Uncovering Conflicts of Interest and Self-Dealing in the Executive Branch

President Donald Trump’s second term in office is just one month old, but it is already clear that his return to the Oval Office could send massive financial windfalls to his wealthy campaign backers and political allies, as well as his own family and businesses. While Trump’s first term was beset with allegations of corruption and abuses of power, the new administration’s aggressive assertion of executive authority — disregarding norms, laws, and constitutional checks — and the lack of guardrails to prevent conflicts of interest threaten to expand the use of government action for personal enrichment to a new level.

Most presidents have faced allegations of impropriety in their administrations at some point. Trump, however, has approached the presidency with a uniquely transactional style. He has openly used the powers of his office to help allies and punish adversaries, and advisers say he keeps a grievance list of companies and executives that stopped donating to his political efforts after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Trump’s reelection and the start of his second term have also been notable for how extensively he leaned on ultra-wealthy donors to fund his campaign and staff his administration. Money has always played a role in American politics, but this moment is different. No winning presidential campaign has relied as much on such a small group of donors as the Trump campaign did in 2024 — a strategy made possible by Citizens United and subsequent Supreme Court decisions that dismantled key federal campaign finance regulations. Many of Trump’s biggest supporters were unusually vocal about their support and the outcomes they wanted to see over the next four years. And Trump has pulled them closer since the election, placing them at the center of his secretive transition and giving some of them big roles in the administration.

While winning candidates often reward supporters with ambassadorships or other administration jobs, Trump has given some of his biggest donors key positions with extraordinary potential to influence decisions impacting their own bottom lines. Chief among them is Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and the biggest pro-Trump spender in the 2024 election. Despite Musk’s contracts with the federal government worth billions of dollars, the White House says he will decide for himself whether any conflicts of interest arise in his role as a “special government employee” leading the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on a slash-and-burn campaign across federal agencies and hundreds of billions of dollars in spending.

Musk and Trump’s other Cabinet nominees and White House appointees make up the wealthiest administration in history — including more than a dozen reported billionaires — with an abnormally long list of potential conflicts of interest. And while appointees (though not the president himself) are required to take some steps to avoid clear conflicts, these requirements are relatively easy to evade. So far Trump has also failed to require his political appointees to take an additional ethics pledge, breaking with the long-standing tradition President John F. Kennedy set in 1961.

The concentration of private wealth and political power in so few hands with so few guardrails could pave the way for Trump’s campaign backers and allies to reap massive financial benefits on a scale not seen since the Gilded Age. Many of the big-ticket policies the administration is set to tackle — including government contracts, tariffs, and regulatory decisions — can be precisely tailored to reward (or punish) specific recipients. And Trump’s refusal to step away from his own extensive business entanglements while in office means he could exercise government power to line his own pockets in addition to his political allies’. This comes alongside the administration’s aggressive steps to limit the government’s ability to fight public corruption.

This analysis provides a guide for uncovering corruption and self-dealing at the federal level in the months and years to come. Given the presence of dark money in our political system and the lack of transparency about the Trump family’s businesses, it may not be possible to have a full sense of how, when, and where the Trump administration could use executive powers to reward those who have been a source of money to the president’s campaign or businesses. But using the information publicly available provides a starting point for following the administration’s conduct.

Trump’s transactional approach to governing could mean significant rewards for those in his good graces. That group includes the financial backers who supported his reelection campaign and donors who give to his ongoing fundraising efforts. And given the president’s refusal to put his business holdings into a blind trust — a precaution that, since the 1970s, every president except Trump has taken to maintain public trust and avoid even the appearance of corruption — the Trump family also stands to profit if individuals and companies spend money with Trump businesses to curry favor with the administration.

Pro-Trump Super PAC Donors

Trump broke new ground this election cycle when he outsourced much of his campaign to super PACs funded by wealthy megadonors. Musk, by far the biggest spender, gave more than $270 million to various pro-Trump super PACs. Two other individuals gave more than $100 million each, and another nine gave at least $10 million. In all, Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports show that 76 individuals and entities contributed at least $1 million to the highest-spending pro-Trump super PACs, for a total of $941 million. The table in the appendix lists these donors, how much they contributed, and their industry and business affiliations.

