Is crypto always bad?

Not necessarily. There’s Krypto the Superdog. Such a good boy!

And then there’s crypto-zoology. I’m sure searching for Bigfoot has its charms.

MULDER: …where it’s just you and the elements and possibly a cryptozoological simian hairy humanoid with enormous feet.

What about crypto-currency?

Some argue that it has value, but crypto has yet to find significant uses that don’t involve some sort of criminal activity. The crypto industry itself has been racked by theft and scams. Worse yet, crypto poses real dangers to our democracy and the economy. 

Here are three things you must know.

#1 Trump’s crypto corruption is off the charts

In his first term, Trump profited off the presidency in ways that would have shocked even his most corrupt predecessors. But crypto makes it even easier for individuals and foreign nations to bribe him. Crypto’s murky anonymity makes following the money almost as hard as tracking down the Loch Ness Monster.

Just four days before early voting started in 2024, Trump and his sons launched the crypto firm, World Liberty Financial. The New York Times said: “It’s highly unusual for a presidential candidate to embark on a new business just weeks before Election Day.”

Ya think?

But as soon as Trump won, money started pouring in. 

And then just days before returning to office, Trump launched a separate crypto scheme, selling TRUMP and MELANIA memecoins. Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency based on an image or online joke.

But this is no joke: The Trump family has made about $3 billion from crypto so far — with many purchases by foreign buyers. Forbes now estimates that over half of Trump’s entire net worth is crypto-based.

And with Trump acting as both the President of the United States and as his own crypto brand ambassador, it’s hard to tell which job he’s doing at any given moment. 

                                                                                                                                   Around the time that Trump made a state visit to the United Arab Emirates, a UAE firm announced it would buy $2 billion of Trump’s World Liberty Financial currency. 

Do Trump crypto buyers get presidential favors in return? Well, one US company said it explicitly purchased $2 million of Trump’s memecoins to influence trade policy. 

And then there’s Chinese billionaire Justin Sun. You might have heard of him because he spent $6.2 million buying an avant garde art installation that was a banana duct taped to a wall — which he then ate. 

What you might not have not heard was that Sun was charged with crypto-related fraud. But after Trump was elected, Sun invested more than $115 million into various Trump crypto products.

Guess what happened next? Trump’s SEC suddenly stopped prosecuting Sun. How curious and bizarre! 

Trump’s SEC also abandoned a lawsuit against Binance, a crypto exchange that had previously pled guilty to money laundering. 

When did this happen? Just days after Binance started listing a Trump cryptocurrency on its marketplace.

Why do you suppose they dropped these cases? I guess like the Jersey Devil or the chupa-cabra, those are just mysteries we’ll never unravel. 

But there’s more.

The second thing you must know is that Crypto is trying to buy our government

The crypto lobby spent more than $195 million on the 2024 election. And they seem to be getting their money’s worth. Within his first six weeks in office, Trump called for a “Crypto Strategic Reserve”— a government backed stockpile of crypto assets, sort of like our oil reserve, but completely pointless. That announcement made crypto prices shoot up higher than the supposed flying mothman.

Trump’s pro-crypto SEC chair, Paul Atkins is heavily invested in crypto himself. He’s lifting financial guardrails in ways that will make it easier for crypto firms (like the Trumps’) to spread into new markets.

Trump’s Justice Department even scrapped the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, giving a greenlight to all kinds of crypto crime, even though Americans lost $9.3 billion in crypto scams in 2024.

Crypto also spent big on House and Senate races, on both Republicans and Democrats. And guess what?                                                       

The Senate passed the so-called GENIUS Act — a regulatory bill that the crypto industry lobbied for. Eighteen Democrats joined with nearly all Republicans to vote yes.

The bill gives a stamp of legitimacy to so-called “stablecoins,” a type of currency that Trump’s World Liberty Financial makes and sells. Stablecoins claim to be more stable because they’re supposedly tied to the value of other assets that are held as collateral — like the dollar or Treasury securities. But we already saw one collapse just a couple years ago, wiping out some investors’ life savings.

And here’s a fun detail. While the bill appropriately bans members of Congress and their families from profiting off stablecoins, it places no such restrictions on the president.

But the most dangerous part of the GENIUS Act is how it allows crypto to reach its kraken-like tentacles into mainstream financial systems. That brings us to:

And lastly… Crypto could tank the economy

The GENIUS Act opens the door to institutions investing more heavily in crypto. It would even let banks and big corporations, like Walmart, Amazon, or Facebook, launch their own digital currencies — potentially thousands of them — all with little oversight.

