Dems Prepare for Trump Corruption Investigation Blitz Should They Take House

First Up: Qatari Jets and Crypto Schemes

I received an email from Stand Up America last week about Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), a potential Dem 2028 hopeful, joining the Kick Out Corruption Tour in St. Louis last week, “where over 100 Missourians gathered for a conversation about how corruption in Washington is contributing to higher costs for working families and what can be done to fight back.”

The subject line only caught my eye because it appeared to solidify a series of headlines I’ve been seeing from Axios and others over the past week about Democrats’ coalescing around a midterms message point that, it seems, they think they can continue to capitalize on should the party take back the House in November, and with it, investigative and oversight authority.

“Trump’s profits irk Americans as Dems test anti-corruption message,” read the headline on a Wednesday Axios piece that unpacked Americans’ growing aversion to Trump and his family profiting off the presidency. It cites a handful of recent polls that have found that the majority of Americans are not happy with everything from Trump’s private business interests influencing his decisions as president to his cryptocurrency ventures to his family doing business with foreign countries.

Democrats appear to be banking on this messaging resonating with midterms voters, especially against the backdrop of the nation’s ongoing affordability crisis that Republicans and Trump have done nothing to address. (This midterms strategy is particularly stark when compared to the GOP’s, which is mostly just Islamophobia and calling all Dems communists; I get into that more below).

But it’s also more than an empty message. Should Democrats retake the House, top Democrats in lower chamber are also already preparing for aggressive oversight, looking specifically at Trump and his family’s corruption. Politico reported late last week on the investigative priorities of Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Robert Garcia (D-CA) should Dems win the House and put both men back at the helm of powerful oversight committees. Garcia is poised to lead the House Oversight Committee and Raskin the Judiciary Committee. Both said they plan to look into Trump’s acceptance of a Qatari jet as his new Air Force One and his family’s ludicrously profitable crypto schemes, for starters. Per Politico:

“Ideally, it’s the president’s sons and the president and the family,” Garcia said, adding a litany of other members of the Trump inner sanctum he wants to hear from. They include chief of staff Susie Wiles, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and son-in-law and foreign envoy Jared Kushner, as well as former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Cory Lewandowski, who served as her chief of staff.

In addition to the crypto profits and the much-criticized Qatari 747, Garcia said he planned to probe federal contracts awarded to members of Trump’s family and the series of pardons Trump has granted early in his second term.

Raskin, a veteran of the investigative onslaught that took place in the second half of Trump’s first term, said he planned to focus on allegations of self-enrichment by Trump and his family — as well as illicit foreign influence on American institutions and rising authoritarianism in government.

Republican Islamophobia Watch

I’ve been writing a bit about the Republican Party’s resurrected bloodlust for spreading a new Muslim panic ahead of the midterms because it has nothing else to campaign on (and it pairs well with its red scare campaign because many of the left-leaning progressive candidates it’s trying to demonize as communists also tend to support a free Palestine). Folks like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott are gambling on Islamophobia as an effective campaign strategy. Others, like Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) are just piling on out of love for the hateful discourse.

We’ve got another entry in the love-of-the-game bucket this week.

Indiana’s Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith is a Christian pastor who won the 2024 election alongside Gov. Mike Braun — whom TPM covered most recently for his role in helping the Trump administration bully Republican members of his own state legislature to cave to pressure to gerrymander its maps mid-cycle for Trump. Beckwith and Braun are not up for reelection until 2028. But Beckwith is paying it forward, helping the Republican Party spread its anti-Islam message far and wide ahead of elections this fall. Beckwith has previously said, “I hate Islam” and has described the religion as “a demonic death cult.” During an appearance on the right-wing podcast “Palumbo-Booker Justified” Beckwith doubled down on this sentiment, while also bragging that “Marxists don’t like me and I wear that with a badge of honor.”

“What I said was, not that Muslims are demonic, but Islam is demonic ideology,” he clarified. “And I said, ‘Hey I love Muslims.’ I would give a Muslim in my community the shirt off my back if they needed it. And I would help them, I would serve them and care for them. But their ideology is, I believe, a wicked, evil ideology that is totally incompatible with the American way of life and we should not put up with that ideology.”

‘All the Administration’s Shit’

Some Republicans in Congress are putting the Trump administration on notice against trying to pull any last minute pocket rescissions if it wants to avert a government shutdown ahead of the midterms. GOP lawmakers largely kept their mouths shut about the first round of lawless actions by the Trump administration as it, throughout the first year of Trump’s second term, repeatedly nixed and blocked funding that had already been appropriated by Congress without Congress’ permission. But now some are speaking out about the administration denying federal grants that Congress has authorized. It’s been a theme of TPM’s legislative coverage since January 2025 as it became clear that Republicans in both chambers were willfully ceding their authority over government spending to the executive branch’s political whims.

Now, Republican senators are attempting to block the Trump administration from picking and choosing how to spend money Congress has appropriated by including a provision in a must-pass spending bill that’ll keep the government open through the election. Per Politico:

Earlier this month, GOP senators overwhelmingly agreed to a bipartisan government funding bill that would temporarily block the Trump administration from finalizing a federal rule to let political appointees steer money toward grants “aligned with the president’s agenda.” The House could clear that bill next month, and Trump is expected to sign it to avert a shutdown before the midterms.

As TPM’s Emine Yücel has reported, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought claimed earlier this summer that the White House would not try to force Congress to pass more rescissions this year. But it appears some Republicans are not buying into Vought’s spin, given the administration’s ongoing attempts to change rules for grant funds and then retroactively freeze funds because of it.

“Pocket rescissions would be a very interesting way to curry favor with the legislative branch — especially the one part of the legislative branch which has delivered on all of the administration’s shit,” Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) told Politico.

One Thing You Should Read From TPM Today

Kate Riga has been covering the right-wing media’s obsession with the WNBA amid Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham’s willingness to serve as the right’s new poster child for the anti-trans agenda. Now it appears a MAGA organization — which counts current Trump administration officials among its founding members — is getting involved in at least one of the recent anti-trans culture war stunts keeping the saga alive and well on Fox News: Trump-Aligned America First Policy Institute Backing Ex-NBA Player Tossed from WNBA Game

Yesterday’s Top Story

The US-Canada Trainwreck and the Limits of American Power

What I’m Reading

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Bessent unveils sweeping campaign of sanctions and pressure against Iran 

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