Date: 2025-08-22 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028377
NEWS
THE NEW REPUBLIC (TNR) ... APRIL 17TH 2025
TNR: The New Republic ... Breaking News from Washington and beyond
THE NEW REPUBLIC (TNR) ... APRIL 17TH 2025
TNR: The New Republic ... Breaking News from Washington and beyond
Original article: https://newrepublic.com/article/193291/trump-disappearing-students-rumeysa-ozturk-rubio-biggest-scandal
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
Written by Marin Scotten and others
April 17, 2025/1:00 p.m. ET
- Elon Musk’s New Donations Are Disturbing Sign for the Courts
- Elon Musk is trying to flip the courts in Donald Trump’s (and his own) favor.
- Elon Musk sits in Donald Trump’s Cabinet meeting at the White House
Elon Musk knows which members of Congress detest the courts as much as he does, and he wants to keep them around.
The billionaire gave more than $144,000 to more than two dozen Congress members who support impeaching judges or restricting their power, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. It’s rare to give money to candidates this soon before a midterm election, and an indication that Musk will do everything he can to help the GOP stay in power.
Some House members, such as Representative Brandon Gill of Texas, got the money from Musk almost immediately after introducing legislation to punish various judges. “I just introduced Articles of Impeachment against radical activist Judge James Boasberg,” Gill wrote on X on March 18. “He is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors and should be removed from office.” The next day, Musk gave Gill’s committee $6,600, the Post reported.
Musk donated the same amount, which is the upper limit of the per-race maximum, to Senator Chuck Grassley, who is also pushing to impeach Boasberg, and Representative Derrick Van Orden, who introduced a bill to impeach U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer.
As the Trump administration faces a flurry of lawsuits, Musk is desperately trying to discredit judges who rule against the president. He’s called for the impeachment of judges who tried to block the Department of Government Efficiency’s unlawful dismantling of federal agencies, offered people money to sign a petition against “activist judges,” and made dozens of ludicrous claims against his judicial enemies on social media.
“This is a judicial coup,” Musk posted on X in mid-March, after a judge blocked Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military. “We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people.”
Musk’s $144,000 contribution may not seem like much right now, but his financial support for candidates this soon before the 2026 midterm elections is a bad sign for the courts. He’s playing the long game and is doing everything he can to bolster the GOP’s relentless attack on the rule of law for years to come.
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Read about the last time Elon Musk attacked a judge:
Elon Musk May Actually Have Screwed Himself in Wisconsin Election
Edith Olmsted / April 17, 2025/12:20 p.m. ET Share This Story Trump Has Eyewateringly Corrupt Scheme to Get Rich Off Tariffs Donald Trump has found a way to cash in on his tariffs. Donald Trump smiles while walking outside the White House
Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Donald Trump has a new scheme for making money off of the sweeping tariffs he rapidly imposes, adjusts, and delays, first reported by independent journalist Judd Legum.
Trump Media and Technology Group unveiled a “suite” of thematic “Truth Social-branded Separately Managed Accounts” that it had crafted in collaboration with Yorkville America Equities and Index Technologies Group.
The investment portfolios were organized around the themes of “Faith & Values,” “Liberty & Security,” “Energy Independence,” and “Made in America.”
TMTG CEO Devin Nunes said that the SMAs were designed to meet investors’ demand “to support a wide range of outstanding, non-woke, and innovative companies across key sectors of the U.S. economy.”
It’s not clear what specific assets will be in each portfolio. “Made in America” is likely to contain stocks associated with American manufacturers, while “Liberty & Security” could contain assets for defense contractors and private prisons, which stand to make a killing off of Trump’s massive deportation scheme.
But Trump’s position as a shareholder of TMTG presents a clear conflict of interest, considering the amount of power he has to roil the stock market. Since entering office, Trump has demonstrated the ability to manipulate the value of any particular stock by simply announcing a tariff or exemption, putting him in a particular position of power over his yields from TMTG.
