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Ethically Challenged Commerce Sec. Lutnick Tells National TV Audience to Buy Tesla Stock As His Family Business Apparently Holds ~$840M In Tesla
During a March 19 national television appearance, billionaire Trump Commerce Secretary and “close” Elon Musk associate, Howard Lutnick, urged the public to “buy Tesla” stock -- a glaring ethics violation in light of government watchdog Accountable.US’ new analysis finding that Lutnick’s family-run financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald reported holding nearly $840 million in Tesla Inc. in its most recent holdings report. Conveniently, Lutnick’s appeal to would-be average investors came on the same day Cantor Fitzgerald analysts upgraded Tesla to a “buy” rating.
“This is what abuse of power for personal and family gain looks like,” said Accountable.US Executive Director Tony Carrk. “When the billionaire Commerce Secretary used the Trump administration bully pulpit to try to rocket Tesla stock value, he conveniently forgot to mention his family business empire holds nearly $840 million in the company. While Secretary Lutnick is busy making TV appearances in a government capacity to potentially enrich his family business and his close ally Elon Musk, the rollercoaster Trump tariff policies he helped orchestrate are doing little to lower costs for working people – in fact quite the opposite.”
Accountable.US has previously documented billions of dollars of interests Cantor Fitzgerald is involved in that could directly benefit from his role as Commerce Secretary. While Lutnick has claimed he would divest from his business empire upon becoming Commerce Secretary, nearly two dozen of his associates have stated that his “grip on his various businesses is bolted tight” and “his knot of conflicts is unlikely to loosen easily.” After his confirmation, Lutnick then gave “control” of his businesses to his two 20-something-year-old sons.
Accountable.US is a nonpartisan watchdog that exposes corruption in public life and holds government officials and corporate special interests accountable by bringing their influence and misconduct to light. In doing so, we make way for policies that advance the interests of all Americans, not just the rich and powerful.
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'Delusional' Trump Threatens to Send Tesla Vandals to Prison for 20 Years... in El Salvador
"If genuine steps are taken to remove U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to prisons in El Salvador," said one legal expert, "this removal would violate not only U.S. law but the U.S. Constitution."
Mar 21, 2025
President Donald Trump on Friday morning said anyone caught vandalizing Tesla cars or dealerships would be sent to the notoriously violent prisons of El Salvador for a 20-year sentence, a threat characterized by critics as "delusional" as well as overtly unlawful.
"People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to twenty years, and that includes the funders," Trump stated overnight, adding in all caps: "WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!"
Several hours later, Trump took up the issue again on his TruthSocial platform, saying: "I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!"
"The migrant detentions there are the dry run. He wants to ship U.S. prisoners to El Salvador. We cannot sleepwalk through this."
Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill said the threat, which follows on Trump's highly controversial deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador last week, should not be taken lightly.
"Remember that this is where his discussions with El Salvador began," said Ifill in response to Trump's rantings on Friday. "The migrant detentions there are the dry run. He wants to ship U.S. prisoners to El Salvador. We cannot sleepwalk through this."
The #TeslaTakedown movement has gained steam over recent weeks, with people nationwide angered by Elon Musk's wholesale assault on cherished government agencies and programs. The world's richest man, Musk, has been empowered by Trump to spearhead his invented Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
As Axios reports, in response to the popular anger directed at Tesla, "Trump has put the full weight of the U.S. government behind defending and promoting 'first buddy' Elon Musk's car company, which has seen both its sales and stock price slump."
On Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi touted the arrests of three people for alleged acts of vandalism against Tesla, saying, "Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars."
Sending U.S. citizens to a foreign country for imprisonment—even if duly convicted of a crime—is not just insane but would be grossly unconstitutional, as Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a former prosecutor and currently the senior director of the Brennan Center's Justice Program, recently explained.
"It is illegal to expatriate U.S. citizens for a crime," Eisen wrote earlier this month in response to previous threats from the Trump administration to deport people to El Salvador for alleged crimes committed in the United States. "There is no modern precedent for sending U.S. citizens who are convicted of crimes to other countries for punishment, or 'banishment' as it has been formerly called and practiced."
Eisen concluded that it remained "unclear whether the Trump administration is still researching the 'legality' of this proposal or thinking through this scenario with any seriousness. But if genuine steps are taken to remove U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to prisons in El Salvador, this removal would violate not only U.S. law but the U.S. Constitution."
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Naked Kennedy Center Staffer Rips 'Villainous Liar' Trump and 'Nazi Wannabe' Musk
"I have called Trump out on his bullshit and dare him to fire me for being unapologetically queer, and critical, for showing up everyday in my best red lip and woke gender ideology that says don't fuck with me."
Mar 20, 2025
"Walk away or fight?"
That's what one program director at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. asked in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's bigoted attacks on racial, religious, and sexual minorities—and the artist literally bared all of himself while mulling the question.
"Trump has taken over the Kennedy Center, and that's a place where I work. He has banned drag performers from its stages. And as the saying goes, 'we're all born naked and the rest is drag," Tavish Forsyth, the associate artistic lead for the Kennedy Center's Opera Institute, said in a YouTube video, wearing nothing but an 8-bit rainbow-striped heart digitally superimposed over his groin.
Trump recently took over the Kennedy Center, firing its board, appointing himself chair of the body, and
replacing its members with loyalists in what many critics believe is a bid to remake the venerable institution in his own image.
