February, 27 2019, 11:00pm EDT
Fossil Fuel Lobbyist Wheeler Unfit to Serve as EPA Administrator
The Senate is set to confirm Andrew Wheeler as Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today. A long-time fossil fuel lobbyist with a record of climate denial, Wheeler is unfit to lead the federal agency responsible for protecting our nation's environment and public health.
Ariel Moger, spokesperson for Friends of the Earth, issued the following statement in response:
WASHINGTON
The Senate is set to confirm Andrew Wheeler as Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today. A long-time fossil fuel lobbyist with a record of climate denial, Wheeler is unfit to lead the federal agency responsible for protecting our nation's environment and public health.
Ariel Moger, spokesperson for Friends of the Earth, issued the following statement in response:
As Acting Administrator of the EPA, Andrew Wheeler has served the interests of corporate polluters at the expense of our public health and environment. Instead of handing him a promotion, the Senate should investigate Wheeler's ties to the fossil fuel industry and halt his dangerous and destructive policies.
Americans need an EPA Administrator who will protect our public health, safeguard our environment, and take the threat of climate change seriously. A vote for Wheeler is a vote against the environment and for Big Oil.
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
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Watchdog Launches Probe of Trump-Musk Use of AI for Mass Firings of Federal Workers
"The American people deserve to know what is going on—including if and how artificial intelligence is being used to reshape the departments and agencies people rely on daily."
Mar 03, 2025
A watchdog organization on Monday launched a public records probe to determine the extent to which the Trump administration and its billionaire wrecking ball, Elon Musk, are using artificial intelligence as part of their lawless effort to purge the federal workforce.
"The American people deserve to know what is going on—including if and how artificial intelligence is being used to reshape the departments and agencies people rely on daily," said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, the group behind the new investigation.
"We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to force the Trump-Vance administration to fulfill its obligation to the public and to our system of laws," Perryman added.
The probe comes days after NBC Newsreported that federal workers' responses to Musk's email ultimatum were "expected to be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary."
"The information will go into an LLM (Large Language Model), an advanced AI system that looks at huge amounts of text data to understand, generate and process human language," the news outlet reported, citing unnamed sources. "The AI system will determine whether someone's work is mission-critical or not."
Additionally, according to The Washington Post, Musk lieutenants "have fed sensitive data from across the Education Department into artificial intelligence software."
"For an administration that claimed it wanted to bring about transparency and efficiency in government, the Trump-Vance administration's purge of public servants and sloppy processes have done just the opposite."
Democracy Forward said Monday that it would use Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in an attempt to shine light on the administration's reliance on AI for personnel decisions. The Trump Justice Department argued in a court filing last week that the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is exempt from public records requests—a claim that experts have rejected and condemned as an attempt to skirt oversight.
"For an administration that claimed it wanted to bring about transparency and efficiency in government, the Trump-Vance administration's purge of public servants and sloppy processes have done just the opposite," Perryman said Monday. "DOGE and this administration are operating in a shroud of secrecy, and their 'govern by chaos' tactics have only made government less efficient and caused disruptions to our safety and security."
Democracy Forward said its new FOIA requests were sent to DOGE as well as the Office of Personnel Management, the State Department, the Education Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the General Services Administration, among other agencies.
Wiredreported last month that "Thomas Shedd, the recently appointed Technology Transformation Services director and Elon Musk ally, told General Services Administration workers that the agency's new administrator is pursuing an 'AI-first strategy.'"
"Shedd provided a handful of examples of projects GSA Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian is looking to prioritize, including the development of 'AI coding agents' that would be made available for all agencies," Wired added. "Shedd made it clear that he believes much of the work at [Technology Transformation Services] and the broader government, particularly around finance tasks, could be automated.
Geoffrey Fowler, the Post's technology columnist, noted Monday that "lots of recent evidence shows that relying on automation alone to make critical decisions can lead to big government mistakes."
"Just ask New York City, where last year a government AI chatbot advised businesses to break the law," Fowler wrote. "Or Australia, where a deeply flawed algorithm called Robodebt created the opposite of efficiency: the government had to settle for more than a billion dollars with citizens for wrongly reclaiming benefits."
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House Dems Push Trump AG for Answers on 'Illegal Quid Pro Quo' With Eric Adams
"The DOJ has strayed far from its principles of equal justice under the law by dismissing a serious criminal public corruption matter in exchange for assistance with the White House's immigration priorities."
Mar 03, 2025
Senior House Democrats on Monday demanded that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi hand over information about the Trump administration's "lawless order that federal prosecutors move to dismiss the public corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams as part of a corrupt bargain to buy the mayor's obedience in immigration enforcement."
Calling on Bondi to "immediately end the cover-ups and retaliations within the Department of Justice (DOJ)," House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and House Oversight Subcommittee Ranking Member Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) wrote in a letter to the attorney general:
Last month, troubling reports emerged about the Trump administration's demand that federal prosecutors move to dismiss the serious public corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams as part of a blatant and illegal quid pro quo to secure the mayor's loyal assistance in executing the Trump administration's mass arrest and deportation policies. Not only did the Department of Justice attempt to pressure career prosecutors into carrying out this illegal quid pro quo, it appears that acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove was personally engaged in a cover-up by destroying evidence and retaliating against career prosecutors who refused to follow his illegal and unethical orders.