Trump profits directly from TMTG in two key ways, Legum explained in his newsletter Public Notice. “First, TMTG will invest a portion of its cash reserves in accounts. Secondly, as the majority shareholder in TMTG, Trump will benefit from the fees generated by these accounts. The performance of the underlying assets held in these accounts will determine both TMTG’s return on its cash reserves and interest from outside investors,” he wrote.
Through TMTG’s actively managed investment accounts, Trump would be able to directly financially benefit simply by announcing or rescinding a policy. For example, Apple stock sank when Trump announced his sweeping “reciprocal tariff” policy on April 2 and continued to drop as he escalated tariffs on Chinese goods to the triple digits. But when the administration announced that there would be an exemption applied to electronic devices on April 11, Apple stock began to improve.
Trump has been accused of obvious market manipulation after he instructed his followers that it was a “great time to buy” just hours before announcing a 90-day pause on his “reciprocal tariff” policy. He even bragged about how much money he made for his billionaire buddies who came to visit him in the White House.
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Read more about the tariffs: Trump’s Tariff Madness Is About One Thing: His Thirst for One-Man Rule Most Recent Post
Hafiz Rashid /
April 17, 2025/11:52 a.m. ET
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Trump’s FCC Chief Tries to Warp News Coverage of Wrongly Deported Man
The Federal Communications Commission chief is joining Trump’s efforts to smear Kilmar Abrego Garcia, in a troubling attempt to control the media. FCC Chair Brendan Carr speaks at a Semafor news event.
Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg/Getty Images
The head of the FCC, Brandon Carr, attacked NBC’s parent company, Comcast, in an X post over its coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration has repeatedly accused of being a violent gang member despite admitting in court that he was accidentally deported to El Salvador.
In his post, Carr repeated Trump’s accusations—which have not been proven in court—and insinuated that Comcast was violating federal law, taking aim at its broadcast licensing and accusing the company of “news distortion.”
His statement also quoted a different post from Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung decrying the lack of media coverage for an alleged victim of murder by a totally different immigrant, as the Trump administration seeks to conflate the two stories.
X screenshot Brendan Carr @BrendanCarrFCC: Comcast outlets spent days misleading the American public—implying that Abrego Garcia was merely a law abiding U.S. citizen, just a regular “Maryland man.”
When the truth comes out, they ignore it.
Comcast knows that federal law requires its licensed operations to serve the public interest. News distortion doesn’t cut it.
Abrego Garcia came to America illegally from El Salvador, was validated as a member of the violent MS13 gang—a transnational criminal organization—and was denied bond by an immigration court for failure to show he would not pose a danger to others.
Why does Comcast ignore these facts of obvious public interest?
quote tweet of Steven Cheung @StevenCheung47:
SHAMEFUL that @CNN and @MSNBC refuses to take Angel Mom Patty Morin as she recounts the terrible tragedy of how an illegal killed her sweet daughter, Rachel.
(screenshots of chyrons on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC)
Carr’s attack seems to be threatening a news network with penalties for coverage he doesn’t like, a disturbing attack on freedom of the press from a government official who is supposed to be protecting the constitutional right. In fact, with no trace of irony, Carr’s previous X post praised Secretary of State Marco Rubio for “smashing the censorship cartel and restoring free speech rights to Americans.”
The entire Trump administration has been hell-bent on defying a Supreme Court order and refusing to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. They’ve compared him to Osama bin Laden and tried to paint him as an abusive husband, a claim that his U.S. citizen wife has rebutted. On Wednesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed to have new evidence against Abrego Garcia—but it was nothing more than a rehash of the hearsay Trump officials were already citing.
For his part, Carr has been attacking Comcast and NBC for weeks, announcing an investigation into Comcast’s diversity, equity, and inclusion practices just weeks into Trump’s presidency. And he has the full blessing of Trump, who is pushing his own vendettas against media outlets such as CBS News at the moment.
But if Carr and Trump want the news to stop attacking their disregard of a Supreme Court order, attacking the media won’t help. The quickest way to get the news to stop focusing on Abrego Garcia is to do the right thing and return him to the U.S.