February, 07 2025, 03:51pm EDT
New Federal Vehicle Charging Funds Halted
Late yesterday, the Federal Highway Administration halted new funding for state programs to install tens of thousands of new vehicle chargers along highways and at rest stops across the nation.
A key part of the 2022 bipartisan infrastructure law, all 50 states have federally approved plans to build these fast chargers, which will allow more drivers to access fast, convenient charging when they are on long trips.
The highway department said existing state plans would be scrapped, and that it would take months to review and restart the process. Consequently, the deployment of the federally funded electric vehicle charging network will be paused indefinitely.
The following is a comment from Beth Hammon, a senior vehicle charging advocate at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):
"On a bipartisan basis, Congress funded this program to build a new vehicle charging network nationwide. The Trump administration does not have the authority to halt it capriciously.
“Stopping funding midstream will result in chaos and delays in states across the nation. It will throw state efforts into turmoil, wreak havoc with the companies that install the chargers and risk the jobs of their workers. The only winner from this chaos is the oil industry.
“This should not stand. Courts have already blocked the Trump administration’s other illegal attempts to halt legally mandated funding.
“Congress needs to stand up for itself: This move and many others from the Trump administration steals away its Constitutionally established spending authority."
NRDC works to safeguard the earth--its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends. We combine the power of more than three million members and online activists with the expertise of some 700 scientists, lawyers, and policy advocates across the globe to ensure the rights of all people to the air, the water, and the wild.
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Trump Stages Tesla Car Show at White House After Berating Americans for Boycotting Musk
"While Trump cuts programs you need to live, he's turning the White House into a car dealership to advertise his unelected shadow president's failing company," said one critic.
Mar 11, 2025
With Tesla's stock plummeting since the electric carmaker's CEO, Elon Musk, arrived in Washington, D.C. and began slashing federal jobs and programs, U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday was intent on helping his "special government employee" as he spent part of the afternoon inspecting five of the company's cars on the White House lawn.
The president declared the cars "beautiful" and expressed hope that his purchase of a Tesla will help the company's financial position.
More Perfect Union, the labor-focused media organization, cast doubt on Musk's claim that he will double production due to the president's interest, "given declining demand for his cars."
"This is just two corrupt oligarchs scratching each other's backs," said the group.
He also joined Musk in condemning protests that have broken out at Tesla dealerships over the CEO's work at the Trump-created Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), which has pushed to dismantle agencies across the federal government and overseen the firing of about 30,000 federal employees.
"It's really terrible that there's so much violence being perpetrated against people at Tesla, Tesla supporters, Tesla owners, Tesla stores" said Musk after thanking Trump for displaying the cars. "These are innocent people who have done nothing wrong."
There have been at least 10 acts of vandalism reported against Tesla vehicles, charging stations, and dealerships in recent weeks as outrage has grown over the unelected Musk's enormous influence at the White House. No injuries have been reported in any of the incidents.
Shares of the company plummeted 15% on Monday—Tesla's worst day in four and a half years. Since peaking in mid-December after Musk poured nearly $300 million into Trump's election campaign, Tesla's shares have lost more than 50% of their value and the company has lost more than $800 billion.
Before parading Tesla's products in front of the press at the White House, the president took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to lambast "Radical Left Lunatics" for "trying to illegally and collusively boycott" his ally and benefactor's company.
"Why should he be punished for putting his tremendous skills to work in order to help make America great again?" asked Trump.
Podcast host Matt Bernstein called the scene at the White House "jaw-dropping."
"While Trump cuts programs you need to live, he's turning the White House into a car dealership to advertise his unelected shadow president's failing company," said Bernstein. "Dystopian levels of corruption."
At the White House, the president also suggested he may label any attacks against Musk's dealerships as domestic terrorism.
"Those people are going to go through a big problem when we catch them," said Trump. "And let me tell you, you do it to Tesla, and you do it to any company, we're going to catch you and you're going to go through hell."
Murtaza Hussain of Drop Site Newsprojected that with the Trump administration pushing to deport visa holders who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests—with at least one abducted by immigration agents and detained in recent days—"we're maybe two years away from people deported for terrorism for keying a Tesla."
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Sensing Opportunity, White-Collar Criminals Vie for Trump Pardons
"Everybody that is in prison now is keenly aware of the environment, and it's become a very hot topic within the low- and minimum-security inmate communities," said a consultant who has advised white-collared convicts.
Mar 11, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump began his second term with a blitz of clemency actions, including issuing pardons and commutations for over 1,500 rioters convicted in connection to the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol and pardoning Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, and now the president's "moves to expand the use of pardons have white-collar defendants jolting to attention," according to Tuesday reporting from Politico.
