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Trump Must Divest Himself of All Business Holdings, Democracy Advocates and Ethicists Say
WASHINGTON
More than a dozen pro-democracy organizations and leading government ethics experts today urged President-elect Donald Trump to divest his holdings in his business assets. They called on Trump or an independent trustee to sell his assets, with proceeds invested in treasury bills and mutual funds that do not create conflicts of interest. Alternately, the proceeds could be invested by an independent trustee operating a genuine blind trust.
"If family members choose to stay involved with Trump Organization businesses, or any other business, then a clear firewall must be established so that these family members have no involvement with policy decisions at the White House," the letter says.
"Failure to follow this course of action will create conflicts of interest of unprecedented magnitude," the letter says.
"The nature and diversity of the Trump Organization businesses mean that a wide range of government policy has direct impact on those businesses. This includes important domestic matters related to tax policy, standards for government contractors, consumer protection, the functioning of the civil justice system, financial regulation, labor rights, workplace safety and health standards, and bankruptcy law."
The Trump Organization has substantial wealth invested in hotels and golf courses around the world in addition to past involvement in failed ventures like casinos, airlines, professional football and other industries. Trump's companies are privately held, so financial details often are scarce or incomplete. But as the president-elect of the United States, his countless investments, coupled with no publicly available tax records, cry out for public disclosure and blind trusts for his wealth, the groups and ethicists said.
Matters of foreign policy also are implicated because of the global reach of the Trump Organization, the letter said. "The American people need to know that when you are making decisions concerning our allies and our adversaries, you are not doing so because they are allies or adversaries of your businesses."
The letter cautions, "There is no way to square [President-Elect Trump's] campaign commitments to the American people - and your even higher, ethical duties as their president - with the rampant, inescapable conflicts that will engulf your presidency if you maintain connections with the Trump Organization, including by maintaining ownership with control transferred to your children."
Signers of the letter include:
Gary D. Bass, Campaign for Accountability, Campaign Legal Center, Center for American Progress, Center for Media and Democracy, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Common Cause, Democracy 21, Ambassador (ret.) Norm Eisen, chief White House ethics lawyer, 2009-2011, Essential Information, Issue One, Thomas E. Mann, OpentheGovernment.Org, Norman Ornstein, Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer, 2005-2007, People for the American Way, Project on Government Oversight, Public Citizen, Sunlight Foundation
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
(202) 588-1000LATEST NEWS
Israeli Defense Minister Says IDF Is 'Awaiting a Green Light' From Trump to 'Push Iran Back Into a Dark Age'
One critic described the Israeli official's remarks as the country's "official statement of intent to commit further war crimes in Iran."
Apr 23, 2026
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Thursday said his country was ready to unleash devastating new attacks on Iran should it get approval from US President Donald Trump.
As reported by Amichai Stein, diplomatic correspondent for iNews24, Katz said that Israel is "prepared to resume the war" and is "awaiting a green light from the United States."
Katz also vowed that Israel would hit Iran even harder than in previous strikes, vowing "to complete the elimination of the Khamenei family and to push Iran back into a dark age."
"This time, the strike will be different and far more lethal, delivering devastating blows at the most sensitive points," Katz warned, "ones that will shake and undermine its very foundations."
Targeting civilian infrastructure such as power plants is a war crime under international law. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu already has a warrant out for his arrest issued in 2024 by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza.
Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, described Katz's remarks as "Israel’s official statement of intent to commit further war crimes in Iran."
Drop Site News reporter Ryan Grim observed that the Israeli defense minister's threats are reminiscent of the strategy that it has employed in Gaza in its effort to dislodge Hamas over the last three years.
"Israel believes it is always a few good assassinations away from total victory," Grim commented. "Now pledging more."
Trump, in partnership with Netanyahu, illegally launched a war with Iran in late February without any congressional authorization. In response to the attack, Iran shut down all shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, choking off roughly 20% of the global oil supply.
In that time, the price of oil has soared, Trump's approval ratings have crashed to record lows, and a UN expert warned on Wednesday about the possibility of a global food crisis if the strait is not soon reopened to fertilizer shipments.
There has been a fragile ceasefire agreement in effect between the US, Israel, and Iran for the last two weeks, which Trump extended indefinitely on Tuesday.
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IDF Soldiers Say Commanders Turning Blind Eye to Lebanon Looting 'On a Crazy Scale'
"It's not hidden," said one Israeli soldier. "Everyone sees it and understands."
Apr 23, 2026
While media coverage of Israel's war on Lebanon mainly focuses on the slaughter of hundreds of Lebanese civilians and destruction of entire villages, Israel Defense Forces commanders are tacitly condoning widespread looting by their troops in Lebanon, according to reporting Thursday.
Haaretz, Israel's oldest daily newspaper, interviewed a number of IDF personnel who described routine theft of items including motorcycles, televisions, paintings, sofas, and rugs from the homes and businesses of some of the more than 1 million Lebanese forcibly displaced by Israel's assault on its northern neighbor.
Israel has seized control of more than 50 villages in southern Lebanon as part of its expanding so-called “Yellow Line,” with residents who cross it risking their lives. Their absence offers IDF troops the opportunity to loot with no Lebanese resistance.
