Today in Trump

[TIC]

classic insider trading vibes

[Master]

classic insider trading vibes

It does feel like this which is just sick. People making $100 millions out of pensions and messing with people lives. They have no shame.

[Kirkland Laing]

classic insider trading vibes

It does feel like this which is just sick. People making $100 millions out of pensions and messing with people lives. They have no shame.

They were at it again on Friday night. They announced exemptions from the Chinese tariffs for smartphones and a few minutes before the nnouncements some people made huge bets that Apple stock would go up in the next twenty four hours. Just obvious naked corruption. Even the Democratic party have noticed. If they don't go full nuclear meltdown about this stuff it won't get through to the public at all though. For it to get through you'd have to have the Trump appointees at the SEC announce an investigation and the Trump appointees including the fifth amendment guy at the FBI to cooperate. So it's just going to continue.



Look at this:



Executives from cryptocurrency exchange Binance met with Treasury Department officials last month and discussed loosening U.S. government oversight on the company, while it was also exploring a business deal with a Trump family crypto venture, according to people familiar with the talks. The Binance executives asked Treasury officials in Washington to remove a U.S. monitor that oversees the exchange’s compliance with anti-money-laundering laws, some of the people said. The move would mark a first step toward returning the company, which in 2023 pleaded guilty to violating those laws, to the U.S. market.

Binance has also been in talks to list a new dollar-pegged cryptocurrency from World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture backed by President Trump’s family, other people familiar with the discussions said. Listing the token, known as a stablecoin, could catapult it into a huge market and potentially bring in billions in profit for the family. Those dealings mark the progression of a growing alliance between the Trump family and Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which paid a record $4.3 billion fine for allowing terrorists, drug traffickers and sanctioned actors to move billions of dollars through its exchange.


The Treasury talks took place after Binance had already begun discussing deals with representatives of the Trump family. For World Liberty, Binance’s market power could help turn it into a serious player in the crypto industry. Binance has more than 250 million users and processes some $65 billion in trades a day. The more of its USD1 stablecoins in circulation, the more the Trump family could profit from the assets underpinning the token’s value. Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer, reported $13 billion in profit last year.



The Trump family’s embrace of Binance captures a strange dynamic in the White House. The crypto tycoons that previous administrations pursued for helping the U.S. government’s foes move their funds—Russian sanctions evaders, Islamic terrorist groups, Mexican drug cartels, global fraud rings—are now doing business with the president and members of his inner circle.



https://www.wsj.com/finance/regulation/binance-world-liberty-financial-crypto-deals-70c817c3



President Donald Trump and his family have taken a interest in just about every corner of the crypto industry. There are nonfungible tokens and digital collectibles; a decentralized finance project; a proposed stablecoin; an effort at Bitcoin mining; and a pair of memecoins, one for the president and one for First Lady Melania Trump.

Taken together, the various projects are approaching $1 billion in paper gains even after accounting for the latest round of trade war-induced market gyrations, according to Bloomberg calculations based on publicly available data. Listen to the Here’s Why podcast on Apple, Spotify or anywhere you listen.

Donald Trump is already the richest person to have ever become US president, and his non-crypto holdings include significant investments in real estate. After his first election in 2016, Trump’s lawyers created a trust to handle his business affairs. That was managed by his two eldest sons and by Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of Trump’s real estate company. Eric Trump has emphasized that “there are no conflicts” related to the family’s crypto investments. “I don’t work with the White House,” Eric Trump said during a Bloomberg TV interview in April. “We’ve believed in crypto for a long time.”

This is after three months. There's another forty five to go. Imagine the depths we're going to see over the next few years. Now when you look at all this do you really think that this family is going to entertain the prospect of a rule of law government following them in 2028? It would be impossible not to prosecute them.


Imagine how Trump sees it. Even if he thinks he'll be long gone before his appeals to the guilty verdicts are exhausted he won't want his name destroyed and his family in prison and their assets all seized. There's no way once you start down this path, and it's a path that has nearly four years to run, that you're going to give up power voluntarily. Maybe it'll be different in America. Maybe it'll be different to every other case of backsliding democracies from history and the autocrat will voluntarily hand over power. I'm going to go with the percentage bet on this one though.



Oh yeah:

https://x.com/SykesCharlie/status/1910358565715312948



and here's the direction politics is heading in:



https://x.com/atrupar/status/1910378518820606365


People aren't yet understanding the situation we're in.

[Beanz]

The cognitive dissonance from Trumps defenders/supporters is off the charts. The two wings of the same bird stuff really does not apply here. From an outsider wtf has happened to the USA and the rule of law?

Nobody is going to risk visiting with him in charge. Just the utter contempt from Trumps administration for anyone who doesn't blow smoke up his arse is pretty shocking.

