Latest / 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel / Last week in the US: Trump's $2 billion year, birthright citizenship saga, and attacks on American history

Transcript

Last week in the US: Trump's $2 billion year, birthright citizenship saga, and attacks on American history · 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hi.
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: So this week I'm going to cover three themes.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: So Corruption, Hollowing the State and Nationalism.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into it.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with corruption.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: This week.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump's annual financial disclosure was released.
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  SPEAKER_00: In 2025, so the first year of his second term, Trump made more than $2 billion.
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  SPEAKER_00: The largest single source of this was cryptocurrency, which was about $1.5
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  SPEAKER_00: billion, including $635 million from Trump's meme coin.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yahoo reported this week that nearly 1 million investors
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  SPEAKER_00: in the meme coin have lost almost $4 billion on their investments.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump says he doesn't talk to the people managing his money.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the disclosure also revealed that on the 8th of April, 2025,
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  SPEAKER_00: so after markets had been falling for four days following his sweeping
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  SPEAKER_00: Liberation Day tariffs, accounts linked to Trump made 327 stock purchases.
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  SPEAKER_00: The very next morning, Trump posted on Truth Social “This is a great time to buy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Four hours later, Trump announced a 90 day pause on the tariffs, following
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  SPEAKER_00: which the stock market jumped nearly 10%, recovering around $4 trillion in value.
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  SPEAKER_00: This week, Trump also took his first flight on his new Air Force One.
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  SPEAKER_00: So this is a Boeing 747 that was gifted to the US
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  SPEAKER_00: by the Qatari government, worth about $400 million.
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  SPEAKER_00: On top of that, the US Air Force has also spent
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  SPEAKER_00: another $400 million retrofitting it to meet the security requirements.
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  SPEAKER_00: And apparently part of that cost was drawn from funds
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  SPEAKER_00: originally allocated to the nuclear missile modernization program.
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  SPEAKER_00: the plane will serve as Air Force One until Trump leaves office.
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  SPEAKER_00: But then
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  SPEAKER_00: it's apparently going to be transferred to his Presidential Library Foundation,
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  SPEAKER_00: which basically means that it could then be used as a private plane for Trump.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, multiple legal experts say that this arrangement likely violates
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  SPEAKER_00: the Emoluments
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  SPEAKER_00: Clause, basically saying the president shouldn't profit off the presidency.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's also worth noting that Qatar is somewhere
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  SPEAKER_00: where the Trump Organization has invested over $5 billion in a golf resort.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the attorney general, who approved the transfer at the time,
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  SPEAKER_00: Pam Bondi, previously worked for Qatar.
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  SPEAKER_00: Also in the family, Donald Trump Jr, so Trump's son, is a shareholder and board
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  SPEAKER_00: member of an online gun shop called Grab a Gun,
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  SPEAKER_00: and they call themselves the Amazon of Guns.
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  SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump Jr even rang
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  SPEAKER_00: the bell at the New York Stock Exchange when the company went public last year.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, last week, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives,
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  SPEAKER_00: also called the ATF, proposed a new rule that would allow licensed dealers to ship
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  SPEAKER_00: firearms directly
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  SPEAKER_00: to buyers homes, bypassing the requirement to pick them up in person at a gun shop.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now gun control groups say that this could
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  SPEAKER_00: be one of the most significant changes to US gun policy in two decades.
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  SPEAKER_00: The ATF itself projects almost half of all gun buyers,
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  SPEAKER_00: about 3 million people a year, would eventually use home delivery
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  SPEAKER_00: if the rule Grab a Gun’s CEO said the company is uniquely positioned
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  SPEAKER_00: to capitalize on this potential opportunity.
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  SPEAKER_00: Last week also saw America's 250th anniversary celebrations on July 4th.
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  SPEAKER_00: for this purpose, Congress established a bipartisan commission called America
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  SPEAKER_00: 250 back in 2016 to plan the nation's birthday.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Trump administration tried to take it over last year, but when it couldn't, it
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  SPEAKER_00: set up a rival group called Freedom 250, which it embedded
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  SPEAKER_00: inside the National Park Foundation.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this week, a report by House Democrats, citing confidential sources,
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  SPEAKER_00: alleges that donors who intended to give to the bipartisan America
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  SPEAKER_00: 250 committee were instead given the bank transfer details of Freedom
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  SPEAKER_00: 250, which is where their money went, all without their knowledge.
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  SPEAKER_00: The report says this could constitute wire fraud and charitable solicitation
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  SPEAKER_00: fraud under federal law.
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  SPEAKER_00: The report also alleges that America 250 was promised $100
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  SPEAKER_00: million of the $150 million Congress allocated for the celebration.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that's the bipartisan committee, but it's received only $25 million.
