'Bread and butter corruption': Senator suspects sinister plot behind Trump's pardon spree

And it's kind of wild that Trump doesn't know anything about it, that it's happening behind his back.

Matthew Chapman
December 3, 2025

RAW STORY

Donald Trump (Reuters)


Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) tore into President Donald Trump's recent string of pardons for powerful and well-connected criminals and criminal defendants — and suggested there is something much more sinister going on below the surface.

Specifically, he argued to MS NOW's Chris Hayes on Wednesday, there is a whole lobbying network at play that has set up a cash-for-pardons pipeline to the White House.

"I mean, he has made a series of what would seem to be audaciously politically toxic pardons," said Hayes. "I mean, a man convicted and sentenced for 40 years for trafficking cocaine into the U.S., someone convicted of an enormous fraud enterprise and defrauding investors. I think today he's now pardoning someone who is indicted by his own Justice Department this July. And when he's asked about it, he says, I don't know who they are. What are we supposed to make of that?"

"Yeah, I mean, my sense is that somebody is getting rich ultimately, that there is a cabal of administration officials and MAGA-friendly lobbyists that are in league together," said Murphy. "They all huddle together at these elite restaurants and clubs in Washington, D.C. and they likely hatch deals in which if somebody pays a MAGA-affiliated lobbyist a couple hundred thousand dollars, then maybe you'll be able to get a pardon and somehow, you know, that deal will be consummated down the line."

"The Binance owner, the owner of one of these big crypto companies, was pardoned," said Murphy. "And this is a bad, bad guy. He pled guilty. I mean, it wasn't like he was contesting the charges. He had essentially set up a company that was being used to launder money for terrorists and for child sex predators, and he got a pardon pretty explicitly because his company had chosen to give Trump's crypto coin advantage in the marketplace."

"And remember, that's not just Trump making money," he added. "That's anybody that gets inside information from Trump on when he's going to boost the cryptocurrency. If they get just two minutes notice of that, they can make millions of dollars and so on. The cryptocurrency stuff, there's clearly a whole group of people around him that are making millions of dollars, and they're handing out favors to folks in the form of pardons in order to make sure that they get their pockets lined."

"I mean, that's like just bread and butter corruption," said Murphy. "And it's kind of wild that Trump doesn't know anything about it, that it's happening behind his back."

'Totally disgusted': Victim aghast after Trump frees fraudster

Robert Davis
December 3, 2025 
RAW STORY

CNN screenshot

A victim of a fraudster that President Donald Trump recently let out of jail spoke out on Wednesday, railing that the president's move "makes no sense."

Carolann Tutera, who was defrauded by David Gentile, the former CEO of GPB Holdings, discussed the impact of Gentile's fraud on her family during Wednesday's broadcast of "The Lead" with Jake Tapper. Gentile was convicted in May of leading a $1.6 billion Ponzi scheme and sentenced to seven years in federal prison. He served just 12 days before Trump commuted his sentence.

"I'm totally disgusted because it wasn't only myself, it was my elder mother in her 90s and my sister as well. We all got defrauded," Tutera told Tapper.

Tutera said she lost about $500,000 in Gentile's scams and has since been able to recoup about $40,000. She told Tapper that she realized she was being scammed after her late husband died, and she asked for her money back.

"You're not really functioning for quite some time after you lose your spouse of many, many years," Tutera said. "And when I asked for money back, they said they're just waiting. What are they waiting for? Call me in about six months. Time went on, and there was no money. None."

Gentile is not the only white collar criminal Trump has granted clemency for during his second administration. He pardoned former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who was convicted of money laundering and forced to pay a more than $4 billion fine. Trump has also pardoned Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar, who was also convicted of money laundering.

Trump pardons media exec indicted by his own DOJ

Matthew Chapman
December 3, 2025

RAW STORY


U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a breakfast with Republican Senators at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. November 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

President Donald Trump has issued a full pardon to Tim Leiweke, a media executive who co-founded the Oak View Group, according to CNN on Wednesday.

The move is notable as, unlike many other controversial Trump clemencies for rich and well-connected people, this pardon is for a charge brought by his own Justice Department earlier this year.

"A federal grand jury indicted Leiweke, then the CEO of the live entertainment group, in July for 'orchestrating a conspiracy to rig the bidding process for an arena at a public university in Austin, Texas,' according to a press release from the Justice Department announcing the charge," noted the report. Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater proclaimed at that time, “As outlined in the indictment, the Defendant rigged a bidding process to benefit his own company and deprived a public university and taxpayers of the benefits of competitive bidding.”

