Chuck Schumer

Subterms

    Latest story

    150 Shares24 Views

    Why have top Democratic leaders failed to endorse rising star Zohran Mamdani?

    by

    He’s the hottest politician in the US, who managed to attract thousands of young and first-time voters to the Democratic party in his unexpected win in the New York City mayoral primary.With the Democrats suffering from historically low approval ratings, one might have thought the party would rally round Zohran Mamdani, to learn lessons from the media-savvy 33-year-old and bask in his soaring popularity.That hasn’t happened.The most influential political figures in New York state politics have instead studiously avoided any public endorsement of Mamdani, the self-described democratic socialist who has a 22-point lead over his nearest challenger.New York’s two senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, are yet to back Mamdani. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader who represents a Brooklyn district, hasn’t endorsed him either – despite Jeffries endorsing a candidate for mayor last time round.View image in fullscreenKathy Hochul, the New York governor, endorsed Mamdani on Sunday, describing him as “a leader who is focused on making New York City affordable” in an op-ed for the New York Times – while stating she was not “aligned with him on every issue”.But the hesitation from New York’s top Democrats, all considered centrist politicians, has led to anger from the left. Bernie Sanders, the progressive Vermont senator who has campaigned with Mamdani, blasted the party as “crazy” in an interview with CNN on Wednesday.“He was in the polls, 2%, all right?” Sanders said, referencing the lowly start Mamdani had to his campaign.“He wins, wins by a lot. He has over 50,000 volunteers, people enthusiastic about his campaign. He brings out people, registers all kinds of new people, brings out non-traditional voters. Now, if you were a Democratic leader in a party which is now in the doldrums, you would be jumping for joy: ‘Oh, my God, this is just the guy we want. I want to see this all over the country.’Sanders described the lack of endorsement from party grandees as “absurd”.View image in fullscreenAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez was more diplomatic when asked about Mamdani last week, saying she was “very concerned about the example that is being set”, but it’s clear that grassroots political activists are furious.“Democratic leaders who refuse to endorse winners of Democratic primaries do massive damage to the party and should be politically defenestrated,” Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of progressive organization Indivisible, said.“We don’t have time for this post-primary bullshit in the middle of an authoritarian putsch.”Some from the center of the party have begun to urge Democrats to rally round Mamdani. Jamie Raskin, the Democratic congressman from Maryland, gave a glowing review of Mamdani in an interview with the New York Times this week, describing him as a “significant and inspiring leader”.“In these times, the Democratic party needs to stick together with the maximum solidarity and focus,” Raskin said.“Even though I’m not a New Yorker and have never been a New Yorker, I feel that Democrats must stand together to defend not only our party but our constitution and our country.”Raskin added: “He really wants to rebuild an FDR coalition that is fundamentally committed to the success of the working and middle classes in his city.”Some believe there are political reasons for the caution. With midterm elections looming next year – Democrats desperately need to pick up seats in Congress if they are to stymie Donald Trump’s agenda – the president and the rightwing media have already begun demonizing Mamdani as a “communist”. There appears to be a belief on the right that tying Mamdani to the wider Democratic party could be beneficial for the Republican party.View image in fullscreen“I do think some of the hesitation is because on some of the national Democrat level and some of the donor level, there is some type of fear that an association with a socialist mayor will hurt Democrats nationally,” said Trip Yang, a Democratic strategist and founder of Trip Yang Strategies.“That is a traditional viewpoint. I respectfully disagree with that. [But] I’m sure that people nationally who have this viewpoint have relayed this viewpoint to the top Democratic leaders in New York.”Before Hochul backed Mamdani over the weekend, she had shown tacit support: Yang pointed out that Hochul had sometimes spoken positively of Mamdani, something she has not done about Andrew Cuomo, the former governor, or the incumbent Eric Adams. Both, though, have abandoned the Democratic party to run for mayor as independents.Still, the stalling comes as Trump appears to be wading into the race. Trump advisers, according to numerous reports, have discussed offering Adams a job in the administration if he drops out of the race – something they believe would benefit Cuomo’s chances.View image in fullscreenMamdani’s campaign pledges to tax the very wealthiest New Yorkers appear to have deep-pocketed donors worried, and his stance on Israel’s war in Gaza may also have had an impact. Schumer and Jeffries are both staunch supporters of Israel, while Mamdani has repeatedly criticized the country, and described the situation in Gaza as a genocide – as have many human rights groups, including some from Israel.For Sanders, however, the motive comes down to money. In the CNN interview Sanders referenced a New York Times report that wealthy New York business leaders had met on Tuesday to, as the Times put it, “plot Mamdani’s defeat”.“So what you have is an oligarchal group in New York. But you know what they’re worried about? They’re not just worried about Mamdani. If Mamdani wins in New York, the idea will go all across the country. That in fact, you can take on the oligarchs, and you can beat them. That at the end of the day, grassroots organizing, ordinary people, working-class people, standing up and fighting back, are more powerful than the oligarchs and all of their money.“That is what the oligarchs are afraid of. That’s what the Republicans are afraid of. That is what I fear the Democratic leadership is afraid of.” More