This super PAC spending played a larger role in Trump’s campaign than in any prior election. In addition to helping Trump largely erase former Vice President Kamala Harris’s lead in traditional fundraising, super PACs successfully took on many core general election campaign functions for the first time ever, such as door-to-door canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts. These activities — which unquestionably would have been illegal before Citizens United — allowed Trump to operate his campaign with a skeleton staff at a fraction of the cost of a traditional presidential campaign.

Given their business interests, many of the largest super PAC funders have tremendous financial stakes in the outcome of the policy debates that the administration is set to handle. Those in industries especially likely to be impacted by the administration’s decisions, including aerospace, telecommunications, shipping, oil and gas, and building and construction, were among the top echelon of Trump’s supporters.

Ongoing Political Donors

Business leaders have continued to donate to a constellation of political committees as the Trump team seeks to build a $500 million war chest to finance his inauguration, policy agenda, and eventual presidential library. Trump reportedly met with corporate executives after the election to pressure them to give and berate those who had not donated over the past four years. Big Tech and cryptocurrency were especially generous. Amazon, Apple, Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft all gave $1 million to Trump’s record-setting inauguration fund — far more than in prior years — and some crypto investors reportedly gave $10 million or more.

During these meetings, Trump apparently has told company executives that they will not get anything in return for their contributions. Still, some believe that giving will lead to favorable policy outcomes, and others have said they worry about the consequences of drawing Trump’s ire, especially if their rivals have already donated. As one lobbyist put it, they “don’t want to get DOGE’d” — a reference to Musk’s cost-cutting initiative.

Similar fears may have contributed to several companies’ decisions to pay millions toward Trump’s presidential library rather than fight his lawsuits in court. In December, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to resolve Trump’s defamation claim. Meta recently paid $25 million to settle a lawsuit over its decision to suspend Trump’s accounts following the insurrection on January 6, 2021. Although legal experts questioned the strength of Trump’s claims, the companies decided that settling was preferrable to trial. And now Paramount may be next. Executives there worry that the administration could block or delay a potentially lucrative merger with Skydance unless the company resolves Trump’s seemingly meritless lawsuit alleging that CBS deceptively edited an interview on 60 Minutes with his campaign opponent, then Vice President Harris.

Most donations to Trump’s affiliated political committees should become fully transparent once the groups file required disclosures with the FEC. But some contributions are flowing to a dark money nonprofit group called Securing American Greatness that does not disclose its donors. And details about settlement payments may be available only through media reports.

The President and His Family

Trump’s continued business involvements while in office could prompt those who want to curry favor with the administration to make deals with his businesses, potentially generating huge profits for the Trump family.

Some deals may be difficult for the public to evaluate. The president and First Lady Melania Trump launched new cryptocurrency tokens called $TRUMP and $MELANIA just days before the inauguration. Because the tokens lack intrinsic economic or transactional value, purchases constitute pure profit for the Trumps. Initial reports estimated that the tokens were worth billions of dollars, though their market value has dropped in the weeks since the launch. With little transparency into the tokens or their owners, the public is in the dark about how much the Trumps made and who paid them.

Other deals are more conspicuous. In late November, for instance, crypto billionaire Justin Sun, whom the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued for fraud, invested $30 million in a Trump family cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial. Amazon Prime announced in January that it has agreed to distribute an upcoming documentary that the First Lady is executive producing, which promises a “behind-the-scenes look” at her life. The deal reportedly is worth $40 million. Later that month, House Republicans held a retreat at the president’s Doral resort in Florida. (When Trump tried unsuccessfully to hold a Group of 7 meeting there in 2020, members of Congress, including some Republicans, accused him of violating the Constitution.) And business executives and lobbyists (as well as foreign officials) are likely to continue spending lavishly at Trump’s properties, as they did during his first term.

The new administration has no shortage of tools at its disposal to distribute financial windfalls to favored recipients. Some of the most likely vehicles are federal contracts, tariffs, regulatory decisions, and taxes and subsidies. Other, less conventional paths may emerge as well, including negotiations over government funding and the debt ceiling, investigations and enforcement decisions, and Trump’s use of pardons. In many cases, the administration will be able to target specific individuals and companies to receive these benefits.