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  SPEAKER_00: that said, Freedom 250, so Trump's outfit, denies the allegations and calls
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  SPEAKER_00: the report a partisan smear.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
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  SPEAKER_00: Elsewhere in the administration, and this really shows
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  SPEAKER_00: kind of how deeply corruption is kind of embedded throughout now.
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  SPEAKER_00: The FDA, so the Food and Drug Administration,
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  SPEAKER_00: has announced the composition of a new expert panel
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  SPEAKER_00: to review the safety and effectiveness of peptide drugs.
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  SPEAKER_00: So peptide drugs are injectable compounds
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  SPEAKER_00: that have become really popular among athletes and wellness influencers.
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  SPEAKER_00: Health Secretary RFK junior has publicly said he is a big fan of peptides.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, previous FDA panels on peptides have been composed of academics
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  SPEAKER_00: and independent researchers, but the new panel is composed mainly of
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  SPEAKER_00: doctors and farmers who prescribe, produce or promote peptides commercially.
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  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, this pattern is the same as the one we've already seen
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  SPEAKER_00: with vaccine advisory panels, where independent academic experts
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  SPEAKER_00: are being replaced with practitioners who have a stake in the outcome.
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  SPEAKER_00: The next section is going to be
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  SPEAKER_00: hollowing out the state, hollowing out the administration's ability
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  SPEAKER_00: to do its this week, the most significant item is a Supreme
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  SPEAKER_00: Court ruling that shifts the balance of power in ways that could last decades.
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  SPEAKER_00: On the 29th of June this year, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3
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  SPEAKER_00: along ideological lines that Trump had the right to fire Rebekah Slaughter.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, she was a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission or the FTC.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the point is that she was fired without any reason.
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  SPEAKER_00: what this ruling does is it overturns a 1935
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  SPEAKER_00: Supreme Court precedent called Humphrey's Executor.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so, almost 90 years ago now, that established that commissioners
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  SPEAKER_00: of independent agencies could only be fired for cause,
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  SPEAKER_00: so things like misconduct or neglect of duty.
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  SPEAKER_00: So presidents couldn't just fire you for no reason.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that protection was created specifically to insulate
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  SPEAKER_00: these kind of expert regulatory bodies from political interference.
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  SPEAKER_00: the FTC alone, where Rebecca Slaughter was a member, enforces 80 statutes covering
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  SPEAKER_00: almost every part of the economy, from antitrust law to consumer protection.
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  SPEAKER_00: this Supreme Court ruling now affects around two dozen independent agencies,
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  SPEAKER_00: any of which can now be packed with political loyalists
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  SPEAKER_00: or purged of career experts at the president's whim.
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  SPEAKER_00: Chief Justice Roberts carved out a possible exemption
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  SPEAKER_00: for the Federal Reserve, but he didn't really resolve that question indefinitely.
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  SPEAKER_00: Justice Sotomayor, who dissented, wrote that the majority had endorsed
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  SPEAKER_00: total executive control
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  SPEAKER_00: and produced a president who emerges with far greater power than ever before.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump himself celebrated on Truth Social, calling it one of the most important
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  SPEAKER_00: rulings ever given with respect to presidential powers.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then, separately, I want to talk about conviction review units.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, these are units that are there to identify cases
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  SPEAKER_00: where people may have been in prison for crimes they didn't commit.
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  SPEAKER_00: So they're pretty important in establishing
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  SPEAKER_00: and maintaining justice in the US.
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  SPEAKER_00: But in Minnesota,
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  SPEAKER_00: the state's attorney general has just shut down his office's conviction
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  SPEAKER_00: review unit after the Trump administration suspended its federal funding.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this is kind of coming on the back
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  SPEAKER_00: of several months of dispute between Minnesota and the administration.
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  SPEAKER_00: Kind of more broadly, the New York Times this week reported on what it described
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  SPEAKER_00: as a generational collapse in civil rights enforcement cases
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  SPEAKER_00: across the federal government.
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  SPEAKER_00: So in 2025, Trump issued an executive order
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  SPEAKER_00: instructing agencies to deprioritize civil rights cases.
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  SPEAKER_00: And since then, the Equal Employment
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  SPEAKER_00: Opportunity Commission, the Departments of Education, Housing, Justice
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  SPEAKER_00: and others have closed large numbers of discrimination cases.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's no real public accounting of exactly how many, but legal
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  SPEAKER_00: advocates describe what they call a generational void in enforcement.
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  SPEAKER_00: So what that means is that discrimination law itself hasn't changed, but the
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  SPEAKER_00: capacity and the political will to enforce that law has effectively been removed.
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  SPEAKER_00: the administration has also been undermining states rights.
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  SPEAKER_00: So the Commerce Department has accused California of environmental terrorism
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  SPEAKER_00: after the state is trying assert its own rules in energy production,
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  SPEAKER_00: which are climate friendly, and has also said that it would evaluate
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  SPEAKER_00: the performance of the California Coastal Commission, which does things like
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  SPEAKER_00: regulate offshore wind farms.