Ironically, according to the report, Leiweke has a history of criticizing Trump on social media, posting that he was the “single greatest Con man” and lauding former Vice President Mike Pence for standing up to Trump's scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Leiweke was represented in his quest for a pardon by former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), a former ally of the president.

This comes just hours after Trump sent House Republicans into chaos by pardoning conservative Texas Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar, who was charged alongside his wife with a $600,000 bribery scheme on behalf of an oil and gas company tied to foreign entities. GOP lawmakers had hoped to leverage his criminal charges to unseat him in his South Texas district.

'Cowboy Chernobyl': Trump admin accused of rushing approval of experimental nuke reactor

Brett Wilkins,

 Common Dreams
December 3, 2025 


View of pipes of nuclear power plant near Dampierre-en-Burly town, France. (Photo credit: BearFotos / Shutterstock)

A leading nuclear safety expert sounded the alarm Tuesday over the Trump administration’s expedited safety review of an experimental nuclear reactor in Wyoming designed by a company co-founded by tech billionaire Bill Gates and derided as a “Cowboy Chernobyl.”

On Monday, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced that it has “completed its final safety evaluation” for Power Station Unit 1 of TerraPower’s Natrium reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming, adding that it found “no safety aspects that would preclude issuing the construction permit.”

Co-founded by Microsoft’s Gates, TerraPower received a 50-50 cost-share grant for up to $2 billion from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. The 345-megawatt sodium-cooled small modular reactor (SMR) relies upon so-called passive safety features that experts argue could potentially make nuclear accidents worse.

However, federal regulators “are loosening safety and security requirements for SMRs in ways which could cancel out any safety benefits from passive features,” according to Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear power safety director Edwin Lyman.

“The only way they could pull this off is by sweeping difficult safety issues under the rug.”

The reactor’s construction permit application—which was submitted in March 2024—was originally scheduled for August 2026 completion but was expedited amid political pressure from the Trump administration and Congress in order to comply with an 18-month timeline established in President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14300.

“The NRC’s rush to complete the Kemmerer plant’s safety evaluation to meet the recklessly abbreviated schedule dictated by President Trump represents a complete abandonment of its obligation to protect public health, safety, and the environment from catastrophic nuclear power plant accidents or terrorist attacks,” Lyman said in a statement Tuesday.



Lyman continued:
The only way the staff could finish its review on such a short timeline is by sweeping serious unresolved safety issues under the rug or deferring consideration of them until TerraPower applies for an operating license, at which point it may be too late to correct any problems. Make no mistake, this type of reactor has major safety flaws compared to conventional nuclear reactors that comprise the operating fleet. Its liquid sodium coolant can catch fire, and the reactor has inherent instabilities that could lead to a rapid and uncontrolled increase in power, causing damage to the reactor’s hot and highly radioactive nuclear fuel.

Of particular concern, NRC staff has assented to a design that lacks a physical containment structure to reduce the release of radioactive materials into the environment if a core melt occurs. TerraPower argues that the reactor has a so-called “functional” containment that eliminates the need for a real containment structure. But the NRC staff plainly states that it “did not come to a final determination of the adequacy and acceptability of functional containment performance due to the preliminary nature of the design and analysis.”

“Even if the NRC determines later that the functional containment is inadequate, it would be utterly impractical to retrofit the design and build a physical containment after construction has begun,” Lyman added. “The potential for rapid power excursions and the lack of a real containment make the Kemmerer plant a true ‘Cowboy Chernobyl.’”

The proposed reactor still faces additional hurdles before construction can begin, including a final environmental impact assessment. However, given the Trump administration’s dramatic regulatory rollback, approval and construction are highly likely.

Former NRC officials have voiced alarm over the Trump administration’s tightened control over the agency, which include compelling it to send proposed reactor safety rules to the White House for review and possible editing.

Allison Macfarlane, who was nominated to head the NRC during the Obama administration, said earlier this year that Trump’s approach marks “the end of independence of the agency.”

“If you aren’t independent of political and industry influence, then you are at risk of an accident,” she warned.

'Absolute moron': Analysts flag dangers of Treasury secretary's latest 'performance act'

Robert Davis
December 3, 2025 

RAW STORY


FILE PHOTO: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's recent interview with Aaron Ross Sorkin raised red flags for a pair of analysts on Wednesday.

Sorkin interviewed Bessent at The New York Times' DealBook Summit, an annual gathering of business leaders, where the Treasury secretary made a series of questionable claims, according to Jonathan V. Last and Tim Miller of The Bulwark. Among them: Bessent's defense of Trump's appearance at Tuesday's cabinet meeting — where he appeared to fall asleep — and suggestion that he doesn't read the news.