Federal Contracts

In his second inaugural address, Trump vowed to explore space and plant the U.S. flag on Mars. In 2016, a NASA systems engineer estimated that a trip to Mars would cost approximately $500 billion. And two companies that stand to profit from the contracts associated with such a project — Musk’s SpaceX and Robert Bigelow’s eponymous aerospace company — are led by major Trump donors. Though his contributions were dwarfed by Musk’s spending, Bigelow gave more than $14 million to MAGA Inc., placing him among the top 10 donors to pro-Trump super PACs.

Government contracting decisions are perhaps the most direct path by which the administration can reward donors, and safeguards to prevent abuses are thin. Contractors are prohibited from making political contributions only while the contract is active. And, under FEC regulations, the prohibition does not apply to stockholders, officers, employees, and affiliated entities so long as they do not use the contracting entity’s funds.

There are many ways contractors can influence policy decisions to help their bottom lines. Some contractors have recently hired lobbying firms with ties to President Trump, for example. And although contract procurement rules usually require competitive bidding and other procedural safeguards, presidents have significant control over how contracts are structured, including the ability to impose conditions to further specific policy aims, such as the “buy American” requirements Trump imposed during his first term.

Space exploration is just the beginning of the opportunities for delivering government contract largesse to donors. For example, according to a spending forecast, the State Department was poised to purchase $400 million worth of armored Tesla vehicles later this year. The agency quickly deleted the word “Tesla” from the planning document after news of the deal sparked public outcry, and a spokesperson has since said the contract is on hold. But the announcement was enough to send Tesla stock surging. And the deal, which was the single largest purchase listed on the forecast, could be revived in the future.

President Trump also promised in his inaugural address to refill the strategic oil reserve “right to the top,” which at current prices could mean more than $20 billion in revenue for petroleum sellers. He has also pledged to boost gas exports and expand drilling on federal lands — including by holding more lease sales and expediting permit approvals — and signed an executive order on his first day in office to open vast areas of federal lands and waters to oil drilling.

Trump courted oil executives aggressively during his campaign, including at a private meeting in April at his Mar-a-Lago club, where he said he wanted the industry to give $1 billion to his reelection. Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren and an affiliated LLC ultimately gave $15 million. Energy trader John Addison and CrownQuest CEO Tim Dunn each gave about $5 million, while Continental Resources and its chair, Harold Hamm, combined to give more than $3 million. GeoSouthern Energy founder George Bishop and Furth Oil president Marcia French each gave $1 million.

Other industries to watch include defense, technology, and construction, which could be in line for big awards as the administration turns to border security and AI infrastructure. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency asked companies to pitch ideas for an “Iron Dome for America” that would defeat threats from low-space orbit, a contract opportunity that could mean massive profits for SpaceX and other aerospace companies. An internal report from the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term estimated that walling the southern border could cost more than $20 billion. And although Trump’s recent announcement of a $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure relies on private sector money, it could spark associated projects with public funds.

There are a number of resources available to track information about federal contracts, including who receives them. Using these databases, researchers can search for individuals, corporate entities, and potential aliases or “doing business as” (DBA) names, or when necessary request such information, to compile a portrait of a contractor’s business with the federal government.

Where to track federal contracts:

• USAspending.gov — This searchable database managed by the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service has user-friendly filters and compiles federal spending data to provide transparency into contracting trends by recipient, agency, region, and program.
• Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS.gov) — This searchable database managed by the General Services Administration (GSA) compiles detailed contract-level procurement data to provide procurement-specific transparency.
• System for Award Management (SAM.gov) — This searchable database managed by GSA is an operational platform used by contractors to register, find contracting opportunities, and compete for awards.
• OpenCorporates.com — To facilitate greater corporate accountability, this free or low-cost database compiles contract information and corporate transparency data, such as ownership structure and subsidiaries.
• GovWin from Deltek (info.deltek.com/Try-GovWin-IQ) — This private, subscription-based platform geared toward contracting entities offers contract information and market intelligence.
• Agency websites — Individual agencies often announce contract awards through press releases, typically searchable on their websites.
• Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests — If specific contract details are not publicly available, it may be possible to obtain additional information by submitting a written request to the target agency following the guidance on FOIA.gov.
• GW Law Government Procurement Law Program — The George Washington University Law School created a document tracking changes the Trump administration has made to the U.S. federal procurement system.

