Poison and Plunder
From gutting clean air rules to waging a war no one asked for, the Trump administration is showing that human suffering is a core feature of this regime.
Welcome back to Revolving Door Project’s Corruption Calendar, where we provide in-depth explanations of the material consequences—real and potential—of the Trump administration’s corrupt policymaking, with an emphasis on tangible harms to working people. Read our first 47 issues here, and follow us on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for more updates on our work.
Intro
The United States turns 250 years old this summer, and it’s our patriotic duty to celebrate the semiquincentennial America-style. That means beach trips and road trips, if you can afford the rising gas prices (Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sure can!). It also means cookouts, but maybe go store brand on the hotdogs because groceries are still expensive. Lucky for everyone, we can wholeheartedly celebrate one of America’s favorite pastimes: corporate tax evasion. That’s right folks, while we contend with a cost of living crisis, at least 88 of the largest corporations paid zero federal income tax in 2025. Corporate profits hit record highs last year, yet these companies got to keep all of it as they avoided paying a collective $22.1 billion tax burden. Instead, they received $4.7 billion in tax rebates, pushing the corporate tax breaks to $26.7 billion.
Selective enforcement of the federal tax code quite literally gifts money to corporations. The Trump administration doubled down on its pro-corporate tax policy when it granted a $370 million tax break to a liquid natural gas exporter following some questionable classifications of its carrier ships. Each one of us is subsidizing corporate profits, and soon we may be subsidizing Trump’s ballooning personal wealth. Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that the Justice Department is considering settling a $10 billion lawsuit Trump brought against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for leaking his family’s tax returns. It cannot be overstated how outrageously corrupt this would be; the floated figure is 25 thousand times larger than his yearly salary, eclipsing his current net worth by close to $4 billion. Any chance he pays taxes on it?
Administrative Cruelty
Deregulation has been a hallmark of Republican administrations since Nixon, and Trump has been no different. Yet, there is something sinister about the approach the administration has taken towards environmental regulations and public health. ProPublica reported that coal fire plants and chemical manufacturers were granted exemptions to Clear Air Act air pollution provisions simply by sending an email. At least 3,000 pages of emails were submitted by industry executives, after which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began granting exemptions, some in as little as 11 days. No application process, no input from scientists, just a single email. Never mind that clean air provisions save hundreds of thousands of Americans from premature deaths each year, the email was received! The EPA’s enforcement of the Clean Water and Air Acts saved us from an apocalyptic America where the rivers caught fire, the rain killed plant life, and the smog-filled air choked the life out of us. The EPA has already stopped assigning dollar values to the human health impacts of deadly air pollutants. If the Trump administration continues down its current path, we’re headed right back into that hellscape.
Chemical industry lobbyists have worked overtime to pull back safeguards against some of the worst chemical pollutants, including carcinogenic pesticides. In late April, the industry’s emissaries secured another win when EPA deputy administrator David Fatouhi abandoned the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), the system used to identify and create hazard response assessments for new chemicals. Eliminating IRIS has been on the chemical industry wishlist for years since new findings may lead to new regulations. Once housed under a dedicated research arm of the EPA, the assessment responsibilities will fall to several offices, leading to fragmented information silos more easily influenced by political considerations rather than scientific findings.
When all is said and done, this administration may hold one of the worst public health records in modern American history. As my colleague Dylan Gyauch-Lewis wrote, “... there is simply nothing that can compare to the scale and breadth of Trump 2.0’s across-the-board evisceration of every part of the government that helps with cancer prevention and treatment.” Even babies aren’t exempt from the administration’s unleashing of cancer-causing substances. Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration announced the results of its tests of 300 baby formula samples, concluding that most met high safety standards. Yet independent scientists found the FDA results contradicted recent findings showing that a majority of the samples were contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) or phthalates. Both are endocrine disruptors with no safe level of exposure, and are found to cause developmental, reproductive, and neurological harms, as well as cancer.
It’s rich that former FDA commissioner Marty Makary told The Guardian that “You can judge a society by how it treats its most vulnerable members” as he presided over the shoddy infant formula testing program, but the sentiment rings true. While I’m reluctant to condemn society as a whole, you can tell a lot about the Trump administration by its treatment of people living with severe cognitive disabilities. The Social Security Administration is working on a rule change that would cut Supplemental Security Income by a third for disabled people living with their families, even if those families are poor enough to receive SNAP benefits. The results could be 400,000 disabled and elderly Americans losing their SSI benefits, affecting people with Down syndrome, autism, and dementia. The rule change was initiated by DOGE officials last year, but is being revived under the auspices of OMB Director Russell Vought and SSA commissioner Frank Bisignano. The ironic cruelty of this cost-saving rule change is that it will increase administrative costs.