The looting of civilian homes and businesses is formally known as "pillage" and is strictly prohibited under numerous Israeli and international laws and conventions. However, according to the IDF soldiers and officers interviewed by Haaretz, senior and junior commanders know about the pillaging but are not punishing offending soldiers.
"It's on a crazy scale," one soldier said. "Anyone who takes something—televisions, cigarettes, tools, whatever—immediately puts it in their vehicle or leaves it off to the side, not inside the army base, but it's not hidden. Everyone sees it and understands."
Soldiers interviewed said commanders' responses range from turning a blind eye to prohibiting looting but not punishing offenders.
"In our unit, they don't even comment or get angry," one soldier claimed. "The battalion and brigade commanders know everything."
Another said that "battalion and brigade commanders do speak up and get angry, but without action, those are empty words."
Some IDF soldiers have even posted videos of their looting on social media—usually with no consequences.
🇮🇱🇱🇧IDF soldiers reportedly filmed looting homes in southern Lebanon.
The video shows troops taking belongings from civilian houses during the ground operations.
Israel’s campaign has displaced over 1 million Lebanese in under three weeks…pic.twitter.com/RRgjX8T9Rb https://t.co/iGcjA9NbXt
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 20, 2026
Responding to the Haartez report, the IDF claimed:
The military views any harm to civilian property and acts of looting with utmost severity and unequivocally prohibits them. Any allegation or suspicion of such acts is thoroughly examined and addressed with the full weight of the law. In cases where sufficient evidence is established, disciplinary and criminal measures are taken, including prosecution. The Military Police Corps conducts inspections at the northern border crossing as forces exit Lebanon.
However, some military police checkpoints along the border have been removed, and in some locations there have never been any checkpoints at all.
Widespread looting by IDF soldiers has previously been documented in Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank, sometimes by the perpetrators themselves.
IDF looting has also been reported in Syria, where Israel has seized as many as 200 square miles of additional territory in 2024, including dozens of border villages, under cover of the Gaza genocide. Israel already conquered and occupied much of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967.
Israeli forces also allegedly backed Palestinians who looted Gaza aid convoys in order to boost the narrative that it's Hamas, not Israel, thatof is preventing humanitarian aid from reaching starving Gazans.
Looting of Palestinian property was particularly rampant during the Nakba, or "catastrophe," when more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs were ethnically cleansed to make way for the establishment of Israel.
The systematic theft of Palestinian land, homes, and property—which continued with the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights in 1967—is accelerating today, and can be witnessed in videos of settler pogroms in the West Bank and infamous footage of an American-born settler colonist telling a Palestinian family whose home he's trying to steal that "if I don't steal it, someone else is going to."
The ongoing apartheid in Jerusalem.
“Even if i get out of the house, it won’t be returned to u” pic.twitter.com/5sELdmClH5
— Abed 🕊️ (@tiredpali) May 1, 2021
Such unchecked usurpation emboldens further thievery. One soldier interviewed by Haaretz for Thursday's article said the pillage would effectively end if there were serious consequences for offenders, pointing to units in which commanders took a tough stance against looting, resulting in negligible levels of the crime.
"Lenient enforcement sends a clear message. If someone were dismissed or jailed, or if military police were stationed at the border, it would stop almost immediately," they said. "But when there is no punishment, the message is obvious."
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'The Truth Is Better Than Continuing to Lose': Petition Demands DNC Release Autopsy of 2024 Defeat
"We who are prudent would like to know what mistakes were made that thrust us into this nightmare we are living."
Apr 23, 2026
The Democratic National Committee is still refusing to release its internal "autopsy" report about Democrats' defeat in the 2024 election, but at least one progressive advocacy group isn't letting party leaders off the hook.
RootsAction has organized a letter writing campaign encouraging supporters to email the DNC demanding release of its analysis of how Democrats in 2024 lost the presidential election to twice-impeached convicted felon Donald Trump.
The group has put together an editable template letter for supporters to use, and it makes reference to a February report from Axios claiming that the DNC found that the Biden administration's support for Israel during its years-long assault on Gaza cost Vice President Kamala Harris votes among young people and progressive voters.
"The truth is not just embarrassing but also inconvenient to those who want to persist in making the same mistake, in arming Israel, in shifting more and more of our resources into wars that devastate millions of lives," the letter states. “But the truth is better than continuing to lose. It would be hard not to blame future defeats on your refusal to allow examination of past defeats."
Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction, noted that the DNC "spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at least doing interviews in 50 states," to conduct its autopsy, but has nonetheless decided it won't "tell the millions of people who donated money to the Democratic Party candidates in the last few years" what it learned from that internal review.
RootsAction senior strategist India Walton said it was political malpractice for the DNC to continue suppressing the report.
"We who are prudent would like to know what mistakes were made that thrust us into this nightmare we are living," she said. "Now is not a time for saving face. Releasing the autopsy will help us understand what voters really want heading into midterms and the next presidential election. That’s the least we deserve."
RootsAction last year released its own autopsy of the 2024 election, which found that the Biden administration's support for Israel hurt it among voters, while also blaming the party's strategy of courting corporate donors instead of organizing working-class voters who shifted to Trump.
"This was a preventable disaster," said journalist Christopher Cook, who authored the report, "but Harris and the Democratic Party leadership prioritized the agendas of corporate donors and gambled on a centrist path, while largely abandoning working-class, young, and progressive voters."
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