Miller described the interview as a "performance act" during a new episode of "Bulwark Takes." He pointed to Bessent's repeated attacks against the media.

"Scott Bessant and JD Vance are just condescending p----s with no sauce," Miller said. "And they think that they can borrow some of Trump's sauce by going into these interviews and instead of engaging with the questions that are being asked by a smart, fair person like Andrew Ross Sorkin and he's like, 'I'm just going to attack the New York Times and and then you know the MAGA Chuds are going to cheer for me and go, Yay, Scott Bessent.' No, it doesn't work. It's awkward. You seem weird."

Last also warned that Bessent's suggestion that he doesn't read the news was revealing for all of the wrong reasons. Miller wondered if Bessent would be trustworthy enough to guide the economy out of a true crisis.

"Everything is fine having this absolute moron as secretary of the Treasury so long as there's no crisis," Last said. "But if you wind up in a crisis where you know the president, the secretary of the Treasury, and the chairman of the Fed, what they say and their standing within the financial community is incredibly important because people need to be able to trust their representations."

'People are having trouble getting by': Conservative slams Trump's economy on Fox News

Robert Davis
December 3, 2025

  RAW STORY

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump smiles during an announcement about "Trump accounts", in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 2, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo

A conservative columnist on Wednesday slammed President Donald Trump's economy during an interview on Fox News.

Byron York, a columnist for The Washington Examiner, discussed Trump's economy during an interview on "The Ingraham Angle" with host Laura Ingraham. He noted that the economy is one area where the Republican Party is not addressing a lot of people's concerns, and that could be bad news for the party in the midterms.

"Look at credit card balances; they have gone up and up," York said. "People are using credit cards for essential items. Car loan delinquencies are going up. These are real indicators that people are having trouble getting by every single day."

Throughout his second term, Trump has repeatedly made misleading claims about the economy. For instance, he's claimed that the second administration "defeated inflation," even though economic data shows otherwise. He has also claimed unprecedented job growth, despite data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing job growth has been flat since he took office.

Fact-checkers have consistently challenged Trump's economic narratives, pointing out exaggerations about manufacturing job creation, trade deficits, and economic recovery.


York seemed to undercut Trump's narrative on inflation during the interview.


"The inflation that went up under Biden is still there," York said.

 

New camera traps snap nearly three times more images of endangered Sumatran tigers than before

In Sumatra, researchers captured almost three times as many images of critically endangered tigers as during previous surveys, which shows the positive impact of conservation efforts even outside of national parks

Frontiers

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Tigress with cub in the Leuser ecosystem. Credit: Figel et al. 2025, BKSDA-Aceh, DLHK. Please write to press@frontiersin.org for higher resolution video. 

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Credit: Figel et al. 2025, BKSDA-Aceh, DLHK

Destroyed habitats, poaching, and prey depletion have dramatically reduced tiger habitats around the world. Today, tigers occupy just 5 to 10% of their historical habitats. But on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, an important population of critically endangered Sumatran tigers may persevere, a new Frontiers in Conservation Science study showed.

Using infrared cameras, researchers working on the island, have set out to estimate sex-specific population densities and tigers’ movements during three surveys.

“We documented a robust tiger population, apparently among the healthiest on the island,” said Dr Joe Figel, a conservation biologist, who works with Indonesian wildlife and forestry agencies. “For those on the ground, the onus now falls on us to double down and adequately protect them.”

Long-time tenants

In many ways, the Leuser ecosystem is ideal habitat for Sumatran tigers. Three times the size of Yellowstone National Park, it is the largest contiguous tiger habitat remaining in Sumatra. It’s made up of lowland, hill, and montane forests, of which 44% are classified as intact forest landscape. “It’s also more thoroughly patrolled by rangers than nearly any other place on the island,” Figel said.

Working with local collaborators from communities at the edges of the study area, the team put up cameras in the northern stretches of Leuser, located in Aceh province, and kept them there for three monitoring periods: 34 cameras were installed during March to May 2023, 59 cameras between June and December 2023, and 74 cameras between May and November of 2024.

“Multi-year camera trap monitoring is critically important for estimating key tiger demographic parameters such as survival, recruitment, tenure, and population growth rate,” explained Figel. “With these data – and only with these data – can we even begin to evaluate conservation efforts.”

