Secret Deals, Foreign Investments, Presidential Policy Changes: The Rise of Trump's Crypto Firm
The pitch from 'ZMoney' arrived on the encrypted messaging app Signal just days before Donald J. Trump's presidential inauguration.
'ZMoney' was Zachary Folkman, an entrepreneur who once ran a company called Date Hotter Girls and was now representing World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency firm that Mr. Trump and his sons had recently unveiled. Mr. Folkman was writing to a crypto startup in the Cayman Islands, offering a 'partnership' in which the firms would buy each other's digital coins, a deal that would bolster the startup's public profile.
But there was a catch, The New York Times found. For the privilege of associating with the Trumps, the startup would have to make, in effect, a secret multimillion dollar payment to World Liberty.
'Everything we do gets a lot of exposure and credibility,' Mr. Folkman wrote, asserting that other business partners had committed between $10 million and $30 million to World Liberty.
The Cayman startup rejected the offer, as did several other firms that received a similar pitch from World Liberty, executives said. They considered the deal unethical, concluding that World Liberty was essentially selling an endorsement — and hiding the arrangement from the public.
World Liberty's executives, who have maintained that they did nothing improper, were undeterred. They successfully pitched similar deals to other firms while also marketing their coin to buyers around the world, reaping more than $550 million in sales, with a large cut earmarked for the president's family.
Mr. Trump's return to the White House has opened lucrative new pathways for him to cash in on his power, whether through his social media company or new overseas real estate deals. But none of the Trump family's other business endeavors pose conflicts of interest that compare to those that have emerged since the birth of World Liberty.
The firm, largely owned by a Trump family corporate entity, has erased centuries-old presidential norms, eviscerating the boundary between private enterprise and government policy in a manner without precedent in modern American history.
Mr. Trump is now not only a major crypto dealer; he is also the industry's top policy maker. So far in his second term, Mr. Trump has leveraged his presidential powers in ways that have benefited the industry — and in some cases his own company — even though he had spent years deriding crypto as a haven for drug dealers and scammers.
He has filled his administration with sympathizers to the crypto cause, including by appointing a former adviser to industry players as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, the Justice Department recently disbanded a crypto crimes task force, continuing a broader unwinding of Biden-era scrutiny of the industry.
A Times examination of World Liberty's rapid ascent from fledgling startup to international force — and Mr. Trump's conversion from crypto skeptic to industry cheerleader — highlights the range of conflicts of interest trailing the company:
'It's a black spot on our industry,' said Andre Cronje, a founder of SonicLabs, a crypto firm that turned down World Liberty's pitch. Anyone who accepted would 'obviously think they're going to make money because it's the officially endorsed Trump project.'
A spokesman for World Liberty, David Wachsman, disputed that any of the company's deals constituted a 'one-sided payment for services rendered.' But he acknowledged that the company has engaged in 'mutual investment deals,' and said that its deal-making had resulted in 'thoughtful, strategic exchanges between parties who stand to mutually benefit.'
Mr. Wachsman also said it would be 'false, absurd and dangerous to suggest that investments or partnerships with World Liberty Financial were conducted as some sort of political quid pro quo.'
'Never has an investor or partner requested any political favoritism,' he said. 'Nor would we ever entertain such a possibility.'
Still, the company's deal-making benefits the president's family. A Trump business entity owns 60 percent of World Liberty, according to the company's website, and is entitled to 75 percent of certain revenue from coin sales, which could be converted into cash.
'It's one of the more successful things we've ever done,' Eric Trump, the president's son who runs the family business, said in an interview this month at the Trump Doral golf course in Florida.
He and his older brother, Donald Trump Jr., are actively involved in World Liberty, though they rely on three partners to oversee the daily operations. Two of them, Mr. Folkman and Chase Herro, have a mixed track record in crypto. The other is Zach Witkoff, the son of Mr. Trump's envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who is also a World Liberty founder.
In recent days, Zach Witkoff, Mr. Folkman and Mr. Herro were in Pakistan meeting with the country's prime minister, Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, and other top government officials to discuss World Liberty. The trip, complete with limousines, a dance performance and police escorts, seamlessly blended the president's business interests with the trappings of a state visit. (Mr. Wachsman said no U.S. government officials were involved in the meetings.)
President Trump has noted that conflict of interest laws do not apply to him, and that he has broad immunity for official actions he takes as president.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for President Trump noted that his 'assets are in a trust managed by his children,' and that as a result, 'there are no conflicts of interest.' (The trust still benefits President Trump directly.)