Trump has also opened the door to letting retirement plan administrators invest 401(k) funds in crypto. That could put your savings at risk even if you never buy any cryptocurrencies.

As we saw during the 2008 financial meltdown, the more the economy becomes entwined with volatile and speculative investments, like crypto, the greater the risk to all of us. The failure of risky bets can have a domino effect. 

If a single cryptocurrency began to tank (as they have done in the past), investors would likely rush to sell off crypto to get their real money back. This could lead to massive bank runs. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has predicted that under the GENIUS Act, crypto firms could end up holding more than $2 trillion in U.S. treasury bills as collateral. If they had to suddenly liquidate those assets to cover a bank run, the value of U.S. securities could plummet, triggering a global financial crisis.

But at least the Trumps are getting rich, right?

To summarize, crypto has shown no redeeming social value, and it poses huge dangers to our democracy and our economy. 

I don’t believe that Bigfoot, Nessie, or the Dover Demon are real (sorry), but the dangers of crypto definitely are. 

And we will need a lot more than a dog with superpowers to protect us from them. 

Please share this video to help spread the word.

Did you know that every time you go to the gas pump or heat your home, you’re effectively being charged twice?

First, you pay for the actual cost of the fuel itself — a cost that has risen 46 percent since 2019. Second, you’re also footing the bill for the billions of dollars Big Oil gets through special subsidies and tax breaks.

These handouts don’t go towards lowering prices for us. They help boost oil and gas companies' profits — at the expense of your wallet and our planet.

Let’s start with Big Oil’s favorite tax break, which it’s been benefiting from since 1913. (Yes, it even predates me.)

Its official name is the “intangible drilling cost deduction.” It sounds boring to us — but it’s so important to Big Oil that industry analysts have called it the “one subsidy to rule them all.” 

This tax break allows companies to write off as much as 80 percent of the costs of developing an oil or gas well within the first year of operation, such as employee wages for surveying lands. This tax break can be used before a single drop of oil is even produced. 

Big Oil has had this subsidy for over 110 years and it's helped the industry make a killing. How much longer will taxpayers be expected to foot the bill? 

Big Oil’s other favorite tax break allows companies to deduct the cost of major capital investments from their taxes right away. It’s called “bonus depreciation.” I know, so riveting.

Bonus depreciation does apply to all corporations, but it especially benefits industries with large equipment expenses like Big Oil. One pipeline company was recently able to use this special tax break to help wipe out its entire tax bill. It’s such a boon to the industry that the American Petroleum Institute named it one of their top lobbying priorities for 2025.

Dozens of other tax breaks help Big Oil skirt taxes on its foreign profits, too. U.S. companies that extract oil and gas abroad, like Chevron and ExxonMobil, regularly end up paying little to no U.S. corporate income tax on their profits from foreign drilling. 

All told, Big Oil extracts about $17 billion in direct industry specific tax breaks and subsidies every year.

And fossil fuel giants also stand to gain from the roll back of clean energy tax credits and investments. These have been lowering your energy costs, creating thousands of good-paying jobs, and reducing our dependence on oil and gas.

Big Oil doesn’t need to be propped up by our taxpayer dollars — they’re doing just fine. The top five oil companies soaked up profits over $100 billion in 2024 alone. 

And what does Big Oil do with these profits? It spends billions juicing its own stock prices with stock buybacks to further enrich its shareholders and executives, and spends millions more paying off politicians in Congress to do its bidding. In the last election cycle, Big Oil spent $445 million.

That flood of money is responsible for Big Oil’s special tax breaks and subsidies — despite voters overwhelmingly wanting to end them.

While we continue to pay through the nose at the pump and on our home energy bills, the climate crisis is accelerating and our planet is being polluted — with natural disasters costing the U.S. over $180 billion in 2024 alone.

It doesn’t have to be this way. As I’ve said, Big Oil’s agenda is not popular. 

It’s also not inevitable. We can fight back. 

The first step is spreading the truth about our giveaways to Big Oil. We need to keep fighting to get big money out of politics so we can reduce Big Oil’s influence on our democracy. And we need to advocate for our taxpayer dollars to be spent on programs that actually deliver for people — like investing in clean energy that reduces our energy bills and protects the environment.

This is the future we deserve.

It’s a wonderful time to be a criminal. 

If you cozy up to Donald Trump, that is. 

Trump has been using his presidential power to shield his allies and donors from legal trouble, while his Department of Justice goes after his political enemies. 

Is this the same guy?

Who has he pardoned so far?