During the monitoring periods, the team captured a total of 282 sufficiently clear images of Sumatran tigers to allow for the identification of individuals. Analyzing stripe patterns, the team identified 27 individuals from camera-trap images, including 14 females, 12 males, and one tiger of unknown sex. The relatively high number of tigers suggests there is adequate prey in the area to support tiger presence. Over the study period, female and male individuals were photographed an average of 14 and 16 times, respectively. High densities of female tigers indicate a healthy tiger social system and high-quality habitats, where they can raise about three litters of cubs over a decade. During the six-month session in 2023, three different sets of cubs were documented. Two tiger brothers photographed together as cubs were later spotted individually as adults.

Thriving tigers

Inside the Leuser ecosystem lies Gunung Leuser Nation Park, however, the present study was conducted in forests provincially protected by the Aceh government. In Indonesia, provincially protected forests receive far fewer resources than national parks, which are supported and managed by the central government.

The camera traps placed by Figel and colleagues snapped nearly three times as many tiger images as during previous 90-day surveys at other sites in Sumatra, and the team was able to identify many more individuals than reported in earlier studies. Only three previous surveys – all carried out in protected national parks – documented more than 10 tigers in a single survey. Higher tiger density estimates than reported in the present study were only documented in an intensive protection zone in southern Sumatra.

The current study also provides valuable insights for future monitoring of tigers, the team said. The data on tiger movement collected here could, for example, inform survey protocols and optimal camera spacing.

The high numbers of tiger sightings reported here highlights a success story that is due to a multitude of factors, said the team. “Thanks to the work, activities, and support of government agencies, local Acehnese and Gayo communities, donors, and other researchers, Leuser has maintained important patches of lowland and hill forests where, in Sumatra, tiger prey densities reach their highest levels,” concluded Figel. “The persistence of these habitats and prey populations are the main reasons for our findings.”

---

Journal

Frontiers in Conservation Science

DOI

10.3389/fcosc.2025.1691233 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Sumatran tiger density estimates in the Leuser Ecosystem, Sumatra, Indonesia

Article Publication Date

4-Dec-2025

Lowland River valley in the Leuser Ecosystem. 

Camera trap snapshot of tiger in the Leuser ecosystem.

 Credit: Figel et al. 2025, BKSDA-Aceh, DLHK. 

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Camera trap snapshot of tiger in the Leuser ecosystem.

A resident female Sumatran tiger grooming one of her two large male cubs in October 2023. 

Credit

Figel et al. 2025, BKSDA-Aceh, DLHK

Tigress with two cubs [VIDEO] 

Tigress with two of her cubs in the Leuser ecosystem. Credit: Figel et al. 2025, BKSDA-Aceh, DLHK. Please write to press@frontiersin.org for higher resolution video. 

Credit

Figel et al. 2025, BKSDA-Aceh, DLHK

Survey: Nearly all Americans not aware midwives provide care beyond pregnancy, birth

The benefits of a certified nurse-midwife that most people don’t know

Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

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A new survey by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center reveals 93% of people think midwives only deliver babies and are surprised to learn they can be a trusted partner in all aspects of women’s health.

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Credit: The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the United States is expected to face a significant shortage of OB-GYNs in the next five years. It’s vital for women to have access to highly trained health care providers for all stages of their lives, from the first menstrual cycle to menopause and beyond. Certified nurse-midwives offer this kind of care, but most Americans don’t realize it.

A new survey by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center reveals 93% of people think midwives only deliver babies and are surprised to learn they can be a trusted partner in all aspects of women’s health.

“We take care of women across the lifespan,” said Michaela Ward, APRN-CNM, a certified nurse-midwife at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. “We are highly trained and we're highly skilled. We can take care of you even if there is something more complex about you or your health.”

Survey results
The Ohio State survey of 1,006 Americans shows only 1 in 5 are aware midwives can provide women’s annual gynecology exams. The survey found that while some services, such as pregnancy and birth support and water births were identified correctly as midwife services by over half of adults, other services, like medication management, menopause care and annual women’s health exams are known by far fewer.

Among those lesser-known services, there are no significant differences by gender, meaning both men and women are equally unaware of the full breadth of women’s health services provided by midwives.

Survey respondents’ knowledge of women’s health services provided by midwives:

• Pregnancy and birth support (93%)

• Water births (69%)

• Medication management, including birth control (26%)

• Menopause care (23%)

• Annual women’s health exams including pap smears and STI testing (20%)

• C-sections (13%)

• Don’t know (1%)

Ohio State has 17 certified nurse-midwives on staff, the largest midwife program in central Ohio. Maternal fetal medicine and obstetrics and gynecology specialists are only a phone call away from midwives to provide support and care to patients with complex pregnancies.

“If I need to consult with one of our physicians at Ohio State, I can call them right away and discuss the patient’s case,” said Ward. “We all work together to provide the best care possible for our patients.”

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