This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot" for today:
Today, two Canadian Premiers have ignored the Trump Administration's pause on most tariffs and have imposed their own retaliatory actions directly targeting key resources used by the American people.
First, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced that Ontario will be putting a 25% surcharge on all electricity exports to the United States. Right now, Ontario provides a significant amount of electricity to New York, Minnesota, and Michigan.
Ford's surcharge will impact American residents and is already in place, regardless of what happens with the United States' tariffs. Ford, when making this announcement noted that Ontario will not back down until the threat of tariffs from the United States is completely eliminated.
One year ago, a report appeared in the media documenting Musk’s heavy use of a range of illegal and mind-altering drugs. This report didn’t come from some left-wing scandal sheet; it was actually a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal. Here’s how the story begins:
Elon Musk and his supporters offer several explanations for his contrarian views, unfiltered speech and provocative antics. They’re an expression of his creativity. Or the result of his mental-health challenges. Or fallout from his stress, or sleep deprivation.
In recent years, some executives and board members at his companies and others close to the billionaire have developed a persistent concern that there is another component driving his behavior: his use of drugs.
The world’s wealthiest person has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, often at private parties around the world, where attendees sign nondisclosure agreements or give up their phones to enter, according to people who have witnessed his drug use and others with knowledge of it. Musk has previously smoked marijuana in public and has said he has a prescription for the psychedelic-like ketamine.
The story documents the drugs he took at parties, naming specific people (a brother, a board member, friends) with whom he took them. It recounts incidents at work where he appeared to be too wasted to function (including one attempt to address SpaceX employees that attendees termed “nonsensical” and “cringeworthy”). It cites repeated concerns of his companies’ board members about his ability to function on at least a somewhat steady keel, and their concerns that his companies might have to pay a price for his conduct. In particular, members also feared that Musk’s drug use might threaten SpaceX’s ability to do business with the government, as SpaceX is privy to highly classified information about the U.S. spy satellites it sends into orbit. As a subsequent Journal story that ran less than three months ago reported:
[T]he company’s lawyers advised senior executives not to seek a higher security clearance for Musk that would give him access to details about sensitive programs SpaceX is involved in, according to people familiar with the matter.
The reason, these people said, was that Musk would have had to answer questions from the government about his contacts with foreign nationals and drug use previously reported by The Wall Street Journal. In internal discussions, the lawyers and executives posited scenarios in which Musk might inadvertently disclose secrets to foreign officials with whom he regularly speaks, the people said. The Journal reported in October that Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.
That may explain why Donald Trump hasn’t officially appointed Musk to anything, as he might be required to perjure himself to become an actual administration official. Then again, chatting with Putin while in possession of highly classified U.S. secrets and being hallucinogenically high as a kite probably poses no problem in the Trump White House.
Whitehouse and Grassley were the original sponsors of the TITLE Act, the precursor to the Corporate Transparency Act
Washington, DC – Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter today to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent requesting an explanation for the Treasury Department’s announcement that it intends to suspend enforcement of the bipartisan Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), the 2021 law considered the most important anti-money laundering law in decades. Congress passed the CTA to clamp down on criminals and foreign enemies hiding assets from U.S. law enforcement, national security officials, and tax authorities.
The CTA was designed to play an important role in protecting national security and public safety by providing law enforcement and national security officials with the names of the true owners (“beneficial ownership information”) of U.S. corporations and other legal entities. This information facilitates the government’s efforts to combat terrorist financing, money laundering, sanctions evasion, proliferation financing, tax evasion, and other forms of illicit finance carried out through shell and front companies.
On March 2, the Treasury Department announced that it would refuse to enforce penalties or fines associated with the CTA’s beneficial ownership information reporting rule against U.S. citizens or domestic reporting companies, and would be issuing a new proposed rulemaking that will narrow the scope of the rule to foreign reporting companies only.
“We request that you provide us the legal basis for the Treasury Department’s policy decision to categorically suspend enforcement of the CTA’s reporting requirements for all U.S. citizens and domestic reporting companies. In addition, we request that you provide us with information about how you intend to satisfy the policy goals of the CTA,”wrote Whitehouse and Grassley.
The senators asked the Treasury Department to respond to the following questions by Wednesday, March 12:
- Has the Treasury Department followed or initiated the process required by the CTA to exclude an entity or class of entities from its reporting requirements?
- What steps has Treasury taken to ensure that any change in the practice or rulemaking governing [beneficial ownership information] reporting fulfills the law enforcement and national security purposes of the CTA?
“This is a matter of public and congressional accountability and ensuring that relevant policy interests underlying the CTA are satisfied. We encourage you to fully implement the CTA so that law enforcement agencies around the country have access to information necessary to prevent human trafficking, terrorist financing, border smuggling, drug distribution, and many other categories of criminal activity,”added Whitehouse and Grassley.
