Pratap Chatterjee, executive director of CorpWatch, joins us to discuss their latest report, MAGA Inc., which identifies the Crypto Czars, the Tech Titans and the Prison Profiteers who have bankrolled and benefited the most from Donald Trump’s corrupt regime. Then, Ralph welcomes Elliot Negin, executive editor of Money Trail to talk about how Donald Trump is trying to turn Washington DC into a monument to himself.
Pratap Chatterjee is an investigative journalist, producer and executive director of CorpWatch, an organization that works to promote environmental, social and human rights by holding multinational corporations accountable for their actions. He is the author of several books, including Verax: The True History of Whistleblowers, Drone Warfare, and Mass Surveillance, Halliburton’s Army, and Iraq Inc.: A Profitable Occupation.
Palantir is really critical to understanding how the surveillance state works, especially in identifying people to deport and locations and people to kill in Trump’s new wars overseas, such as in Iran…Palantir’s data analytical capabilities are actually extremely simplistic and terrible. But when it comes to looking for an easy solution, that’s what Palantir offers. And they’ve been able to offer this to the Trump administration—to have them speed up their political plans such as deportation, such as waging war against Iran by giving them easy answers.
Pratap Chatterjee
The biggest company behind the cryptocurrency used by criminals and drug dealers and gun traffickers has come out of the shadows, into the light, thanks specifically to the credibility offered by the Trump administration. And so this is really a sea change.
Pratap Chatterjee
Elliott Negin, executive editor of the Substack newsletter Money Trail, is an award-winning writer, illustrator and publication designer. Prior to co-founding Money Trail in February 2025, he was the managing editor of American Journalism Review, editor and art director of Public Citizen and Nuclear Times magazines, a news editor at NPR, and a regular contributor to HuffPost and the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Equation. His freelance articles have appeared in The Atlantic, Common Dreams, The Hill, L.A. Progressive, The Nation, Scientific American, the Washington Post and other publications.
It turns out that there is a government-owned ballroom less than a mile from the White House that would serve the purposes of a state dinner, which is one of the only events that you would need a ballroom for. If Trump builds a ballroom, it will not be used probably 360 days out of the year… To have a building that big that’s going to be sitting empty for all that time makes no sense whatsoever.
Elliott Negin
Right now, the cost of this ballroom has been escalating… And half of it’s supposed to be covered by taxpayers. Give credit to Public Citizen. It did a report that found out that more than half the donors that were identified as donating to the project when it was pegged at $400 million (including Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Palantir) have gained contracts with the federal government worth more than $50 billion in the last six months. That’s a hell of a return on investment.
Elliott Negin
News 7/3/26
Our top stories this week are the Colorado primaries. First, DSA-backed insurgent Melat Kiros successfully ousted 29-year incumbent Democratic Congresswoman Diana DeGette in the state’s first congressional district, winning in a surprise blowout of over 13 points. Kiros, a 29-year old Tigrayan-American lawyer and PhD student, was fired from Sidley Austin – a “biglaw” firm in 2023, after she “posted an open letter defending students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza from charges of antisemitism,” per Colorado Newsline. Axios reports many House Democrats, speaking anonymously, have bemoaned DeGette’s loss, with one accusing Kiros of trafficking in “performative politics,” but Usamah Andrabi, spokesperson for Justice Democrats, one of the main groups that backed Kiros, put it simply when he said “If DeGette didn’t deserve a primary, Denverites wouldn’t have elected Melat” by double digits.
Also in Colorado, state Attorney General Phil Weiser easily defeated Senator Michael Bennet in the primary to succeed Jared Polis as Governor. While Weiser did run to Bennet’s left, the real victory for progressives is that Bennet finishing out his own term means the Colorado Democratic establishment won’t be able to appoint someone – likely a centrist member of the House – to replace him, per Axios. Meanwhile, John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democratic institution won his primary as well, fending off a challenge from his left by state Senator Julie Gonzales. However, Gonzales came within 6 points of Hickenlooper, according to Colorado Public Radio, a tantalizingly close margin. Moreover, not only has Hickenlooper vowed that this would be his final Senate term, many are speculating that Bennet himself won’t run when his term ends in 2028. That is all to say, it is possible we have not seen the last of Ms. Gonzales.
Speaking of Gonzales, much has been made of the fact that she “softly” distanced herself from DSA as she launched her primary campaign, per Colorado Pols. Perhaps maintaining that organizational relationship would not have resulted in her victory, but the stunning successes of DSA-backed candidates – including Melat Kiros in Colorado – speaks to the group’s impressive organizational muscle. In fact, the group can boast of winning yet another seat in the New York State Assembly, with Maurice “Mo” Brown declaring victory against longtime incumbent Assemblyman Bill Magnarelli in the 129th Assembly District. Magnarelli held the seat for 30 years. Brown won by just over 100 votes after all the absentee and affidavit votes were tallied, according to Syracuse.com. With Brown’s victory, DSA will send 16 members to Albany next session, nearly doubling its presence across both chambers of the state legislature.
