NEWS: FDA Now Run By Don Jr.'s Hunting Buddy, ICE’s Nazi Recruitment Alarmed Cops
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A note on media diet: Great journalists work at legacy outlets. The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and BBC reported on important stories in this edition, yet operate under ownership structures that create real editorial pressure to push anti-democratic agendas or otherwise normalize Trump’s extremism. A healthy, pro-democracy media diet draws from the full spectrum of fact-based reporting while remaining clear-eyed about who owns what and why that matters. Discernment, the kind you’d use while reading labels in the store when seeking to feed your kids, is a must. This week, the outlets most worthy of your financial support are: The Intercept, Mother Jones, Talking Points Memo, 404 Media, The New Republic, NOTUS.
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Here’s what you may have missed:
CORRUPTION & SELF-DEALING
BBC, How Trump’s IRS settlement could block tax audits of him, his family and their businesses
The Justice Department settled Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit over leaked tax returns, then added a one-page document permanently blocking the IRS from auditing Trump, his family, and their businesses for any taxes filed before May 19, 2026. Legal experts say this violates federal law. The settlement also creates a $1.776 billion slush fund for Trump allies and January 6 rioters.
Why this matters: The president used the Justice Department to shield himself and his family from tax scrutiny, then created a nearly $2 billion fund he controls that is meant to reward political allies, like people who tried to overthrow the results of a free and fair election. It’s naked corruption.
NOTUS, What Donald Trump Knows About His Stock Investments
Trump personally signed a government document certifying he knows exactly what stocks he owns and is aware of the more than 3,500 individual trades he’s made between January and March—even as the White House and Trump Organization gave contradictory explanations about who manages his portfolio. Trump bought stock in companies that hold lucrative federal contracts, including Nvidia, Axon, and Palantir, and publicly promoted some of them after buying in. He called on Congress to ban stock trading by lawmakers, then attacked a senator who tried to extend that ban to the president. He also violated the STOCK Act’s 45-day disclosure deadline and paid a $200 fine.
Why this matters: The president controls federal contracts, regulations, and tariffs and is playing the market with information no private investor can access. It’s naked corruption.
Rolling Stone, Trump Taps Don Jr.’s 38-Year-Old Turkey-Hunting Pal to Lead FDA
Kyle Diamantas—a 38-year-old Florida lawyer with no medical degree whose main qualification appears to be hunting with Donald Trump Jr.—is now acting FDA commissioner, overseeing an agency that regulates products making up roughly a quarter of the U.S. economy. His predecessor was pushed out after resisting White House pressure to approve fruit-flavored vapes following Trump’s lunch with tobacco industry executives. DOGE cuts and leadership chaos have hollowed out the agency, allowing Diamantas to step in.
Why this matters: The agency responsible for the safety of America’s food and medicine is now run by the president’s son’s hunting buddy, installed after his predecessor was ousted for resisting tobacco industry pressure. It’s, you guessed it, naked corruption.
ICE & IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
The Intercept, ICE Recruitment Tweets Are So Racist That Cops Feared They Could Incite Neo-Nazi Violence
A counter-terrorism bulletin from Colorado law enforcement warned agencies nationwide that DHS social media posts recruiting for ICE were so loaded with white supremacist imagery that they were creating conditions for vigilante violence against immigrants. The bulletin flagged DHS’s use of a neo-Nazi anthem, the term “remigration” from 1930s Germany, and a KKK-coded meme. White supremacist forums responded by encouraging followers to infiltrate ICE and form a race-war militia. A former ICE official called the evidence “rather damning.”
Why this matters: The federal government is openly recruiting white supremacists and state level counter-terrorism officials are warning that it will lead to neo-Nazi violence. DHS is purposefully speaking the language of white supremacy, implying to extremists that they have support of the federal government.
The Guardian, All charges against Chicago protesters dropped in latest ICE case to unravel
Federal prosecutors dropped all charges against four people who were indicted for protesting outside a Chicago-area immigration detention center. The case fell apart after a judge found prosecutors had improperly altered grand jury transcripts. She said she had never seen that kind of behavior before and that “trust has been broken.” Charges were dismissed with prejudice, meaning they can’t be refiled. The judge is now considering sanctions against the U.S. attorney’s office.