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  SPEAKER_00: then separately, the Justice Department has filed lawsuits against both Virginia
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  SPEAKER_00: and California over their recently enacted gun restriction laws, arguing
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  SPEAKER_00: that they are unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
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  SPEAKER_00: on the one hand, you've got an administration that has argued
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  SPEAKER_00: vigorously for states rights, but it basically what it seems is that states
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  SPEAKER_00: rights are fine as long as they align with Trump's priorities.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when they don't, you get under attack.
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  SPEAKER_00: The last thing I want to talk about is nationalism.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I guess this week, the biggest story around that is birthright citizenship.
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  SPEAKER_00: On the 30th of June, the Supreme Court ruled that birthright citizenship,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is the guarantee that anyone born on US soil automatically
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  SPEAKER_00: becomes a US citizen, is protected by the 14th amendment of the Constitution.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that ruling basically overruled an executive order Trump
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  SPEAKER_00: signed on his first day in office last year,
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  SPEAKER_00: which would
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  SPEAKER_00: have denied citizenship to children born to parents without legal status
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  SPEAKER_00: or on temporary visas.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every lower court that had considered that question agreed with the Supreme Court
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  SPEAKER_00: that it was unconstitutional.
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  SPEAKER_00: Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote for the majority, was clear.
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  SPEAKER_00: Children born to parents unlawfully or temporarily present in
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  SPEAKER_00: the United States are citizens at birth under the US Constitution.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump responded to that on Truth Social with a post saying the Supreme Court
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  SPEAKER_00: upheld birthright citizenship, which is too bad for our country,
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  SPEAKER_00: we can easily make it up in Congress through legislation.
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  SPEAKER_00: So what Trump wants to do
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  SPEAKER_00: now is pass a law banning birthright citizenship for some people.
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  SPEAKER_00: Constitutional law experts say that's not true, that the only way
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  SPEAKER_00: to change the 14th amendment is through another constitutional amendment,
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  SPEAKER_00: which requires
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  SPEAKER_00: two thirds of both chambers of Congress and three quarters of states to agree.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ordinary legislation cannot override a constitutional Nonetheless,
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  SPEAKER_00: Republican lawmakers are now looking
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  SPEAKER_00: at ways that they can kind of circumvent the Supreme Court's ruling.
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  SPEAKER_00: So one way is to use Congress's power to deny
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  SPEAKER_00: federal money to agencies or jurisdictions that recognize birthright citizens.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the Department of Justice has also directed federal prosecutors to
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  SPEAKER_00: prioritize investigations of birth tourism.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, birth tourism is where foreign nationals travel to the US on tourist
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  SPEAKER_00: visas to give birth so that their child becomes a citizen.
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  SPEAKER_00: So it's not that birth tourism doesn't exist.
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  SPEAKER_00: It does exist, but it's a tiny phenomenon.
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  SPEAKER_00: The organization Full Fact estimates that at most, it
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  SPEAKER_00: represents 0.5% of annual births in the US.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Separately, in the five days immediately following the Supreme Court ruling, ICE
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  SPEAKER_00: did a big surge in immigration enforcement and arrested more than 10,000 people.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then finally,
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to kind of talk about a separate aspect to nationalism,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is about rewriting America's history to match the administration's view
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  SPEAKER_00: of an ethnically White Christian nation founding.
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  SPEAKER_00: the Smithsonian National Museum of American History was the target
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  SPEAKER_00: of a 162 page report published by the White House's Domestic
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  SPEAKER_00: Policy Council,
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  SPEAKER_00: they published this report on the 4th of July,
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  SPEAKER_00: which I don't think is a coincidence.
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  SPEAKER_00: The report was called Saving America's Story,
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  SPEAKER_00: and it accused the Smithsonian of ideological capture,
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  SPEAKER_00: claiming that it has abandoned its mission
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  SPEAKER_00: to tell America's story in favor of extreme political activism,
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  SPEAKER_00: including anti-white bias and concentrating too much on slavery.
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  SPEAKER_00: The museum's director is named throughout the report,
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  SPEAKER_00: along with several more junior staff members.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, the Smithsonian has operated more than 180 years
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  SPEAKER_00: as an independent institution.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is internationally respected, and it responded and said it
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  SPEAKER_00: remains committed to nonpartizan and independent scholarship.
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  SPEAKER_00: This kind of latest attack follows a March executive order by Trump
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  SPEAKER_00: directing the administration to ensure the federal museums and historic sites
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  SPEAKER_00: reflect American exceptionalism, And it follows a previous threat
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  SPEAKER_00: of cutting the Smithsonian budget
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  SPEAKER_00: unless it handed over its records to the administration.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: that's it for this week.
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  SPEAKER_00: All of these stories with sources and more on TrumpActionTracker.info.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: See you in a week or two.