[Master]

A federal judge has given the Trump administration two weeks to submit evidence on how it is trying to return a Maryland man who officials have conceded was wrongly deported last month to a mega-prison in El Salvador.

Judge Paula Xinis accused government officials of inaction in the case of Salvadoran national Kilmar Ábrego García, warning "there will be no tolerance for gamesmanship".

She said she would decide if the government acted in good faith or was in contempt of court.

The Supreme Court has ordered the administration to "facilitate" the 29-year-old's release, though El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said on a visit to the White House he did not "have the power" to return him.

The Trump administration maintains Mr Ábrego García has ties to the MS-13 gang, which has been designated a foreign terrorist designation. His legal team denies this and says he has never been charged with any crime.

On Tuesday, Judge Xinis told justice department lawyers at a Greenbelt, Maryland, court hearing: "To date, what the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing."

"Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments," she said, adding: "I expect all hands on deck."

She said she would require four officials with the US homeland security department and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to answer questions under oath by 23 April.

Judge Xinis, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, last Friday requested daily updates from the government about steps they are taking to return Mr Ábrego García.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c793vwrrgjwo

[Master]

Former President Barack Obama is applauding Harvard University's decision to refuse the White House's demands that it change its policies or lose federal money, in his first social media post to criticise the Trump administration since at least Inauguration Day.

President Donald Trump is freezing more than $2bn (£1.5bn) in federal funds for Harvard because it would not make changes to its hiring, admissions and teaching practices that his administration said were key to fighting antisemitism on campus.

Obama, a Harvard alum, described the freeze as "unlawful and ham-handed".

He called on other institutions to follow Harvard's lead in not conceding to Trump's demands.

"Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions – rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect," Obama wrote on social media.

The former president, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991, has rarely criticised or rebuked government officials or government policies on social media since leaving the White House almost a decade ago. His posts during the election typically extolled Trump's challenger, then-Vice-President Kamala Harris, and since Inauguration Day, he has mainly posted tributes, personal messages and thoughts on sports.

Obama is one of a handful of US political figures and university officials now speaking out against the Trump administration's attempts to reshape the country's top universities, through pressure to change what they teach and who they hire and threats to cut research funding.

Hundreds of faculty members at Yale University, published a letter expressing their support for Harvard's decision to reject the Trump administration's demands.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0w2656x33o

[Kirkland Laing]

If a penniless and backward China was willing to face down America at the zenith of its global power in 1950, China is hardly likely to roll over today now that it is the world’s industrial hegemon and financial creditor – with some $6 trillion (£4.5 trillion) of foreign exchange assets, once you include the opaque holdings of state-owned banks.
“How has it ever been possible in history that the world’s largest creditor would be defeated by the world’s largest debtor?” asks Uncle Ming.
Well, indeed. America’s savings rate has collapsed to 0.6pc of GDP. The US treasury depends on foreign investors to fund a national debt rising higher than ever before, already 122pc of GDP with a structural fiscal deficit of 6pc to 7pc as far as the eye can see.
The treasury must roll over 33pc of its $36 trillion federal debt over the next 12 months.
China had nothing to do with last week’s Treasury rout, the defining fiasco of Donald Trump’s mad antics. There were plenty of other reasons: a disorderly unwinding of the “basis trade” by hedge funds caught flat-footed; and above all the capitulation of Republican deficit hawks in Congress, willing to go along with a budget gimmick that lets America slash taxes and spend trillions more that it cannot afford.
But it is easy to see how China could create panic just before Treasury auctions if it wished to do so.
Did Trump have any idea what he was doing when he launched his tariff war against China, jauntily shutting down the anchor trading relationship of the international system?
One might have thought that the political pain threshold of the totalitarian, web-controlling Chinese Communist Party was infinitely higher than the threshold of Walmart-shopping Maga America or Republican politicians facing midterm elections next year. And equally that Xi Jinping has much to gain from defiantly refusing to “kiss ass”, as Trump delicately puts it.




Exports to the US have fallen from a peak of 6.7pc of Chinese GDP in the early 2000s to 2.7pc today.
Almost 86pc of Chinese exports now go to the rest of the world. The maritime Silk Road is turning much of the Global South into a Chinese economic system.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations alone is a bigger market for China than the US. Most of the Mid-East is now listed as pro-China or leaning-China on the geopolitical map of Capital Economics.