World Liberty's supporters are unbothered by questions about conflicts.
'Trump wants to make a lot of money in crypto,' Konstantin Kuznetsov, a Russian citizen living in Miami whose Gibraltar-based firm bought $1 million of World Liberty's coins, said in an interview. 'We can join in this wave.'
Chief Crypto Advocate
As a businessman who made his name in the tactile world of real estate, Donald Trump never aspired to build a digital coin empire.
Indeed, at the end of his first term, Mr. Trump turned to social media to express disdain for cryptocurrencies.
They 'are not money,' he warned. Their 'value is highly volatile and based on thin air.'
By last year, his views had begun to shift.
His older sons had become enthusiastic crypto proponents after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol effectively exiled the family business from the mainstream financial system.
'We built and sold and held real estate forever. And for a long period of time, I had access to everyone in the world,' Donald Trump Jr. explained in a live video appearance at a crypto conference in Washington last month. 'All of a sudden that became really difficult. And I sort of realized very quickly just how much discrimination there is in the ordinary financial markets.'
The change of heart also coincided with an influx of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the crypto industry into the Trump re-election effort. Under the Biden administration, the industry had faced nearly 100 enforcement actions by the S.E.C., and crypto executives wanted a leader to champion their interests in Washington.
During his campaign stumps, Mr. Trump's qualms about crypto appeared to vanish. At a Bitcoin conference in July, he vowed to turn the United States into the 'crypto capital of the planet.'
Two months later, Mr. Trump completed his conversion, announcing that he and his sons would enter the crypto marketplace with a new venture called World Liberty Financial.
Mr. Trump delivered the news in a livestream at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where he had gathered with Eric and Donald Jr., along with Mr. Herro and Mr. Folkman.
'Crypto is one of those things we have to do,' Mr. Trump said. 'Whether we like it or not, I have to do it.'
Mr. Herro and Mr. Folkman were unusual choices to partner with a president.
Mr. Folkman, who has short curly hair and tattoos, ran a company in his 20s tutoring forlorn men on how to pick up women. In numerous podcast appearances, Mr. Herro has recounted his life's redemption arc, describing a wild youth in which he was charged with marijuana possession and spent a couple of weeks in a Wisconsin jail.
The two men had worked together for years, selling everything from colon cleanses to get-rich-quick advice, before pivoting to crypto with uneven results.
In 2022, Mr. Herro urged a roomful of crypto enthusiasts to invest in the currency TerraUSD, calling it 'one of the coolest assets in history.' The coin imploded a month later, erasing billions of dollars in wealth. Mr. Herro's most recent venture with Mr. Folkman was a crypto platform called Dough Finance, which was hacked in July, leading to the theft of $2 million.
It's not clear exactly how the pair earned the Trumps' trust. But Steve Witkoff said last year that he met them through his son, and then introduced them to the family.
On the livestream introducing World Liberty, Donald Trump Jr. hailed the men as first-class financial minds.
'You could put them in a boardroom at Goldman Sachs, and they're going to smoke the people in the room,' he said.
In October, Mr. Herro and Mr. Folkman got to work on the company's first initiative — selling a new cryptocurrency, which it called $WLFI, with the goal of $300 million in sales.
These coins would be different from $TRUMP — the so-called memecoin that spiked in January after Mr. Trump marketed it to his followers before it abruptly crashed.
World Liberty, at least according to its marketing pitch, eventually plans to operate as a new type of internet bank that would allow customers to borrow and lend money in various digital currencies. Anyone who bought the $WLFI coins would get to vote on certain bank business decisions like shareholders in a traditional company.
Mr. Trump was at the core of the pitch. The company published a 13-page 'Gold Paper' that described its mission and leadership team. On the cover was a portrait of Mr. Trump, styled to look as if gold paint had been splashed across the page.
He would serve as the company's 'Chief Crypto Advocate,' the paper said.
When World Liberty launched, the Trump family and its affiliates were given 22.5 billion units of the crypto coins — a stash now worth at least $1.1 billion on paper, depending on the various prices used in recent sales.
Under the company's rules, the Trumps and other World Liberty investors are not allowed to sell their coins on the open market, though the company has said it might eventually lift that restriction if other buyers of the coin agree.
