Trump Transportation Chief Sure Chose a Convenient Time to Sell Stock

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sold potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock just days before Donald Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs went into effect, ProPublica reported Monday.

Duffy sold between $75,000 and $600,000 of stock on February 11, just two days beforeTrump first announced that he had instructed his trade advisers and federal agencies to examine imposing “reciprocal tariffs” on a “country-by-country” basis. Duffy sold $50,000 more the day of the announcement.

Duffy sold stock in 34 different companies, several of which were part of an ethics agreement he’d made to sell stocks where he might have a conflict of interest, according to disclosure records he filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Other companies he sold stock in include some that are projected to take hits as a result of Trump’s tariffs, such as Shopify and John Deere, which is expected to have a whopping $500 million in new costs as a result of Trump’s trade policy. Duffy also sold stocks in companies that are unlikely to be directly affected by the tariffs.

A Transportation Department spokesperson told ProPublica that Duffy “had no input on the timing of the sales” and that his transactions were “part of a retirement account and not managed directly by the Secretary.”

“The Secretary strongly supports the President’s tariff policy, but he isn’t part of the administration’s decisions on tariff levels,” the spokesperson said.

While it’s certainly not clear that Duffy was privy to discussions about Trump’s tariff announcement before it was made, he has credited himself for laying the groundwork for the transformative (i.e., destructive) trade policy through his work on a piece of failed legislation called the U.S. Reciprocal Trade Act during his time in Congress. Duffy has said that Trump’s current policy is the “cumulation” of the work he did on that bill.

Duffy isn’t the only Cabinet member to dump stock at a suspiciously convenient time. Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million of her share in Trump Media on April 2, the same day the president’s “Liberation Day” tariff war announcement broke the stock market, according to reporting from ProPublica. Trump Media stocks specifically fell 13 percent that day.

More than two dozen people were killed by tornadoes across Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia over the weekend—but come Monday, the White House and the executive agency responsible for the emergency response to natural disasters had not publicly addressed it.

St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer told MSNBC Monday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was “not on the ground” and that the area did “not have confirmed assistance” from FEMA, forcing local organizations such as the St. Louis Community Foundation to turn to crowdfunding to rebuild their community.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump made an appearance at the Rose Garden Monday afternoon, offering brief remarks during a bill signing focused on curbing revenge porn. Trump’s comments made mention of his wife, Melania Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, a potential peace deal in Ukraine, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz but notably did not address the storm system that killed 28 people across three states (two of which voted for him in November).

And FEMA announced Monday that there was less than a week left to apply for federal aid for homeowners in Kentucky who had their properties damaged during storms in February. The deadline is May 25. Survivors of storms in April have until June 25, the agency advised in a press release.

It made no mention of potential aid application deadlines for survivors of the weekend tornadoes, though the state is reportedly in the process of seeking FEMA assistance, according to the Kentucky Lantern.

But getting the aid they need from the federal government is not a guarantee under the Trump administration. Last month, FEMA rejected North Carolina’s application for an emergency aid extension as the state grapples to recover from Hurricane Helene, a Category Four storm that killed 250 people in September. It was the deadliest hurricane in state history.

In a letter to North Carolina Governor Josh Stein in April, acting FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton said that the agency had determined that an extension with a full cost share was “not warranted.”

Like Kentucky and Missouri, North Carolina had also voted for Trump in November, but months into his presidency, residents of devastated communities are still begging the president to send relief.

Since Helene, Trump and his allies have spread unfounded conspiracies that the lead response agency has run out of money and that the Biden administration had diverted funds from FEMA to assist undocumented immigrants entering the country. (FEMA administrators have fervently and repeatedly denied this.) Conservatives, at the time, claimed that working with the White House to expedite disaster relief “seemed political” and even conspiratorially suggested that the hurricanes were a government manipulation.

Days after his inauguration, Trump pitched that it would be better to do away with FEMA altogether in favor of handing the money directly to the states, though that plan never seemed to gain traction.

Since then, Trump has actively worked to dismantle the agency. The administration has blocked states across the nation, including California and Michigan, from accessing preapproved relief. A coalition of Democratic-led states has sued the federal government, claiming that “hundreds of millions of dollars in FEMA grants” are still inaccessible.

A federal judge on Monday struck down the Department of Government Efficiency’s takeover of the U.S. Institute of Peace, saying that DOGE’s actions two months ago were “unlawful” and “null and void.”

In March, Elon Musk’s DOGE used law enforcement and private security to take over the USIP and its Washington, D.C., headquarters despite the fact that the think tank, created by Congress during the Reagan administration, is an independent nonprofit not controlled by the federal government. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell pointed out these issues in her ruling.