I am not amongst those who think China is automatically destined for economic supremacy. It has overinvested chronically in excess capacity. It faces debt deflation and the onset of Japanification. It is formidable in whole sectors of technology but it is also brittle, rigid, fear-based, and cursed by the pathologies of party dictatorship.
The liberal democracies have everything to play for. China wins the 21st century only if the West commits suicide, and that is exactly what Trump is urging upon us.
However, much of China’s $500bn export trade to the US is expendable. Shipping toys, furniture, shoes, and clothes for bargain sales in US supermarkets is not profitable. Nor is it the market niche that China wants as a rising hi-tech power.
“It’s time for all these low-value businesses that sell to Walmart to close,” said Andy Xie, a former Morgan Stanley banker .
As my colleague Szu Ping Chan reports, there is a whole school of economists in China arguing that the “Trump shock” is exactly what China needs to break out of the middle income trap and jump up the value ladder.
So who suffers most political stress from a total and violent economic decoupling? Xi’s tightly controlled China; or Trump’s febrile, restless America, where 100m consumers live on maxed-out credit cards and zero savings, acutely vulnerable to a price spike in day-to-day goods, with no safety margin if they lose their jobs?




Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, says China is “playing with a pair of twos”, which is one way to describe its stranglehold over critical minerals and much of the resource base of the 21st century hi-tech economy.
“The US civilian economy is totally disorganised and has no coherent plan if China cuts off rare earth supply,” said Jack Lifton, chairman of the Critical Minerals Institute.
China has already restricted exports of gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite over the last two years, and has now widened the list.
This stranglehold is no accident of the free market or geography. China has pursued a strategic policy to knock out rivals via predatory dumping and compelled its own smelting companies to overbuild refining capacity.
As is by now well known, it has gained 90pc control over the rare earth supply chain needed for robots, semiconductors, aviation, magnets, radar, electric vehicles, 5G & 6G wireless, power electronics, you name it.
China’s sway over global sources of lithium, cobalt, nickel is weaker, but Washington has clearly been asleep at the wheel. Trump is right about that.
The rational policy for the US is to build up its own processing industry over the next decade and to contract long-term supply from the likes of Canada and Australia. Instead, Trump has punched allies in the face, and launched his war with China before the US is ready for the consequences. He has the sequencing entirely backwards.
Joe Biden did the exact opposite. He strove to bring America back from industrial death first, calibrating the US showdown with China at manageable levels.
He showered $280bn on semiconductor fabs to repatriate America’s chip industry from Asia, and to combat China’s push for supremacy in quantum computing, space, biotech, and materials technology. He teed up what would have been a turbo-blast of $1 trillion to electrify America and to stop China running away with the booming world market for clean tech.
Trump persists in telling the world that he will not retreat on tariffs and that “nobody is getting off the hook”. But markets are heavily discounting everything he now says.
They can see that he backed down against Canada and Mexico after discovering that US car prices would go through the roof, and that he dared not pull the trigger on full tariffs against Europe, and that he immediately unpicked his own embargo against China after discovering that a US-made iPhone would cost $3,000.
All but a diminishing band of Trumpian fellow travellers around the world can see, in short, that his bluff has been called. China just has to grit its teeth, like the 15th Corps at Triangle Hill, and wait until Trump’s voters can see it too.

[Kirkland Laing]

Ont eh plus side Elon has gobbled up billions of dollars of every American's data for his own personal use, sacked a bunch of people in critical government research and data collection etc where he and his friends can start new businesses to replace and bill the government, shut down the IRS oversight of wealthy people which the IRS reckon will lose hundreds of billions a year in tax receipts, shut down most of the CFPB which has saved Americans hundreds of billions in charges from the financial industry and so on and so on. So tens of billions in savings and hundreds of billions in lost tax revenue means an actual increase in the deficit after he's finished plus all the above.

If only America had an actual opposition party that had access to various media and was capable of communicating what is happening to the public.

Trump crypto rundown:

https://www.citationneeded.news/trump-crypto-empire/

[Beanz]

Is this a genuine Whitehouse reply?

FB_IMG_1745049108485.jpg

[Beanz]

FB_IMG_1745130756466.jpg

[TitoFan]

Trump now going after the Federal Reserve Chair....


https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...d=BingNewsSerp

"Trump gripes about interest rates and says Fed Chair Powell’s 'termination cannot come fast enough'"

[Saddo]

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[Kirkland Laing]

This post requires you to click the Thanks button to read this content. This post requires you to click the Likes button to read this content. This post requires you to click the Dislikes button to read this content.

[Kirkland Laing]

Trump now going after the Federal Reserve Chair....


https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...d=BingNewsSerp

"Trump gripes about interest rates and says Fed Chair Powell’s 'termination cannot come fast enough'"

He needs a scapegoat. He's fucked the economy up and needs somebody to blame for what's coming. He'll have been told repeatedly that going after Powell will make things worse but he's done it anyway to give himself somebody to blame.