Initially, there were few buyers. By the end of October, World Liberty had sold only $2.7 million worth of the coins, a tiny fraction of its goal.
Election Day was a game changer.
A Flood of Investors
With polls closed in most of America and Mr. Trump on his way to victory, the World Liberty account on X posted a celebratory message on Nov. 5: 'Big things on the horizon.'
Soon a surge of investment flowed into World Liberty's cryptocurrency.
Most crypto purchases are recorded on a public ledger called the blockchain, with the buyers and sellers largely anonymized. But World Liberty has said it performs extensive checks on investors in its coin, so it knows who they are.
An analysis performed for The Times by the forensics firm Nansen, drawing on crypto industry data, showed that many of the investors were based abroad in places like Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.
Federal law prevents foreigners from donating to presidential campaigns or inaugural funds, but World Liberty's coin sale offered a new, legal way to back Mr. Trump.
'The main reason for purchasing such a token was to support Trump's inauguration, as he was the first crypto-friendly president of the United States,' said Keer Lau, chief strategy officer at Orbiter Finance, a Hong Kong-based entity.
Some investors, domestic and overseas, have managed firms that ran afoul of U.S. regulations. One was Yoni Assia, an Israeli who founded eToro, an online trading platform whose U.S. subsidiary reached a $1.5 million settlement with the S.E.C. last year for crypto-related violations. Troy Murray, a Puerto Rico-based investor, also bought World Liberty's coin. Before that, he had helped create BarnBridge, which in late 2023 agreed to pay the S.E.C. $1.7 million to settle its own crypto-related accusations.
Since Mr. Trump took office, some World Liberty investors have pushed the government for regulatory approvals, or are poised to interact with the administration as they try to build or expand businesses in the United States.
In March, Mr. Assia's company notified the S.E.C. that it intended to go public in the United States. DWF Labs, a crypto firm based in the United Arab Emirates, announced this month that it had bought $25 million of $WLFI — and that it was opening a New York office.
'Our visibility in the U.S. has been increased because of this deal,' Andrei Grachev, the managing partner of DWF Labs, said in an interview. 'We would like to have direct dialogue with the policymakers.'
The crypto executive with perhaps the most to gain from his affiliation with World Liberty is Justin Sun, a Chinese billionaire who founded the crypto platform Tron.
Mr. Sun gained global attention late last year, when he spent $6.2 million at an art auction to buy a banana that had been duct taped to a wall. Not long after, Mr. Sun made another headline-grabbing maneuver: He spent $75 million on $WLFI coins.
The investment drew widespread criticism given that Mr. Sun had a clear incentive to gain favor with the Trump White House. During the Biden administration, the S.E.C. sued Mr. Sun, arguing that he had fraudulently inflated the price of a Tron cryptocurrency.
Mr. Sun has denied the S.E.C.'s charges, and in a text message to The Times last year, he said his World Liberty investment was simply a vote of confidence in the Trump family's 'excellent project.'
In late February, the S.E.C. asked a federal judge to halt proceedings in Mr. Sun's case: The agency said it was exploring 'a potential resolution.' The judge granted the stay.
The Stars Align
Justin Sun gave World Liberty a big lift. But Mr. Trump's company wanted more money. Much more.
So World Liberty executives soon announced what they called 'a transformative initiative' to partner with other crypto outfits and invest in their coins. The strategy, the executives said in February, would leverage World Liberty's growing clout to help their lesser-known partners.
'It's like taking care of your brother in the space,' Mr. Herro said at a crypto event in New York that month.
But World Liberty's public pronouncements omitted a key aspect of its private pitch to several crypto startups, executives at these companies told The Times. World Liberty wanted to sell its own coin — not just to invest in others'. It was proposing a currency swap.
Here is the deal World Liberty offered, according to executives at three crypto firms approached by the company: The startups would spend between $10 million and $30 million on a large chunk of World Liberty's coins. In return, World Liberty would buy a smaller amount of each startup's own cryptocurrency. World Liberty would keep the rest of the money for itself — a premium as high as 20 percent.
World Liberty's purchases would signal to the market that Mr. Trump's firm had deemed the startups worthy of investment. But the market would have no way of knowing that World Liberty had been compensated for that endorsement. Some details of a similar pitch from World Liberty were previously reported by Blockworks, an industry news outlet.
'They kept telling us, 'We're like, we're super close to Trump,'' said Mike Silagadze, the chief executive of Ether.Fi, a crypto startup that World Liberty approached.