Why this matters: The government built a felony case against people exercising First Amendment rights and it collapsed because prosecutors manipulated evidence. This is the latest Trump administration prosecution targeting immigration protesters to fall apart in court.
Politico, 10,000 rulings: The courts’ overwhelming rebuke of Trump’s ICE policies
Federal judges have ruled against ICE detention practices more than 10,000 times—roughly 90 percent of cases—since the agency declared last July that millions of long-term U.S. residents must be locked up without bond hearings while awaiting deportation. More than 425 judges, including a majority of Trump’s own appointees, have deemed this mandatory detention policy illegal. Cases include a nursing mother detained despite active refugee status, a 5-year-old picked up on his way home from school, and parents of U.S. military servicemembers. ICE has responded by brazenly defying court orders and the rule of law. For instance, ICE is moving detainees across state lines to force new legal proceedings and issuing after-the-fact warrants to make illegal arrests look legal on paper.
Why this matters: The Trump administration is detaining people it knows courts will rule are illegally imprisoned and doing it anyway. The federal government is habitually flouting the Constitution and ignoring the rule of law. Pretty bad in a democracy, huh?
404 Media, ICE Agents Have List of 20 Million People on Their iPhones Thanks to Palantir
A senior ICE official boasted at an industry conference that Palantir’s technology gives agents a list of 20 million potential targets on their iPhones. The official said Palantir raised ICE’s success rate in locating targets from 27 percent to nearly 80 percent, cutting investigative work from hours to 10-15 minutes by pulling from 30 to 40 datasets. More than 70 percent of people currently held in ICE detention have no criminal conviction. The same official said he had “a lot of money” and invited vendors to pitch him on LinkedIn.
Why this matters: The government has built a 20-million-person dragnet accessible from any agent’s phone, and is running it primarily against people with no criminal record. As we saw above, judges have ruled against these Palantir-driven detentions over 10,000 times. Taxpayer funded mass surveillance infrastructure is fueling illegal detentions.
The Guardian, Trump’s immigration crackdown could cost up to $479bn in lost taxes over 10 years
Trump’s immigration crackdown has scared hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants away from filing taxes—with some advisers reporting losing up to 75% of their clients this season. A IRS data-sharing deal with DHS (that a court eventually blocked) and the elimination of the child tax credit for undocumented parents removed both the safety and the incentive to file. Yale’s Budget Lab estimates the lost federal revenue could reach $479 billion over ten years. Undocumented immigrants paid an estimated $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022 alone, often at higher effective rates than citizens.
Why this matters: The lost tax revenue resulting from our fascist assault on immigrants is staggering.
The Washington Post, Trump offered White South Africans a new life. Thousands took him up on it.
The U.S. refugee program now admits almost exclusively white South Africans after Trump froze admissions for everyone else based on his false claim that a genocide is targeting them. Refugee workers say these arrivals look nothing like typical refugees: many are English-speaking, financially comfortable, and some had other legal pathways to the U.S. but chose the refugee route because it was faster. The administration wants to more than double the cap to 17,500, at a cost of $100 million more to taxpayers. The annual refugee limit is now 7,500 — the lowest in the program’s nearly 50-year history.
Why this matters: Trump gutted a program built to protect the world’s most desperate people and replaced it with a whites-only pipeline built on a debunked genocide claim. Congolese, Afghan, and Syrian refugees fleeing actual war zones have been left behind.
ELECTIONS & DEMOCRACY
The New Republic, The Election Fraudsters Who Will Follow in Tina Peters’s Footsteps
The debate over Colorado Governor Jared Polis commuting Tina Peters’s sentence is a distraction, the author argues—because Peters was never the real threat. Nearly 300 public officials attempted to overturn the 2020 election, and many still hold office. In Michigan, fake electors—including a now-sitting lieutenant governor—signed fraudulent Electoral College certificates. In Arizona, a state senator who called for violence at a white nationalist conference now chairs the Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee. With midterms approaching, the author warns that election subversion in 2026 is likeliest to come from local officials who have already shown what they’ll do.