“The removal of USIP’s president, his replacement by officials affiliated with DOGE, the termination of nearly all of USIP’s staff, and the transfer of USIP property to the General Services Administration” were “effectuated by illegitimately installed leaders who lacked legal authority to take these actions, which must therefore be declared null and void,” Howell wrote.

The institute was shuttered without the authorization or consultation of Congress, “rushed through action” with “blunt force, backed up by law enforcement officers from three separate local and federal agencies” to carry out President Trump’s executive order, the ruling states.

Why did DOGE so blatantly target an organization that isn’t part of the executive branch and only receives congressional funding to prevent outside influence? The answer lies in the valuable real estate of USIP’s headquarters: a $500 million building in a prime location between the Potomac River and the National Mall.

DOGE installed its staffer, Nate Cavanaugh, as acting president of the USIP, and he was ordered to transfer the USIP building to the government’s General Services Administration in late March. Russell Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget and an author of Project 2025, also sought to have the building transferred at no cost. Now those plans have been blocked, and the public is wondering what DOGE and Project 2025’s intentions were for that building.

More than 50 of the 240 Venezuelan men that President Trump deported to the CECOT megaprison in El Salvador came to the United States legally, poking yet another hole in the Trump administration’s narrative that these are all dangerous Tren de Aragua gang members. 

“Cato published my review of the ~240 Venezuelans the US government renditioned 2 months ago to Salvador’s notorious prison,” wrote David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “We identified FIFTY who came legally, never violated any immigration law, but are imprisoned at the US government’s request and at US taxpayer expense.”

Two dozen of the men were parolees who came in at normal ports of entry, 21 came through CPB One appointments, four were granted refugee status by the U.S. government, and one had a tourist visa, according to Cato’s review. The Trump administration still had them all deported on the grounds that they were gang members who had illegally infiltrated our precious country. He even went so far as to invoke the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798.  

“Well this is a time of war. Because Biden allowed millions of people, many of them criminals, many of them at the highest level.… Other nations emptied their jails into the United States, it’s an invasion,” Trump said at the time of the deportations. “These are criminals, many many criminals … murderers, drug dealers at the highest level, drug lords. People from mental institutions. That’s an invasion.”

We now know this is completely false. 

“DHS continues to slander & lie about [the migrants], calling them all ‘illegal aliens.’ When confronted with the lies, DHS lies more. For instance, it says Ricardo ‘entered illegally at a port of entry via the CBP One.’ It literally just describes a legal entry as ‘illegal,’” Bier wrote. “We found DHS labeling LEGAL immigrants gang members for tattoos: roses, clocks, playing cards covering up a scar from a childhood accident, a Puerto Rican song lyric, the Real Madrid logo, a callout to Call Of Duty videogame, many crowns w/ loved ones’ names like these on Andry [José Hernández Romero].” 

As Bier noted, the Trump administration could care less about the innocence of these men or about the authority of the Supreme Court to stop his deportation crackdown. Anyone getting in his way is simply a leftist, activist judge who is “sabotaging democracy.” The administration continues to spin tall tales of criminality while fathers, sons, brothers, and innocent men rot in a Salvadoran gulag.

The Trump administration is planning to pay the family of January 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt $5 million to settle a lawsuit.

The Washington Post reports that the family of Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer while trying to climb through a broken glass panel of the barricaded Speaker’s Lobby doors inside the Capitol, reached a settlement with the Department of Justice earlier this month. The terms of the settlement had not been disclosed until two unnamed sources spoke with the Post Monday.

The settlement reverses a 2021 DOJ finding that Babbitt’s civil rights were not violated and it was reasonable for the officer who shot her to believe he was acting in self-defense or in defense of members of Congress.

U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd was also cleared by a Capitol Police investigation, which found that his actions “potentially saved members and staff from serious injury and possible death from a large crowd of rioters who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol and to the House Chamber where members and staff were steps away.”

One-third of the settlement will go toward the Babbitt family’s lawyers, which include the right-wing legal group Judicial Watch and Richard Driscoll, an attorney in Alexandria, Virginia. Conservatives, led by Trump, have tried to rewrite the narrative of January 6, 2021, minimizing the violence of the rioters, who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and paint them as victims who were unfairly punished by the justice system for supporting Trump.

The president has in effect legitimized the rioters’ actions by issuing blanket pardons for everyone involved in the insurrection, including violent participants and hate group members such as the Proud Boys. He has also taken steps to punish prosecutors and federal law enforcement officers involved in investigating and bringing cases against the rioters.

The settlement with Babbitt’s family will appease Trump’s die-hard supporters who would be willing to commit violence on his behalf, and is an attempt to rewrite history by painting Babbitt as a victim and martyr rather than one of the many criminals on that day four years ago. It also sends the message that violence committed in Trump’s name won’t lead to punishment but to rewards.