'We immediately rejected,' said Dominik Schiener, who founded the IOTA Foundation, a Berlin-based group that also received the pitch. 'It's a very dishonest approach.'
In his statement, Mr. Wachsman, the World Liberty spokesman, said The Times's reporting contained 'fundamental misunderstandings about standard industry practices' and called the company's business arrangements 'not only common in the blockchain industry but essential for creating lasting economic alignments in business, generally.'
'These arrangements establish skin in the game for all parties,' he added.
The benefits of a partnership were enough to attract at least five crypto firms to strike other deals with World Liberty, without disclosing details of the financial arrangements, The Times found.
In one deal, the Sui Foundation, a U.S.-based group, announced that World Liberty would buy an unspecified amount of its cryptocurrency, prompting Sui's price to jump more than 10 percent. As part of the arrangement, the foundation was slated to receive World Liberty's coins in return, said two people familiar with the deal who requested anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
Other World Liberty partnerships have shown how Mr. Trump is mixing his official role with his business. In December, the company announced that it would use technology designed by a startup based in Lisbon, Ethena Labs. It also bought more than $5 million of Ethena's cryptocurrency.
One of Ethena's investors is Arthur Hayes, a crypto entrepreneur who pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act in 2022 and was sentenced to six months of home detention. Last month, Mr. Trump granted Mr. Hayes a pardon. (A spokesman who represents both Ethena and Mr. Hayes declined to comment.)
Another World Liberty partner is Ondo Finance, a New York-based startup backed by Founders Fund, the conservative billionaire Peter Thiel's venture capital firm.
World Liberty made its first purchase of Ondo's coins in December, buying more than 130,000 of them. The transaction at least briefly helped drive up the price of Ondo's coin, drawing headlines in crypto news sites celebrating World Liberty's bet.
In January, Ondo donated $1 million to Mr. Trump's inauguration, securing an invite to a candlelight dinner at the National Building Museum in Washington, where the guest list included several of Mr. Trump's cabinet nominees. Ondo also helped sponsor an inauguration event called the Crypto Ball. Soon after, Donald Trump Jr. and World Liberty's management team were headliners at a conference Ondo organized in New York.
'This is a moment we weren't sure was gonna happen,' Ian De Bode, Ondo's chief strategy officer, said from the stage. 'But sometimes the stars align.'
'Thank Me Later'
In February, Eric Trump passed along some investment advice to his followers on Elon Musk's social media platform, X: 'In my opinion, it's a great time to add $ETH.'
It was the ticker symbol for a digital coin called Ether. 'You can thank me later,' he added, before deleting that line.
His advice proved prescient.
The next month, his father announced the creation of a 'U.S. Crypto Reserve' — a Fort Knox-like repository of cryptocurrencies intended to help bolster the industry.
Mr. Trump's announcement included a list of digital currencies to go into the stockpile. Along with Bitcoin, he included Ether, saying it would be 'at the heart of the Reserve.'
Ether's price surged more than 13 percent.
The spike had an immediate beneficiary: World Liberty. Over the previous few months, the company had bought $240 million worth of Ether, according to Arkham, a crypto data firm.
The day the president announced the crypto reserve, the value of World Liberty's Ether stash rose by $33 million, assuming it had not sold any of its holdings. That gain was later lost as Ether declined in value.
That same pattern — Mr. Trump making policy pronouncements or posting messages that intersected with World Liberty's business interests — occurred again in March.
In a video feed at a crypto conference in New York, Mr. Trump called on Congress to pass legislation governing stablecoins, a type of crypto designed to maintain a value of $1.
Both the Senate and the House have introduced bills that would make it easier for firms issuing stablecoins to operate in the United States. In his remarks last month, Mr. Trump said that the rise of stablecoins would 'expand the dominance of the U.S. dollar.'
A week later, World Liberty announced it was releasing its own stablecoin, USD1. 'The future is here, and it is so bright!' Zach Witkoff wrote on X.
Jordi Alexander, a crypto executive who helped World Liberty with its plans to launch its stablecoin, said in an interview that the company had already secured commitments of at least $1 billion from investors to buy the stablecoin once it hits the market.
The new venture will only compound World Liberty's ethical conflicts. The company plans to offer USD1 on a platform developed by Binance, a giant exchange that settled criminal charges with the Justice Department in 2023. This week, Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Herro and Mr. Folkman met with Changpeng Zhao, Binance's founder and former chief executive, in Abu Dhabi.