    More stories

    • 175 Shares118 Views

      in US Politics

      It’s time for Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to step down | Mehdi Hasan

      by

      In a recent podcast conversation, the former spokesperson for Jeb Bush sat down with the leader of the House Democrats. Guess which one of them endorsed the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York?“I was a Republican up until two minutes ago and I’m a capitalist, and I had Zohran on … it’s not really a close call, is it?” Tim Miller said to Hakeem Jeffries on his Bulwark podcast, to which a defensive-sounding House Minority leader replied: “What I can say is that he’s the only one I’m scheduled to talk to.”Time and time again, Jeffries has refused to endorse his own party’s official candidate for mayor in his own city, two months after Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic mayoral primary in New York by double digits – including Jeffries’ own congressional district by eight points.This is the same Democratic party leader who has insisted in the past that progressives should “vote BLUE (no matter who)”. But centrists? Apparently, they’re under no such obligation.Jeffries is not alone in his brazen hypocrisy. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader who represents the state of New York and lives in the city of New York, has also refused to endorse his own party’s official candidate for mayor of New York.If you want to understand why the Democrats are polling at their lowest point for more than three decades, look no further than these two uninspiring Democratic leaders in Congress.If you want to understand why 62% of Democratic voters say “the leadership of the Democratic party should be replaced with new people,” again, look no further than Jeffries and Schumer.Week after week, month after month, they embarrass themselves, undermine their colleagues and demoralize their voters. Theirs is a record of cowardice and capitulation.Let’s start with Jeffries. In February, the hapless House minority leader wondered aloud: “I’m trying to figure out what leverage we actually have. They control the House, the Senate. And the presidency. It’s their government. What leverage do we have?” It was a shrug of impotence; a sign of pre-emptive submission only weeks after Trump’s inauguration.That same month, just days before Bernie Sanders began his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour in front of packed arenas across the country, Jeffries “quietly met with more than 150 Silicon Valley-based donors … in tony Los Altos Hills”, reported Politico, in order to “mend fences” with the billionaire big tech bosses.In April, when Democratic members of Congress such as Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Maxwell Frost were visiting El Salvador and raising the issue of Kilmar Ábrego García’s detention, the Bulwark reported: “The minority leader has discouraged further excursions to the country” (reporting that Jeffries later denied). Subsequent polling suggests those trips helped change public opinion on immigration and, especially, on the fate of Ábrego. Jeffries, though, can claim no credit for that shift in American sentiment.In June, in the wake of the Trump administration’s decision to file ludicrous charges of assault against the Democratic congresswoman LaMonica McIver after a protest outside an immigration detention center, the dead-eyed Jeffries appeared on CNN with host Dana Bash.
      BASH: You previously warned that the administration charging members of Congress was a, quote, ‘red line’. What are you doing now that the red line you talked about has apparently been crossed?
      JEFFRIES: We will make that decision in a time, place and manner of our choosing. But the response will be continuous, and it will meet the moment that is required.
      BASH: What exactly does that mean? Have you not decided how to respond?
      JEFFRIES: We will respond in a time, place, and manner of our choosing if this continues to happen.
      Bash looked bewildered. And we’re now coming up to three months since Jeffries made those bizarre, tone-deaf remarks. Has the time not arrived yet? Has he still not found the place?Last month, Jeffries refused, again, to endorse Mamdani but then went further, telling CNBC that Andrew Cuomo’s baseless attack on Mamdani’s rent-stabilized apartment was a “legitimate issue” and that his campaign was “going to have to address it”. Can you imagine a Republican leader in Congress going on live television to throw their party’s mayoral candidate under the bus in this way?Jeffries has become almost a parody of a weak, spineless Democratic leader. When he was asked recently about Trump’s fascistic deployment of troops to the streets of Washington DC, his response was to praise the DC attorney general’s “strongly worded letter”.Well, you know who else likes to bring a “strongly worded letter” to a gunfight with Republicans? Yep. You guessed it. Chuck Schumer. The Senate minority leader bragged to CNN earlier this year about how he had reacted to Donald Trump’s attack on US universities by sending him “a very strong letter just the other day”.To be clear: Schumer’s record on resisting Trump and fighting back against his authoritarian takeover of the US government has been as feeble and feckless as Jeffries’.Remember that cringe chant of ‘We will win’ and ‘We won’t rest’ that he led outside the Treasury building in February, as Elon Musk’s Doge teams rampaged through the federal government?Or when he shamefully backed down from a confrontation with Trump over a government shutdown in March and earned the scathing soubriquet “Surrender Schumer”? (One anonymous House Democrat joked at the time that the Senate minority leader’s popularity was “hovering somewhere between Elon Musk and the Ebola virus”.)How about when he told NPR that same month that accusing Israel of genocide – now the view of 77% of Democratic voters – was antisemitic, or when he declared to the neoconservative Brett Stephens that his job was “to keep the left pro-Israel”?Who can forget also his hawkish denunciation of “Taco Trump” in June for not being “tough” enough on the “terrorist government” of Iran, just weeks before Trump illegally bombed Iran?It makes no sense to me that Schumer is still the leader of the Democrats in the Senate. The party lost the upper chamber on his watch, under his leadership, but Schumer chose to stay on and his colleagues let him. But when you lead your party to defeat in an election, shouldn’t you … lose your job?As for Jeffries, the Democrats may win back the House of Representatives next November on the back of an anti-Trump wave, but what then? What vision will a Speaker Jeffries offer? What resistance will he provide to the wannabe dictator in the White House? What actual plan does he have to preserve and protect democracy in 2028?Since Trump was inaugurated for a second time in January, Jeffries and Schumer have demonstrated time and again that they are not built for this particular moment. While Trump seeds the ground for an American dictatorship, these two top Dems pine for bipartisanship. While millions of rank-and-file Democrats across the country say they want leaders who will fight, Jeffries and Schumer fold. While younger Democrats like Mamdani and AOC offer energy and charisma, these two lackluster leaders in the House and Senate offer cringe chants and even cringier photo ops.It is past time for both Jeffries and Schumer to step down and step aside. This fascist moment, this age of Trump, demands outspoken, unrelenting and fearless opposition. Whether you are a Democrat, or simply a democrat, we all deserve better.

