On
the House floor, Rep. Jasmine Crockett calls out Republican cruelty and
hypocrisy in their proposed SNAP and healthcare cuts. Speaking on
behalf of a 28-year-old single mother of five from her district,
Crockett highlights the real human cost behind the GOP’s so-called
“fiscal responsibility.” From slashing food assistance to gutting
healthcare access for millions, Crockett makes it plain: “The only thing
lazy about this bill is their lies.” She urges Congress to reject
cruelty disguised as policy—and to stand with working families, not
political theater.
Records show well-timed trades by executive branch employees
and congressional aides. Even if they had no insider information,
ethics experts say such trading undermines faith in government and the
markets.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
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.
The Republican Budget Bill Rips College Away From the Working Class
If the GOP really cared
about meritocracy, they wouldn’t gut programs that help low-income
students—especially those who also have a job or care for a child—earn a
college degree.
Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News/Getty Images
UCLA graduates celebrate at their commencement in 2024.
The budget bill that House Republicans passed early Thursday funds tax cuts for the rich by kneecapping Medicaid, slashing food stamps, and gutting green energy investments—while also adding trillions
to the deficit. But Republicans aren’t content simply to take away
health care and nutrition assistance from millions of Americans while
accelerating climate change. The bill will also disproportionately hurt
low-income students by making it harder
for them to borrow and repay their loans and by tightening the rules
for Pell Grant recipients. In doing so, it takes an ax to one of the few
reliable ladders for working-class people seeking higher education.
While there is some appetite for changes to the student loan program—total student debt is $1.6 trillion and growing, and more than five million borrowers are in default—they are not the ones that the Republican Congress has made. And no one was crying out for cuts to the Pell Grant program,
a straightforward grant given to the lowest-income college students
that doesn’t have to be repaid. But these provisions in the bill are
consistent with Republicans’ broader attacks on higher education itself,
which they consider to be corrupted by elitism and wokeism. Increasing
the burden of student loans and tightening restrictions on Pell Grants,
though, will only make it harder for working students to attend college.
So much for the GOP’s reverence for meritocracy.
The
changes to the Pell Grant program increase the number of credit hours
that are required to qualify as a full-time student, from 12 to 15,
and cut off aid entirely for students attending less than half-time.
For most college programs, that effectively requires one additional
class per semester to get the maximum loan, around five classes total,
and amounts to an almost $1,500 cut for students taking 12 credit hours who can’t add to their course load. It would also entirely cut off an estimated 20 percent
of students currently receiving aid. “It is a full-out assault on the
ability of students—especially low-income students—to access and afford
higher education,” Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government
relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education,
told Inside Higher Ed
last week. And it will only save the government an estimated $67
billion through the next decade, in a bill that the Congressional Budget
Office estimates will add $3.1 trillion to the deficit over that time period.
Advocates
have said that the requirements are likely to hit the hardest for
students who need to work or take care of a child while in college. “It
just completely ignores the reality that the majority of these students
are not able to take five courses because they’re also juggling the
realities of life … working multiple part-time jobs just to get by,”
said Aissa Canchola Banez, the policy director at the Student Borrower
Protection Center, a nonprofit that wants to eliminate student debt.
The
50-year-old Pell Grant program was designed to enable the poorest
students to attend school by providing them with tuition assistance they
didn’t have to pay back. Today, most recipients come from families making less than $60,000 a year. Overall, the value of the amount provided has diminished
over the years because the small increases lawmakers have made haven’t
kept up with inflation, not to mention the much faster-rising costs of
college. The grant once covered almost three-fourths of tuition and now
only covers a little over a quarter.
As
Pell Grants have decreased in value, students in need have relied more
on student loans, both those provided by the government and those
provided by private lenders. Student debt has more than doubled in this century, as more students have gone to college and college costs have soared. Defaults rose over that time period as well.
Borrowers have already been struggling to pay back those loans,
especially those who borrowed but didn’t finish to receive degrees, and
the programs meant to help those in over their head weren’t working as designed. Former President Joe Biden forgave
a record number of student loans, largely by removing administrative
barriers to forgiveness under existing laws. But Biden’s biggest effort
was blocked by the Supreme Court.
Advocates
have rallied around free college tuition at state universities and
community colleges and increased aid like Pell Grants to help tackle the
student loan crisis and the college affordability crisis. But the fight
over student loans has helped make higher education funding more
generally a target for the right. Republicans used the student loan
crisis as a justification for these cuts. “Our current student loan
system is broken and has left students holding over $1.6 trillion in
federal student loan debt, with taxpayers estimated to lose hundreds of
billions of dollars on loans disbursed over the next decade,” GOP
Representative Tim Walberg of Michigan said in a statement
after the House Education and Workforce Committee passed the education
cuts, adding that the bill “would save taxpayers over $350 billion” and
“bring much-needed reform” of student loans.
