We’re joining forces with Crooked Media’s Jon Lovett on June 6 for a live show in D.C. to raise funds for Andry Hernandez Romero. We’ll be joined on stage by special guests to celebrate Pride, vent, pre-game, commiserate, laugh, vent some more, and raise money for the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, which represents Andry and others being held in El Salvador without so much as a hearing. Because if this administration can kidnap Andry and ship him off to a foreign gulag—if they get away with that and the media just moves on—they can do it to anyone.
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Can’t make the show? You can support efforts to free Andry and other wrongly imprisoned immigrants at FreeAndry.org.
Want to get more involved? Join Vote Save America, the Human Rights Campaign and the Immigrant Defenders Law Center for a protest in support of Andry José Hernández Romero. This is an opportunity for WorldPride attendees, DMV area residents, and the entire LGBTQ+ community to rally around Andry as we demand his return!
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Illustration by Imogene Chayes, costume design by Ann Foley
I’m joined by Ann Foley this week to discuss her work as costume designer on the hit HBO show The Last of Us. From sourcing vintage clothes to weaving the infected’s fungal-explosions in with the clothes they were wearing when they died to her graduate school on the sets of Agents of SHIELD, Ann’s insights into translating the world of the game to the world of the screen are pretty fascinating. At the end of the episode, Ann mentions Ellie’s Converse sneakers; you can see what Bella Ramsey scribbled on them here. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend!
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Friedrich Merz is Germany’s new chancellor — head of government in Europe’s largest economy, but likely also setting the direction for the EU as a whole. Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Merz’s campaign for the federal election this February 23 was marked by sharp conservative rhetoric and promises of market‑driven reforms. Yet, falling well short of a majority, he immediately turned toward the familiar terrain of negotiating a “grand coalition” with the center‑left Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Merz thus sought the very alliance that he has always denounced. But who is he, and what can be expected from a chancellor who campaigned as a hard-liner but now faces the same compromises that defined Angela Merkel’s rein? To answer this, it helps to look back three years.
Back then, in a quiet dining room of a Berlin hotel, a group of leading German conservatives gathered for what was publicly described as a farewell dinner for Volker Bouffier, then prime minister of the state of Hesse. Sitting at the table were familiar faces from the CDU. As journalist Sara Sievert recounts in her biography of Merz, Der Unvermeidbare (“The Inevitable”), the real purpose of the evening was more strategic than sentimental. With Merkel’s long chancellorship nearing its end — and her chosen successors, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Armin Laschet, failing to secure public confidence — the CDU elite were searching for a new direction.
When Merz, then-new party leader, stood up to speak that night, everyone knew what was coming: the long-anticipated break with the Merkel era. But instead of denouncing his predecessor outright, Merz invoked another CDU heavyweight — Roland Koch, himself former prime minister of Hesse — praising his controversial 1999 campaign against the reform of Germany’s citizenship laws. Back then, Koch’s hard-line stance against granting birthright citizenship to immigrants’ children had mobilized xenophobic sentiments. People queued in front of the CDU’s stalls, asking where to sign against foreigners. Under Merkel, this was regarded as a low point of CDU history. For Merz, it was to be a model for the party’s new direction.
Thus, fears of a sharp rightward shift under Merz have long simmered in Germany’s political discourse. Critics warn that his chancellorship could signal the CDU’s gradual openness to collaboration with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), or at the very least, a reversal of the centrist policies that defined the Merkel years. Under Merkel, the CDU had accommodated progressive reforms: introducing a minimum wage, legalizing same-sex marriage, phasing out nuclear energy, and accepting over a million refugees in 2015.
Merz has often been viewed as Merkel’s ideological antithesis. A sharp-tongued critic of her centrism, he was sidelined from party leadership as early as 2002, when Merkel ousted him from his post as parliamentary leader. For years, he remained in the political wilderness as an arch-conservative waiting for the pendulum to swing back. Now that he’s returned, however, he appears less intent on reviving his old neoliberal convictions than on emulating Merkel’s pragmatism — ironically adopting the very approach he once derided.
Much of Merz’s public reputation, particularly on the broad liberal and left-wing space, stems from this time out of the political spotlight. In particular, his role as chairman of the German division of BlackRock, the American asset management behemoth, is seen with a critical eye by most Germans. His close personal ties to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, as reported in a recent biography by Volker Resing, only add to the perception that Merz represents the financial elite more than the electorate.
Still, his advocates seek to reframe this association not as a liability but as a strength. His corporate entanglements are portrayed as proof of worldly competence, a business-minded sensibility absent from the typical career politician. “Through his many board positions,” write Jutta Falke-Ischinger and Daniel Goffart in their biography of Merz, “he gained a deep and novel insight into the economy.” Between 2007 and 2018, Merz served on at least nineteen corporate boards, from Commerzbank to BASF and the recycling giant Interseroh. Just as he was plotting his political comeback, his connections earned him millions and embedded him within Europe’s financial elite.
This fusion of economic power and political ambition has drawn intense scrutiny. Merz continued to serve in Germany’s parliament until 2009 despite having effectively exited politics two years earlier. He collected his full salary while delivering no parliamentary speeches in his final term. More controversial still were the board seats and advisory roles he received from industrial leaders with whom he shared personal histories.