      Mehdi Hasan is the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of the media company Zeteo and a Guardian US columnist More

    • 275 Shares140 Views

      in US Politics

      The Democrats are in deep trouble in the US – and Labour is on the way to joining them | Nesrine Malik

      by

      The measure of a political party’s failure lies not in how many agnostics and opponents it fails to convert, but in how many loyalists it fails to preserve. The endorsement of new, unnatural voters – Latinos in the US for Donald Trump, or Tories voting for Labour for the first time – might deliver big electoral swings but is ultimately not sticky. And these votes are only meaningful if the bedrock is solid. That bedrock is the people who consistently show up, no matter what, from generation to generation, for a party. And the Democrats are losing them.In extensive research published last week tracking voter registration, the New York Times identified an alarming pattern. The Democratic party has been “haemorrhaging” voters since way before election day. In the states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost to Republicans in all of them in the years between 2020 and 2024. By the time Kamala Harris took over from Joe Biden, the party had already shed more than 2m votes in those states, and Republicans had gained 2.4m. This is part of a “four-year swing” that amounts to 4.5m votes. In a chilling conclusion, the report states that “few measurements reflect the luster of a political party’s brand more clearly than the choice by voters to identify with it”.The signs get worse the more closely you look. It’s not just a decline in new registered voters, but a hacking away of those natural voters who parties can easily rely on. Some of the sharpest declines were among young voters who came out emphatically for Joe Biden in 2020, then swung towards Trump in 2024. An assumption that voters who are young, Black or Latino would register mostly in the Democrats’ favour was no longer safe.The most striking thing about these revelations is how long and consistent the turn-off has been: “There is no silver lining or cavalry coming across the hill,” said one voter registration analyst, “this is month after month, year after year.” They show how during the last election, when the Democrats were battling with the damage of a belated handover from Biden to Harris, and a swirl of other challenges, the party was already on the back foot, hostage to a years-long disillusionment. And if you look at some of the reasoning for Democrat abandonment from last year, the same conclusion heaves into view – the Democrats rested on their laurels, and Trump attacked. The vibe contest was between business as usual, and the promise of something different.The result is a cratering of Democrat support that cannot be filled in overnight, or even over the next three years, especially with the party seemingly in disarray, and with a lo-fi leadership in Chuck Schumer accused of being “unwilling and unable to meet the moment”. It’s not about the unique, mendacious bewitching of voters by Trump, but something broader. Centre-left parties seem trapped by their inability and unwillingness to articulate values in ways that go beyond just saying the other guys are bad for democracy, by identifying a vision of what and who they are for.They are operating in a world where traditional coalitions around class, labour and identity are dissolving, where high barriers to home ownership, social mobility and job stability have been erected, and the relationship between hard work and prosperity, or even viability, has been severed. Combine that with an online and media ecosystem that trades in attention and feeling, and you have a political climate that requires policy intervention and campaigning edge.Instead, as summed up by Gabriel Winant after Trump’s victory, Kamala Harris had “stretched her coalition into incoherence” in a “grab bag” of policies “sharing no clear thematic unity or coherence”. This is the result of both a lack of direction, and of a party that now houses both the powerful and those at the losing end of that power, which can only mean a lop-sided capture by the former. Or, as chillingly observed by Anton Jäger: “Bankers and warmongers predominate in Democrat ruling circles, the indebted and the marginalised among its rank-and-file.” This reminds me of Keir Starmer’s drive to cast Labour as “pro-business, pro-worker and pro-wealth creation”. You cannot have coherence when the interests you represent, or claim to represent, are by definition antagonistic.This brand tension has an analogue in a smaller but no less revealing way in the UK, where students are abandoning Labour. University Labour clubs are disaffiliating from the party, Labour’s youth membership has collapsed, the tail of a longer falling out with Labour leadership over Gaza. But this is a broader confrontation between young voters and a party that has failed to stand for any clear moral principles that appeal to the idealism so necessary to create not only future voters, but activists and campaigners. On Gaza, Labour is anti-starvation, but also anti-protest.And both the Democrats and Labour are positioning themselves antagonistically to those whose sharper expressions of political vision are hugely popular with those who are abandoning them. Senior Democrats might still not endorse New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who is posting stunning polling leads. Labour disciplines MPs for rebelling against benefit cuts, even as hundreds of thousands of people register their support for a new party.But as new and future voters are lost, the lion’s share of the windfall goes to those on the right and extreme right who have already mastered the gamification of politics, and the ability to summon fever dreams of threats that must be dealt with and prosperity that is just around the corner. “Elections are won from the centre” goes the old adage, but increasingly the centre itself has changed as the world becomes not a place of wide-tent compromise, but of irreconcilable differences. And I would venture another formulation – elections are won in the past. By the time it becomes apparent that remote and complacent centrist politics is not even managing to convince its own tribes, it will be too late. Some would argue it already is.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More

