Letters from an American – August 22, 2025 – Heather Cox Richardson

Letters from an American

August 22, 2025, by Heather Cox Richardson

In these last days of August, with Congress on hiatus and the Epstein files looming, the Trump White House appears to be making a big move to consolidate power over the federal government, weaponize it against Trump’s opponents, and keep him in power indefinitely.

At around 7:00 this morning, FBI agents searched the home and office of Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton, who has been a fierce critic of Trump since leaving his first administration. Officials told reporters the search was part of an investigation into whether Bolton illegally retained classified information or leaked it to news media. But as J.V. Last of The Bulwark noted, an investigation into classified documents from several years ago—as opposed to a search of, say, a drug dealer—would normally mean the government officials would have a conversation with Bolton’s lawyers and arrange for a routine search to which Bolton agreed. Instead, agents stormed his house and office in an early morning raid.

The raid seems a pretty clear warning to those Trump perceives as enemies that he will bring the full weight of the United States government to harass them. Bolton has been a thorn in Trump’s side for years because he is a well-known right-wing figure who has not been shy about speaking out against Trump. As recently as last week, Bolton told CNN that Trump had “achieved very little” by meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Alaska, and that “Putin clearly won.” He also noted that Trump “looked tired.”

Earlier this month, when ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked Bolton if he was worried Trump would come after him as part of the president’s “retribution campaign” being waged through the FBI and the Department of Justice. Bolton pointed out that Trump had already come after him by removing his Secret Service protection despite specific Iranian threats against his life. Bolton added: “I think it is a retribution presidency.”

Targeting Bolton has been a goal of FBI director Kash Patel, whom Trump appointed after Patel made it clear he intended to use the power of government against Trump’s opponents. “We’re going to come after you whether it’s criminally or civilly,” Patel said in 2023 on Trump associate Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast.

Indeed, Trump loyalist Attorney General Pam Bondi has launched criminal investigations into Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA), who led the House Intelligence Committee that broke the story of Trump’s phone call to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky asking him to smear Trump’s 2020 political opponent Joe Biden; New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully sued Trump and the Trump Organization for fraud; and now Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, who suggested on August 6 that the revision of the last few months’ jobs numbers might signal a turning point in the economy.

Those investigations come after another Trump loyalist, William Pulte, who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, alleged that the three committed mortgage fraud years ago. All three have denied the allegations, and Allan Smith, Steve Kopack, and Dareh Gregorian of NBC News note that accusation of mortgage fraud “has long been a common tactic in opposition research on political campaigns. James’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, pointed out that the administration does not appear to be investigating Trump loyalist Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who, divorce filings released this July show, claimed three different properties as his primary residence, thus securing lower-interest mortgages on them.

Earlier this week, bodycam footage released from a court filing by Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), whom the administration has charged with assaulting federal agents during the chaotic arrest of Newark, New Jersey, mayor Ras Baraka on May 9, shows that the Justice Department’s deputy attorney general Todd Blanche personally ordered Baraka’s arrest. The case was later dismissed.

And yet Trump loyalists are not just targeting people in order to intimidate opponents. They seem determined to rewrite history to suit Trump.

In July the Department of Justice launched investigations of former FBI director James Comey and former CIA director John Brennan, alleging they had made false statements to Congress about the investigation into the attempt by Russian operatives to help Trump’s 2016 candidacy. After all these years, Trump continues to come back to the scandal that he calls “Russia, Russia, Russia.”

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How SpaceX avoids paying taxes – Musk Watch

How SpaceX avoids paying taxes

By Caleb Ecarma, Aug 22, 2025

Elon Musk gives a control room tour to Donald Trump before the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on November 19, 2024, in Brownsville, Texas. (Photo by Brandon Bell / Getty Images)

Despite receiving billions of dollars in federal contracts and subsidies, SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company, has reportedly taken advantage of a benefit from President Trump’s first term to avoid paying income taxes.

But SpaceX has most likely paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002 and has privately told investors that it may never have to pay any, according to internal company documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The rocket maker’s finances have long been secret because the company is privately held. But the documents reviewed by The Times show that SpaceX can seize on a legal tax benefit that allows it to use the more than $5 billion in losses it racked up by late 2021 to offset paying future taxable income.

President Trump made a change in 2017, during his first term, that eliminated the tax benefit’s expiration date for all companies. For SpaceX, that means that nearly $3 billion of its losses can be indefinitely applied against future taxable income.

In other SpaceX news:

• On Thursday evening, SpaceX used a Falcon 9 rocket to successfully launch a U.S. Space Force X-37B, an uncrewed rocket plane used for classified missions.
• In June, SpaceX reassigned about 20% of the Falcon 9 engineering team to a six-month stint working on Starship, according to Bloomberg. The changeover was made after a Starship vehicle exploded during a routine test, marking a fourth consecutive failure for SpaceX’s largest and most expensive rocket. The next Starship test launch is scheduled for Sunday at 7:30 p.m. EDT.

• SpaceX is demanding more funding from Louisiana’s $499 million share of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, a federal infrastructure initiative that seeks to improve broadband access in rural America. Louisiana allocated just $7.7 million to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet, with the vast majority of its BEAD funding going to the development of wired, fiber connections. While satellite internet has low upfront costs, fiber infrastructure is faster, more reliable, and offers users cheaper subscription fees.
• Starlink suffered a network outage on Monday for the second time in as many weeks.
• Starlink users must now pay a $5 monthly fee to pause their subscription, ending a policy that allowed intermittent users to activate and deactivate the service at will. The new “Standby Mode” comes with “unlimited low-speed data” capped at 500Kbps. Users can still cancel their Starlink subscription rather than pay the $5. However, they may be unable to reactivate or use it in the future, due to local capacity limits and exorbitant demand fees.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: https://www.muskwatch.com/p/how-spacex-avoids-paying-taxes

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