Hey everyone. Welcome back.
Our top story today is one that, in a functioning country, would sound like satire. Trump allies at the Treasury have been pushing to put the president’s face on a brand new $250 bill, and they have already pushed aside the career official who told them it was illegal. Sadly, this is all too believable in Donald Trump’s America.
We will also get into the White House steering a $620 million Pentagon loan to a company tied to Donald Trump Jr., a wave of grim new economic data showing Americans saving less than they have in years, the on-again off-again Iran deal the president keeps promising is almost done, and the federal judge who just refused to block Trump’s plan to build a national voter list.
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1. Treasury Appointees Push To Put Trump's Face On A $250 Bill
According to the Washington Post, two political appointees at the Treasury Department have repeatedly leaned on staff at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to design the 250 dollar bill. They even handed over mock-ups showing Trump’s portrait dead center, flanked by his own signature and that of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
There is just one problem. It is against the law. Federal law says only deceased people can appear on American money. No living person has been on our currency since 1866.
The career official who ran the printing bureau, a 24-year Army veteran and the first woman to ever hold that job, told them that it was not authorized and that a new bill takes six to eight years to produce. Last month, she was abruptly reassigned. In her farewell email, she signed off with a pointed line: “The buck stopped here.”
The appointee who had pushed her was then handed her old job.
At this point, I don’t think any of us are surprised Trump wants his face on the money. He is obsessed with himself. He wants his face and name on everything. But the scary thing is how easily they are able to just push aside a career official whose job was to follow the law and hand the job to someone who will just do as the President says.
In this White House, the reward goes to the person willing to break the rule, and the punishment goes to the one who points it out.
2. Pentagon Fast-Tracked $620M Loan To Firm Backed By Trump Jr.
The company is Vulcan Elements, a tiny rare-earth magnet startup in North Carolina with fewer than fifty employees. Rare earths are super important. They go into drones, missiles, and fighter jets. China dominates the supply, so funding American producers is a real national security goal.
Here is the catch. About three months before the loan was announced, Don Jr.’s venture capital firm took a stake in Vulcan. And of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was weighing, Vulcan was the only one where the request came straight from a top aide to the president. That aide was Peter Navarro.
One person involved described the order that came down: “The call came from the White House: We have to get this done.”
Staff worked late nights to push it through in weeks, when a deal like this normally takes months of vetting. By the time it was done, Vulcan’s valuation had jumped from around $200 million to roughly $2 billion. Everyone involved denies Don Jr. had anything to do with it.
We have been doing this show for almost a month now, and it feels like every single week we are sitting right here talking about another sketchy deal involving Trump or one of his sons. They say they had nothing to do with it, everybody moves on, and a few days later we are back here talking about a different deal with a different company. While the names of the middle-men and companies change, it always ends with a Trump profiting.
3. Americans Are Saving Less Than Ever, According to New Data
The government revised first quarter GDP growth down this morning to 1.6 percent, from an earlier estimate of 2 percent. Corporate profits nearly flatlined, growing about $40 billion after a $247 billion jump the quarter before.
But the number that should stop you is savings. In April of last year, Americans were socking away 5.5 percent of their income. This April, that number collapsed to 2.6 percent. People are not saving less because they feel rich. They are saving less because prices are up and paychecks are not keeping pace.
The New York Fed reports that 13.1 percent of credit card balances are now ninety days or more past due. That is the highest level since 2011, back in the wreckage of the financial crisis, and it is closing in on the all-time record. Auto loan delinquencies are the worst on record. Millions of student borrowers have defaulted in just the last two quarters.
And of course, the administration’s economic team is not worried at all. Their actual argument is that people putting more on their credit cards is a sign of confidence. Sure.
The folks at the top can call the economy whatever they want. The people living in it just told us exactly how it feels, and it is not good.
4. We Are Close to a Deal With Iran. Again.
Here is where it actually stands as of this morning. Axios reports that American and Iranian negotiators have reached a tentative sixty-day memorandum of understanding. It would extend the current ceasefire, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, let Iran sell its oil again, and start talks on its nuclear program.
But here is the whole story. Trump has not given final approval. Iran has not confirmed it accepts. And even American officials are keeping their expectations low, calling it an agreement just to get everybody to the table.
That is not a deal. That is an agreement to keep talking, which is roughly where we were ten days ago. And the president himself cannot seem to keep his story straight. One day he says it is largely negotiated. Next he is telling his own team not to rush. Then come the new demands, then another optimistic post, then a walk-back. It changes by the day, and the only consistent part is the deal itself never actually arrives.
We’ve talked about how Iran has not been sitting quietly during this ceasefire. US intelligence says Tehran has been rebuilding faster than anyone expected, restarting drone and missile production and digging out launchers that survived the strikes. So a sixty-day extension is not a neutral pause. It hands Iran sixty more days to rearm. If we are going to give them that time, we better be getting something enormous in return, and right now it is not clear we are getting anything beyond a promise to talk.
I hope it works. I genuinely do. But until there are signatures on paper, this is a copied press release that has been sent out every couple days. Not a peace deal.
5. Trump Judge Won’t Block His Federal Voter List
Back in March, after Congress would not pass his election bill, Trump signed an executive order doing it anyway. It directs the federal government to assemble a master list of eligible voters, and then tells the Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to the people on that list.
The Constitution is clear that the states and Congress set the rules for elections, not the president. So Democrats and civil rights groups sued to stop it.
But Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee in Washington, declined to block it. And here is the frustrating part. He did not rule that the order is legal. He ruled that it is too early to challenge, because the administration has not actually put it into effect yet.
He even acknowledged that the Postal Service could end up issuing a rule that harms voters, or build citizenship lists that wrongly leave people off.
So the damage has to happen first. Someone has to be dropped from the rolls before a court will even look at whether dropping them was allowed.
Telling Americans to wait until after they have lost their vote to find out whether it was legal to take it is no way to protect a right.
Okay, that is the show for May 28th.
Thanks for being here! If any of this mattered to you, the best thing you can do is like it, share it, and pass it along to someone who needs to see it. See you tomorrow.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the writer who won two civil suits against Donald Trump. Two separate juries found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and then defaming her, awarding her $5 million and later $83.3 million. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has recused himself, since he personally represented Trump on the Carroll appeals before joining the administration. Trump is also asking the Supreme Court to throw out both verdicts.
Trump's financial disclosure shows his portfolio bought into Robinhood stock sometime in Q1. On April 6, the Treasury Department named Robinhood the brokerage and initial trustee for "Trump Accounts," the government-seeded investment accounts for children born between 2025 and 2028. The White House says independent managers handle his investments and that he tracks standard indexes, and there is no evidence he timed the purchase or directed the deal. Must just be a really weird coincidence.