Mr. Zhao, who served four months in federal prison for money-laundering violations, has been seeking a pardon from the Trump administration, according to people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. The pardon effort was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The overlap between Mr. Trump's policy pronouncements and his business interests have alarmed congressional Democrats, who moved recently to amend the pending stablecoin legislation to bar the Trump family from issuing one.
The amendment failed, and none of the concerns about World Liberty have disrupted its momentum.
Last month, Mr. Witkoff was among a group of executives invited to the White House for a first-of-its-kind industry summit.
After the meeting, Mr. Witkoff posted a photograph on social media of him smiling outside the White House next to Mr. Herro and Mr. Folkman.
'Thank you Mr. President,' Mr. Witkoff wrote.
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June 9, 5 a.m. EDTAt least 60 people were arrested in San Francisco after police reportedly clashed with a group of protestors who gathered to show solidarity with the Los Angeles protestors and oppose the Trump administration's immigration crackdown and deployment of National Guard troops to quell protests. 4 a.m. EDTIn a post on his Truth Social platform Trump mentioned the LAPD's comments from the press conference about reassessing the situation about bring in the National Guard, and wrote 'He should, RIGHT NOW!!! Don't let these thugs get away with this.' In follow up posts Trump wrote: 'Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS,' and 'ARREST THE PEOPLE IN FACE MASKS, NOW!' 3:30 a.m. EDTThe LAPD told reporters at a late night press conference that it had arrested 10 people on Sunday, bring the day's total tally to 27 after adding to the California Highway Patrol's 17 arrests. LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell told reporters that he was aware of the 'deep fear and anxiety' among the immigrant community, and said the department is 'committed to transparency, accountability, and treating every Angeleno with respect, regardless of their immigration status.' When asked about the need for National Guard presence, McDonnell told reporters, 'tonight this thing has gotten out of control' but he would have to know more about their intended role before making that determination and added: 'we got to make a reassessment.' 2:30 a.m. EDTLos Angeles Police Department said an 'UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY' declaration has been issued 'for the area of the Civic Center part of Los Angeles' and said people with with 'Cell Phones in the received the alert.' 1:30 a.m. EDTAccording to the New York Times, a man tried to aim his van at protesters near a gas station in downtown Los Angeles, but it is unclear if any people were harmed. The LAPD later told the Times that it had detained the van driver, and noted 'multiple charges to follow.' 12:30 a.m. EDTThe Los Angeles Police Department has announced that gatherings at Downtown Los Angeles have 'been declared as an UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY,' as it ordered people to 'leave the Downtown Area immediately.' June 8, 11.45 p.m. EDTIn an interview with MSNBC, Newsom dared the Trump administration to come and arrest him in response to earlier comments by the president's border czar Tom Homan threatened to go after any official who interferes the immigration crackdown. Newsom told MSNBC, 'Come after me, arrest me, let's just get it over with, tough guy...I don't give a damn, but I care about my community.' In his interview, Newsom once again accused Trump of 'putting fuel on the fire,' with his actions and confirmed that his state will file a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday. 11.30 p.m. EDTCalifornia's Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis told CNN that she expects state officials to file a federal lawsuit on Monday against the Trump administration's move to federalize and deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles. Kounalakis said the lawsuit will say that the president did not have the 'authority to call in the National Guard for 400 people protesting in a way that local law enforcement could clearly handle it.' Earlier in the evening, Newsom said he had made a formal request to the White House to 'rescind their unlawful deployment of troops in Los Angeles county and return them to my command,' The governor said: 'This is a serious breach of state sovereignty — inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they're actually needed.' 4 p.m. EDTWhen asked by reporters whether he would invoke the Insurrection Act, the law that gives presidents the authority to deploy the military domestically, Trump said, 'Depends on whether or not there's an insurrection,' adding he does not think the Los Angeles protests are an insurrection, though he said there are 'violent people, and we're not going to let them get away with it.' Trump said he called Newsom and told him he had to 'take care' of the protests, otherwise he would 'send in the troops,' and he told a reporter who asked whether California officials who obstruct deportations would face federal charges: 'If officials stand in the way of law and order, yeah, they will face charges.' 1:30 p.m. EDTAbout 300 members of the National Guard have been stationed across Los Angeles so far, The New York Times reported, the first soldiers as part of the 2,000 Trump has promised to station across the city as more protests are expected to take place this afternoon. 1 p.m. EDTLos Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told the Los Angeles Times said she tried to talk to the Trump administration to 'tell them that there was absolutely no need to have troops on the ground here in Los Angeles,' stating the protests on Saturday were 'relatively minor' and 'peaceful,' with about 100 protesters. 