One case involved Werner Müller, the former minister of economic affairs under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who awarded Merz a lucrative consulting role at Ruhrkohle AG. Müller later also helped secure him a board seat at Stadler Rail, a Swiss company that went public in 2019. This reportedly made Merz a multimillionaire. Resing, another Merz biographer, quotes one of Merz’s confidants describing this as “his real entry into the circle of the financial and business elite.” This entry came just a year after Merz announced his return to frontline politics.
His proponents have tried to downplay the potential for conflicts of interest. Resing cites a corporate attorney familiar with Merz’s legal work who insists that “the substantive work was always done by others.” Merz, the implication goes, was more of a figurehead than an operative.
When BlackRock executive Merz returned to the political spotlight in 2018, his image as Merkel’s adversary and a neoliberal hard-liner was already firmly established. But what has largely disappeared from the public eye is that Merkel herself was not always perceived as a non-ideological chancellor devoid of political dogmas. On the contrary: when she competed with Merz early in her career for the most important posts within the CDU power apparatus, she too was seen as a neoliberal “radical reformer.” The weekly Der Spiegel wrote at the time about Merkel: “She doesn’t just want to discard cornerstones of 16 years of CDU policy under Helmut Kohl. Merkel wants to overhaul the welfare systems so thoroughly that all concepts dating back to Chancellor Bismarck gradually disappear from the party’s program.”
This stance was especially evident at the CDU party congress in Leipzig in December 2003. At the time, the CDU was, according to Merkel and Merz biographer Resing, “almost radically hungry for renewal.” The policy resolution called for a flat tax, a comprehensive pension system reform, and a massive reduction in social spending. Merz was also present at the congress: “Today marks the beginning of the end of the Social Democratization of the Union,” he thrilled back then.
Yet when Merkel entered the 2005 election campaign, it became clear that this course did not convince a majority. Her economically neoliberal agenda did not resonate — and in fact the CDU lost voters. With 35.2 percent of the vote, she achieved exactly the same result as seven years earlier — the very result that had enabled Gerhard Schröder and the SPD to take power. This outcome would become pivotal for Merkel’s subsequent political strategy. As Resing, who published his first Merkel biography in 2009, writes, the lesson was clear for Merkel: “You can’t win elections with a hardline, economically liberal reform agenda.” Thus, Merkel became the pragmatist the world remembers her for today.
Could the same thing happen to Merz? In 2005, he understood that the Christian Democrats’ electoral victory actually exposed the weakness of Merkel and her program. In a newspaper column at the time, he pointed out that 2.6 million voters had given their first, local vote to the CDU but not their second, more decisive one. The piece bore the title: “Voters apparently don’t want Merkel.”
Back then, sixteen years of Helmut Kohl were followed by a brief SPD-led interlude, to which Merkel responded in 2005 with a radical reform agenda that fared modestly with voters but still brought her to the chancellorship — thanks to a coalition with the SPD.
Now, sixteen years of Merkel have been followed by an even shorter SPD-led interlude, and Merz has responded with a radical reform program that has fared even worse with voters — but will still make him chancellor, again thanks to a SPD willing to cooperate for a little bit of power within ministries.
In their coalition agreement, the two parties prioritize stricter immigration controls and corporate tax relief, while officially preserving key social democratic achievements such as the independent Minimum Wage Commission. Notably, the SPD has managed to prevent major rollbacks of welfare policies, even as the CDU secures business-friendly reforms like accelerated depreciation and a lower corporate tax rate. It’s a playbook known from Merkel’s time. In a more surprising shift, both parties also committed to easing the so-called “debt brake,” a constitutional constraint that has long hampered public investment since its enactment by Merkel’s government in 2009.
So, the parallels have limits. Today’s SPD is weaker than ever, and the CDU is also diminished — the resulting coalition is hardly comparable to Merkel’s power-saturated grand coalitions. These altered dynamics will also have their effect on Merz.
There is no doubt that Merz has presented himself as a radical candidate for the chancellorship. In previous years, he primarily attracted media attention when he overstepped rhetorical boundaries, for example, when he accused Ukrainian refugees of “welfare tourism,” referred to migrant children as “little pashas,” or falsely claimed that asylum seekers were getting free dental work in German clinics.
In 2020, when asked whether he could imagine a gay chancellor for Germany, he replied: “Let me put it this way: the question of sexual orientation is none of the public’s business. As long as it remains within the bounds of the law and doesn’t involve children — and at that point I draw an absolute line — it’s not a matter for public debate.” That this statement placed him “on the borderline of homophobia,” as Sievert writes in her book, is perhaps the most charitable interpretation.
But despite his reliance on provocative topics, Merz may no longer be genuinely interested in escalating them. In the biography by Falke-Ischinger and Goffart, Merz is quoted as saying: “I’m not the conservative fossil my opponents like to make me out to be.” The authors describe how he has become more cautious. He had come to realize that his brash demeanor and outdated rhetoric from pre-1989 West Germany had repeatedly tripped him up. He has since accepted, they write, “that the world can’t simply be rolled back to where it was 16 years before Merkel.”
Even though he is celebrated in the more conservative factions of his party for his aggressive stance, it has become evident that this approach cannot replicate past electoral successes. Public sensitivity has increased, as clearly demonstrated by the wave of outrage over the taboo-breaking joint vote with the AfD on a Bundestag motion this January.