Whitehouse and Grassley were the original sponsors of the TITLE Act, the precursor to the Corporate Transparency Act. The CTA was the culmination of more than a decade of painstaking bipartisan congressional deliberation. The CTA passed as part of the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act and was supported by a wide range of stakeholders, including national security experts, law enforcement, anti-corruption groups, human rights organizations, faith communities, financial institutions, real estate organizations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, labor unions, and the first Trump Administration.
The text of the letter is below and a PDF of the letter is availablehere.
March 10, 2025
The Honorable Scott Bessent
Secretary
U.S. Department of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20220
RE: March 2, 2025 Corporate Transparency Act Enforcement Announcement
Dear Secretary Bessent,
We write regarding the Department of the Treasury’s March 2, 2025 announcement that Treasury intends to suspend enforcement of the bipartisan Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”) for U.S. citizens and domestic reporting companies.[1] We wish to ensure that the terms of the CTA are followed and that its purpose is fulfilled.
The CTA,[2] part of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, was enacted into law as a piece of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021.[3] The CTA is the product of a sensitive and painstaking legislative process, that included robust input and support from the first Trump Administration,[4] and its passage represents perhaps the most important anti-money laundering reform in two decades.
“For years, experts routinely ranked anonymous shell companies—where the true, ‘beneficial’ owners are unknown—as the biggest weakness in our anti-money laundering safeguards.”[5] Drug cartels, terrorist groups, foreign adversaries, corrupt foreign officials, and many others who wish harm to Americans have used anonymous shell companies and opaque corporate structures to finance and facilitate their crimes.
The CTA directly tackled this problem by requiring Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) to create a national directory of beneficial owners of companies within the United States,[6] bolstering our nation’s efforts to combat “money laundering, the financing of terrorism, proliferation finance, tax evasion, human and drug trafficking, sanctions evasion, and other financial crimes.”[7]
In enacting the CTA, Congress found that reporting of Beneficial Ownership Information (“BOI”) was necessary for law enforcement and national security purposes. In particular, Congress found:
(1) more than 2,000,000 corporations and limited liability companies are being formed under the laws of the States [emphasis added] each year;
(2) most or all States [emphasis added] do not require information about the beneficial owners of the corporations, limited liability companies, or other similar entities formed under the laws of the State [emphasis added];
(3) malign actors seek to conceal their ownership of corporations, limited liability companies, or other similar entities in the United States[emphasis added] to facilitate illicit activity […] harming the national security interests of the United States and allies of the United States;
(4) money launderers and others involved in commercial activity intentionally conduct transactions through corporate structures in order to evade detection, and may layer such structures, much like Russian nesting ‘Matryoshka’ dolls, across various secretive jurisdictions such that each time an investigator obtains ownership records fora domestic [emphasis added] or foreign entity, the newly identified entity is yet another corporate entity, necessitating a repeat of the same process;
(5) Federal legislation providing for the collection of beneficial ownership information for corporations, limited liability companies, or other similar entities formed under the laws of the States[emphasis added] is needed to—(A) set a clear, Federal standard for incorporation practices; (B) protect vital Unites States national security interests; (C) protect interstate and foreign commerce; (D) better enable critical national security, intelligence, and law enforcement efforts to counter money laundering, the financing of terrorism, and other illicit activity; and (E) bring the United States into compliance with international anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism standards.[8]
In 2019, the Trump administration issued a Statement of Administration Policy (“SAP”) supporting a draft of the CTA. That SAP agreed with the importance of the goals of the CTA as well as a BOI rule:
This legislation would require corporations and limited liability companies in the United States to disclose their beneficial owners, a measure that will help prevent malign actors from leveraging anonymity to exploit these entities for criminal gain. It would also assist law enforcement in detecting and preventing illicit activity such as terrorist financing and money laundering.[9]
We acknowledge that the CTA creates a process by which the Secretary of the Treasury may exclude “an entity or a class of entities” from BOI reporting requirements so long as four conditions are met. First, the exclusion must take place through the regulatory process. Second, the exclusion must be with “the written concurrence of the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security” to account for law enforcement and national security interests. Third, the Secretary of the Treasury must determine that BOI reports of these entities “would not serve the public interest.” Fourth, the Secretary of the Treasury must determine that such reports “would not be highly useful in national security, intelligence, and law enforcement agency efforts to detect, prevent, or prosecute money laundering, the financing of terrorism, proliferation finance, serious tax fraud, or other crimes.”[10]
We request that you provide us the legal basis for the Treasury Department’s policy decision to categorically suspend enforcement of the CTA’s reporting requirements for all U.S. citizens and domestic reporting companies. In addition, we request that you provide us with information about how you intend to satisfy the policy goals of the CTA. As part of your response, please address the following questions:
- Has the Treasury Department followed or initiated the process required by the CTA to exclude an entity or class of entities from its reporting requirements?