3:22 a.m. EDTBass appeared to rebuff Trump's claim the National Guard did a 'great job' in the city, stating in a post on X that the National Guard had not yet been deployed at that time in Los Angeles, while praising Newsom and local law enforcement. 2:41 said in a late-night Truth Social post the National Guard did a 'great job' in Los Angeles, while slamming Newsom and Bass and the 'Radical Left' protesters and stating protesters will no longer be allowed to wear masks: 'What do these people have to hide, and why???' 12:14 slammed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for 'threatening to deploy active-duty Marines on American soil against its own citizens' as 'deranged behavior.' June 7The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said it had arrested two people Saturday evening for alleged assault on a police officer, stating multiple officers had been injured by a Molotov cocktail, the Los Angeles Times reported. 10:34 exhibited 'violent behavior' toward federal agents and local law enforcement, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said in a statement, while clarifying it is not involved in federal law enforcement response and is instead focused on crowd and traffic control. 10:22 a post on X, Newsom said the federal government is taking over the California National Guard and deploying soldiers in Los Angeles solely to create a 'spectacle.' 10:06 announced in a post on X the Department of Defense is 'mobilizing the National Guard IMMEDIATELY to support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles,' stating Marines are standing by for deployment in case of violence. 9:17 House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Trump would deploy 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles to address 'lawlessness,' citing protests targeting immigration officers. Similar protests have spread to other cities across the U.S., including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Seattle, Boston, Santa Ana, California, and parts of Texas, including Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. At least 80 protesters were arrested in New York, while 15 were arrested in Philadelphia, more than a dozen were arrested in Austin and one was detained in Dallas. At least two police officers were injured during protests in Philadelphia. Los Angeles Metro Police officers stand on the road in front of city hall Tuesday night. People take part in an anti-ICE protest in New York City on Tuesday. Protesters walk by the Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago on Tuesday. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass will hold a press conference at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday. Protests broke out Friday and Saturday in Paramount and Compton, cities adjacent to Los Angeles, over immigration raids conducted by ICE, during which the agency detained 44 immigrants Friday and 118 immigrants Saturday, the Associated Press reported. Police and protesters clashed over the weekend, according to local reports and videos on social media, with law enforcement using tear gas and flash grenades to break up the crowds while some protesters threw rocks and lit vehicles on fire. Glendale, California, announced Sunday the city had terminated an agreement with Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement that allowed the agencies to house federal detainees at the city's police facility. Glendale officials said the move was 'a local decision and was not made lightly,' as the city 'recognizes that public perception of the ICE contract—no matter how limited or carefully managed, no matter the good—has become divisive.' Glendale's city manager opted to end the contract after 'careful evaluation of legal, operational and community considerations,' the city said, noting the decision was not 'politically driven.' Trump reportedly said in a memo he is invoking Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services, which allows the federal government to deploy the National Guard if the United States is 'invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation,' or if there is a 'rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.' Vice President JD Vance said in a post on X on Saturday night the influx of immigrants, which he called 'Biden's border crisis,' amounts to an 'invasion,' rebuffing critics who have questioned whether Trump had the authority to deploy troops. Trump's move has faced some pushback from constitutional scholars. 'For the federal government to take over the California National Guard, without the request of the governor, to put down protests is truly chilling,' Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, told the Los Angeles Times. The legal issues raised by Trump sending the National Guard to L.A. (Los Angeles Times)
The Hill
10 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump EPA moves to repeal climate rules that limit greenhouse gas emissions from US power plants