Why this matters: Elected officials with documented records of election subversion still control the machinery of local elections. The midterms will be decided in precisely the places where these people hold sway. Too many pundits are telling the public that concerns over election interference are unfounded. This piece appropriately raises the alarm.
Talking Points Memo, Their Loved Ones Died for the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court’s Ruling Is a New Injustice.
The Supreme Court’s Callais v. Louisiana decision gutted what remained of the Voting Rights Act, and red states are now redrawing maps that could wipe out Black congressional representation across the South within Trump’s term. TPM spoke with families of Civil Rights martyrs—including the son of Vernon Dahmer, murdered by the KKK in 1966 for registering Black voters—who say the ruling has undone the one lasting change their relatives’ deaths produced. A historian told TPM this moment is “much more grave” than the post-Reconstruction Redemption era because, unlike then, there is now a single national leader coordinating the effort.
Why this matters: People were murdered so that Black Americans could vote. The Supreme Court has handed white supremacist politicians the legal tools to undermine the Black vote again.
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT & THE LAW
The Atlantic, A Department of Justice for an Age of Conspiracy Theories
The Justice Department has stopped operating as an institution grounded in facts and become an active player in right-wing propaganda. It rushes out criminal charges within days of MAGA influencers demanding action, settles lawsuits to validate conservative grievances, and crafts indictments built to generate outrage rather than win in court.
Why this matters: A Justice Department that uses indictments as propaganda corrodes the trust the entire legal system depends on. The government is a conspiracy theory machine not by accident. By sowing doubt amongst the public for a decade, about institutions, the press, science, and reality, Trump and his cronies have successfully created a nation in which truth becomes harder to discern. This opens up avenues of corruption for them and weakens the public ability to combat it.
ENVIRONMENT & PUBLIC HEALTH
The Guardian, Trump officials plan to repeal limits on ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water
The EPA announced plans to scrap Biden-era drinking water limits on four PFAS “forever chemicals” and delay standards for two others—reversing the first new federal drinking water protections in 27 years that were passed under Biden. The Biden limits were projected to reduce PFAS exposure for 100 million people and prevent thousands of deaths from cancer and cardiovascular disease. Lee Zeldin and RFK Jr. held a press conference to announce the rollback, with Kennedy claiming the administration wasn’t rolling back protections—even as it moved to eliminate them. PFAS are estimated to contaminate drinking water for more than 200 million Americans.
Why this matters: The administration is removing the only enforceable protections for 200 million Americans from chemicals linked to cancer and birth defects. The official leading the rollback claims to be protecting public health.
Mother Jones, We Are Bombarding America’s Forests With Roundup
A yearlong Mother Jones investigation found that glyphosate use in California’s forests has nearly quintupled over two decades. The investigation also revealed that Monsanto secretly ghostwrote key safety studies—including the Forest Service’s most-cited research paper—that regulators used to justify the spraying. That paper has since been retracted. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to boost glyphosate production and shield its maker from lawsuits, while cutting the research funding scientists need to study its harms.
Why this matters: The government’s case for spraying public forests with a carcinogen rests on research it now knows was faked by the manufacturer. The administration’s response has been to protect the company, cut safety research, and spray more.
Mother Jones, Locals Didn’t Think Roundup Was Being Sprayed Near Lake Tahoe. So I Went to Find Out.
While locals were told that Roundup spraying near Lake Tahoe had been delayed until 2028, a Mother Jones reporter drove out and found ski slopes already covered in dead vegetation from glyphosate application. The Forest Service confirmed the spraying had happened and that 2026 applications were either done or ongoing. The agency has authorized up to 584,000 pounds of glyphosate across 75,000 acres of the Caldor Fire scar. Trump used an executive order to more than double the scope of the project without public comment.
Why this matters: The federal government is soaking a beloved public watershed with a carcinogen and actively misled the public about it. Communities can’t fight back against what they’re not “allowed” to know.
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