"Only Trump’s get-rich-quick bros would come up with this corrupt and moronic scheme," wrote Democratic Sen. Ed Markey. |
|
A prominent US senator on Tuesday implored President Donald Trump to cancel his administration’s plan to give private companies enough plutonium to build around 2,000 nuclear bombs, warning the move raises “serious weapons proliferation concerns” along with potentially massive safety issues and conflicts of interest.
“If implemented, this would be the first time the US government has made weapons-grade plutonium available to private companies,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wrote in a letter to Trump. “I urge you to cancel this misguided scheme.”
The New York Times reported last week that the US Department of Energy currently has “more than 50 tons of surplus plutonium left over from nuclear weapons programs, and the agency had previously been planning to dilute much of that material and bury it.”
But last May, Trump signed an executive order halting the dilution program and instructing his energy secretary to “establish a program to dispose of surplus plutonium by processing and making it available to industry in a form that can be utilized for the fabrication of fuel for advanced nuclear technologies.”
Last Tuesday, the Energy Department said it has entered into “advanced negotiations” with five nuclear energy companies—Oklo, Flibe Energy, Exodys Energy, Shine Technologies, and Standard Nuclear—to potentially distribute the Cold War-era plutonium.
Markey noted in his letter that Energy Secretary Chris Wright previously served on the board of Oklo, a California-based nuclear technology company whose stock price jumped in response to the department’s announcement.
“I am concerned that your administration is moving forward with plans to give plutonium to Oklo not because this makes
sense for the United States, but because Oklo stands to benefit financially and Secretary Wright is acting in his former company’s interest. Secretary Wright’s close ties to the company present an appearance of impropriety.”
The senator also expressed opposition to the plan on its merits, warning that “the transfer of weapons-usable plutonium to private industry would increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, including to rogue states or terrorists.”
“Your plan—which would provide US companies with plutonium from US military stocks and subsidize them both to reprocess plutonium domestically and export reprocessing technology—would reverse our successful nonproliferation policy,” Markey wrote. “The United States cannot effectively discourage other countries from using plutonium for civil purposes if we use it ourselves.”
Nuclear experts have raised similar concerns about the Trump administration’s plan to transfer weapons-grade plutonium into the hands of private, for-profit corporations.
“Plutonium-based fuels and reprocessing have a poor track record when introduced in civilian nuclear energy programs,” Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist who headed the Energy Department during the Obama administration, wrote last year, warning that transfer schemes such as the one put forth by Trump would “produce new radioactive waste streams that must be managed” and “elevate the risk of a safety or security incident at a nuclear facility.”
In a social media post last week, Markey condemned the Trump administration’s plan in scathing terms, writing that “using plutonium for nuclear power is stupid and dangerous.”
“This material is used in nukes, and it’s too unsafe for widespread commercial use. Do we want Iran using plutonium in its reactor? No,” Markey wrote. “Only Trump’s get-rich-quick bros would come up with this corrupt and moronic scheme.”
“This would strip long-held investor protections from retirement savers and encourage the use of more risky, complex, and expensive investments." |
|
Two progressive US senators are leading the charge against a new Trump administration scheme that would allow Americans’ retirement funds to invest in cryptocurrencies.
As reported by The Guardian on Tuesday, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), along with Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), sent a letter to the US Department of Labor (DOL) warning against enacting a proposed rule change that would allow 401(k) investments to include crypto.
Cryptocurrencies have long proven to be volatile assets that have been involved in multiple fraud schemes, which the FBI estimates cost Americans more than $20 billion in 2025 alone.
“This would strip long-held investor protections from retirement savers and encourage the use of more risky, complex, and expensive investments,” states the letter. “The proposed rule is harmful to American workers.”
Offering an example of the dangers of investing in crypto, the letter cites President Donald Trump’s personal meme coin, whose value has cratered since its peak in January 2025.
The push to let 401(k)s invest in crypto has also drawn criticism from Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), which on Monday released a white paper outlining how the plan would put Americans’ retirement savings at risk while also serving as a boon to the private equity industry.
Oscar Valdés Viera, senior policy analyst for private equity and capital markets at AFR, accused the DOL of handing over US retirement savings to “the worst Wall Street predators and crypto scammers.”
