Corruption Watch: DHS Awards Trump Allies a Billion-Dollar Contract, the Pentagon Investigates Senator Mark Kelly, and Elon Musk Bankrolls More Campaigns
“Fool me eleven times, and I am exactly the right person to continue running the White House.”
Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff, has opinions, according to an intense two-part profile in Vanity Fair. Over 11 interviews, Wiles told reporter Chris Whipple that Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality,” among other statements that are both very obvious and surprising to see attributed to someone in the president’s inner circle. Wiles called Vance a “conspiracy theorist” and Musk an “odd, odd duck,” but we already knew that. She also criticizes the way USAID’s funding was cut, and is blunt about Trump’s desire for regime change in Venezuela, which she cites as a reason the United States is bombing vessels in the Caribbean, actions being investigated as potential war crimes. It’s unclear whether Wiles gave the interviews to protect her own reputation or for some other reason. The National Review (which I don’t quote very often) described Wiles’s decision to be candid with Vanity Fair during multiple interviews: “You know the old saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me eleven times, and I am exactly the right person to continue running the White House.”
Unprecedented enrichment of the First Family. For The New Yorker, John Cassidy catalogues the scale of the corruption after scouring Trump family business announcements, official filings, and reporting from various media outlets. Here’s yet another reminder that Trump and his family have increased their net worth by hundreds of millions of dollars through crypto schemes.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is now routinely arguing that people should be deported to countries they are not from, according to the Bay Area outlet KTVU. The Trump administration is increasingly deporting immigrants to “third countries,” even if they have never visited that country. The administration is also increasingly calling for asylum cases to be closed before a hearing. And, these “third country removals” are ramping up while federal immigration judges are being fired, creating a chill on judicial independence. A lawyer told KTVU that he and other attorneys “have heard DHS lawyers say in open court that they have been told to file third-country motions to Honduras and Guatemala for every Spanish speaker who entered the country after 2019.” A recently fired immigration judge told KTVU that each of the third party countries where DHS is sending people “has an abysmal human rights record.”
Meanwhile, DHS fast-tracked a nearly $1 billion contract to a company tied to a pro-Turmp group. Salus Worldwide Solutions is run by a major donor to the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute, which advocates for mass deportations, and has received the enormous contract to run deportation programs, describes The Washington Post, in a stunning report. The company was only formed in 2023, and it has no reported experience with federal contracts. One of the DHS officials overseeing the billion-dollar contract has worked at America First, and the Post reports that DHS employees exchanged dozens of emails with Salus to discuss the contract, way outside a normal bidding process. The Post points out that this is just the latest in a string of major DHS contracts being handed to Trump administration affiliates.
The Pentagon moved its investigation of Senator Mark Kelly to a new stage, according to CNN. In a video address, the senator, a retired Navy captain, along with other lawmakers reminded American servicemembers that they have a duty to refuse illegal orders, amidst the government killing people on boats in the Caribbean. Trump called Kelly “seditious” and Hegseth called the video Kelly’s “sedition video.” Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force judge advocate and current law professor at Southwestern Law School, told CNN that should Hegseth subject Senator Kelly to a court-martial, it would be “an abuse of power.” The Administration could try to pursue a military charge like conduct unbecoming of an officer, because “Those are the most ambiguous military crimes that can be twisted and exploited to unfairly penalize speech.”
Elon Musk is already funding Republican House and Senate 2026 midterm campaigns, reports Axios. Musk famously spent $250 million to help elect President Trump ahead of the 2024 election, and then was appointed head of DOGE, which dismantled major portions of the federal government, leading behind at least 300,000 workers and an estimated 640,000 deaths related to USAID cuts, according to The Advocate. Earlier this year, Trump and Musk appeared to have a falling out, leading to speculation that Musk would cease to bankroll the GOP, but it seems that he will be pouring money into electing Republicans in the midterms.
But we can end Citizens United, writes David Sirota in The Lever. He quotes his Denver Post op-ed with Colorado state Representative Javier Maybry: “We don’t have to wait for the Supreme Court to overturn Citizens United to fix the mess we are in. Citizens in Montana are now advancing a ballot initiative to get corporate money out of politics. While the measure cannot overturn Citizens United, it proposes the next best step, removing corporations’ authority to engage in political activities in the first place. Defining in state law what corporations are allowed to do is not a new principle; it has existed in American law since the dawn of our republic.” This initiative will be on the ballot in 2026. And, as Sirota writes, before you dismiss the idea as implausible, consider “that each state can do this inside their own state, instantly weakening the power of corporations to buy elections inside their jurisdictions right now.”
At least the Christmas trees are green. Melania Trump is, of course, known for her iconic haunted holiday decor, including blood red Christmas trees. People reports that this year, the trees are green. President Trump says he told Melania, “Do me a favor. Make the trees green. Let them just be green.” We deserve much more, but there’s that.
Happy Holidays, everyone.