    • 200 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Trump is a wrecking ball’: behind the president’s $200m plan to build a White House ballroom

      by

      “Sir, why are you up on the roof?”The question was shouted by a reporter on Tuesday as Donald Trump scaled new heights at the White House. The US president explained that he was scoping out a new ballroom and boasted: “Just another way to spend my money for this country.”It emerged last week that Trump, who made his money in the New York construction industry, intends to build an enormous $200m ballroom for hosting official receptions, one of the biggest projects at the White House in more than a century.This will be just the latest step in a radical architectural overhaul intent on making the 225-year-old executive mansion less redolent of stuffy Washington and more evocative of Mar-a-Lago, his gaudy palace in Palm Beach, Florida.Trump has revamped the Oval Office by splashing the room in gold, from the stars surrounding the presidential seal on the ceiling to gold statues on the fireplace to the mantel itself. He crowded its walls with numerous portraits, while just outside the office is a framed photo of Trump’s mugshot as featured on the cover of a New York tabloid newspaper.View image in fullscreenOutside, Trump has erected a pair of towering flagpoles that fly the Stars and Stripes and paved over a grassy patch of the Rose Garden, and, he told NBC News, he intends to replace what he said was a “terribly” remodeled bathroom in the Lincoln Bedroom with one that is closer in style to the 19th century.But his most ambitious architectural gambit will be the new ballroom, which officials say he and unspecified donors will pay for, designed to host grand state dinners, given in honour of foreign leaders visiting Washington. Until now, these were generally done by erecting a huge tent on the White House grounds.“When it rains or snows, it’s a disaster,” Trump said in his NBC interview, bemoaning how the tents are stationed “a football field away from the White House”.View image in fullscreenWhereas the East Room, currently the biggest room in the White House, can accommodate about 200 people, the new structure will span more than 8,000 sq metres (90,000 sq ft) and have space to seat 650 people. Work will begin in September and is expected to be completed before the end of Trump’s second term, in January 2029.A model of the ballroom presented by the government shows it will be a white building with tall windows reminiscent of the main White House edifice. It will replace the East Wing, which usually houses the offices of the first lady, and it remains unclear where they will be relocated.View image in fullscreenTrump told reporters last week: “They’ve wanted a ballroom at the White House for more than 150 years, but there’s never been a president that was good at ballrooms. I’m good at building things and we’re going to build quickly and on time. It’ll be beautiful, top, top of the line.”He added: “It’ll be near it but not touching it and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of. It’s my favourite. It’s my favourite place. I love it.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrats are sceptical, however. Chuck Schumer, the party’s minority leader in the Senate, told a press briefing: “Listen, I’m happy to eat my cheeseburger at my desk. I don’t need a $200m ballroom to eat it in. OK?”Others regard Trump’s transformation of the White House as a dark metaphor for his approach to US democracy. Mona Charen, policy editor of the Bulwark website, wrote this week: “Trump is a walking wrecking ball of law, tradition, civility, manners, and morals. Many visitors to the nation’s capital won’t know or understand much of that damage.“But starting now with the paving of the Rose Garden, and coming soon with the construction of a garish ballroom, they will see a physical representation of a low and shameful time. The once graceful executive mansion will be transformed into something tasteless and embarrassing. It will be both awful and fitting.”The ballroom is shaping up to be one of the most significant projects to break ground at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since renovation and expansion works undertaken by Theodore Roosevelt at the start of the 20th century. Harry Truman also oversaw sweeping construction work between 1948 and 1952, including gutting the main building and adding the Truman Balcony.View image in fullscreenTruman drew his share of criticism at the time. Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, wrote in a recent essay published on LinkedIn: “Preservationists mourned the loss of original interiors, while media outlets questioned the project’s cost during post-war economic recovery.”Subsequent presidents have overseen facelifts, refreshes and renovations. Anita McBride, who was chief of staff to first lady Laura Bush, recalled on Wednesday: “Mrs Bush transformed every single room in the residence. The largest restoration of any room in the White House is the Lincoln Bedroom, done under her tenure. She helped to oversee the the redo of the White House theatre; the way that she designed it is the way it still looks to this day.”McBride acknowledged that Trump, a longtime property developer, is more engaged in remodelling the White House than many of his predecessors. “He’s certainly paying attention to things at the White House that he feels would be improvements for the occupants, not just him but those that come after him. Maybe it’s his background that lends itself to having a keen eye to enhancements.“This is the largest transformation we have seen since the Truman renovation when it needed improvement and to be structurally sound. President Truman took such criticism for wanting to add the balcony and you cannot imagine the White House without that balcony now.” More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Irate Trump tells Schumer to ‘go to hell’ after Senate standoff over confirmations