“This proposal would use 401(k)s to bail out a struggling industry and advance the administration’s push to embed crypto deeper into the financial system,” Valdés Viera explained. “Driving workers into the arms of private equity firms and crypto insiders would let the president’s Wall Street and crypto cronies pocket billions at the expense of families’ retirement security.”
Democracy Defenders Fund (DDF) last week noted that Trump and his family, who have major ties to the cryptocurrency industry, would stand to personally profit from the DOL’s proposed rule change.
“President Trump stands to benefit if ordinary people can use their employer-sponsored retirement plans to invest in crypto,” said Virginia Canter, chief counsel and director of ethics and anti-corruption at DDF. “The administration claims the proposed rule would ‘relieve regulatory burdens,’ but it looks more like self-dealing.”
In addition to allowing 401(k)s to invest in cryptocurrencies, the proposed DOL rule change would also allow them to invest in private credit assets, which are typically loans negotiated with non-bank lenders.
Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy for Better Markets, said on Tuesday that letting 401(k)s invest in these assets would be a similarly risky bet to letting them invest in crypto.
“This is exactly the wrong approach at the wrong time,” said Schiffrin. “There could hardly be a proposal more dangerous to Americans’ retirement security. Investors already in private credit are currently running for the exits. DOL’s proposal means that one day millions of Americans with 401(k)s may have to do the same.”
"It's fascinating that the more money that goes into our political system, the less we talk about actual politics." |
|
The super PACs pouring money into the US Senate race in Maine are doing a great job of proving Graham Platner’s point.
As new reporting on Monday detailed the flood of dark money targeting his campaign, the Democratic hopeful in recent days has put a spotlight on the super PACs, which he says have created a political system dominated by corporations and wealthy donors who want to distract from the serious issues and struggles faced by everyday voters and working families.
“I think it’s very telling that a political system that has become controlled by money, controlled by the power of organized money, is also a political system that is trying to convince all of us down here that policy and discussions around what government can or cannot do is not what they want to talk about,” Platner said during a conversation with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime critic of super PACs, posted to social media.
“It’s fascinating that the more money that goes into our political system,” he continued, “the less we talk about actual politics.”
“I agree with Senator Sanders: Super PACs should be outlawed,” said Platner.
On Monday, Sludge reported that a pair of shadowy nonprofits “with no public presence and no disclosed staff” have dumped at least $750,000 into a super PAC supporting Platner’s opponent, the five-term incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
Condorcet Initiative Corp. has given $500,000 to Pine Tree Results PAC across two separate donations, including $250,000 on May 1 that was disclosed in a filing reported to the Federal Election Commission last week. Ardleigh Impact Corporation contributed an additional $250,000 in April.
The PAC has spent nearly $4 million on attack ads against Sen. Susan Collins’ Democratic challenger Graham Platner, according to FEC data.
The two nonprofits are both described as shell-like entities linked to the same address in Springfield, Virginia, belonging to Republican political consultant Staci Goede.
The groups are part of a much larger network and have poured a combined $9 million into GOP-aligned PACs since 2024, including in four competitive Senate races in this coming cycle.
Goede, meanwhile, is the treasurer or officer for at least nine different nonprofits “that span Republican Senate campaigns, pro-Israel donor pass-throughs, and issue advocacy groups,” according to the report.
The Campaign Legal Center has filed a complaint against Ardleigh, arguing that the nonprofit, which contributed an astonishing $2.575 million across six federal committees in its first three months of existence, was being used as a straw donor to conceal the identities of one or more rich benefactors.
The source of the $750,000 aimed at Platner remains unknown. But the Pine Tree Results PAC is already known to have a slate of wealthy backers from the commanding heights of finance and tech, including Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, hedge fund founder Paul Singer, and Palantir CEO Alex Karp. The fund has also taken in contributions from an affiliate of the tobacco giant Altria and from the far-right news company Newsmax.
According to a FEC data, it has raised more than $16 million to help Collins ward off a challenger in 2026, which will almost certainly be Platner.
While the potential use of straw donors may present legal issues, the use of super PACs by wealthy backers to dump unlimited sums behind their preferred candidates is unquestionably legal under federal campaign finance law.