Tariffs

Trump has made tariffs a central focus of his second term, recently announcing a 25 percent across-the-board tariff on steel and aluminum imports and promising many more. Threatening to impose tariffs appears to be one of the president’s favorite negotiating tactics, so it is not yet clear which measures the administration will actually implement. Even at this stage, however, the tariffs Trump placed on China in 2018 show what an effective tool they can be to distribute financial benefits to political allies.

Unlike earlier tariffs, which were traditionally administered by the Commerce Department and supervised by an inspector general and Congress, Trump gave the U.S. Trade Representative unilateral authority to administer the 2018 China tariffs with next to no oversight. The result was a boon for Republican-aligned companies.

A recent study analyzing thousands of exemption applications filed by public companies found that Republican donors were more likely to receive valuable exemptions than their Democratic counterparts. According to the study, donating just $35,000 to Republicans correlated to a 3.9 percentage point increase in a company’s chances of receiving a tariff exemption, while donating just $4,000 to Democrats was associated with a 3.4 percentage point decrease. The official who oversaw the exemption application process has said claims of partisan bias in the program are “utterly false.” But intentional or not, this swing had a significant impact on the companies involved: the researchers calculated that, combined, those that received exemptions added an extra $57 billion in market capitalization compared with those that were denied.

Tariffs can be an especially potent vehicle for political favors because the president has substantial authority to impose them — and grant exemptions — without congressional involvement. The president can tailor overarching tariff policy to help or hurt specific companies or industries by targeting specific sectors and countries. And exemption decisions allow the administration to carve out individual companies with surgical precision.

The first tariff to take effect under the new administration — a 10 percent hike on goods from China — could have a dramatic impact if the administration again skirts typical oversight mechanisms, as it did in 2018. Businesses that rely on Chinese manufacturing, including the tech companies that donated to Trump’s inauguration and Musk’s Tesla, whose factory in Shanghai accounted for more than half of the company’s electric vehicle deliveries in the third quarter of 2024, could save huge amounts if they can avoid paying the increased duties.

More expansive tariffs — like those on steel and aluminum and potential reciprocal measures on trade partners — could extend these impacts across the economy, making exemptions a valuable commodity for virtually any business that imports materials or products. That could include several major pro-Trump super PAC donors, such as Diane Hendricks and Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein. Hendricks, head of ABC Supply, one of the largest wholesale distributors of roofing and other building materials in the United States, gave $15 million to MAGA Inc. and $11 million to Turnout for America, which ran an extensive ground game effort across the battleground states. And the Uihleins, who own and operate packing giant Uline, gave a combined $93 million to various pro-Trump groups.

We do not yet know which, if any, companies will seek exemptions, and it is not clear how, or even whether, information about tariffs and exemptions will be publicly available. Much like how Trump shifted authority to the U.S. Trade Representative in 2018, his call for a new External Revenue Service to collect tariffs — a responsibility that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has held since 1789 — could again change where information is housed within the federal bureaucracy.

Where to track tariffs and exemptions:

• Executive orders — The president typically announces new tariffs through executive orders or memoranda, which are available at WhiteHouse.gov.
• Harmonized Tariff Schedule (hts.usitc.gov) — The U.S. International Trade Commission maintains the HTS, which sets out tariff rates and categories for all imports.
• U.S. Trade Representative (ustr.gov/issue-areas/enforcement) — Information about tariff exemptions traditionally has been available through the Commerce Department. But if the administration follows the approach it used for the 2018 China tariffs, this information may be available on the USTR Enforcement page. The information’s location likely will depend on the underlying legal authority (e.g., Section 201 investigations vs. Section 301 investigations).
• Regulations.gov — This is a searchable database of federal regulatory actions, which compiled data about 2018 China tariff exemptions in a non-rulemaking docket named for the underlying legal authority. The database includes filters for Dockets, Documents, and Comments.