Merz long saw himself as the antithesis of Merkel, but he may end up becoming her political reincarnation. The fact that — just like Merkel before him — he is now entering a grand coalition is further evidence that he intends to govern not as a radical reformer, but as a pragmatic administrator of what he would like to be a hyper-stable Republic.
But it is questionable whether even this opportunistic governing style will work under present conditions. The political and economic prerequisites have fundamentally changed since Merkel’s era. Her chancellorship benefited from a phase of global economic growth that especially favored Germany as an export nation. That model no longer functions. Merz, on the other hand, is unlikely to be compelled — given the absence of pressure from the Left — to sustainably boost domestic demand. There will likely be investments in bridges sturdy enough for tanks. But wage increases that might allow a young generation to afford a new car again? Hardly. Merkel’s stability-focused course had an expiry date — and that date has long since passed.
To be Merkel’s true successor, Merz would have to tackle the many unresolved issues she left behind, notably crippling infrastructure deficits and the failing model of an export-led economy that relied on cheap energy and low labor costs and now faces immense challenges in the context of global supply chain disruptions. But he lacks not only the political finesse, but also the power base to do so.
When Merkel first governed with the SPD, she had a comfortable majority of seats in the Bundestag. The grand coalition Merz now leads is the weakest in history with merely 52 percent of seats. Moreover, the political pressures on the CDU have shifted fundamentally. While Merkel governed during a global upsurge of left-liberalism, with majorities in Germany in favor of legalizing gay marriages, the transition to clean energy and, initially, even the opening of borders, Merz faces a reversed dynamic. Today, the pressure is coming from the Right, articulated by the AfD with a vehemence that no party had the basis to match during Merkel’s time.
Under these conditions, it will be difficult for Merz to stabilize and capitalize on the “center” that Merkel cultivated. He has already distanced himself from his economic radicalism in the hope of reassembling Merkel’s broad voter base. But it is likely that the consensus model she cultivated will not survive his chancellorship.
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THE HOUSE REPUBLICANS’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” is big, at over a thousand pages. But is it beautiful? Not in the eyes of this beholder.
All I can see when I look at it is “denihilism,” a word my former boss at USA Today, Bill Sternberg, used this week in an article about climate change, the coming hurricane season, and the many ways the Trump administration has weakened and destabilized federal weather forecasting and disaster response agencies.
These actions, Bill wrote,
appear driven by a combination of scientific denial (if you pretend a problem like climate change doesn’t exist, then you don’t have to do anything about it, particularly anything that would offend fossil fuel interests) and ideological nihilism (taking a perverse pleasure in inflicting trauma on federal employees and watching the world burn). Call it denihilism.
The gigantic House budget bill that passed by one vote is denihilism to the max. On climate alone, it would roll back Biden-era clean energy incentives and programs, resulting in over 800,000 lost jobs, increased climate-warming pollution, and rising electricity prices—a triple threat to workers, public health, and the cost of living. Not to mention setbacks to U.S. progress in clean-energy manufacturing.
The 215–214 vote came hours after a stock selloff sparked by analyses showing the bill’s tax component—extending, expanding, and reviving provisions of the 2017 tax law—would increase U.S. debt by $3 trillion to $5 trillion over ten years, with interest costs approaching one-third of all federal revenues, amid downgrades of U.S. creditworthiness.
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While most of the tax benefits go to upper-income households, most of the savings proposed to offset about a third of the tax-revenue losses would penalize lower-income Americans by cutting roughly $1.1 trillion in health coverage and food benefits. And they would be cut in a deceptive way—by increasing red tape and paperwork to the point where stressed, needy, busy people just give up.
The GOP plan, public policy professors Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan wrote this week, relies on “opaque cuts, which will shed millions of eligible beneficiaries by overwhelming them with pointless paperwork and other needlessly complicated administrative requirements.” They are less obvious than outright cuts, but they’ll have the same effect—making it “impossible for eligible clients to access the safety net.”
Republicans aren’t stopping at adding work requirements and administrative burdens to Medicaid, the health insurance program (no cash handouts) that’s a lifeline to hospitals and over 70 million low-income people, almost all of whom are kids, parents, disabled, or already working. They’re also reversing years of reforms to ease enrollment and renewals—“simplifying applications, eliminating confusing paperwork and automating processes,” Herd and Moynihan note.
THE GOP BILL TAKES THE SAME APPROACH to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known as food stamps, that 40 million children, seniors, and disabled adults count on. Republicans are counting on the burden of work requirements to pare participation and costs, and on states to find money to pay an increased share of the joint federal-state program.
The knock-on effects of all of this can hardly be overstated. There’s solid evidence that these kinds of complexity can stunt and wreck lives, a concept I wrote about in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of the War on Poverty in 2014:
In Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, economist Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard and psychologist Eldar Shafir of Princeton show that simply feeling poor makes it very hard to think clearly. Their studies found the same dramatic results whether the subjects were Indian sugarcane farmers or shoppers at a New Jersey mall. Feeling rich (the farmers who were studied after their harvests, for instance) resulted in good performance on intelligence tests. Feeling poor produced much worse results.
Worries about not having enough money, it turns out, can subtract 13 IQ points from your mental capacity or “bandwidth,” as the authors call it. That’s a more profound effect than losing a full night’s sleep.