- What steps has Treasury taken to ensure that any change in the practice or rulemaking governing BOI reporting fulfills the law enforcement and national security purposes of the CTA?
This is a matter of public and congressional accountability and ensuring that relevant policy interests underlying the CTA are satisfied. We encourage you to fully implement the CTA so that law enforcement agencies around the country have access to information necessary to prevent human trafficking, terrorist financing, border smuggling, drug distribution, and many other categories of criminal activity.
Please provide your response to our information request and questions no later than Wednesday, March 12, 2025.
RFK Jr. joined Trump’s “million dollar” dinners with Pharma execs, raising questions about promises to “clean up corruption” and industry’s influence on key policies to lower drug costs
“You owe the American public an explanation for why you took part in PhRMA’s influence-peddling events with President Trump.”
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), along with Senate Finance Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his promises to “clean up corruption” and “stop the revolving door between industry and government,” following reports that Kennedy attended multiple “million-dollar” dinners with Big Pharma executives at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
According to the Wall Street Journal, healthcare executives wrote checks for millions of dollars to attend at least six private dinners with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Kennedy attended several of these dinners, despite being a longtime Big Pharma critic and leading previous proposals to beat back the industry’s influence — raising questions about Big Pharma’s ability to throw its weight around during the Trump Administration.
“It is unclear why you attended private dinners with Big Pharma executives at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club following your promises to ‘clean up corruption’ and 'stop the revolving door between industry and government,’” wrote the lawmakers.
The pharmaceutical executives who attended Trump’s dinners alongside RFK Jr. have repeatedly called on the Administration to stop the Medicare drug negotiations that have already lowered prescription costs and could save taxpayers as much as $100 billion by 2032. Big Pharma stands to profit immensely from President Trump’s abandonment of this and other policies that would bring drug prices down, such as patent reform. PhRMA officials have continued to lobby President Trump to weaken drug price negotiations in the months since the dinners.
“The dinners may have served as an opportunity for Big Pharma to gain insider access to both you and President Trump,” continued the lawmakers.
At Kennedy’s swearing-in ceremony last month, he committed to “end the corruption, end the corporate capture” of regulatory agencies like HHS by Big Pharma, additionally promising to remove regulatory panel members with conflicts of interest, and provide “radical transparency.” His presence at these lobbying dinners stands in stark contrast with these commitments, and raises questions about the policies he may pursue at HHS.
“You owe the American public an explanation for why you took part in PhRMA’s influence-peddling events with President Trump, what happened at these meetings, and whether they will affect your commitment to ensuring that Americans receive the relief they deserve from high drug prices,” concluded the lawmakers.
Senator Warren led efforts to oppose RFK Jr.’s nomination and subsequent confirmation for his conflicts of interest and dangerous views on vaccines:
- On March 3, 2025, Senator Warren wrote to RFK Jr. regarding his dangerous actions to undermine vaccines and vaccine production, just weeks after he was confirmed as Secretary and days after he published a new op-ed.
- On February 13, 2025, following Senate Republicans voting to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Senator Elizabeth Warren released a statement calling his confirmation “a huge mistake” and said his conflicts of interest would allow him and his family to “continue getting richer from his anti-vaccine crusade.”
- On February 12, 2025, on the Senate floor, Senator Elizabeth Warren joined Democrats in delaying a final vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. In her speech, she warned that American families and children would pay the price for Mr. Kennedy’s “conspiracy-driven health care decisions,” while his serious ethics conflicts remain unresolved.
- On February 6, 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) wrote to then-nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. about his continued conflicts of interest. The senators called out Mr. Kennedy’s plan to enter office with a serious ethics conflict by keeping a financial interest in anti-vaccine lawsuits within his family, asked him to recuse himself from former clients’ matters, commit to not lobbying HHS after his tenure as Secretary, and more.
- On February 4, 2025, following the Senate Finance Committee vote to advance the nomination of RFK Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Senator Warren gave remarks regarding Mr. Kennedy’s continued conflicts of interest.
- On February 3, 2025, Senators Warren and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Ranking Member on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to RFK Jr., pressing him to urgently resolve his serious conflicts of interest before the committee vote Wednesday morning.
- On January 31, 2025, following pressure from Senate Democrats, RFK Jr., agreed to amend his flawed ethics agreement (see Warren QFRs at the end of Part 2 and start of Part 3).
- On January 29, 2025, at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Warren questioned Mr. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, about his dangerous conflicts of interest and record of profiting from anti-vaccine conspiracies.
- On January 18, 2025, ahead of RFK Jr.’s confirmation hearing for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Senator Warren sent a 34-page letter detailing her concerns with his nomination and asked him to answer 175 questions ahead of his hearing before the Finance Committee.
- On November 14, 2024, in response to the news that President-elect Donald Trump selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Senator Warren released a statement calling him a “danger to public health, scientific research, medicine, and health care coverage for millions of Americans.”
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