      by

      The US Senate left Washington DC on Saturday night for its monthlong August recess without a deal to advance dozens of Donald Trump’s nominees, calling it quits after days of contentious bipartisan negotiations and the president taking to social media to tell Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to “GO TO HELL!”Without a deal in hand, Republicans say they may try to change Senate rules when they return in September to speed up the pace of confirmations. Trump has been pressuring senators to move quickly as Democrats blocked more nominees than usual this year, denying any fast unanimous consent votes and forcing roll calls on each one, a lengthy process that can take several days per nominee.“I think they’re desperately in need of change,” Senate Republican majority leader John Thune said of the chamber’s rules on Saturday after negotiations with Schumer and Trump broke down. “I think that the last six months have demonstrated that this process, nominations is broken. And so I expect there will be some good robust conversations about that.”Schumer said a rules change would be a “huge mistake”, especially as Senate Republicans will need Democratic votes to pass spending bills and other legislation moving forward.“Donald Trump tried to bully us, go around us, threaten us, call us names, but he got nothing,” Schumer said.The latest standoff comes as Democrats and Republicans have gradually escalated their obstruction of the other party’s executive branch and judicial nominees over the last two decades, and as Senate leaders have incrementally changed Senate rules to speed up confirmations – and make them less bipartisan.In 2013, Democrats changed Senate rules for lower court judicial nominees to remove the 60-vote threshold for confirmations as Republicans blocked then president Barack Obama’s judicial picks. In 2017, Republicans did the same for supreme court nominees as Democrats tried to block Trump’s nomination of justice Neil Gorsuch.Trump has been pressuring Senate Republicans for weeks to cancel the August recess and grind through dozens of his nominations as Democrats have slowed the process. But Republicans hoped to make a deal with Democrats instead and came close several times over the last few days as the two parties and the White House negotiated over moving a large tranche of nominees in exchange for reversing some of the Trump administration’s spending cuts on foreign aid, among other issues.The Senate held a rare weekend session on Saturday as Republicans held votes on nominee after nominee and as the two parties tried to work out the final details of a deal. But it was clear that there would be no agreement when Trump attacked Schumer on social media Saturday evening and told Republicans to pack it up and go home.“Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the Radical Left Lunatics, to GO TO HELL!” Trump posted on Truth Social.Thune said afterward that there were “several different times” when the two sides thought they had a deal, but in the end “we didn’t close it out”.It’s the first time in recent history that the minority party hasn’t allowed at least some quick confirmations. Thune has already kept the Senate in session for more days, and with longer hours, this year to try and confirm as many of Trump’s nominees as possible.But Democrats had little desire to give in without the spending cut reversals or some other incentive, even though they too were eager to skip town after several long months of work and bitter partisan fights over legislation.“We have never seen nominees as flawed, as compromised, as unqualified as we have right now,” Schumer said. More

    • 200 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘I have never seen such open corruption’: Trump’s crypto deals and loosening of rules shock observers