Trevor Milton, the former CEO of an electric car company, was convicted of securities and wire fraud. During his appeal, he donated heavily to Trump’s re-election campaign. Oh, and one of Milton’s lawyers was the brother of Pam Bondi, the future U.S. Attorney General. According to Trump…

CLIP: TRUMP (00:29): The thing that he did wrong was he was one of the first people that supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for president. 

Another pardon was for Todd and Julie Chrisley, fellow reality TV personalities. They were convicted of tax evasion and bank fraud totaling $36 million dollars. Maybe the pardon had something to do with their daughter’s speech at the Republican National Convention... 

[CLIP: SAVANNAH CHRISLEY (4:10)]:  “Donald J. Trump has only one conviction that matters, and that is his conviction to make America great again."

Next up, Paul Walczak, a nursing home executive who was charged with defrauding the government of millions of dollars, using some of the money to buy himself a yacht. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. A judge defended the sentence, saying there isn’t a “get out of jail free” card for wealthy people. 

Not so fast, your honor. Walczak’s mother is a major Trump donor who attended a  million-dollar--plate fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Less than three weeks later, Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon for her son. 

Not only did it keep Walczak out of prison, it got him out of paying $4.4 million dollars in restitution. 

In fact, Trump’s thumb on the scales of justice has erased roughly $1.3 BILLION dollars in fines and restitution that pardon recipients would have paid the victims and the government.

And it’s not just individuals either. The Trump administration has paused or dropped investigations into at least seventeen corporations that donated to his inauguration fund. 

See the pattern? Do something for Trump, and maybe Trump does something for you.

Buttering up Trump has proven so lucrative, allies and lobbyists are reportedly receiving multi-million dollar payouts to get pardon requests in front of the president. One was quoted as saying “It’s like the Wild West. You can basically charge whatever you want.”

Now, nearly every U.S. president has issued pardons that were controversial. But Trump’s pardons almost exclusively go to people serving his political interests.

The most extreme examples? Trump’s pardon of rioters and violent criminals who participated in the January 6th insurrection — including members of The Proud Boys.

CLIP TRUMP: The people of January 6th were treated very unfairly. (00:38)

Trump is sending a message that you can commit violence as long as it’s done in service of him. 

And who decides which pardons get in front of the president? That would be Ed Martin — Trump’s top pardon attorney. Historically, this role at the Department of Justice has been nonpolitical. But Martin is a staunch MAGA ally.  And Martin isn’t just in charge of recommending pardons to Trump, he’s also simultaneously serving as head of the Justice Department’s new Weaponization Working Group. 

This group was tasked by Trump with targeting his supposed enemies — including prosecutors who put January 6 criminals behind bars and anyone else viewed as a threat to the MAGA regime. 

Trump is blatantly weaponizing the justice system to attack his political enemies while rewarding his crooked allies and those who will commit violence on his behalf.

So much for “law and order.” 

Understand what’s really going on here — and help spread the truth. 

If there's one thing Democratic and Republican voters can agree on, it's how much we love our national parks.

But our national parks are under assault.

Majestic public lands like the Grand Canyon. Shenandoah. Yellowstone. We can all come together to appreciate the beauty of Yosemite, even if some of us pronounce it a little differently. 

TRUMP (00:15) : When they gaze upon Yo-semites, Yo-semites, towering sequoias…

For over a hundred years, the National Park Service has been tasked with conserving America’s wonders. Our national parks, monuments, and historic battlefields —  which span 85 million acres in all 50 states — are public goods to be shared and enjoyed by all Americans. There’s a reason why the U.S. parks system has been called “America’s best idea.” 

Which is why it’s so infuriating that Trump and Congressional Republicans are taking an axe to the National Park Service budget.

The cuts will hit park operations the hardest, likely reducing hours of operation and leading to thousands of layoffs. That means fewer park rangers to guide tourists, conserve park lands, and much more…

[CLIP Park Ranger (1:36)]: These are the people who sell you tickets, give you programs… They rescue you from trails if you fall and break your ankle.

BOB: Our parks provide educational opportunities for students. They give us low-cost places to hike, camp, and fish. They preserve important cultural resources like historic buildings and archaeological dig sites. 

And these cuts won’t just be bad for people who want to visit our national parks. They would be bad for our economy, too.

CLIP Ranger (3:08): “The communities around Yosemite depend on the tourists. If they close the park, businesses are gonna close.” 

BOB:  In 2023, total visitor spending in communities surrounding our national parks hit a record 56 billion dollars and supported 415,000 jobs. The National Park System’s entire budget was just $3.6 billion. That’s some return on investment. 

Taking away national park services from the public simply doesn’t make sense. 

ANGUS KING CLIP (1:56) : To save virtually no money from the federal budget, we’re devastating one of America’s treasures.

