The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The Trump EPA, now helmed by Lee Zeldin, has looked at its mission of "protecting human health and the environment" and decided that was cute, but what if instead it just protected coal companies, gas guzzlers, and AI server farms? In the first year back under Trump, the agency has clocked 66 environmental rollbacks, slashing limits on mercury and soot, killing grants for renewables and toxic communities, gutting clean water protections, and even deleting mentions of the climate crisis from its own website—because nothing says "serious governing" like editing reality out of your About page.

The real innovation, though, is philosophical: the EPA is now assigning a new monetary value to human life in air pollution rules, and that value is zero. The agency will no longer count the health costs from common air pollutants, but will still lovingly tabulate what regulations cost industry. In other words, your lungs are worthless, but a coal plant’s compliance budget is priceless. This comes on top of the plan to rescind the 2009 endangerment finding—the legal backbone for federal climate action—essentially trying to erase the government’s own obligation to act on greenhouse gases, something even George H.W. Bush’s EPA chief calls "revolutionary" in the "are you kidding me" sense.

To recap: Trump promised to "unleash" oil, gas, and AI by bulldozing a "globalist climate agenda," and Zeldin’s EPA has responded by inviting polluters to email in for exemptions from black-letter air laws, rewriting cost-benefit math so that industry always wins, and trying to legally blindfold the federal government on climate. The official line is that these are just "updates" guided by science and concern for taxpayers. The unofficial reality is that the Environmental Protection Agency has been rebranded as the Environmental Profit Assurance office—but sure, tell us again how this is all about freedom and efficiency.

The Treasury Department has heroically canceled $21 million in Booz Allen Hamilton contracts after a contractor leaked IRS data showing how the ultra-wealthy — including Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos — pay little or nothing in taxes. Because nothing says "restoring trust in government" like making sure no one ever again finds out how thoroughly the tax code has been engineered to kiss the ring of the billionaire class.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tore up 31 contracts and declared this an "essential step" to rebuilding confidence, which is an interesting way of saying: we can’t have the peasants seeing the receipts. The leaker, Booz Allen contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn, already got five years in prison for exposing how the richest people on earth treat the IRS like a suggestion box, but apparently that wasn’t enough punishment for the crime of publicly humiliating Trump and his fellow tax contortionists.

Booz Allen, for its part, insists it’s shocked — shocked! — by Treasury’s decision, stressing that the leaks happened on government systems, not theirs, and that they helpfully assisted in the investigation that put Littlejohn behind bars. In other words: they’re very committed to ethics, as long as those ethics begin and end with protecting the confidentiality of billionaires’ shell games, not the public’s right to know that the system is a joke.

So the message is clear: if you’re a billionaire, the government will bend over backwards to safeguard your privacy as you legally acrobat your way out of paying taxes. If you expose that rigged circus? Enjoy prison, canceled contracts, and a federal government that treats transparency like the real crime.

Donald Trump enters his second decade as the main character of American decline, and suddenly a bunch of very rich people discover a deep, heartfelt commitment to…writing seven- and eight-figure checks to his super PAC. More than a dozen donors who had never come close to this level of political giving before 2024 are now dropping $1 million or more into MAGA Inc. — after Trump wins, while he’s governing, and exactly when their companies and families just happen to have major business, federal contracts, regulatory problems, or prison sentences on the line. But sure, this is all about “democracy” and “innovation.”

OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife each cut $12.5 million checks to MAGA Inc., right as Trump rolls out an AI agenda written on Palantir letterhead and an executive order preempting pesky state AI regulations. Brockman solemnly explains on X that this is about “responsible AI” and “constructive dialogue,” because nothing says responsible governance like quietly handing $25 million to the guy who just gave your industry everything it wanted by fiat. Palantir CEO Alexander Karp also suddenly finds $1 million for MAGA Inc. (on top of $1 million for the inaugural) while his surveillance company is hoovering up high-profile federal contracts, including for Trump’s immigrant-tracking obsession. In other words: the government cuts the checks, he cuts the checks, everyone’s happy — except the people being tracked.

Then there’s William Ford of General Atlantic, who casually bumps his giving from five figures to $1.25 million right before Trump takes office, while he sits on the board of ByteDance — the TikTok parent company that was supposed to be banned in the U.S. until Trump graciously delayed the hammer. Miraculously, ByteDance gets time to arrange a cushy American joint venture sale. Other new megadonors, like private equity guy Konstantin Sokolov and In‑N‑Out’s Lynsi Snyder‑Ellingson, join the fun, some with relatives staring down long federal prison sentences. And because this is America, all of this is technically legal: just a bunch of patriotic billionaires independently deciding to give life-changing sums to a president who just happens to control their contracts, regulations, and loved ones’ futures.

So no, this isn’t bribery, it’s just the free market in action: Trump sells access and policy, and the donor class finally stops pretending their money isn’t a down payment on government favors. Campaign finance reform is for suckers; real players just buy the presidency wholesale.

The redacted Epstein files are out, which is Washington-speak for: "Here is a stack of black rectangles where accountability was supposed to be." The public gets a government-issued Rorschach test, and surprise, it still looks like a decades-long protection racket for powerful creeps. Because nothing says "we take this seriously" like turning key names and details into a CIA-approved blackout poem.

All this lands while Trump is already under fire for his stellar handling of the economy — you know, the one where working people get vibes and volatility while billionaires get tax cuts and bailouts. In other words, it's business as usual: the rich and connected float above the law in a sea of redactions, and everyone else gets to argue about gas prices while wondering which of their "leaders" needed that many pages blacked out.