Regulations

At a crypto conference in the United Arab Emirates in December, Eric Trump told the crowd his father would be “the most pro-crypto president” in American history. He explained that the previously skeptical Trump family had to embrace cryptocurrencies after major financial institutions stopped doing business with them following the events of January 6, 2021. And he claimed the new administration would roll back regulations across the industry.

If that happens, President Trump, his family, and several of his biggest campaign supporters could make huge profits. The Trump family continues to invest in crypto holdings, including through its World Liberty Financial trading platform and the $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins. And Cantor Fitzgerald, the hedge fund long run by Trump’s new Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, reportedly has a $600 million stake in the crypto firm Tether. Lutnick has said he will hand over control of the hedge fund and divest any assets that create conflicts of interest. But his solution — giving control to his 26-year-old son, who is an executive at Cantor Fitzgerald — raises questions about how removed Lutnick really will be.

Despite his potential conflict of interest, Lutnick, who donated nearly $11 million to Trump’s super PACs, is set to play a central role in shaping federal cryptocurrency regulations. That could include deregulation and pushing the administration to adopt less aggressive enforcement policies. It could also mean trying to realize Trump’s call for a strategic reserve of Bitcoin and working with the new Congress on new legislation to formalize a favorable regulatory framework that will shield digital assets from traditional securities laws. Anticipating these regulatory changes, crypto prices have surged since the election.

Regulatory actions like these give the Trump administration perhaps its broadest path to deliver political favors. By passing new regulations, stripping away existing ones, or selectively enforcing them, the Trump administration has immense power to shape business fortunes across the U.S. and world economies.

For example, Trump’s regulators could reshape the financial services sector by rescinding rules adopted after the 2008 financial crisis to prevent banks from making risky financial bets with their depositors’ money and by loosening restrictions on mergers and acquisitions. These actions could benefit Trump’s financier backers like hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who gave $7.5 million to pro-Trump super PACs, and venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who gave $4.5 million and $2.5 million, respectively. The administration has also moved to shutter the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau (CFPB), the agency created following the 2008 subprime mortgage–lending scandal to protect consumers. Russell Vought, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director and acting CFPB head, recently ordered CFPB employees to suspend all pending rules and “cease all supervision and examination activity,” which could impact consumer financial services and products across the market.

The administration is similarly poised to boost the oil and gas industry. Trump’s initial slate of executive orders halted green energy initiatives, including electric vehicle emissions waivers and wind farm projects, and his new energy secretary is industry insider and staunch fossil fuel defender Chris Wright. Kelcy Warren, the Energy Transfer Partners CEO who led pro-Trump contributions among oil executives, has said he expects the administration will help his company resume projects that have been stalled pending regulatory approvals. That could include reinvigorating the company’s natural gas export project in Louisiana and securing an easement that is vital for the future of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which Energy Transfer Partners built and operates.

Other examples of regulatory changes that could help Trump’s allies abound, including DOGE’s wide-ranging mandate to review agency actions across the entire federal government. For instance, DOGE fired employees at the Food and Drug Administration who were reviewing Musk’s brain implant company, Neuralink. DOGE could recommend changing or eliminating environmental protections, which Musk has vocally criticized for slowing SpaceX’s development. It could seek to undermine the long-standing program of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fund expansion of rural broadband services, which compete with Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet services company. Or it could influence spending at the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, which is currently investigating incidents involving Tesla’s autonomous-driving technology. Favorable regulatory decisions across these agencies could mean huge wins for Musk’s businesses.

Fortunately, detailed information about rulemaking, interpretive guidance, and other actions at agencies likely to be central to the Trump administration’s agenda is readily available.

Where to track regulatory action:

• FederalRegister.gov — This is the official daily publication of the U.S. government for rules, proposed rules, notices, and other documents. It is the main source of information on federal regulatory actions and other government announcements.
• Agency websites — Individual agencies, including the Treasury, Commerce, and Energy departments as well as the SEC and FCC, often announce administrative actions with press releases and publish these and other agency documents on their websites.
• Office of Government Ethics (OGE.gov) — The OGE website compiles senior government officials’ individual disclosures. It also traditionally has published information about conflict waivers, including those granted by the president. But because the new administration does not have an operative ethics pledge in place, there currently are no such waivers.