As of March, super PACs funded by crypto, artificial intelligence, pro-Israel donors, and outside groups had already spent more than $225 million trying to influence the 2026 election cycle, according to the Washington Post.
Platner has argued on the campaign trail that the unchecked ability of the wealthy to influence elections is a genesis point for the growing wealth gap between the rich and poor.
“The inequality we’re experiencing, it didn’t happen organically,” he said at a recent campaign event. “We live in the outcome of policy written by establishment politicians who for 40 years have been doing the bidding of those who donate the most money to them.”
The Pine Tree Results PAC had already spent nearly $4 million on ads attacking Platner as of May 20, according to FEC data. As Sludge’s reporting notes, “Rather than engaging with policy, the ads are exclusively focused on personal attacks against Platner, digging up comments the candidate made online going back as far as 2013.”
So far, attempts to mire Platner in personal scandal have done little to blunt the momentum of his populist campaign. A poll from the University of New Hampshire in late May showed him leading the incumbent by a nine-point margin among likely voters and other polls show similar advantages.
It can be expected that the PACs attacking Platner will make a meal out of recent reports from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times that probe into the private details of his marriage.
But noting the failure of past attempts to drown Platner in controversy, Lever News founder David Sirota questioned in a piece on Monday if these sorts of “character” attacks even work in an age of politics defined by rapacious corporate greed and corruption.
He noted how Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) responded to recent questions from news outlets about whether Platner’s controversies mean he’s failed to “pass the character test.” Murphy responded that “character involves standing up to people who are bankrupting and corrupting this country,” while Khanna lauded Platner for “having the character to stand up against the war in Iran, against genocide, and against an unfair and lopsided economy.”
This response, Sirota said, hinted that the country could be entering a new political paradigm—“a reality in which many voters are so economically pulverized and politically disillusioned that they now define ‘character’ in a politician solely as whether or not they are single-mindedly focused on destroying oligarchy and ending corruption.”
“It is, potentially, a new era in which voters who can’t afford anything and who feel totally ignored by their government have reimagined their entire definition of political ‘character’ on economic/anti-corruption terms—rather than on old definitions of personal moral rectitude,” he wrote. “In this potential new reality, the personal shortcomings of individual politicians—which often have little effect on voters’ actual lives—are less important and electorally salient than the policies those politicians support and oppose.”
“And such a shift,” he added, “would make sense in the current moment.”
"The president has chosen an official who has demonstrated not just willingness but eagerness to use the authorities of government to pursue political retribution," said US Sen. Mark Warner. |
|
President Donald Trump shocked many observers on Tuesday when he appointed Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte to be his acting director of national intelligence, weeks after Tulsi Gabbard stepped down from the role.
In a Tuesday morning social media post, Trump announced that Pulte would be taking over as DNI while also remaining at his current post at the FHFA, which regulates government-sponsored housing enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
As noted by a Tuesday CNBC report, Pulte “has no prior experience in an intelligence role. His tenure at FHFA has been marked by his criminal referrals for mortgage fraud against Trump’s political foes, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, whom the president has been trying to fire in an effort to stack the US central bank with political loyalists.
James was targeted for prosecution after she won a $450 million judgment against the president and his business in a civil fraud case.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairperson of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, delivered a scathing response to Trump’s announcement.
“This appointment speaks volumes about what this president expects from the nation’s top intelligence official,” he said. “Rather than selecting a respected national security professional capable of delivering independent judgments, the president has chosen an official who has demonstrated not just willingness but eagerness to use the authorities of government to pursue political retribution.”
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) also denounced the president’s decision.
“Bill Pulte led Donald Trump’s efforts to charge and jail his political enemies, now he’s being rewarded with a job he has no business doing,” Cortez Masto said. “Putting Pulte at the helm of the intelligence community risks American lives just so Trump can keep going after his political opponents.”
Sean Vitka, executive director of Demand Progress, argued that Pulte’s appointment was yet another reason for Democrats to oppose further extension of warrantless spying powers under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
“Congress must not sign away unchecked spying powers to the government,” said Vitka, “when Donald Trump’s top spy is a man whose primary qualification is his willingness to weaponize sensitive information held by the government against the president’s political enemies.”