Adams had faced five federal felony charges including alleged wire fraud, bribery, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. According to a September 2024 indictment, the Democrat "sought and accepted improper valuable benefits, such as luxury international travel, including from wealthy foreign businesspeople and at least one Turkish government official seeking to gain influence over him" as it became clear in 2021 that he would be elected.
On February 14, Trump's DOJ formally moved to drop the charges against Adams without prejudice, meaning they could be brought again. This prompted the resignation of seven federal prosecutors, and, on February 17, four of Adams' eight deputy mayors.
Raskin's office said Monday that federal prosecutors' resignation letters, "including those by Danielle Sassoon, a staunch conservative, former law clerk to [U.S. Supreme Court] Justice Antonin Scalia, and Trump's interim United States attorney for [the Southern District of New York], and Hagan Scotten, a former law clerk to both [Supreme Court] Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts, revealed a stunning account of a corrupt bargain the DOJ struck with Mayor Adams, as well as an attempted cover-up."
Sassoon described a January 31 meeting she and colleagues attended with Bove at which "Adams' attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the [DOJ's] enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed," and added that Bove "admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting's conclusion."
Subsequently, Adams reportedly told New York City officials to refrain from criticizing Trump. After meeting with Trump "border czar" Tom Homan, Adams on February 13 announced an executive order to allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to operate at Rikers Island, New York City's largest jail, for the first time in decades.
The following day Adams and Homan appeared together on Fox News. Although the two men were seen laughing it up, Homan said that if the mayor didn't "come through" for the Trump administration, "we won't be sitting on this couch, I'll be in his office, up his butt, saying, where the hell is the agreement we came to?"
Thinly veiled Homan warning to Adams: “If he doesn’t come through … I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, Where the hell is the agreement we came to” pic.twitter.com/Pq0msJXZGb
— Emily Ngo (@emilyngo) February 14, 2025
Raskin and Crockett are seeking all notes related to the January 31 meeting, all communications between the White House and DOJ regarding the Adams case, and other information.
"For our justice system to function, 'legal judgments of the Department of Justice must be impartial and insulated from political influence,'" the lawmakers asserted. "As Ms. Sassoon said in her letter, our system depends on prosecutors pursuing justice 'without favor to the wealthy or those who occupy important public office.' Here, the DOJ has strayed far from its principles of equal justice under the law by dismissing a serious criminal public corruption matter in exchange for assistance with the White House's immigration priorities."
"Unfortunately, this is yet another example of the Trump DOJ allowing criminals to go free—whether they assaulted police officers, sold drugs to the community, or are corrupt politicians—as long as the criminals pledge loyalty to President Trump," the pair added.
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'This Is Grim': Trump Admin Moves to Gut Anti-Money Laundering Law
The U.S. Treasury Department will no longer enforce a "beneficial ownership" reporting requirements that are aimed at curbing money laundering and shell company formation.
Mar 03, 2025
The Trump administration announced Sunday it will cease to enforce penalties and fines on businesses that fail to adhere to beneficial ownership financial reporting requirements under the Corporate Transparency Act, an anti-money laundering law passed by Congress in 2021. The announcement was panned by advocates, economists, and other critics who called the move an on-ramp for corruption.
The Corporate Transparency Act, a bipartisan effort, includes a rule that requires many corporations and limited liability companies to disclose information on who owns and controls a business entity (also known as the beneficial owner) to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department.
"Exciting news!" wrote Trump on Truth Social when announcing that the Treasury Department would no longer enforce the reporting rule, which he called "invasive and outrageous."
Garbiel Zucman, a professor of economics, reposted Trump's message on X, and wrote: "Exciting news for tax evasion and money laundering!"
Economist and author Anders Åslund reacted to the update writing, "to oppose corporate transparency is to favor corruption."
Supporters of the Corporate Transparency Act, which has face court challenges, argue that the policy is an important step toward reining in anonymous companies, which are the preferred vehicle for moving around illicit funds.
"God, this is grim," weighed in author Oliver Bullough, who has written a book about global wealth and corruption. "The White House has killed the Corporate Transparency Act, which was itself a tiny first step in the marathon journey of stopping U.S. companies from being the most egregiously opaque shell structures on the planet."
In a Monday statement, Ian Gary, executive director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition, called the move a "hollowing out" of the Corporate Transparency Act that runs counter to years of bipartisan work to "end the scourge of anonymous shell companies."
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, for his part, said ceasing enforcement is a "victory for common sense," according to a Sunday statement. "Today's action is part of President Trump's bold agenda to unleash American prosperity by reining in burdensome regulations, in particular for small businesses that are the backbone of the American economy," he said. In response, Bullough, argued that Bessent doesn't recognize that fraud "suppresses prosperity, rather than enables it."
According to the announcement, the Treasury Department will issue a proposed rulemaking with the aim of narrowing the scope of the rule so that it solely applies to foreign reporting companies.
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