It’s part and parcel with Republicans’ wholesale assault on higher education. The Trump administration has gone directly after many elite colleges and universities
over their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and students’
pro-Palestinian protests. This bill will extend the fight to the state
and community colleges that educate the vast majority of students in the
U.S., particularly those from low-income and working-class families.
Other efforts to cut government spending on higher education will also
impede these institutions’ ability to step in and provide help to the
students who need it who can no longer count on Pell Grants to help
cover their costs.
Tying colleges and universities to the culture wars has helped stoke anti-elitism among the right. Republican voters are worried
about the values colleges and universities teach and think these
institutions hold too much sway over American culture, moving it too far
left. This is especially true of older voters who presumably see their
grandchildren in college and don’t know what to make of the generational
gaps they see in political thinking. It’s led them to question not only
what universities are teaching, but whether they hold value for society
at all.
There are criticisms of higher education that are
more than fair. The cost of college has gotten too far out of reach for
many Americans, and for those who must borrow and struggle
to earn a degree, their eventual earnings are often offset by
unmanageable debt. The rise in student debt has also led many
policymakers to question
whether too many professional fields require unnecessary credentials.
The push for high school students to go to college has been accompanied
by a decline in apprenticeship programs and other alternative pathways
into careers that provide high-earning opportunities in blue-collar
work.
As the daughter of a plumber, I’m sympathetic to
arguments that not everyone needs to go to college for a good,
well-paying career. But that message seems most aimed at low-income
students in poor communities, those who might benefit most from college
and can afford it the least. Earlier in my career, I held a second job
as a private tutor for SAT prep on Connecticut’s Gold Coast, and those
parents and students were all scrambling to get into the best colleges
possible, never once doubting the value or their ability to afford it. I
never once heard someone suggest they forgo college for a blue-collar
career.
Abandoning
the idea that education can be an engine for social mobility would
change the shape of the United States. And it’s become clear that
funding for colleges has now simply become a wedge in the ongoing
culture wars and battle for voters, as college graduates of all classes
have migrated to the Democratic Party and non-college graduates are
wooed by the MAGA Republicans’ faux populism. Needless to say, the cuts
in the GOP bill were authored by congressmembers who not only attended college, but in many cases went to Ivy League schools and hold advanced degrees.
The bill still has to pass the Senate, where the Republican majority is also slim, and GOP senators including Rand Paul of Kentucky and Josh Hawley
of Missouri have objected to some provisions. Whatever happens in the
upper chamber, the Republican Party has shown us that it plans to use
the worries of the working class to dismantle any government attempt to
help them, even in the smallest ways.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South
Africa’s top law enforcement official said Friday that U.S. President
Donald Trump wrongly claimed that a video he showed in the Oval Office
was of burial sites for more than 1,000 white farmers and he “twisted”
the facts to push a false narrative about mass killings of white people
in his country.
Police Minister Senzo Mchunu was talking about a video clip that was played during the meeting between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday that showed an aerial view of a rural road with lines of white crosses erected on either side.
“Now
this is very bad,” Trump said as he referred to the clip that was part
of a longer video that was played in the meeting. “These are burial
sites, right here. Burial sites, over a thousand, of white farmers, and
those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning.”
Mchunu said the crosses did not mark graves or burial sites, but were
a temporary memorial put up in 2020 to protest the killings of all
farmers across South Africa. They were put up during a funeral
procession for a white couple who were killed in a robbery on their
farm, Mchunu said.
A son of the couple who were killed and a local community member who
took part in the procession also said the crosses do not represent
burial sites and were taken down after the protest.
South Africa
struggles with extremely high levels of violent crime, although farm
killings make up a small percentage of the country’s overall homicides.
Both white and Black farmers are attacked, and sometimes killed, and the
government has condemned the violence against both groups.
Whites make up around 7% of South Africa’s 62 million people but
generally still have a much better standard of living than the Black
majority more than 30 years after the end of the apartheid system of
racial segregation. Whites make up the majority of the country’s
wealthier commercial farmers.
Mchunu said Trump’s false claims that the crosses represented more
than 1,000 burial sites was part of his “genocide story” — referring to
the U.S. president’s baseless allegations in recent weeks that there is a
widespread campaign in South Africa to kill white farmers and take their land that he has said amounts to a genocide.
“They
are not graves. They don’t represent graves,” Mchunu said regarding the
video that has become prominent on social media since it was shown in
the White House. “And it was unfortunate that those facts got twisted to
fit a false narrative about crime in South Africa.”
“We have
respect for the president of the United States,” Mchunu added. “But we
have no respect for his genocide story whatsoever.”
The White
House, when asked about Mchunu’s remarks, pointed back to press
secretary Karoline Leavitt’s comments a day earlier at her briefing,
when she said that “the video showed crosses that represent the dead
bodies of people who were racially persecuted by their government.”