If Bernie had won in 2024 and had carried out the exact same economic policies in the same way there would have already been a coup.

How things are going:

Donald Trump’s nominee to run the IRS, Representative Billy Long, just had a six-figure debt paid off by campaign donors, all of whom happen to have tax issues with the IRS.

https://x.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1912680089730359408



the american electoral system is basically 500,000 information-resistant people across a handful of states taking a guess and then going "haha! oops!" every two years. this process takes 18 months and costs four trillion dollars every time

https://bsky.app/profile/paleofuture.../3lmzcutmbo22j



This honestly is perhaps the most insane thing we’ve heard since Jan 20. Musk, Thiel and Luckey want the US to pay for the creation of this network of surveillance and attack lasers and then the Pentagon will become a subscriber to the service. So the US won’t own our own missile defense.

https://bsky.app/profile/joshtpm.bsk.../3ln7csmodrc2a



It’s remarkable how many different authoritarian portents get packed into the news agenda of each individual day:

https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1914759278742605827



Worth clicking on the above links.



Finally, draining the swamp:



Trump’s return sparks a K Street gold rush

Lobbying revenues were up nearly across the board during the first three months of 2025, with a handful of firms cashing in on their ties to the president and his inner circle.
Donald Trump’s return to Washington lit a new fire under an already-hot lobbying market, but no firms experienced a bigger boon in the first quarter than those with close ties to the president, according to a POLITICO analysis of disclosure filings.
Lobbying revenues were up nearly across the board during the first three months of 2025 for many of K Street’s top shops, as Trump steamed into office and immediately began pumping out executive orders, targeting perceived enemies and moving to upend global trade and geopolitical alignments before sometimes retreating abruptly.
The huge payday for K Street also comes as congressional Republicans roll back key Biden-era regulations, dig in on regulating the cryptocurrency and AI industries,attempt to extend Trump’s prized 2017 tax breaks and enact the president’s domestic agenda. And that’s not to mention the upheaval and confusion caused by Elon Musk’s slashing of federal programs and the federal workforce.






Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, whose $16.4 million in lobbying revenues were second only to Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s $16.8 million, saw its strongest quarter ever, according to Brian Pomper, the co-head of Akin’s lobbying practice. Akin’s lobbying revenues were up more than 12 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2024 and almost 19 percent compared to the same period a year ago. Their new lobbying registrations last quarter were about triple the average number of new registrations per quarter in 2024.
The biggest story in the numbers, though, is the handful of firms that are cashing in on their ties to the president and his inner circle.
Among these Trump-connected firms, Continental Strategy saw the biggest boost to its business, relative to previous quarters. Continental brought in more than $3.6 million in lobbying revenues in the first quarter of the year. That’s up almost tenfold from last quarter, when the firm disclosed earning $373,000. During the same period in 2024, Continental reported just $128,000 in lobbying revenues. Carlos Trujillo, a former Trump campaign adviser, founded Continental in 2021, and the firm has also added former Marco Rubio staffer Alberto Martinez and recently promoted Katie Wiles, the daughter of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.








The longtime head of another top-20 lobbying practice mused that “the industry has developed a new type of firm” that is eating into “the ‘normal’ transition” that follows turnover in Washington — an apparent reference to the scale of the surge in business for those hyper-connected Trump firms.
As POLITICO reported yesterday, Ballard Partners saw its lobbying revenues skyrocket to $14 million in the first quarter of the year, compared to $4.3 million a year ago. The increase was enough to vault Ballard Partners, which is led by top Trump fundraiser Brian Ballard, from 16th in the revenue rankings for all of 2024 to fourth in the revenue rankings for the first quarter.
Also making it into the top 20 this year are Miller Strategies and Mercury Public Affairs, which employs former Trump adviser Bryan Lanza and previously employed Susie Wiles. Miller pulled in $7.2 million in lobbying fees last quarter — an 80 percent increase compared to the fourth quarter and a 152 percent increase compared to the first quarter of 2024. And Mercury saw its lobbying revenues more than double, to $5.2 million, since the end of 2024.
Lobbying revenues at Michael Best Strategies — which counts Reince Priebus in its leadership ranks — increased by almost 70 percent quarter-over-quarter, to $2.1 million, while several other firms with contingents of well-connected GOP lobbyists saw boosts as well. The all-Republican firm CGCN Group reported $3.8 million in lobbying income last quarter, up 47 percent from the fourth quarter of 2024. S-3 Group saw its lobbying revenues increase by 45 percent, to $5.6 million. Squire Patton Boggs, Vogel Group and BGR Group reported increases of nearly a quarter compared to the final three months of 2024.











https://www.politico.com/news/2025/0...-rush-00305069

[Spicoli]