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas, an action that Administrator Lee Zeldin said would remove billions of dollars in costs for industry and help 'unleash' American energy. The EPA also proposed weakening a regulation that requires power plants to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants that can harm brain development of young children and contribute to heart attacks and other health problems in adults. The rollbacks are meant to fulfill Republican President Donald Trump's repeated pledge to 'unleash American energy' and make it more affordable for Americans to power their homes and operate businesses. If approved and made final, the plans would reverse efforts by Democratic President Joe Biden's administration to address climate change and improve conditions in areas heavily burdened by industrial pollution, mostly in low-income and majority Black or Hispanic communities. The power plant rules are among about 30 environmental regulations that Zeldin targeted in March when he announced what he called the 'most consequential day of deregulation in American history.' Zeldin said Wednesday the new rules would help end what he called the Biden and Obama administration's 'war on so much of our U.S. domestic energy supply.' 'The American public spoke loudly and clearly last November,' he added in a speech at EPA headquarters. 'They wanted to make sure that … no matter what agency anybody might be confirmed to lead, we are finding opportunities to pursue common-sense, pragmatic solutions that will help reduce the cost of living … create jobs and usher in a golden era of American prosperity.' Environmental and public health groups called the rollbacks dangerous and vowed to challenge the rules in court. Dr. Lisa Patel, a pediatrician and executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health, called the proposals 'yet another in a series of attacks' by the Trump administration on the nation's 'health, our children, our climate and the basic idea of clean air and water.' She called it 'unconscionable to think that our country would move backwards on something as common sense as protecting children from mercury and our planet from worsening hurricanes, wildfires, floods and poor air quality driven by climate change.' 'Ignoring the immense harm to public health from power plant pollution is a clear violation of the law,' added Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council. 'If EPA finalizes a slapdash effort to repeal those rules, we'll see them in court.' The EPA-targeted rules could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year they are in effect, according to an Associated Press examination that included the agency's own prior assessments and a wide range of other research. It's by no means guaranteed that the rules will be entirely eliminated — they can't be changed without going through a federal rulemaking process that can take years and requires public comment and scientific justification. Even a partial dismantling of the rules would mean more pollutants such as smog, mercury and lead — and especially more tiny airborne particles that can lodge in lungs and cause health problems, the AP analysis found. It would also mean higher emissions of the greenhouse gases driving Earth's warming to deadlier levels. Biden, a Democrat, had made fighting climate change a hallmark of his presidency. Coal-fired power plants would be forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a strict EPA rule issued last year. Then-EPA head Michael Regan said the power plant rules would reduce pollution and improve public health while supporting a reliable, long-term supply of electricity. The power sector is the nation's second-largest contributor to climate change, after transportation. In its proposed regulation, the Trump EPA argues that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel-fired power plants 'do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution' or climate change and therefore do not meet a threshold under the Clean Air Act for regulatory action. Greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired plants 'are a small and decreasing part of global emissions,' the EPA said, adding: 'this Administration's priority is to promote the public health or welfare through energy dominance and independence secured by using fossil fuels to generate power.' The Clean Air Act allows the EPA to limit emissions from power plants and other industrial sources if those emissions significantly contribute to air pollution that endangers public health. If fossil fuel plants no longer meet the EPA's threshold, the Trump administration may later argue that other pollutants from other industrial sectors don't either and therefore shouldn't be regulated, said Meghan Greenfield, a former EPA and Justice Department lawyer now in private practice. The EPA proposal 'has the potential to have much, much broader implications,' she said. Zeldin, a former New York congressman, said the Biden-era rules were designed to 'suffocate our economy in order to protect the environment,' with the intent to regulate the coal industry 'out of existence' and make it 'disappear.' National Mining Association president and CEO Rich Nolan applauded the new rules, saying they remove 'deliberately unattainable standards' for clean air while 'leveling the playing field for reliable power sources, instead of stacking the deck against them.' But Dr. Howard Frumkin, a former director of the National Center for Environmental Health and professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Public Health, said Zeldin and Trump were trying to deny reality. 'The world is round, the sun rises in the east, coal-and gas-fired power plants contribute significantly to climate change, and climate change increases the risk of heat waves, catastrophic storms and many other health threats,' Frumkin said. 'These are indisputable facts. If you torpedo regulations on power plant greenhouse gas emissions, you torpedo the health and well-being of the American public and contribute to leaving a world of risk and suffering to our children and grandchildren.' A paper published earlier this year in the journal Science found the Biden-era rules could reduce U.S. power sector carbon emissions by 73% to 86% below 2005 levels by 2040, compared with a reduction of 60% to 83% without the rules. 'Carbon emissions in the power sector drop at a faster rate with the (Biden-era) rules in place than without them,' said Aaron Bergman, a fellow at Resources for the Future, a nonprofit research institution and a co-author of the Science paper. The Biden rule also would result in 'significant reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, pollutants that harm human health,' he said.