Of
the more than 5,700 homicides in South Africa from January through
March, six occurred on farms and, of those, one victim was white, said
Mchunu. “In principle, we do not categorize people by race, but in the
context of claims of genocide of white people, we need to unpack the
killings in this category,” he said.
Lourens Bosman, who is a former lawmaker in the national Parliament,
said he took part in the procession shown in the video the Trump
administration played. It happened near the town of Newcastle in the
eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal in September 2020. The crosses were
symbols to white and Black farmers and farmworkers who had been killed
across South Africa over the previous 26 years, Bosman said.
Trump’s
falsehoods that South Africa’s government is fueling the persecution
and killing of its minority white farmers has been strongly denied by
the country, which says the allegations are rooted in misinformation.
Ramaphosa pushed for this week’s meeting
with Trump in what he said was an attempt to change Trump’s mind over
South Africa and correct misconceptions about the country to rebuild
ties.
Trump issued an executive order on Feb. 7 that cut all U.S. financial
assistance to South Africa and accused it of mistreating white
Afrikaner farmers and seizing their land. The order accused Ramaphosa’s
government of “fueling disproportionate violence against racially
disfavored landowners.”
Trump’s
executive order also accused South Africa of pursuing an anti-American
foreign policy and specifically criticized its decision to launch a case
at the International Court of Justice accusing U.S. ally Israel of
genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The order accused South Africa of
supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas through that case.
Gumede is a Johannesburg-based text news reporter for
The Associated Press. She covers a wide range of news topics, including
health, climate change, and politics in South Africa.
The poorest kids in the country miss out on the full benefits of the expanded child tax credit in the "big beautiful bill."
Why it matters: The bill now making its way to the Senate provides moretax breaks to higher earners than those at the bottom.
By the numbers: The Republican bill raises the maximum child tax credit to $2,500 per child from $2,000 for three years.
20
million children would not fully benefit from the increase, according
to an analysis from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP),
since their parents don't earn enough income to get the maximum amount.
"A majority of those children get nothing from the proposed expansion," says Kris Cox, director of federal tax policy at the CBPP.
17
million children as of now do not receive the full benefit from this
tax credit, per the CBPP. None of them will get anything from the
expansion.
How it works: Under current law,
families need upward of $30,000 a year to receive the full tax credit
amount, explains Joe Hughes, senior analyst at the Institute on Taxation
and Economic Policy.
Parents who are poor and don't owe
income taxes can only claim up to $1,700 per child, known as the
"refundability cap." It's a number which adjusts annually for inflation.
The
new bill didn't raise the refundability cap. Instead, it only increases
the maximum that parents, earning less $400,000 a year, can claim.
A
married couple filing jointly would need to earn $48,550 to receive the
full tax credit under the new bill, per CBPP estimates. Under current
law, a married couple has to earn $36,800.
Zoom out: The new bill widens the gap between what's available to kids in higher income families and those who need help most.
For example: A
married couple with two children earning $400,000 a year, the max
income allowed to claim the credit, would get an additional $1,000 tax
credit.
A single parent with two children, earning $24,000 a year, would get nothing, Cox explains in a recent Bluesky post.
The
parents who miss out on the full benefit are those working in
low-paying jobs like cashiers, home health aids and housekeepers.
Presumably a few
of these parents are tipped employees who could benefit from the
no-tax-on-tips provision of the bill. However, just as with this the
child tax credit, many earn too small an income to benefit.
The other side: The
standard defense here is that low-income Americans don't pay very much
in taxes. Their tax burden is low, so they shouldn't get the full credit
because they don't need the tax relief.
White House
spokesman Kush Desai says wealth inequality decreased after the 2017 tax
bill, and the new bill would lock that success in place.
He
adds that it builds on that success "by eliminating taxes on tips and
overtime in addition to rewarding American manufacturing with full
equipment and factory expensing to turbocharge America's economic
resurgence."
Between the lines: This big
bill faces big hurdles ahead in the Senate — and the bond market — and
it's not clear what will eventually make it through.
The intrigue: The
legislation also blocks another 4.5 million children from benefiting
from the child tax credit because now to claim it, both parents, if they
are filing jointly, must have their own Social Security numbers.
Under
current law, parents who don't have Social Security numbers can claim
the credit if their child has one. So, for instance, a parent who is a
non-citizen immigrant and files taxes with an ITIN number can claim it.
Before
2017, any parent filing taxes could claim the credit. But when Congress
changed the law in the first Trump tax bill, 1 million citizen children
lost out, Cox says.
State of play: The child tax credit provisions are a stark 180 for the House.
Just last year, the House passed a bill, with 169 Republican votes, that would have made the credit more equitable. (It failed in the Senate.)
The bottom line: An expanded child tax credit benefits a lot of middle and upper-middle class parents, but the poorest don't catch a break.