      by

      Cryptocurrency multibillionaire Justin Sun could barely contain his glee.Last month, Sun publicly flaunted a $100,000 Donald Trump-branded watch that he was awarded at a private dinner at Trump’s Virginia golf club. Sun had earned the recognition for buying $20m of the crypto memecoin $Trump, ranking him first among 220 purchasers of the token who received dinner invitations.Trump’s much-hyped 22 May dinner and a White House tour the next day for 25 leading memecoin buyers were devised to spur sales of $Trump and wound up raking in about $148m, much of it courtesy of anonymous and foreign buyers, for Trump and his partners.Memecoins are crypto tokens that are often based on online jokes but have no inherent value. They often prove risky investments as their prices can fluctuate wildly. The $Trump memecoin was launched days before Trump’s presidential inauguration, spurring a surge of buyers and yielding tens of millions of dollars for Trump and some partners.Trump’s private events on 22 May to reward the top purchasers of $Trump have sparked strong criticism of the president from ethics watchdogs, ex-prosecutors and scholars for exploiting his office for personal gain in unprecedented ways. But they fit in a broader pattern of how Trump has exploited the power and lure of his office to enrich himself and some top allies via cryptocurrencies.“Self-enrichment is exactly what the founders feared most in a leader – that’s why they put two separate prohibitions on self-benefit into the constitution,” said former federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig. “Trump’s profiting from his presidential memecoin is a textbook example of what the framers wanted to avoid.”Scholars, too, offer a harsh analysis of Trump’s crypto dealings.“I have never seen such open corruption in any modern government anywhere,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and an expert on authoritarian regimes who co-authored the book How Democracies Die.Such ethical and legal qualms don’t seem to have fazed Trump or Sun. The pair forged their ties well before the dinner as Sun invested $75m in another Trump crypto enterprise, World Liberty Financial (WLF), that Trump and his two older sons launched last fall and in which they boast a 60% stake.The Chinese-born Sun’s political and financial fortunes, as well as those of other crypto tycoons, have improved markedly since Trump took office and moved fast to loosen regulations of cryptocurrency ventures at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the justice department and other agencies to upend Joe Biden’s policies.As the SEC has eased regulations and paused or ended 12 cases involving cryptocurrency fraud, three Sun crypto companies that were charged with fraud by an SEC lawsuit in 2023 had their cases paused in February by the agency, which cited the “public interest” and reportedly has held settlement talks.Trump’s and Sun’s mutually beneficial crypto dealings symbolize how the US president has boosted his paper wealth by an estimated billions of dollars since he returned to office, and worked diligently to slash regulations fulfilling his pledges to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” and end the “war on crypto”.After the 22 May dinner, Sun posted: “Thank you @POTUS for your unwavering support of our industry!”Although Trump’s crypto ventures are less than a year old, the State Democracy Defenders Fund watchdog group has estimated that as of mid-March they are worth about $2.9bn.In late March, Reuters revealed that WLF had raised more than $500m in recent months and that the Trump family receives about 75% of crypto token sales.Trump’s pursuit of crypto riches and deregulation represents a big shift from his comments to Fox News in 2021, when he said that bitcoin, a very popular crypto currency, “seems like a scam”.View image in fullscreenIn July 2019, Trump posted that “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade”, and noted that their value was “highly volatile and based on thin air”.Now, Trump’s new pro-crypto policies have benefited big campaign donors who lead crypto firms as well as Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who spent almost $300m to help elect Trump, and who boasts sizable crypto investments in bitcoin through his electric car firm Tesla and his other ventures. Though Trump and Musk have since fallen out, the mogul’s crypto fortunes seem to have improved due to the president’s deregulatory agenda.Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is a real estate billionaire who helped found WLF, in which he has a stake; Trump’s two oldest sons, Eric and Don Jr, and Witkoff’s son Zach have played key roles promoting WLF in the Middle East and other places.Trump’s use of his Oval Office perch to increase his wealth through his burgeoning crypto businesses while his administration rapidly eases regulations is unprecedented and smacks of corruption, say scholars, many congressional Democrats and some Republicans.“To me, Trump’s crypto dealings seem pretty explicit,” Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University professor who focuses on political history, told the Guardian. “Policy decisions are being made regarding parts of the financial industry that are being done not to benefit the nation, but his own financial interests … It’s hard to imagine what he’s doing benefits the nation.”Rosenzweig stressed that “not only do Trump’s extravagant crypto ventures benefit him personally as his administration slashes crypto regulations and takes pro-crypto steps at the SEC; they also benefit his tech bro backers who will take full advantage of the end of regulatory enforcement”.In Congress, leading Democrats, including Richard Blumenthal, a senator from Connecticut, and Jamie Raskin, a representative from Maryland, in May announced separate inquiries by key panels in which they are ranking members into Trump’s crypto dealings, and attacked Trump for using his office to enrich himself via his crypto operations.“With his pay-for-access dinner, Trump put presidential access and influence on the auction block,” Blumenthal told the Guardian. “The scope and scale of Trump’s corruption is staggering – I’ll continue to demand answers.”Last month, too, the Democratic senator Jeff Merkley, from Oregon, and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, introduced the “end crypto corruption” bill, which 22 other Democrats have endorsed.