Week 27: Media Merger Madness

Also, CFPB pays for Russ Vought’s security detail while ignoring Americans’ financial security—and other tales from Trump’s swamp.

Current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who this week approved a merger between Skydance and Paramount, speaks at CPAC in 2018. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

Welcome to week twenty-seven of the Revolving Door Project’s Corruption Calendar, where we highlight examples of corporate corruption shaping the Trump administration’s agenda and their material impact on everyday people.

Sometimes we’re asked if we ever fear that there will not be enough corruption from the Trump administration for us to continue putting this newsletter out weekly. Unfortunately, no, that’s not a fear. Read our first twenty-six issues here and follow us on Bluesky and X for updates.

To start this week’s Corruption Calendar, here are two new resources that will help you get a handle on this administration’s epic levels of graft. The first resource is Just Security’s new “Anti-Corruption Tracker,” which tracks “the erosion or dismantling of oversight and accountability systems within the United States Executive Branch.”

The second, from Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington (CREW), is a report on President Trump’s promotion of his private real estate interests during the first six months of his second term. CREW found that since his second inauguration day, Trump has visited his own properties 99 times (62 of those visits were to his golf courses), he has promoted his businesses 57 times, and special interests, political committees, and foreign governments have held 49 events at his properties—all marked increases compared to the first six months of his first term.

Now, for this week’s highlights:

FTC Un-Sanctions GOP Mega-Donor. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission’s three Republican commissioners voted to reward anti-competitive behavior, reversing a Biden-era order to keep former CEO and founder of Pioneer Natural Resources Scott Sheffield off Exxon Mobil’s board of directors. During its review of the Pioneer-Exxon merger in 2024, the FTC found evidence that Sheffield had colluded with OPEC to raise the price of oil, leading the FTC to bar Sheffield from the board. Sheffield is a mega-donor, and most of his campaign money has gone to the GOP.

Yes, Trump is giving a free pass to a mega-donor credibly accused of conspiring with foreign countries to raise the prices Americans pay for energy. (Perhaps a strong political opposition ought to be doing something dramatic with this accusation given that affordability concerns dominate our domestic politics?)

Department Of Labor Marches To The Beat Of Capital’s Drums. At the beginning of July, the Department of Labor quietly unveiled what it called an “aggressive” agenda of labor deregulation, which is sure to please billionaires everywhere. Some standouts among the 63 agency actions include a proposal to abolish the minimum wage for home health care workers, the stalling of a Biden-era proposal to protect workers from extreme heat, and a proposal to repeal a rule requiring proper lighting at construction worksites. To learn more, see this commentary from The Century Foundation.

Maybe Steve Bannon was premature when he said, “We’ve turned the Republicans into a working-class party.”

Paramount And Skydance Dance For Their Dinner. Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission approved a merger between Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, and Skydance, a Hollywood studio. At the beginning of the month, CBS agreed to give $16 million to Trump’s presidential library in exchange for him dropping a (frivolous, weak) lawsuit he had filed over the editing of Kamala Harris’s “60 Minutes” appearance. Lest anyone be confused about the connection there, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement about the merger approval, “I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network.” In a dissent, Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez said, “After months of cowardly capitulation to this Administration, Paramount finally got what it wanted.”

CFPB Keeps Russell Vought Safe While Ensuring Consumers’ Financial Ruin. This week, Government Executive revealed that the Office of Management and Budget has billed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau $4.7 million for OMB Director Russ Vought’s security detail. It comes at a time when, as GovExec notes, “President Trump and Vought have pushed to essentially eliminate the CFPB, seeking to lay off nearly the entire staff and prevent it from conducting most investigations.” Just last month, for instance, the CFPB terminated a November consent order requiring Navy Federal Credit Union to pay a $15 million civil penalty and upwards of $80 million in restitution to victims after the CFPB found that it illegally charged overdrafts to its members—largely military families.

Bondi Continues Purge Of January 6 Investigators. Last week, Global Investigations Review reported that two Department of Justice career national security trial attorneys who had previously investigated Trump under Special Counsel Jack Smith were fired earlier in July. Their firings are the latest cases of the administration’s mission to punish all perceived enemies.

Trump Sues WSJ Over Epstein Story After Failed Appeal To Its Owner. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on a “bawdy” letter that Trump wrote to Jeffrey Epstein, which among other things contained the line, “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.” Prior to the story’s release, Status News reported that Trump personally called the Journal’s editor in chief in an attempt to kill the story, and Trump later posted on Truth Social that he “told Rupert Murdoch [the Journal’s owner] it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story.” Trump proceeded to sue the outlet, continuing his relentless attacks on any media organization that reports on him critically. It remains to be seen whether the Journal will bow to the pressure as Paramount and others have.

The Trump Family’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Trump Media & Technology Group, the company that owns Trump’s Truth Social and is in turn majority-owned by Trump, announced this week that it had acquired $2 billion worth of Bitcoin. The move adds substantially to the Trump family’s ever-growing crypto empire. As Popular Information notes, this copycat investment strategy could prove especially fruitful, since “Trump has the authority to take actions that will drive the price of bitcoin higher.”

Despite Fallout, Musk Continues To Cash Out. ProPublica this week reported on a draft executive order that would direct Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy to “use all available authorities to eliminate or expedite” the environmental review process required to obtain a license for a commercial rocket launch. As the outlet notes, “The changes outlined in the order would greatly benefit SpaceX, which launches far more rockets into space than any other company in the US”—though it would also benefit the company’s competitors. Still, the reporting comes as Trump backtracked this week on his previous threats to cut Musk’s companies’ many subsidies. “I want Elon, and all businesses within our Country, to THRIVE, in fact, THRIVE like never before!” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social.

Columbia Bows To Trump. On Wednesday, Columbia University settled a lawsuit initiated by the Trump administration alleging (pretextually) that it had violated federal antidiscrimination laws. The university agreed to pay more than $200 million to resolve the suit and said that it would “examine its business model and take steps to decrease financial dependence on international student enrollment”—a clear concession to Trump and his anti-immigrant agenda. The Associated Press noted that “Columbia agreed to some provisions similar to those that Harvard rejected and called a dangerous precedent.” Announcing the deal on Truth Social, Trump appeared to threaten other universities: “Numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust, and have wrongly spent federal money, much of it from our government, are upcoming” (emphasis added).

Follow the Revolving Door Project’s work on whatever platform works for you! You can find us on X, Bluesky, Instagram, and Facebook. And click here to check out our latest work tracking the Trump administration.