The upside of the research is that the scarcity-perpetuating-scarcity problem can be fixed. “Starting from the premise that programs for people in need should use as little mental bandwidth as possible, the potential for policy remedies is clear,” I wrote. For instance, for people eligible for multiple programs, a one-stop shop open for long hours would relieve stress by reducing time spent on public transportation, in waiting rooms, and away from jobs.
Unfortunately for us, we now have a Republican party determined to make policy remedies as complicated as possible, knowing and perhaps even intending that the result will be more scarcity. How can that possibly help the country?
The GOP safety-net plans, not surprisingly, are wildly unpopular. Data for Progress, a progressive polling firm, found overwhelming opposition to SNAP cuts in every single congressional district in the country. Less than 15 percent of likely voters in each district support the cuts, the firm said Thursday.
It’s true that some parts of the GOP megabill enjoy broad support. Eliminating federal income taxes on tips and overtime, in line with Donald Trump’s campaign promises, is in the bill, at least for now. The exemption only lasts through 2028, and it could disrupt the labor market, and safety-net cuts could cancel out any advantage to families, but it’s one of the only appealing talking points available to Republicans. If they end up keeping it.
As for Democrats, those safety-net cuts are a political layup. Senate Republicans might prevent the worst, but 215 House Republicans are already on record as voting for it. And, as the fictional detective Harry Bosch’s mantra goes, “Everybody counts or nobody counts.”
He’s talking about bringing justice in equal measure in all his cases. We should be making sure all Americans have the opportunity to live their best lives, instead of making sure we shower the most generous tax cuts on people who need them least.
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The week before President Donald Trump unveiled bruising new tariffs that sent the stock market plummeting, a key official in the agency that shapes his administration’s trade policy sold off as much as $30,000 of stock.
Two days before that so-called “Liberation Day” announcement on April 2, a State Department official sold as much as $50,000 in stock, then bought a similar investment as prices fell.
And just before Trump made another significant tariff announcement, a White House lawyer sold shares in nine companies, records show.
More than a dozen high-ranking executive branch officials and congressional aides have made well-timed trades since Trump took office in January, most of them selling stock before the market plunged amid fears that Trump’s tariffs would set off a global trade war, according to a ProPublica review of disclosures across the government.
All of the trades came shortly before a significant government announcement or development that could influence stock prices. Some who sold individual stocks or broader market funds used their earnings to buy investments that are generally less risky, such as bonds or treasuries. Others appear to have kept their money in cash. In one case unrelated to tariffs, records show that a congressional aide bought stock in two mining companies shortly before a key Senate committee approved a bill written by his boss that would help the firms.
Using nonpublic information learned at work to trade securities could violate the law. But even if such actions aren’t influenced by insider knowledge, ethics experts warn that trading stock while the federal government’s actions move markets can create the appearance of impropriety. The recent trades by government officials, they said, underscore that there should be tighter rules on how, or if, federal employees can trade securities.
“The executive branch is routinely engaged in activities that will move the market,” said Tyler Gellasch, who, as a congressional aide, helped write the law on insider trading by government officials and now runs a nonprofit focused on transparency and ethics in capital markets. “I don’t think members of Congress and executive branch officials should be trading securities. To the extent they have investment holdings, it should be managed by someone else outside their purview. The temptation to put their own personal self-interest ahead of their duties to the country is just too high.”
There is no evidence that the trades by government officials identified by ProPublica were informed by nonpublic information. Still, when government officials trade stock at opportune times, Gellasch said, even if it was based on luck and not inside information, it undermines trust in government and the markets
“It then becomes a thing where our markets look rigged,” he said.
In response to questions from ProPublica, the officials who made the trades either said they had no insider information that would help them time their decisions or did not respond to questions about the transactions.
Questions about trades based on nonpublic information have swirled around Congress for years and began anew after Trump’s tariffs announcements led to wild swings in the market. Lawmakers’ trades are automatically posted online and, after multiple congressional stock-trading scandals, are widely scrutinized as soon as they become public.
But less attention is paid to the trades of executive branch employees and congressional aides whose work could give them access to confidential information likely to influence markets once made public.
Last week, ProPublica reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares of Trump Media, the president’s social media company, on April 2. After the market closed that day, Trump unveiled his “Liberation Day” tariffs, sending the market reeling. Bondi’s ethics agreement required her to sell by early May, but why she sold on that date is unclear. She has yet to answer questions about the trades, and the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Earlier this week, ProPublica reported that Sean Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary, sold shares in almost three dozen companies on Feb. 11, two days before Trump announced plans to institute wide-ranging “reciprocal” tariffs. A Transportation Department spokesperson said Duffy’s account manager made the trades and that Duffy had no input on the timing.
Using insider government information to buy or sell securities could violate the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, or STOCK, Act. But no cases have ever been brought under the law, and some legal experts have doubts it would hold up to scrutiny from the courts, which in recent years have generally narrowed what constitutes illegal insider trading.
Thousands of government employees are required to file disclosure forms if they sell or buy securities worth more than $1,000. In many cases, the records are available only in person in Washington, D.C., or through a records request. The documents do not include exact amounts bought or sold but instead provide a broad range for the totals of each transaction.