Vitka specifically urged Warner to change course on his push to renew Section 702, particularly in light of Pulte’s appointment.
“By supporting a FISA extension without any independent checks like warrant protections, Sen. Warner is putting the entire country at serious risk and enabling perhaps the greatest threat to American democracy we have seen in modern history,” he said.
Journalist James Surowiecki expressed horror at Pulte’s elevation to acting DNI.
“Even for Trump, this is nuts,” Surowiecki wrote. “Bill Pulte, who’s a [private equity] guy/real-estate developer with exactly zero intelligence experience, is going to be the new Director of National Intelligence—while also continuing to run FHFA and Fannie Mae/Fredde Mac!”
Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, issued a dire warning about Pulte potentially abusing US intelligence services to target Trump opponents.
“Fuck me, this is Bill Pulte,” Moynihan wrote. “The guy who was using mortgage data to launch DOJ investigations against Lisa Cook, Letitia James, and [US Sen.] Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). He is being put in charge of national intelligence because of his track record of being willing to manufacture false allegations to target Trump’s enemies.”
Political commentator Keith Boykin described Pulte as Trump’s “personal henchman” who “abused his position as chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to send baseless criminal referrals against Letitia James and Lisa Cook.”
National security attorney Bradley Moss, meanwhile, could not hide his disgust at Pulte’s appointment in an all-caps social media post.
“WHAT THE... I QUIT,” Moss wrote. “I GIVE UP. BILL PULTE??”
"Many more parents of young children enrolled in Medicaid themselves will be at higher risk of losing coverage as work reporting requirements and added red tape come along in 2027." |
|
The number of young children without health insurance in the US rose sharply between 2022 and 2024 and is set to continue surging as the Trump administration implements work reporting requirements and other changes expected to kick millions—adults and kids—off Medicaid.
A report published Monday by the Center for Children and Families (CCF) at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy found that nearly 220,000 additional children under the age of six were uninsured in 2024, a 23% increase from 2022. During that period, the total share of young children without health insurance rose to 5.3%—the highest rate in almost a decade.
The new report argues the rising uninsured rate among young children is “at least in part” attributable to the unwinding of pandemic-era protections that allowed people to remain on Medicaid without undergoing routine eligibility checks. The analysis found that Texas, Florida, and Georgia accounted for more than half of the increase in young children without insurance between 2022 and 2024.
Elisabeth Wright Burak and Aubrianna Osorio, researchers at CCF, wrote that “these data provide a major warning sign for what’s to come, as states grapple with the onslaught of Medicaid cuts from [the 2025 Republican budget law] and new coverage restrictions.”
“One in 4 children in the US have at least one parent who was born abroad,” the researchers wrote. “For these children, the vast majority of whom are citizens, harsh anti-immigration policies and rhetoric are already leading to missed doctor appointments, on top of the ongoing fear, uncertainty, and overall stress that can compromise healthy development of young children. Fears of safety and separation have made more parents afraid to enroll their eligible, citizen children in programs like Medicaid and [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], exposing children and families to additional financial risk and food insecurity.”
“Many more parents of young children enrolled in Medicaid themselves will be at higher risk of losing coverage as work reporting requirements and added red tape come along in 2027,” they added. “We know as parents lose coverage, their children are also at grave risk of losing access to health care through the ‘unwelcome mat’ effect.”
CCF’s report came as the Trump administration rolled out a new rule that will dictate how states implement Medicaid work reporting requirements included in the 2025 Republican budget law, which contains around $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.
Advocates warned the rule will result in millions of people, including many children, losing coverage by creating onerous bureaucratic barriers to obtaining and keeping Medicaid coverage. CCF estimated last week that, as of April 2026, roughly 2 million fewer children were enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program compared to January 2025, the start of President Donald Trump’s second White House term.
“This is terrible news because when child enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP goes down, the child uninsured rate goes up,” wrote Joan Alker, CCF’s executive director. “And the child uninsured rate was already going up when President Trump took office, yet we have heard nothing about this from them. Federal officials should be scrambling to figure out the root cause of this coverage loss for children as income eligibility levels did not change and the unemployment rate has been inching upward since President Trump took office.”