Washington Post associate editor Marc Fischer wrote Wednesday that "there has been much worry in the anti-Trump world that the president will turn the Kennedy Center into an easy-listening temple, a reliquary for washed-up middlebrow acts, a refuge for the few artists who wave the MAGA flag. Kid Rock in the Opera House, Jason Aldean in the Concert Hall."
Reflecting his administration's attacks on LGBTQ+ people, Trump has canceled or proscribed performances deemed "woke," including a concert featuring the Gay Men's Chorus and the National Symphony Orchestra's A Peacock Among Pigeons: Celebrating 50 Years of Pride.
Calling Trump a "villainous liar," Forsyth asked: "Does staying make me a collaborator or somehow complicit in a hostile government takeover that is systematically targeting the rights, livelihood and liberty of poor people, queer people, Black, brown people, people of color, immigrants, Muslims, victims in war-torn countries, ethnic cleansing, women... Gosh when I put it like that, it seems kind of obvious: Fuck Donald Trump and fuck the Kennedy Center. But, on the other hand, is staying holding the line and living to fight another day?"
Forsyth called Trump's move to install himself as the head of Kennedy Center's board "surprising, because he seemed so busy draining dams, damning alliances, siding with killers, endorsing genocide, erasing trans and queer people from history, deporting people who have every right to live in a land of immigrants—a stolen land—and doing everything in his goddam power to seem like a big tough man while Nazi wannabe [Elon] Musk, systematically erodes the government while selling Cybertrucks to the next generation of American war criminals."
"And now that I've said all this shit, people will name me radical, crazy, Antifa, terrorist, pot-smoking, faggot, hippie, whatever the fuck," Forsyth continued. "I also fear that I make myself unemployable. To which I also say, 'Fuck it!' If I'm unemployable, then let it be because I chose to be unrulable. Let it be because I choose me, my beloved family, and stand in solidarity with communities that equally deserve to be free."
"Every bone in my body says run," Forsyth confessed. "And I haven't been sleeping well for over a week. My heart says love one another. My ego says don't let them win. Don't give up. Don't abandon a worthy cause... I have called Trump out on his bullshit and dare him to fire me for being unapologetically queer, and critical, for showing up everyday in my best red lip and woke gender ideology that says don't fuck with me. I threaten him to arrest me for breaking his unjust laws that threaten diversity."
"Shoot your shot, Donald," he added. "The rest of you, should I quit the Kennedy Center or wait to be crucified for this man's sins?"
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Judge Blocks DOGE 'Fishing Expedition' in Sensitive Social Security Data Systems
"The court saw that Elon Musk and his unqualified lackeys present a grave danger to Social Security and have illegally accessed the data of millions of Americans," said one union leader.
Mar 20, 2025
Defenders of the Social Security Administration celebrated a federal judge's Thursday order blocking U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency from access to millions of Americans' SSA records.
"The DOGE team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack," wrote Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander, who issued a temporary restraining order.
In her 137-page opinion, Hollander explained that "to facilitate the expedition, SSA provided members of the SSA DOGE team with unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans, including but not limited to Social Security numbers, medical records, mental health records, hospitalization records, drivers' license numbers, bank and credit card information, tax information, income history, work history, birth and marriage certificates, and home and work addresses."
"Yet, defendants, with so-called experts on the DOGE team, never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE team needs unlimited access to SSA's entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government," noted the appointee of former President Barack Obama.
"Indeed, the government has not even attempted to explain why a more tailored, measured, titrated approach is not suitable to the task. Instead, the government simply repeats its incantation of a need to modernize the system and uncover fraud. Its method of doing so is tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer," asserted the judge, concluding that "plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim that such action is arbitrary and capricious," and violates the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The plaintiffs in this case are three unions—the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Alliance for Retired Americans, and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—represented by Democracy Forward. In addition to DOGE, they sued the SSA and its acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, over the "data grab."
"This is a major win for working people and retirees across the country," AFSCME president Lee Saunders said of the Thursday order. "The court saw that Elon Musk and his unqualified lackeys present a grave danger to Social Security and have illegally accessed the data of millions of Americans. This decision will not only force them to delete any data they have currently saved, but it will also block them from further sharing, accessing, or disclosing our Social Security information."
AFT president Randi Weingarten also welcomed the development, saying that "no one filed for Social Security believing their personal assets would be appropriated by a billionaire who attacks Social Security as a 'Ponzi scheme.' Americans must be allowed to retire with dignity and grace without having to worry about Elon Musk jeopardizing their savings."
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward—which is involved with multiple court battles challenging the Trump administration's sweeping assault on the federal government—pledged Thursday that "our team will continue its legal efforts to ensure that this data remains protected and that those responsible are held accountable."
Judges who have ruled against Trump and Musk's agenda have faced threats of violence and impeachment.
While the Musk-led entity's attempt to gut the federal government has sparked various legal fights, "this ruling is the first time a federal court has explicitly mandated that Musk and DOGE delete unlawfully obtained data," according to Democracy Forward.
Critics of the administration's attempt to "sabotage" the SSA—which includes cutting phone services, laying off workers, shutting down offices, and stealing seniors' earned benefits—warn that Trump and Musk are pushing for privatization.
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