Taxes and Subsidies

Trump’s 2017 tax cuts saved his wealthiest supporters hundreds of millions of dollars. Business owners like Hendricks and the Uihleins were among the biggest beneficiaries as the law’s corporate pass-through deduction — a provision originally touted as tax relief for small businesses — allowed them to dramatically reduce their taxable income.

Trump made extending that deduction and the rest of the 2017 tax cuts, which are slated to expire at the end of this year, a centerpiece of his campaign. He reportedly promised to make the cuts permanent at fundraising galas where he raised huge sums from donors like oil baron Harold Hamm and Johnson & Johnson heir Woody Johnson.

Tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are a mainstay of Republican administrations, but the Trump administration also could pursue more targeted tax policies to benefit specific companies and industries represented by Trump’s biggest donors. Musk, for example, wants to do away with tax credits for individuals who purchase electric vehicles. Although these credits were crucial to Tesla’s early survival, allowing the company to sell electric vehicles at a higher price and stave off bankruptcy, now they foster competition. Trump prioritized eliminating electric vehicle incentives as one of his first executive actions. The administration could also increase incentives for the oil and gas industry, which already receives an estimated $700 billion in financial support annually; eliminate capital gains taxes on cryptocurrencies; and expand deductions for manufacturing companies, such as bonus depreciation for capital investments and interest expenses.

The primary source of information about new tax breaks will be the final tax bill or bills that pass through Congress, which will be available for public scrutiny.

Where to track tax legislation:

• Congress.gov — Materials related to federal tax legislation, including bill text, amendments, hearings transcripts, committee reports, and final statutory language, are available at Congress.gov, which is maintained by the U.S. Library of Congress.

Funding and Debt Decisions

A chaotic episode at the end of December revealed how the administration could use traditional government funding and debt ceiling negotiations to further private business interests. Congress had a bipartisan funding bill in place, negotiated over several months, to avoid a government shutdown. But Musk sparked opposition at the last minute with a series of excoriating posts on X. Trump and his transition team reportedly had no problem with the bill before Musk’s posts. When Musk’s opposition gained traction, however, Trump began calling on congressional Republicans to reject the deal.

According to Democrats, Musk scuttled the deal over concerns about a bipartisan provision that would have made it harder for American companies to build and operate factories in China — which would have impacted Tesla’s operations in Shanghai. While Congress ultimately reached a new agreement to fund the government through March, the final bill was a stripped-down version that omitted the China investment provision.

Since then, DOGE has slashed spending throughout the federal government. It illegally (but effectively) shuttered USAID, an agency that managed more than $40 billion in foreign aid per year. And its staffers got access to the treasury’s payment system, which processes trillions of dollars in federal disbursements every year and includes highly sensitive personal identifying information.

While government funding and debt debates have become relatively common in recent years, tracking entrenched ideological or partisan lines, Musk’s recent actions have shaken things up. His success in eliminating the China provision from the December spending resolution could provide a blueprint for similar tactics during future legislative fights, and DOGE’s blitz through federal agencies similarly could become a vehicle for political rewards.

Many of these fights are likely to play out in the public sphere on social media and in the news. But for traditional funding and debt fights, at least, researchers can gain insights into who stands to benefit by following the operative legislation as it moves through Congress and tracking which provisions are stripped out or added.

Where to track traditional government funding and debt decisions:

• Congress.gov — Materials related to federal legislation, including bill text, amendments, hearings transcripts, committee reports, and final statutory language, are available at Congress.gov, which is maintained by the U.S. Library of Congress.

Investigations, Enforcement Actions, and Pardons

Throughout the campaign, Trump vowed retribution against his adversaries. Now in office, he can order agencies to pursue investigations and enforcement actions against those who draw his ire. The Internal Revenue Service could open audits against individuals, companies, and nonprofits that criticize the administration. The Federal Trade Commission could obstruct deals like Paramount’s planned merger with Skydance. And the FCC could threaten to strip licenses from media companies the administration perceives as biased.