More impressive than the electoral victories however is the fact that DSA members in office are delivering on their campaign promises. Most notably, in New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has successfully forced a vote through the Rent Guidelines Board to enact a rent freeze for the Big Apple’s 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, Time reports. These units make up a whopping 27% of the city’s housing stock and house around 2 million people. Mamdani’s predecessor, the corporate-friendly Democrat Eric Adams, pushed through rent hikes via the guidelines board, raising the rent by 12.6% over the course of his term in office. Mamdani called this the “relief that working people across our city deserve.” This move has, predictably, drawn the ire of landlords and their industry representatives, but there is no denying that the people of New York City voted for Mamdani in large part for this exact policy and he delivered.
In Congress, another socialist – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – is fighting for key amendments to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act. These run the gamut from prohibiting the transfer of weapons to countries hampering the delivery of humanitarian aid, such as Israel, to demanding that the Secretary of Defense conduct declassification reviews or release unclassified reports on American assistance to the dictatorship in Brazil and the coup in Chile, barring Pentagon funds from being used to enforce sanctions on Cuba, and many more. As the scope of national legislation has narrowed in recent decades, amendments to massive flagship funding bills like the NDAA have become a primary means of getting legislation through the gridlock. It is very encouraging to see AOC take advantage of this mechanism to force votes on these issues.
Of course, the centrists will not simply cede power to the left without a fight. Yahoo reports 13 Democratic House members and candidates have signed onto what they are calling the “Promise to America,” consisting mainly of vague commitments to principles like “Growth, Competition, and Broad Prosperity,” or “Safety, Security, and Human Dignity.” They have also stepped up their rhetoric, saying “there’s going to be a war” between themselves and the new crop of progressive and DSA lawmakers, per Fox News. Of course, this all makes one wonder whether the Democrats would be in this position at all if they were this confrontational with the Republicans instead of their own voter base.
Another emerging theater of combat between the center and the left is the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The CHC is led by the lame duck New York Congressman Adriano Espaillat, who was defeated in his primary by Darializa Avila Chevalier. Both Espaillat and Avila Chevalier – or DAC as she has come to be known – are Dominican, despite Espaillat’s last-minute smear campaign calling her Haitian, and she plans to join the CHC once she takes her seat in the House. Yet, POLITICO reports the CHC is divided about admitting DAC. While no member is going so far as to say outright that she should not be admitted, many, such as CHC Whip Sylvia Garcia of Texas, are saying things like if DAC is “aligned with all our priorities and all our legislative programs, we would welcome her.” Of course this raises the question of if she is not, would they still welcome her. The all-Democratic CHC has previously barred the entry of Republican Hispanic Congressman Carlos Curbelo of Florida and the Congressional Black Caucus barred Espaillat himself from joining after a feud between him and former Congressman Charles Rangel. In addition to DAC’s accession, the CHC will also have to decide on a new leader with Espaillat gone. The Vice-Chair, Darren Soto of Florida, may lose reelection due to redistricting in Florida, leaving the seat up for grabs.
In more Florida-related news, on June 25th Florida Governor Ron DeSantis formally announced the closure of “Alligator Alcatraz” the immigrant detention facility much hyped in the early days of the second Trump administration. While DeSantis claims that the facility had simply “fulfilled the role it was designed to serve,” there is an alternate story being told in the native community. Native News Online has published a statement by Judith LeBlanc (Caddo), executive director of Native Organizers Alliance, which highlights that the facility was constructed and operated “in violation of the sovereign rights of the Miccosukee Tribe, who took the government to court for illegally constructing the center without their consultation or consent,” and hailed the closure as “a victory for human rights and Tribal Sovereignty.” The statement further decried “The administration’s violent crackdown on migrant communities” as “an affront to all we stand for as Native peoples.”
Turning further south, the Guardian is out with a chilling story concerning the death of Monika Silva Koniuszek, a Polish anti-corruption activist, who was supposedly investigating self-dealing within the ruling Noboa family of Ecuador. According to her colleagues, Silva Koniuszek was investigating “Noboa Trading, the fruit conglomerate belonging to the family of the rightwing president, Daniel Noboa.” Specifically, they said she had been pursuing allegations that “several tonnes of cocaine had been seized in Noboa Trading banana containers,” and that “high-ranking Ecuadorian judicial officials were stalling the investigations.” Additionally, “Shortly before she was killed, she told friends that she had delivered a dossier of allegations to the US embassy in Quito.” Koniuszek was found dead with a noose around her neck, and Ecuador’s interior minister announced that she had died by suicide even before the autopsy results were released. Once those results came out, they contradicted this claim, finding that her cause of death was “a blow to the head and strangulation.”
Finally, in neighboring Colombia, leftist candidate Ivan Cepeda, who lost the recent presidential election, has called on the people of that country to engage in mass civil disobedience, according to Jorge Bastidas, a Colombian Congressman and member of Cepeda’s party. Specifically, Cepeda is demanding that the Colombian people not recognize the presidency of Abelardo de la Espriella unless and until he meets certain demands, including renouncing his U.S. nationality, disproving claims that he is a CIA collaborator, and vowing not to persecute and extradite his political opponents including outgoing President Gustavo Petro. Cepeda has stressed that this mass action, if pursued, will be peaceful.
This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.
