Trump Is Giving His Buddies Billions in Taxpayer Dollars

What do the White House ballroom, ICE warehouses, and America's 250th birthday have in common? They're making Trump allies rich.

Good morning, AlterNet America family.

Welcome to the Saturday Wrapup, where I get you the week’s news as I consume my morning caffeine with you.

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I missed last week’s wrap-up because I was sick, so I’ve got a lot of thoughts for you now as Donald Trump’s vanity projects pile up. Let’s talk about it.

Trump Is Looting the Government and His Friends Are Getting Rich

There is a pattern to how this administration makes money, and it is not subtle.

Here’s how it works: identify a government building or national moment, attach a price tag to access, and route the proceeds to Trump’s friends. This past month produced three examples so clean they could be a case study.

Start with the ballroom. According to a report released Thursday by Public Citizen, 14 of the 27 known corporate donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom project have won new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion in the six months since construction began.

The White House signed a secret funding agreement, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, that permits donors to remain anonymous. Lockheed Martin led the way with $43.8 billion in new or expanded contracts. Booz Allen Hamilton followed with $4.2 billion. Palantir received just over $1 billion. Other donors whose government business grew include Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Caterpillar, and T-Mobile.

The contracts are only half the story. Public Citizen also found that 16 of the 27 known donors face federal enforcement actions or have seen government scrutiny reduced, including antitrust cases involving Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Nvidia.

Then there’s the warehouses. The Trump administration’s Detention Reengineering Initiative is projected to cost $38.3 billion and hold nearly 100,000 people by November. The infrastructure for it is being assembled through a network of warehouse purchases, and the people selling those warehouses are not strangers to the president.

ICE paid $129 million for a facility in Georgia — nearly five times its assessed value from the prior year. In Salt Lake City, DHS paid $145 million for a warehouse more than 50 percent above its estimated market value. The property was previously held through subsidiaries of Deutsche Bank, which has loaned Trump an estimated $2.5 billion over two decades.

ICE is using a Navy contracting program to circumvent the normal competitive bidding process and avoid disclosing contract details. David Venturella, who left the GEO Group to join ICE, now leads the ICE division overseeing detention contracts even as his former employer competes for those same contracts.

And, of course, the birthday party. Congress created America250 a decade ago as the official bipartisan commission to plan the semiquincentennial, and appropriated $150 million for it. The commission expected $100 million of that. As of April it had received $25 million. The rest went elsewhere.

The Interior Department has given at least $68 million in taxpayer funds to the parent group of Freedom 250, Trump’s preferred organization, which he created several months after Congress had already designated America250 as the sole planning body. Donors who give $1 million to Freedom 250 receive special reception invites. Those who give $2.5 million get a speaking role.

To cover the rest of the tab, the administration is diverting roughly $90 million from entry fees to national parks including Yellowstone and Yosemite. These parks already carry a $24 billion backlog of deferred maintenance.

The administration’s official position is that none of this is corruption. Their position is also for sale, starting at $500,000.

Red States Replace Pride Month With ‘Nuclear Family Month’

Happy Pride Month everyone. Unless you live in Indiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma, Utah, or Arkansas.

In those states, June is now officially Nuclear Family Month, Strong Families Month, Life Month, or Fidelity Month, depending on which governor needed attention this week.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ X account shared her proclamation under the headline “Another Red State is Counter-Programming Pride Month.” Alabama’s proclamation declares fathers “the head of the household” and states that homes led by a father and mother provide children with the structure necessary to succeed.

Single parents, same-sex couples, and grandmothers raising grandchildren were not available for comment — probably because they were busy raising children.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox went with Fidelity Month, a movement promoted by a conservative scholar urging Americans to recommit to God, marriage, family, and country. Cox proclaimed Pride Month from 2021 to 2023, called June a “Month of Bridge Building” in 2024, said nothing in 2025, and has now landed on Fidelity Month.

Meanwhile, a poll this week found that two decades of growing acceptance of same-sex relationships has flatlined. Can’t imagine why.

Bari Weiss Just Fired Her Fifth Journalist

It took Bari Weiss less than twelve months to detonate sixty years of American broadcast journalism

Since Weiss’ takeover, Correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega were let go from CBS, along with executive producer Tanya Simon. Alfonsi had criticized Weiss for pulling a segment about deportees sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.

In their place: Nick Bilton, a technology journalist and filmmaker with no traditional broadcast news experience, installed as executive producer by Weiss herself. This week, the remaining staff got to meet him. It did not go well.

Scott Pelley, a 37-year network veteran and former anchor of the Evening News, stood up at Bilton’s introductory staff meeting and said Weiss was “murdering the show.” He accused Bilton of having “slender qualifications” for the job. The room applauded.

The next day, CBS fired him.

In his statement, Pelley said “60 Minutes” had “lost its DNA” and accused CEO David Ellison of casting aside the show’s reputation “apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.” Ellison called it an ambush. Pelley called it the truth. One of them still has a job.

This is not a story about one television network having a bad quarter. It is a story about what happens when the people who own the cameras decide the journalists in front of them are getting too close to something.

The reporters were not fired because they were bad at their jobs. They were fired because they were good at them.

AlterNet America does not have a parent company. We do not have a broadcast license that requires us to stay on good terms with Washington. There is no version of this where a billionaire buys us and installs a friendlier editor, because there is no billionaire involved.

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We’ll be here. We do not have a Nick Bilton.

—Ryan Rose

Co-founder & Managing Editor, AlterNet America