behind his actions, even when they have dramatically weakened her power at the head of appropriations. The 1873 novel The Gilded Age, a tale of today, by Charles Dudley Warner and Mark Twain that gave the late 19th century its nickname, was not about the riches of the

industrialists who came to be known as robber barons, it was about the political corruption of the era. In the book, Unrupulous Speculators bribed Congressman. A congressional appropriation costs money, a railroad man tells a naive youth who wonders where a $200,000 appropriation has gone. He listed the bribes his project required and noted that the high moral lawmakers cost more than the usual ones. It was an era in which lawmakers lived by the spoils system, as in to the victors go the spoils. Lawmakers at the time rewarded their business followers with government contracts and put supporters into political office. The businessmen and officials, in turn, would hire workers on the condition they voted for the party the boss supported. Every good man looks after his friends, as one

politician put it? The U.S. outlawed the spoils system in 1883 after a disappointed office seeker assassinated President James Garfield, replacing it with the Merit-based Civil Service Reform Act, or Pendleton Act. Trump has ripped up those civil service protections, making much of the government staff again political appointees. Curiously, at the United Nations yesterday, Trump used the phrase, to the victor belong the spoils. The relationship between the MAGA Republican agenda and the misuse of tax dollars

is becoming more and more obvious since ProPublica ran the story last November of how contracts from the Department of Homeland Security appeared to be going to those personally tied to then Homeland Security Secretary, Christine Nome, and her ally, Corey Lewandowski. In July 26, Tarini Party, Josh Dawsey, Michelle Hackman, and Summer Syed of the Wall Street Journal confirmed that Lewandowski effectively controlled billions in spending at Homeland Security.

Lewandowski responded, somewhat half-heartedly, that the story was just another example of the kind of anonymous source, politically driven reporting that Americans have seen time and again, and emphasized that he was a volunteer in advancing this administration's agenda. Stories of the Trump administration's misuse of taxpayer money are starting to drop fast and furious. Yesterday, Liz Esley White of the Wall Street Journal reported that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., funded enhanced security for himself by taking funds from the Department's Office of Minority Health. White notes that the Reagan administration created the Office of Minority Health after a landmark report showed that black life expectancy in the U.S. was shorter

than white Americans, and that black babies were more likely than white babies to die. Christina Jewett and Cheryl Gays Stolberg of the New York Times reported today that over the past year, Kennedy has also accepted $4 million in book advances and more than $270,000 in gifts from allies connected to the Make America Healthy or Maha movement interested in changes to government policies. Kennedy's wife, Cheryl Hines, accepted 200,000. $110,000 in consulting fees from a Maha advocacy group. On a far larger scale is the use of tax dollars to pay authoritarian governments to imprison immigrants from the United States who are not their own citizens.

On Monday, David Nakamura and Adam Taylor of the Washington Post reported that the State Department's Office of Remigration has pledged at least 400,000. million dollars to facilitate third country renditions to expel migrants that U.S. courts say cannot be returned to their home countries for fear they will be harmed or killed. So the U.S. has sent more than 25,000 people to at least 28 third countries, including Eswatini, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, and Sierra Leone. a fee. That money includes $81 million in direct payments to 13 foreign governments, as well as funding for agencies that will then contribute to those countries. Those countries either imprison the

migrants or send them back to their home countries, a loophole that enables the administration to get around the prohibition on the U.S. sending them there. Last Friday, a federal appeals Court found that this policy is unlawful. The administration will appeal to the Supreme Court. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has ordered the deals, and Christian Earhart, a State Department official, has secured them. Nakamura and Taylor explained that the Office of Remigration, the word Remigration, is popular with white nationalists who seek to expel racial minorities and immigrants through ethnic cleansing, reverses the previous U.S. emphasis on resettling refugees,

and instead focuses on expelling them, including into places where there is strong evidence they will be tortured. The administration is locking in those deals as quickly as possible, the journalist report, exercising minimal oversight over how the money is spent and how the migrants are treated, even though some of the third countries, are ruled by authoritarian regimes. A former State Department official

who left the department over the policy told Nakamura and Taylor that the administration wanted fast money with no strings attached. The whole point was to circumvent congressional notification that money was being sent to a government known to be corrupt. The plan appears to be to create such terror in migrant communities that people here self-deport and other, are afraid to come.