ProPublica examined hundreds of records for trades shortly before major tariff announcements or other key government decisions. Trump, of course, repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he intended to institute dramatic tariffs on foreign imports. But during the first weeks of his term, investors were not panic selling, seeming to assume that his campaign promises were bluster. Several tariff announcements by Trump early on shook the markets, but it wasn’t until he detailed his new tariffs on April 2 that stocks dived.
Among those who sold securities before one of Trump’s main tariff announcements was Tobias Dorsey. Dorsey, a lawyer in the executive branch since the Obama administration, was named acting general counsel for the White House’s Office of Administration in January, when Trump was inaugurated. The division provides a range of services, including research and legal counseling across the president’s staff, including the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which helps craft trade policy. In his LinkedIn bio, Dorsey describes his duties since 2022 as giving “expert advice on a wide range of legal and policy matters to help White House officials achieve their policy goals.”
On Feb. 25 and 26, disclosure records show, Dorsey unloaded shares of an index fund and nine companies, including cleaning products manufacturer Clorox and engineering firm Emerson Electric. The total dollar figure for the sales was between $12,000 and $180,000. (He purchased one stock, defense contractor Palantir, which was selling for a bargain after recently plummeting on news of Pentagon budget cuts.)
At the time of Dorsey’s trades, investors were still largely in denial that Trump was going to go through with the massive tariffs he had promised during the campaign. But the next morning, Trump posted on social media that significant tariffs on Mexico and Canada “will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled” in several days, and that “China will likewise be charged an additional 10% Tariff on that date.”
The S&P 500, a stock index that tracks a wide swath of the market, fell almost 2% that day alone and ultimately dropped nearly 18% in six weeks.
In an interview, Dorsey said the sale was made by his wife from an account belonging to her. He said she decided to sell around $20,000 worth of shares so they could make tuition payments and that he had no nonpublic information on the impending tariff announcements. The kind of work he does as a career employee, he said, focuses not on public policy, but on how the White House operates, including personnel, workplace technology, contracts and records issues.
“I’m not advising Stephen Miller or Peter Navarro,” he said, referring to top policy advisers to the president. “I’m advising the people running the campus. … I don’t have access to any sensitive political information.”
Another well-timed set of transactions was made by Marshall Stallings, the director of intergovernmental affairs and public engagement for Trump’s Trade Representative. The office helps shape the White House’s trade policy and negotiates trade deals with foreign governments.
On March 25 and 27, Stallings sold between $2,000 and $30,000 of stock in retail giant Target and mining company Freeport-McMoRan. The sales appear to have been an abrupt U-turn. He had purchased the shares less than a week earlier. Days after Stallings’ sales, Trump unveiled his most dramatic tariffs. Target stock fell 17%. Freeport-McMoRan fell 25%.
Stallings and the Trade Representative’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A longtime State Department official, Stephanie Syptak-Ramnath, who until April was ambassador to Peru, also appeared to make a bet against the stock market. On March 24 and 25, she sold between $255,000 and $650,000 in stocks, and bought between $265,000 and $650,000 in bond and treasury funds (along with $50,000 to $100,000 in stocks). Then, on March 31, two days before Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement, she sold between $15,000 and $50,000 of a broad-based stock fund. When the market started to plummet, she bought back the same dollar range in another stock fund. Syptak-Ramnath said she did not have any information about the administration’s decisions beyond what was publicly available. The trades, she said, were “undertaken as a result of family obligations” and in “response to a changing economy.”
A second longtime State Department official, Gautam Rana, who is now ambassador to Slovakia, sold between $830,000 and $1.7 million worth of stock on March 19, a week before Trump declared new tariffs on cars and two weeks before his “Liberation Day” announcement. The shares he sold were largely broad-based index funds. Rana declined to comment for this story.
Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer, said executive branch employees who don’t have nonpublic information and want to trade stock should consult with ethics officials before doing so, thereby allowing an independent third party to assess their actions.
“If you trade and you don’t seek advice in advance, you kind of do it at your own risk, and if you’re asked about it, you have to hope there aren’t factors that make someone question your motivations,” Canter said. “If you seek ethics official advice, you have some cover.”
Executive branch employees are barred from taking government actions that would narrowly benefit them personally, and some are required to sell stock in companies and industries they have purview over in their jobs. But like members of Congress, they are allowed to trade securities.
Since Trump’s tariff announcements and walkbacks began causing fluctuations in the market, questions have been raised about whether anyone has profited off advance notice of the moves. After Trump unexpectedly rolled back some of his tariffs in early April, causing stocks to surge, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned on social media that “any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene bought between $21,000 and $315,000 of stock the day before and the day of the announcement. In a statement, Greene said a financial adviser controls her investments: “Since my portfolio manager makes my trades for me, I usually find out about them when the media asks.”
ProPublica’s review of disclosures also found trades by congressional aides that took place before the market tumbled.
Michael Platt, a veteran Republican staffer who served in the Commerce Department during Trump’s first term and now works for the House committee that handles administrative matters for the chamber, restructured his portfolio in March. An account under his wife’s name sold off between $96,000 and $390,000 in mostly American companies, and purchased at least $45,000 in foreign stocks and at least $15,000 in an American and Canadian energy index fund. Some stock forecasters considered international markets a relatively safe haven if Trump went through with his tariffs. Platt did not respond to requests for comment.
