Month: June 2019

Kushner’s Company Got $90 Million from Shadowy Offshore Firm

Buck Banks

$90 million

“A real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner has received $90m in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since he entered the White House as a senior adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump,” the Guardian reports. “Investment has flowed from overseas to the company, Cadre, while Kushner works as an international envoy for the US… The money came through a vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven that guarantees corporate secrecy.”

Elaine Chao Directed $78 Million in Projects to Kentucky to Help Her Husband Get Re-Elected

Buck Banks

$78 million

“The Transportation Department under Secretary Elaine Chao designated a special liaison to help with grant applications and other priorities from her husband Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky, paving the way for grants totaling at least $78 million for favored projects as McConnell prepared to campaign for reelection,” Politico reports.

Trump’s Latest Foreign Policy Play Hurts Cubans AND Americans

Buck Banks

Credit: The Nation
Tuesday, June 4, as Donald Trump was wrapping up his only moderately disastrous state visit to the United Kingdom, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a press release announcing that the Trump administration was reversing the Obama administration’s 2014 loosening of restrictions on Americans’ travel to Cuba.

Of course, to maximize confusion, the policy was set to go into effect THE NEXT DAY — Wednesday, June 6.

The nugget of the press release was this quote attributed to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin:

“Cuba continues to play a destabilizing role in the Western Hemisphere, providing a communist foothold in the region and propping up U.S. adversaries in places like Venezuela and Nicaragua by fomenting instability, undermining the rule of law, and suppressing democratic processes,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “This Administration has made a strategic decision to reverse the loosening of sanctions and other restrictions on the Cuban regime. These actions will help to keep U.S. dollars out of the hands of Cuban military, intelligence, and security services.”

Although it wasn’t spelled out in the press release, supporting documents made it abundantly clear that Trump was returning to those halcyon days of yore when only Americans with direct family ties in Cuba could legally travel there.

[…]

Bloomberg Pledges $500 Million to End Coal

Buck Banks

$500 million

Michael Bloomberg “will donate $500 million to a new campaign to close every coal-fired power plant in the United States and halt the growth of natural gas,” the New York Times reports. “The new campaign, called Beyond Carbon, is designed to help eliminate coal by focusing on state and local governments. The effort will bypass Washington, where Mr. Bloomberg has said national action appears unlikely because of a divided Congress and a president who denies the established science of climate change.”