Our parks belong to all of us as Americans — that’s part of what makes them beautiful.

And they’re being gutted so Trump can offer bigger tax cuts to his billionaire friends.

With our national parks, as with other public goods, our responsibility is to protect them for ourselves and for future generations.

Due process.

What is it? Who gets it??

There has been some misinformation about this fundamental right that’s guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. 

[CLIP: Welker: Your Secretary of State says everyone who is here, citizens and noncitizens, deserve due process. Do you agree? TRUMP: I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer.]

Well I am a lawyer. And I’ve argued before the Supreme Court. [Bob audio from Supreme Court] I may do TikTok dances from time to time, but I know a thing or two about the legal system.

The 5th Amendment to the Constitution explicitly says “no person shall … be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” 

Now simply put, “due process” guarantees that you will not be arbitrarily fined, arrested, or deported — and that you must know the reason officials have targeted you. You must also have an opportunity to contest those allegations before a neutral third party. 

How formal and complicated this process is depends, in part, on the potential consequences of the charges.

For example, if you get a parking ticket, your “due process” would be the opportunity to contest it before having to pay a fine. That could mean sending a written statement to a traffic court. 

Or maybe you get arrested during a protest. Your “due process” would require being told why you are being arrested. You must also have the right to defend yourself (with the help of a lawyer) in a hearing with a neutral decision-maker. 

If you’re charged with a crime, you have the right to a trial. 

If you are an immigrant who has been detained by ICE and are facing deportation, you are entitled to a notice of the charges against you. The government must provide you with a charging document, often called a “notice to appear,” outlining the reasons for potential deportation. 

You have the right to present evidence before an immigration judge to show why you should not be deported. You might be seeking asylum, for example, or have a student visa or green card. You are entitled to a judgment based on the facts of the case and applicable law — and you have the right to appeal the decision to a higher court. 

You cannot simply be ripped off the streets and deported without a chance to defend yourself. That would be a clear violation of due process. 

Our country was founded on the idea that the government cannot arbitrarily take away your rights and liberties — and that everyone has a right to defend themselves. And that really means everyone. 

The word “person” in the 5th Amendment makes no distinction between citizens and noncitizens. The 14th Amendment makes this applicable to the states as well. And the Supreme Court has reaffirmed this multiple times — conservative and liberal justices have agreed. 

Due process is a fundamental constitutional protection to ensure that all of us can maintain our life, liberty, and our property — regardless of who we are or where we come from. 

This is a right that goes to the very roots of our democracy. 

Please — help me combat misinformation about due process by sharing this video. 

What’s that smell?

That’s the smell of the raw, stinking power of oligarchy — a government controlled by the billionaire class.

Everyday Americans are tired of getting screwed over while the richest of the rich dominate our politics and siphon off the economy’s gains. Millions of people have hit the streets in protest. This is absolutely essential.

But we also need to demonstrate not just against Trump and the oligarchy he serves —  but also for the America we want.

We simply can’t return to the status quo where a majority of the country struggles to get by while billionaires and corporations dominate our economy and democracy. 

Many Republicans, and even some corporate Democrats, are fine with this system. Too many of our elected officials have been eating from the oligarchy’s Big Money buffet to finance their elections and dare not criticize the hands that feed them.

We need to replace those politicians. 

We need to push people-powered Democrats (and even some independents) towards a bold, progressive populism that strengthens democracy and shares the wealth.

Now, it may seem an odd time in our history to suggest such reforms, but this is actually the best time. We need to take on the oligarchy directly by

Busting up big corporations that are price-gouging us to death. 

Getting Big Money out of politics.

Raising the minimum wage while strengthening unions and worker protections on the job.

And we must fairly tax the ultra-rich — like we used to do. This could finance Medicare for all, paid family leave, free childcare, debt-free college, better public schools, and many other programs that the richest nation in the history of the world should be able to provide to its people. 

If we organize, we can achieve these goals, both at the national level and at the state level. 

And these ideas can serve as our basis for evaluating politicians in future elections, to make sure we select true public servants at all levels of government who actually represent us.

One of the unacknowledged advantages of this awful era is that it's revealing the putrid connections between great wealth and great power. The intentions of the oligarchs are fully exposed and more blatant than ever. 

The oligarchs will keep trying to divide and distract us. They don’t want us to focus on how they are picking our pockets. They’ll decry these reforms as “far left” or “radical” or “socialist.” 

But this agenda is neither “right” nor “left” and certainly not “radical.” 

It’s what our nation requires: putting power over our democracy and economy where it belongs — in the hands of the many, not the few.