Stephanie Trifone, a Senate Judiciary Committee aide, sold stock in mid-March and bought at least $50,000 in treasuries. A spokesperson for the committee’s Democratic minority said Trifone had no nonpublic information about the tariffs and her trades were conducted by a financial adviser without her input. Kevin Wheeler, a staffer for the Senate Appropriations Committee, made a similar move. In late February, he and his spouse offloaded between $18,000 and $270,000 in funds composed almost entirely of stocks and bought between $50,000 and $225,000 in bonds. A spokesperson for the Appropriation Committee’s Republican majority said Wheeler had no nonpublic information about Trump’s tariff plans and that a financial planner made the trades after advising Wheeler to take a more conservative approach with his portfolio.
Precious metals can be a safe haven during a bear market turn, but those stocks, like the rest of the market, declined after Trump’s tariff announcements.
Two days after White’s last purchase in April of the mining companies’ shares, however, the firms got some good news. A bill White’s boss introduced to make it easier for mining companies like Hecla and Coeur to operate on public lands was approved by a Senate committee, an important step in passing a bill. (White added to his Hecla shares earlier this month and sold his stake in Coeur.)
White told ProPublica that “all required reporting and ethics rules were followed.” Any suggestion that the committee passing the bill played a role in his stock purchases “is a stretch and patently false,” he said, adding that the legislation “has not become law and even if it does, would take decades to have any appreciable impact.”
Update, May 22, 2025: This story has been updated to include a statement from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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One of the most awaited Supreme Court rulings of the year ended in a deadlocked decision that led to triumph for supporters of church-state separation in schools.
On Thursday, the court split 4-4 over a bid to let Oklahoma use taxpayer funds to open what would have been the United States’ first religious public charter school — St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the sole woman represented in the court’s conservative supermajority, did not deliberate in the case. She recused herself, reportedly because she is a good friend of a Notre Dame Law School professor who served as an adviser to the charter school. St. Isidore would have created a Catholic-centric curriculum and been run by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa. The split ruling, which did not break down how the justices voted, affirms the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision last year prohibiting the charter school because its creation would have violated the state and federal constitutions as well as the state charter school statute.
The central question of the case was whether the First Amendment’s religion clauses allow states to open and fund public charter schools with a religious focus. Had the school been allowed to go forward it could have exposed public school students to discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or religion, opponents of St. Isidore argued. They contend that blurring the lines between church and state in schools could introduce students to ideas that engender shame in them about their identities since religious doctrine can be — and has been — interpreted in ways deemed racist, misogynistic and homophobic.
“Charter schools are public schools that must be secular and serve all students,” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit advocacy group, in a statement. “St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which planned to discriminate against students, families, and staff and indoctrinate students into one religion, cannot operate as a public charter school. A religious public school would be an abject violation of religious freedom.”
Leaders of the nation’s two largest education labor unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), issued statements welcoming the outcome of the case. Both groups filed amicus briefs urging the court to reject the effort to create a religious public charter school. Becky Pringle, NEA’s president, said that directing taxpayer funding to St. Isidore would have harmed public education.
For too long, she said, “we have seen anti-public education forces attempt to deprive public school students of necessary funding and support. We are gratified that the Supreme Court did not take the radical step of upending public education by requiring states to have religious charter schools.”
Cari Elledge, fifth-grade teacher and president of the Oklahoma Education Association, said that requiring Oklahoma to fund the charter school programs would have had an adverse impact on classroom resources and educator salaries.
“Funneling funding meant for all to only a select few would have harmed our students and our public schools,” she said.
Randi Weingarten, AFT’s president, said that her organization respects religious education but believes it should be separate from public schooling, which she described as the bedrock of the nation’s democracy.
“Public schools, including public charter schools, are funded by taxpayer dollars because they are dedicated to helping all — not just some — children have a shot at success,” she said.
The Supreme Court’s split ruling “correctly upheld the separation of church and state and backed the founders’ intention to place religious pluralism over sectarianism,” Weingarten continued. “And we are grateful that it upheld the state’s highest court’s clear and unambiguous ruling to preserve and nurture the roots of our democracy, not tear up its very foundations.”
Conservative groups such as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation offered measured responses to the decision despite it not going their way. In a statement, Neal McCluskey, the director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, expressed surprise by how quickly the decision came, as oral arguments just took place in April. He also noted that it was impossible to tell which justices voted in favor or against the charter school
Chief Justice John Roberts “was likely the swing conservative vote, and while this decision does not establish precedent, it potentially sends an important message: the right way to address discrimination against religion by our public education system is through private school choice programs, not charters,” McCluskey said.
Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, the conservative group behind Project 2025, said the issues the case raised involving the First Amendment’s religion clauses could be resolved through alternative means in the future.
“With no majority and no separate opinions, we can’t know how the justices wrestled with these different options,” Jipping said. “The issues raised here will likely return to the court, perhaps in a case better suited for resolution.”
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Why don’t we learn about so many historically important women? The answer is as old as patriarchy itself: it’s easier to dismiss women if we forget what they’ve done.
A view of the Statue of women’s rights pioneers (Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony) unveiled at Central Park on Women’s Equality Day. (Photo by John Nacion/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The erasure of women under President Trump’s new administration isn’t subtle. It’s sweeping, strategic, and dangerous. This is more than censorship. It’s a political act—a rewriting of who gets to count in America’s story. The names, faces, and accomplishments once proudly displayed on military websites and federal pages are now reduced to blank screens and broken links.