“Trump’s crypto schemes are the Mount Everest of corruption,” Merkley told the Guardian. “We must ban Trump-style crypto corruption so all elected federal officials – including the president, vice-president and members of Congress – cannot profit from shady crypto practices,” which his bill would curtail.Some former congressional Republicans are also incensed by Trump’s blatant use of his presidency to peddle $Trump. “Nobody should be allowed to use their public positions while in office to enrich themselves,” said ex-Republican congressman Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, who once chaired the House ethics panel. “A member of Congress would not be permitted to engage in the kind of memecoin activities which the president has been doing.”Trump and his family have dismissed critics concerns about the 22 May events and his other crypto ventures.Before the 22 May dinner, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that the president would attend his crypto gala in his “personal time” and it was not a White House event, but declined to release names of the many anonymous and foreign attendees.To allay criticism, the Trump Organization said in January that Trump’s business interests, including his assets and investments, would be placed in a trust his children would manage and that the president wouldn’t be involved in decision-making or daily operations. Trump’s family also hired a lawyer as an ethics adviser.But those commitments have been dwarfed by Trump’s public embrace of his crypto ventures and strong deregulatory agenda. In March, for instance, Trump hosted the first-ever “crypto summit” at the White House, which drew a couple dozen industry bigwigs who heard Trump promise to end Biden’s “war on crypto”.Trump’s crypto critics worry that the president’s strong push for less industry regulation may create big problems: the crypto industry has been battered by some major scandals including ones involving North Korean hackers and has been plagued by concerns about industry’s lack of transparency and risks.For instance, a report last December by leading research firm Chainalysis found that North Korean hackers had stolen $1.34bn of cryptocurrency in 2024, a record total and double what they stole the year before.The report concluded that US and foreign analysts believe the stolen funds were diverted in North Korea to “finance its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs”.Other crypto fraud schemes in the US have spurred loud alarms.In an annual report last September, the FBI revealed that fraud related to crypto businesses soared in 2023 with Americans suffering $5.6bn in losses, a 45% jump from the previous year.Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded the now bankrupt FTX crypto exchange, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024 by a New York judge for bilking customers out of $8bn.Nonetheless, a justice department memo in April announced it was closing a national cryptocurrency enforcement team that was established in 2022, which had brought major crypto cases against North Korean hackers and other crypto criminals.The memo stressed that the justice department was not a “digital assets regulator” and tried to tar the Biden administration for a “reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution”. The memo stated that a pro-crypto Trump executive order in January spurred the justice department’s policy shift.Ex-prosecutors and ethics watchdogs worry increasingly that crypto scandals and conflicts of interest will worsen as the Trump administration moves fast to ease crypto oversight at the justice department, the SEC and other agencies.Some of WLF’s high-profile crypto deals have involved overseas crypto firms which have had recent regulatory and legal problems in the US, fueling new concerns, watchdogs and ex-prosecutors say.View image in fullscreenOne lucrative deal raised eyebrows when WLF was tapped to play a central role in a $2bn investment by Abu Dhabi financial fund MGX that is backed by the United Arab Emirates in the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance.As part of the deal, the Abu Dhabi fund bought $2bn of a WLF stablecoin, dubbed USD1, to invest in Binance. Stablecoins are a popular type of cryptocurrency that are often pegged to the dollar.The WLF deal comes after Binance in 2023 pleaded guilty to violating US money-laundering laws and other violations and the justice department fined it a whopping $4bn.Furthermore, Binance’s ex-CEO and founder, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty in the US to violating the Bank Secrecy Act and failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program.Zhao, who still owns 90% of Binance, served a four-month jail term last year.WLF’s $2bn deal was announced at an Abu Dhabi crypto conference on 1 May that drew Eric Trump two weeks before Trump’s visit to the UAE capital, sparking concerns of foreign influence and ethics issues.Increasing WLF’s ties further with Binance, the crypto exchange announced on 22 May that it had begun listing the stablecoin for trading purposes. Binance got some good news at the end of May, too, when the SEC announced the dismissal of a civil lawsuit it filed in 2023 against the exchange for misleading investors about surveillance controls and trading irregularities.Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the justice department’s fraud section, noted that SEC moves back in February “to emasculate its crypto enforcement efforts sent crypto fraudsters a welcome mat of impunity”.He added: “The recent dismissal of the SEC’s lawsuit against Binance for mishandling customer funds, days after it began listing the Trump family’s cryptocurrency on its exchange, seemed to be the natural consequence of such enforcement laxity. Victims be damned.”Other agency deregulatory moves that favor crypto interests can boost Trump’s own enterprises and his allies, but pose potential risks for ordinary investors, say legal scholars.Columbia law professor Richard Briffault noted that as part of the Trump administration’s wide-ranging and risky crypto deregulatory agenda which can benefit Trump’s own crypto ventures, the Department of Labor in late May nixed a Biden-era “extreme care” warning about 401K plans investing in crypto.“[The labor department] has rescinded the red light from the Biden years for 401K retirement plans, which is another sign of the Trump administration’s embrace of crypto,” Briffault said.Briffault, an expert on government ethics, has told the Guardian more broadly that Trump’s crypto ventures and his 22 May memecoin bash are “unprecedented”.“I don’t think there’s been anything like this in American history,” he said. “Trump is marketing access to himself as a way to profit his memecoin. People are paying to meet Trump and he’s the regulator-in-chief. It’s doubly corrupt.”In late May, in a new crypto business twist, the Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent of Truth Social, said it had sealed a deal to raise $2.5bn to be used to buy bitcoin, creating a reserve of the cryptocurrency.Meanwhile, Trump’s stablecoin fortunes and those of many industry allies could get boosts soon from a Senate stablecoin bill, dubbed the “genius act”, that’s poised to pass the Senate on Tuesday but which critics have said loosens regulatory controls in dangerous ways unless amended with consumer protections and other safeguards.Senators Merkley and Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, led unsuccessful efforts to amend the bill to thwart potential criminal abuses, protect consumers and prevent Trump from using his office to profit his crypto businesses.“The ‘genius act’ fails to prevent sanctions evasion and other illicit activity and lets big tech giants like Elon Musk’s X issue their own private money – all without the guardrails needed to keep Americans safe from scams, junk fees or another financial crash,” Warren told the Guardian.“Donald Trump has turned the presidency into a crypto cash machine,” Warren said. The Genius act, Warren stressed, should have “prohibited the President AND his family from profiting from any stablecoin project.”More broadly, Kedric Payne, the general counsel and ethics director at the Campaign Legal Center, said: “President Trump’s financial stakes in the crypto industry at the same time that he is determining how the government will regulate the industry is unprecedented in modern history. This is precisely the type of conflict of interest that ethics laws and norms are designed to stop.” More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Chuck Schumer says he’ll obstruct Trump’s justice department picks over Qatar jet gift