Aaron Reiklin Melnick of the American Immigration Council notes that Congress should demand answers from those responsible for diverting taxpayer funding intended to protect people from persecution to some of the world's worst authoritarian for purposes which clearly violate human rights. On Sunday, an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, shot Wilbur Rafael Garces Perez, a Venezuelan food delivery driver in the back in Austin, Texas. With a bullet still lodged in his body, he was discharged from a hospital to ICE custody, where he spent the night in pain on a cold floor.

Nick Miroff of the Atlantic reported yesterday that the officer was a recent hire who was not wearing a body camera, despite the promise of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen, that all ICE agents would wear cameras. News outlets reported that the officer had been issued one. The Department of Homeland Security set out to add 10,000 new agents last year after Congress provided billions of dollars to double the ICE workforce. Ice ramped up its hiring by offering $50,000 signing bonuses and cutting normal vetting procedures, sometimes not even checking fingerprints or identities or conducting a job interview. David Brulett, the ICE officer with a volatile history, who killed Johann Sebastian Doran Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine in July, was also a recent hire.

On September 15th, Alex Horton, Joyce Sohoun Lee, Maria Cicetti, and Ted Heson of the Washington Post reported that ICE has been quietly firing some of those hastily hired. ICE told the Washington Post reporters, ICE is hiring the best of the best to go after the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens, including drug traffickers, murderers, and pedophiles. When individuals fall short of that standard, personnel decisions are made. This is standard practice in almost every American workplace. Officials told Miroff that the agents who stopped Garces Perez

used a commercial database and federal immigration file that identified the man's plates as belonging to someone with an outstanding deportation order. His lawyer said he had a valid work permit and is an asylum seeker, and that the deportation order came because notice of his immigration Court hearing was sent to the wrong address. After a public outcry, officials took Garcés Perez back to the hospital on Monday. Ryan Quinn of Inside Higher Ed reported Monday that the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Agency for Healthcare Research

and Quality, are running far behind where they should be in terms of funding for the fiscal year, which ends on September 30th. Trump fired the board of the National Science Foundation, or NSF, in April, and the foundation is now effectively being run by the White House Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, a former NSF board member told Quinn. The director of OMB is Russell Vote, a key author of Project 2025, and OMB is directing the agency to direct its grant-making dollars in ways that are very different from federal law as passed by Congress in its budget, the former board member said.

Quinn noted that Nature attributed the funding shortfall mainly to the agency keeping more than $1 billion in an account, much of which is for the White House's grand research challenges project, which is meant to support specific fields, including artificial intelligence. The Trump family and the president's allies are heavily invested in the AI sector. And then there are Trump's vanity projects. Even before Trump announced that the American taxpayer wouldn't pay a dime for the White House ballroom project, the administration had already signed contracts that put the American taxpayer on the hook for more than $300 million. for it. Today, Sarah Blaskey and Jonathan O'Connell of the Washington Post reported that James McCrary

the second, the first architect on Trump's ballroom, resigned when Trump insisted on a design that did not meet fire codes. Normally, White House construction would be managed by federal agencies required by law to comply with building safety codes, but White House officials have routed the bowlers. room through the tiny executive residence office that is exempt from rules because it is not a federal agency. McCrary warned that Trump's design did not have enough emergency exits or measures to contain a fire, which could spread quickly from the kitchen below the ballroom to the event space above it, and pointed out that the design was not up to code. Trump waved off his concerns. I am the code. I am the Code, he said.

Letters from an American was written by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead of Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.