I’ve spent decades studying how women are silenced, sidelined, and sold short. Still, I didn’t expect to see their very names vanish from our national memory—almost overnight.
But this is how erasure works—not with a bang, but with a quiet deletion. It’s not an accident. It’s an agenda.
Women are being unceremoniously removed from critical leadership positions in government. Women like Admiral Linda Fagan, the first woman in American history to lead a branch of the armed forces, and Dr. Carla D. Hayden, the first woman and African American to serve as the head of the Library of Congress.
Mentions of women’s contributions have been removed from dozens of federal websites. The National Institutes of Health has received guidance discouraging the use of words like “women,” “female,” and “feminism.” NASA and the Arlington National Cemetery have reportedly erased web content celebrating women in leadership. Even President Biden’s 2024 executive order directing the National Park Service to elevate women’s stories at historical sites has been scrubbed from public view.
This is how erasure works—not with a bang, but with a quiet deletion. It’s not an accident. It’s an agenda.
In a dystopian twist, these actions are framed as “defending women.” At a rally, Trump claimed he would “protect” women, “whether the women like it or not”—a statement made even more chilling by his history of being found liable for sexual assault and credibly accused by over two dozen women.
The deeper danger here isn’t only censorship—it’s invisibility. Erasure. A nation in which girls grow up seeing fewer examples of women in power, and boys are taught to devalue them accordingly.
“If you erase the memory, we really forget the people,” said historian Alessio Ponzio. “It’s an act of violence that is very subtle but can really destroy the psychology of people.”
Stories matter. They shape our sense of what’s possible. Author Lydia Millet once wrote, “Action depends on a perception of possibility.” If women are missing from the narrative, how can the next generation imagine themselves in it?
That’s why we must fight back—not just through protest or policy, but through storytelling.
The National Women’s History Museum and the National Women’s Hall of Fame are leading that resistance. Independent from federal funding, these institutions are preserving and sharing the stories of women who helped build this country. The Hall’s mission is to advance gender equity—yes, the very phrase stripped from federal websites—through action, education, and narrative.
Many of the more than 300 women inducted into the Hall are names the history books left out. Women like Janet Rowley, a geneticist who established that cancer is a genetic disease. Mae Jemison, the first Black woman astronaut in space. Jacqueline Cochran, who led the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots during World War II. And Matilda Josyln Gage, a suffragist and scholar who identified the systemic erasure of women in science as early as 1870—a phenomenon now called the Matilda Effect.
Why don’t we learn about Sarah Deer, a college professor and activist for Indigenous women? Or Faye Glenn Abdellah, a pioneer in nursing research? Or Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori, the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in science? Or Crystal Eastman, co-founder of the ACLU and an author of the Equal Rights Amendment? Or Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a Presidential Cabinet office and advisor to FDR?
The answer is as old as patriarchy itself: it’s easier to dismiss women if we forget what they’ve done.
Today, fewer than seven percent of national monuments honor women. As Rebecca Solnit observed in City of Women, “A horde of dead men… haunt New York City and almost every city in the Western world.” The silencing is systemic—and intentional.
But history doesn’t belong to those in power. It belongs to those who insist on telling the truth.
As the late Cecile Richards once said, “Stories, told and retold, are the key to igniting change.”
So let’s tell them. Loudly. Relentlessly. Let’s amplify the women who’ve shaped our world—those we know and those we’ve yet to discover. Let’s support the institutions that fight to preserve their legacies. And let’s refuse to be erased.
Because we were here. We are here. And we’re not going anywhere.
The job of a journalist is to go to where the silence is — especially when those in power seek to silence voices that question or challenge power. That is what we do at Democracy Now! day in and day out, and we’re able to do it because of financial support from people like you — people who trust and depend on our independent reporting. If you believe that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are essential to the functioning of a democratic society, please donate today. Every dollar makes a difference. Thank you so much.
Democracy Now!
Amy Goodman
The job of a journalist is to go to where the silence is — especially when those in power seek to silence voices that question or challenge power. That is what we do at Democracy Now! day in and day out, and we’re able to do it because of financial support from people like you — people who trust and depend on our independent reporting. If you believe that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are essential to the functioning of a democratic society, please donate today. Every dollar makes a difference. Thank you so much.
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Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a White House meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Palestinians in Gaza still waiting to receive much-needed aid, and the killing of a former Ukrainian official in Spain.
Unsubstantiated Allegations
A meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday turned into a spectacle when the U.S. leader presented Pretoria’s delegation with a video purporting to show evidence of an ongoing genocide against white farmers in South Africa.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a White House meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Palestinians in Gaza still waiting to receive much-needed aid, and the killing of a former Ukrainian official in Spain.
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Unsubstantiated Allegations
A meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday turned into a spectacle when the U.S. leader presented Pretoria’s delegation with a video purporting to show evidence of an ongoing genocide against white farmers in South Africa.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the country’s new Expropriation Act discriminates against white South Africans. The law’s stated purpose is to redress apartheid-era land inequality by allowing Pretoria to seize property in limited circumstances for redistribution. No land has been expropriated under the law as of this time.