      by

      The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, announced on Tuesday he would obstruct all Trump administration justice department nominations until the White House provides answers about plans to accept a luxury aircraft from Qatar for presidential use.The New York senator declared the hold amid growing controversy over the constitutional and security implications of accepting a foreign government’s offer to provide what would become the new Air Force One.“In light of the deeply troubling news of a possible Qatari-funded Air Force One, and the reports that the attorney general personally signed off on this clearly unethical deal, I am announcing a hold on all DOJ political nominees, until we get more answers,” Schumer said in a Senate floor speech.Schumer called the proposed arrangement “not just naked corruption”, likening it to something so corrupt “that even [Russian president Vladimir] Putin would give a double take”.Though the procedural maneuver cannot completely block nominees, it forces Senate Republicans to use valuable floor time to overcome Democratic opposition through individual confirmation votes.Schumer said he has several demands that must be met before he lifts the blockade, including having the attorney general, Pam Bondi, testify before Congress to explain how accepting such a gift would comply with the US constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibits presidents from receiving gifts from foreign states without congressional approval.“President Trump has told the American people this is ‘a free jet’. Does that mean the Qataris are delivering a ready-on-day-one plane with all the security measures already built in? If so, who installed those security measures, and how do we know they were properly installed?” Schumer asked.The blocking tactic has also been deployed by Hawaii senator Brian Schatz, who said in February he’d also place a blanket hold on Trump’s nominees to the state department until its attempt to shut USAID was reversed. Under the Biden administration, the Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville held a 10-month hold on military promotions based off the Pentagon’s abortion policy.But the opposition on accepting the plane extends beyond party lines, notably from some pro-Israel Republicans long angered by Qatar’s diplomatic role on Israel’s years-long military campaign in Gaza, and its close communication with Hamas.The Texas senator Ted Cruz, typically aligned with Trump, said on CNBC that the aircraft arrangement “poses significant espionage and surveillance problems”. The West Virginia senator Shelley Moore Capito, part of the Republican leadership, said: “I’d be checking for bugs is what I’d be checking for.”Former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who ran against then campaigned for Trump, said the idea of taking gifts from other countries “is never a good practice”.“It threatens intelligence and national security. Especially when that nation supports a terrorist organization,” she wrote on X. “Regardless of how beautiful the plane may be, it opens a door and implies the President and US can be bought.”Even the Senate majority leader, John Thune, acknowledged “there are lots of issues associated with that offer, which I think need to be further talked about”, while Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican senator, suggested: “It would be better if Air Force One were a big, beautiful jet made in the United States of America.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for the White House accused Democratic leadership of “prioritizing politics over critical DOJ appointments” and “obstructing President Trump’s ‘Make America safe again’ agenda”.Trump previously defended accepting the aircraft before departing for a trip to the Middle East, calling it “a very nice gesture” and suggesting the plane would eventually be housed in his presidential library after its service life.“Now I could be a stupid person and say: ‘Oh no, we don’t want a free plane,’” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer.”The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, indicated on Monday that legal details were “still being worked out”, but insisted that “any donation to this government is always done in full compliance with the law”.There are three nominations to the justice department awaiting confirmation, the New York Times reports, with dozens more likely to come down the pipeline. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Top Democrat calls for investigation into ‘chaotic’ Newark airport delays

      by

      One of America’s most important airports continued to be hit by delays and cancellations on Monday as the Senate’s top Democrat called for an investigation into the chaotic crisis.The problems at Newark, a busy airport in New Jersey that acts as one of the main hubs for New York City and the surrounding region, have persisted since last week, causing serious issues for tens of thousands of travelers.Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who is from New York, called for an investigation into the “chaos” that the Federal Aviation Authority says has been sparked by an air traffic controller shortage and thick cloud cover.“To say that there is just minor turbulence at Newark airport and the FAA would be the understatement of the year. We’re here because the FAA is really a mess. This mess needs a real forensic look, a deep look into it,” Schumer said. “So today I am demanding a full inspector general investigation as to what went on.”Schumer added: “The chaos at Newark very well could be a harbinger if issues like these aren’t fixed, and if the FAA can’t get real solutions off the ground.”Other politicians joined in.New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, called the delays “completely and utterly unacceptable” in a post on X, and said he knows US transportation secretary Sean Duffy is “committed” to hiring more air traffic controllers.United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a letter to customers over the weekend that the technology used to manage planes at the New Jersey airport failed more than once in recent days.The flight delays, cancellations and diversions that the equipment problems caused were compounded when more than one-fifth of Newark’s traffic controllers “walked off the job”, Kirby said.Faulting the FAA’s alleged failure to address “long-simmering” challenges related to the air-traffic control system, United cut 35 daily flights from its Newark schedule starting on Saturday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuffy, the transportation secretary, last week announced a program to recruit new controllers and give existing ones incentives not to retire.The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a workers’ union, said at the time that those moves could help address staffing shortages, but it also said the system is “long overdue for technology and infrastructure upgrades”.Meanwhile, the US army is pausing helicopter flights near a Washington DC airport after two commercial planes had to abort landings last week because of an army Black Hawk helicopter that was flying to the Pentagon.The commander of the 12th Aviation Battalion directed the unit to pause helicopter flight operations around Ronald Reagan Washington national airport following Thursday’s close calls, two Army officials confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday. The pause comes after 67 people died in January when a passenger jet collided in midair with a Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan airport.Thursday’s close call involved a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 and a Republic Airways Embraer E170, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. More