Ruling-Class War
Warmongering is nothing new to American politics, but foreign adventurism has usually been accomplished by committee. The current war in Iran, in contrast, seems to be driven by one man’s ego. Whether it’s because Trump got high on his own supply from the military success in Venezuela, or whether he was influenced by whispers in his ear that defeating Iran would cement his legacy as a great American president, this is plainly Trump’s war. To be fair, while Congress hasn’t provided express approval for this war, Republicans have refused multiple opportunities to demur and stand up to the commander in chief.
When asked by reporters to what extent he is motivated by Americans’ financial situations in seeking a deal with Iran, Trump responded, “Not even a little bit… I don’t think about Americans’ financial situations.” Chew on that. The elected leader of America doesn’t care about Americans’ struggles during a cost of living crisis. Perhaps that should come as no surprise when anyone following the news could draw a straight line from the policies he’s enacted to their daily hardships.
The war has engendered widespread debate as people search for a reasonable rationale for the bellicosity. In Jacobin, Ben Case provided a possible explanation, which is couched in the idea that this a ruling-class war, benefitting the Trump regime and his allies, everyone else be damned. Trump has profited from the presidency like no other president before him. Case offers that Trump’s war-of-choice in Iran shows that his willingness to use the might of the US military to achieve his ends appears as a powerful bargaining chip in his self-dealing, regardless of the wealth of evidence betraying it as a bad idea.
War is also highly profitable to a select few Americans who hold stock in or run defense contractors or weapons manufacturers (including members of Congress). Trump’s family now belongs to that select few, as a Trump-backed company sold “desperately needed drone interceptors” to the Gulf countries suffering from retaliatory Iranian missile strikes.
Everywhere you look someone is trying to profit from this war. Trump’s self-dealing has created a permission structure for others to enjoy the grift. Taking cues from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a U.S. Army soldier made $400,000 trading on Polymarket using classified information regarding the operation to capture Nicolás Maduro he participated in. Suspicions of insider trading have run rampant as activity in predictive and oil markets surge just before Trump makes a major announcement. Millions are being made from a war that has killed American soldiers and innocent Iranians, cost taxpayers billions, and forced us all to pay higher prices while Trump is focused on anything but the cost of living.
Case might be right that this is a ruling-class war. White House propaganda arm Fox News has taken the lead in trumpeting all the good the war is doing… for oil executives. Media Matters compiled quotes from Fox News talking heads, and they all celebrate that oil companies are in the midst of the biggest payday in history. Forget that the war could cost $1 trillion and tip the world into a recession, or that farmers can’t afford fertilizer and a global hunger crisis looms, the oil barons are winning big! It’s sick that profits are celebrated as people the world over suffer, but that’s how it goes when the president cannot muster empathy for anyone outside his narrow worldview.
Quick Hits
The Tariff Hustle
One year on from Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs, American families and workers are worse off while Trump profited handsomely. Research from the Groundwork Collaborative shows that since Liberation Day, 89,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in addition to 124,000 other blue collar jobs. American consumers bore the brunt of the tariff’s economic burden, further exacerbated by price-gouging companies that raised prices on unaffected goods. Meanwhile, Trump used the tariffs as leverage to secure business deals for his family businesses and boost his personal wealth. The Vietnamese government fast-tracked permits for Trump’s $1.5 billion golf complex in order to gain early tariff negotiations, and Trump lowered tariffs on Switzerland by 24% after Swiss business leaders gifted him a personalized, $130,000 gold bar and Rolex clock. Even lobbying firms came out on top, earning a record $14.6 million on tariff lobbying. Seems like everyone got what they wanted, except the American people.
Friends ‘Til The End
Despite their very public falling out last summer, Trump remains in Musk’s corner. The Securities and Exchange Commission settled a lawsuit against Musk that accused him of waiting too long to disclose his purchase of Twitter in 2022. The final penalty for the world’s richest man: $1.5 million, paid through a trust in Musk’s name. The suit, which was originally brought under the Biden administration, sought to recover the $150 million Musk had saved by delaying his disclosure. In another boon to the tech oligarch, the Department of Justice signed on as a plaintiff in Musk’s xAI lawsuit against Colorado’s “algorithmic discrimination” law. Musk is wealthy enough to pay for his own lawyers, but having the U.S. government on your side doesn’t hurt.
Another Purchased Pardon
Trump pardoned Joseph Schwartz, a businessman who ran a nursing home empire plagued by neglect, patient deaths, and unpaid workers. Schwartz was sentenced to three years in jail after he admitted to withholding $39 million in employee payroll taxes. Among his victims was Doris Coulson, a patient who had died in one of Schwartz’s facilities after staff fed her solid food she wasn’t allowed to eat. Coulson’s family won $19 million from a wrongful death lawsuit, but Schwartz never paid. Instead, he spent $1 million lobbying the White House for a pardon, hiding $58 million in assets from prosecutors as his business collapsed while families like the Coulsons never received justice or closure.
The case of Schwartz is an example of why we need to police the elites–and also about how we all need to be sharing these horrible stories with as many people as possible. We will not hold elites accountable until we hold the politicians who let the elites prey on society accountable. And that requires the public sharing reliable information–democracy only works with an engaged polity.