Trump has also flexed his largely unrestrained pardon power to absolve political allies, including the 1,500-plus people convicted in connection with the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. In a nod to his libertarian and cryptocurrency supporters, Trump also wasted no time fulfilling his campaign promise to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht had been sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2015 for distributing illicit drugs that federal prosecutors said contributed to the deaths of at least six people. But Ulbricht remained popular in the crypto community because Silk Road, the dark web drug marketplace he ran, was one of the first venues that accepted Bitcoin.

Other actions accentuate the administration’s increasingly transactional approach to law enforcement. The president signed an executive order pausing enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act, a 1977 law that makes it illegal to bribe foreign government officials, arguing in part that requiring American companies to abide by anticorruption provisions hurts their businesses. The administration also ordered federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, based in part on Adams’s apparent agreement to assist with federal immigration priorities. These decisions suggest a potentially unprecedented level of political interference in criminal enforcement matters.

Information about investigations, enforcement actions, and pardons are likely to be reported publicly, by the White House directly or the specific agencies and prosecutors involved in the matter.

Where to track investigations, enforcement actions, and pardons:

• FederalRegister.gov — This is the official daily publication of the U.S. government for rules, proposed rules, notices, and other documents. It is the main source of information on federal regulatory actions and other government announcements.
• Press releases — Agency enforcement attorneys and federal prosecutors, whether with the Department of Justice or a U.S. Attorney’s Office, usually announce notable enforcement measures on their websites.
• Executive orders — The president typically announces pardons through executive orders or memoranda, which are available at WhiteHouse.gov.
• Office of the Pardon Attorney (justice.gov/pardon) — The Department of Justice pardon attorney website contains copies of clemency grants as well as statistics on pending applications.

In his inaugural address, Trump invoked the memory of President William McKinley, whose political career spanned the height of the Gilded Age, another period when private wealth and political power converged to a dizzying degree. Politicians routinely accepted bribes from corporations and demanded kickbacks in exchange for corrupt deals and graft. In a diary entry from 1888, one of McKinley’s predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, lamented that the concentration of “vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous” had caused America to become “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.”

The concentration of wealth and political power during the Gilded Age had real consequences for millions of ordinary Americans. People lost their life savings to fraud and speculation made possible by the lack of financial regulation. Workers enjoyed few legal protections, often facing long hours, dangerous jobs, and meager wages. And industrial conglomerates gobbled up land and other public resources on favorable terms, with most of the benefits accruing to a select few robber barons.

Public anger surged under McKinley and eventually reached a boiling point that led his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, to pass a wave of Progressive Era reforms, including a prohibition on corporate political contributions. That law, the Tillman Act, and state equivalents formed the foundation for limits on corporate campaign spending that stood for decades until the Supreme Court struck most of them down in Citizens United. Since that decision, dysfunction at the FEC and additional Supreme Court decisions dismantling rules designed to curb the influence of big money in politics have enabled an increasingly small group of ultra-wealthy megadonors to dominate our political system more than ever before.

Today, the rising threat of concentrated private interests capturing our political system underscores the renewed need for sensible campaign finance reforms, from strengthening rules to prevent coordination between campaigns and super PACs to modernizing key legal definitions to address new and emerging technologies. The status quo also highlights the importance of developing new solutions to counteract the disproportionate influence of ultra-wealthy donors, especially small-donor public financing systems that have proven effective at amplifying the voices of ordinary citizens.

It is also critical to revive a package of commonsense federal ethics reforms, including closing loopholes that exempt the president from even the most basic conflict of interest safeguards, improving enforcement of the rules that do exist, and ensuring better transparency.

In the meantime, investigators can continue to use existing disclosure laws and other available tools to shine light on campaign contributions, discover conflicts of interest, and expose when officials misuse the powers of their office for personal or political gain.

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful for invaluable guidance and insight from Daniel Weiner, Lawrence Norden, and Michael Waldman. Grady Yuthok Short, Shanze Hasan, and Roberto Cordova provided helpful research assistance. Essential editorial and design work by Marcelo Agudo, Zachary Laub, and Brian Palmer ensured this piece’s successful publication.

An earlier version of this article stated that Citizens United struck down the Tillman Act. The article was updated on February 21 to clarify that the law formed the foundation of the campaign finance regime limiting corporate expenditures, which the Supreme Court struck down.