Those reportedly angling for clemency include individuals like jailed crypto titan Sam Bankman-Fried, former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) who earlier this year was sentenced to 11 years in prison for corruption and bribery, two reality TV stars guilty of defrauding banks and evading taxes, and a member of the music group the Fugees who was convicted for taking part in an embezzlement scheme.
Sam Mangel, a consultant to people convicted of white-collar crime who has advised individuals like Bankman-Fried, told Politico that "everybody that is in prison now is keenly aware of the environment, and it's become a very hot topic within the low- and minimum-security inmate communities."
According to The New York Times, "The new administration has a team of appointees focusing on the process early in Mr. Trump's term, with a particular focus on clemency grants that underscore the president's own grievances about what he sees as the political weaponization of the justice system."
Accordingly, clemency petitioners are "tailoring their pitches to the president by emphasizing their loyalty to him and echoing his claims of political persecution," per the Times.
For example, a lawyer representing conservative reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley wrote in a document prepared for the Trump administration that the couple's conviction for bank fraud and tax evasion "exemplifies the weaponization of justice against conservatives and public figures, eroding basic constitutional protections."
Some, like Menendez, have made themselves out to be the victims of the "corrupt" justice system.
"President Trump is right," wrote Menendez on X the day he was sentenced to 11 years in prison. "This process is political and has been corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores integrity to the system."
In Trump's first term, his use of clemency was "all about cronyism and partisanship and helping out his friends and his political advisers," Rachel Barkow, a professor at New York University School of Law, told the Times. This time around, "the potential for corruption is higher," she said, "because they're starting early, they have figured out how they want to set it up so that people have a pipeline to get to them."
This shift in Trump's second term includes disempowering the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney and instead shifting control of the clemency operations to the White House Counsel's Office, according to anonymous sources cited by the Times.
Elizabeth Oyer, who had been the U.S. pardon attorney since being appointed in 2022, was fired last week after she refused to recommend that actor Mel Gibson—who is a supporter of Trump—should have his gun rights restored, according Monday reporting from the Times. Gibson lost his gun rights following a 2011 domestic violence misdemeanor conviction.
In late February, Trump also appointed White House "pardon czar" Alice Johnson. Both the appointment of Johnson and the departure of Oyer, "signal that Trump is not done exercising his clemency powers," according to Politico.
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House GOP Prepares to Make It Easier for Tech Giants—Like Musk's X—to Scam Consumers
"Allowing companies like Apple, PayPal, and X Money to avoid federal laws creates a blind spot for rampant financial abuse and fraud," said one watchdog group.
Mar 11, 2025
House Republicans on Tuesday are expected to join their Senate colleagues in advancing a resolution that would roll back a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule designed to protect the American public from scammers on digital payment platforms, a move that watchdog groups say would personally benefit President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk.
The House resolution, led by Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.), targets a CFPB rule that was finalized shortly after the November election, in the waning days of the Biden administration. The CFPB said at the time that the rule would help ensure that companies offering digital payment services "follow federal law just like large banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions."
But the CFPB is now led by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, who has halted virtually all of the agency's work while Musk's Department of Government Efficiency overtakes the bureau, looking to gut it from the inside.
With their effort to rescind the CFPB's digital payments rule, congressional Republicans are aiding Musk's assault on the CFPB and delivering a major win for his push into financial services with X Money. The Senate voted mostly along party lines to rescind the rule last week.
"This is a gift to Big Tech and likely the personal finances of Trump and Musk themselves," Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, said in a statement as the GOP-led House Financial Services Committee took up the resolution. "These companies process over 13 billion transactions a year, and millions of Americans are relying on them for safe and secure payments."
"Allowing companies like Apple, PayPal, and X Money to avoid federal laws creates a blind spot for rampant financial abuse and fraud," Carrk added.
Accountable.US noted in a recent report that both Trump and Musk stand to benefit financially from efforts to gut the CFPB and eliminate rules enacted under the Biden administration.
"Last year, Trump Media & Technology Group filed a trademark to create a broad financial services platform Truth.Fi," the group observed. "The products and services they said they would perform included the creation of a 'downloadable computer software' that serves as a 'digital wallet' to store and trade cryptocurrencies as well as a digital payments processing platform for purchases made with cryptocurrencies."
That initiative and Musk's X Money would fall under the purview of the rule that congressional Republicans are poised to roll back.
In a CNNappearance on Monday, former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said that Musk and other powerful corporate executives are "fixated" on the consumer bureau because it is "responsible for monitoring all of those tech companies for how they're moving our money to protect against privacy errors and fraud."
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