The White House has also accused South Africa of targeted violence and killings of primarily white farmers. In a tone reminiscent of Trump’s fateful Oval Office showdown with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, Trump ambushed Ramaphosa with heated allegations, including a more than 4-minute-long video showing inflammatory statements made by firebrand South African politician Julius Malema, a member of parliament and leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters party, as well as other alleged evidence of genocide.
At one point during the meeting, Trump claimed that there were more than “1,000 burial sites” of white South African farmers in the country. Ramaphosa responded with: “I’d like to know where that is. Because this I’ve never seen.” South Africa maintains that there is no evidence of widespread persecution or genocide against white Afrikaners occurring in the country, and Trump has been unable to provide verifiable evidence of widespread killings taking place.
Throughout Wednesday’s meeting, Ramaphosa’s team tried to redirect talks back to trade and investment opportunities. “We have too many deaths; it’s not only white farmers,” South African billionaire Johann Rupert said, alluding to the country’s high crime rate. “It’s across the board, and we need technological help. We need Starlink at every little police station. We need drones.”
Mentioning Starlink by name was likely a calculated choice. The tech company’s CEO, Trump advisor Elon Musk, is from South Africa and has served as one of the most vocal proponents of Trump’s new tough line against Pretoria since the U.S. president’s second term began. Musk was in the room during the Trump-Ramaphosa meeting.
The U.S.-South Africa relationship has reached historic lows in recent months. Since taking office in January, Trump has slashed foreign aid to South Africa, expelled its ambassador, announced hefty tariffs on South African imports, and threatened to boycott the G-20 summit in Johannesburg in November. Last week, the United States also welcomed its first flight of white South Africans who obtained refugee status under the Trump administration by claiming that they face discrimination at home.
The United States and South Africa need to “reset” their relationship, Ramaphosa said on Wednesday. He pointed to critical minerals, peace talks for Ukraine and the Middle East, and global institutions as areas of potential collaboration.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Waiting for aid in Gaza. Authorities have not yet distributed aid to Palestinians in Gaza, the United Nations said on Wednesday, despite Israel partially lifting its blockade on humanitarian assistance entering the territory this week. According to Israeli officials, 93 trucks carrying food and medical equipment passed through the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza on Tuesday. However, U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Israel did not allow aid workers to bring those supplies into the U.N. warehouse.
“I renew my fervent appeal to allow for the entry of fair humanitarian help and to bring to an end the hostilities, the devastating price of which is paid by children, the elderly, and the sick,” Pope Leo XIV said on Wednesday, joining a growing queue of foreign leaders pressuring Israel to fully allow aid into Gaza. Experts warn that a continued blockade could result in famine for the roughly 2 million Palestinians living in the territory.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces fired “warning shots” at a foreign delegation visiting the West Bank city of Jenin on Wednesday. The group—consisting of diplomats from more than 20 countries, including the United Kingdom, France, and Canada—was on an official mission to assess the humanitarian situation at the Jenin refugee camp when the Israeli military said the group “deviated from the approved route and entered an area where they were not authorized to be.”
“IDF soldiers operating in the area fired warning shots to distance them away,” the military added. No injuries were reported. The Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Ministry called the incident a “deliberate and unlawful act,” and European officials were quick to condemn Israel’s actions and demand accountability.
High-profile assassination. A senior advisor to former pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was shot to death on Wednesday outside a school in Madrid that at least one of his children attended. Andrii Portnov, 51, was known for drafting legislation aimed at punishing anti-government protesters who opposed, and eventually ousted, Yanukovych. He was initially accused of treason for alleged involvement in Russia’s annexation of Crimea, though the case was later dropped, and he was the subject of U.S. and European sanctions over alleged corruption in Kyiv.
It is unclear who killed Portnov. According to local police, the assailants fled on foot after shooting Portnov several times in the head and body. His death, however, is the latest in a string of high-profile assassinations since the Russia-Ukraine war began. Other recent killings include journalist Darya Dugina, who was the daughter of an influential Russian nationalist; Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky; and Russian Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, who commanded Moscow’s nuclear and chemical weapons forces.
Balochistan bombing. A suicide bomber targeted a school bus en route to a military-run school in Pakistan’s Balochistan province on Wednesday, killing at least five people—including several children—and injuring more than 50 others. No group has claimed responsibility yet, but experts suspect that ethnic Baloch separatists may have been behind the attack, as the southwestern province has been the epicenter of a long-running insurgency against Islamabad.
Pakistan’s military called the bombing “yet another cowardly and ghastly attack” and accused neighboring India of planning the assault and using “its proxies in Balochistan” to carry it out. “The attack on a school bus by terrorists backed by India is clear proof of their hostility toward education in Balochistan,” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said.
New Delhi has not issued an immediate comment on the accusations. But experts worry that Islamabad’s assertion could collapse the already fragile cease-fire deal that India and Pakistan agreed to earlier this month to halt deadly cross-border attacks.
Odds and Ends
Not all press is good press. Japanese Agriculture Minister Taku Eto resigned on Wednesday after joking that he “never had to buy rice” due to gifts from his supporters. His remarks sparked fierce backlash from Japanese citizens who are struggling with historically high food prices. Former Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi has already been tapped to replace him. “I’m going into this job with the mindset that I am essentially the ‘minister in charge of rice,’” Koizumi said.
