Bloomberg: “Vulcan Elements, a three-year-old startup, aims to build the largest rare-earth magnet factory in the world outside China…”

“Two important changes bolstered Vulcan’s prospects last year. First, a cadre of venture capital firms invested in the company in August. The group included 1789 Capital, a fund that counts the president’s eldest child, Donald Trump Jr., as a partner. Then, three months later, the US government unveiled a deal backing Vulcan with a loan of more than half a billion dollars.”

Garrett Graff: “We’ve spent so much of the last six months focused on the lived American experience of the supercharged secret police regime of ICE and CBP that we’ve mostly overlooked how much money is flooding into all aspects of border security. Just before Noem stepped down, I wrote a new piece for the New Yorker about the giant procurement budget of Customs and Border Protection. Even as someone who follows all of this closely, I was astounded by what I found digging through the government contracting databases…”

“There’s no way that a government agency can responsibly scale from spending three-billion a year to spending twenty times that — and there’s plenty of reason to doubt that CBP is currently spending that money wisely or in any that will deliver real value for the taxpayer.”

National Review: “White House officials, lawmakers, and government contractors told NR that they have long suspected that Lewandowski and his political allies inside and outside of DHS are financially profiting from DHS contracts and multiple offices and committees on Capitol Hill are actively investigating the matter.”

Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) “can’t leave Washington, D.C., to testify in the largest public corruption trial in Ohio history due to the Iran war, the defense attorneys said, but did find time to return to the state to attend a fundraiser,” ABC Cleveland reports.

“Of all the ways President Trump has pushed the boundaries of executive power, one stands out to lawyers and watchdogs,” NPR reports.

“The president wants the government he leads to pay him billions of dollars.”

“Trump has filed multiple claims arguing he’s been hurt by Justice Department investigations and the leak of his tax returns years ago. Now it’s up to his own political appointees to determine whether to settle with their boss — and for how much taxpayer money.”

“Eric Trump is pouring money into a sector that is a growing focus of the Pentagon his father oversees: drones,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The president’s son is investing in the Israeli drone maker Xtend as part of a $1.5 billion deal to take the company public through a merger with a small Florida construction company.”

Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway, was charged with “gross corruption” in connection with his ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the New York Times reports.

Matt Yglesias: “Some people think it’s because the voters don’t care about corruption, but I think that’s probably wrong.”

“Searchlight Institute polling on this shows that voters just have an incredibly low estimate of the baseline level of integrity of politicians. Seventy-one percent say the ‘typical politician’ is corrupt. Typical Republican? Sixty-eight percent. Typical Democrat? Sixty-one percent. Seventy-two percent say that ‘long-term elected officials’ are probably corrupt.”

“I think it’s hard to make political hay out of Trump’s corruption because, while it looks extraordinary to me (and probably to you if you’re reading this), many voters see it as pretty normal.”

“The United States has fallen to its worst-ever position in a leading global index that measures perception of corruption in the public sector among independent experts and businesspeople,” CNN reports.

Wall Street Journal: “When the Trump administration targeted billions of dollars in federal welfare funds recently over fraud concerns, it singled out five Democratic-run states.”

“An examination by The Wall Street Journal found that the main federal aid program the administration is seeking to block, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, has long been plagued by poor financial oversight and questionable spending in states led by both Republicans and Democrats.”

Garrett Graff: “U.S. law enforcement has never experienced a scandal as big, as far-reaching, destructive, and as far-lasting as the wave of corruption and criminality that has overtaken CBP and the Border Patrol since 2005. It’s a story that too much of the public still doesn’t know and too many policymakers still don’t understand…”

“Criminality is so rampant inside CBP that it has seen one of its own agents or officers arrested every 24 to 36 hours since 2005. CBP’s misconduct scandal is so long-running that today it would be old enough to drink.”

David Kirkpatrick: “In August, I reported that the President and his family had made $3.4 billion by leveraging his position. After his first year back in office, the number has ballooned.”

“Manhattan prosecutors on Tuesday offered new details of bribery allegations against a top aide to the former New York City mayor, describing what they said was a corrupt scheme in which the aide received jewelry and other gifts in exchange for pressuring city regulators to approve building projects despite safety concerns,” the New York Times reports.

Martin Cuellar — the Webb County sheriff in Texas and brother of recently pardoned Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) — was arrested in relation to a probe over alleged misuse of public resources and corruption involving pandemic-era cleaning contracts, 24Sight News reports.

New York Times: “President Trump has never been a man to ask what he can do for his country. In his second term, as in his first, he is instead testing the limits of what his country can do for him.”

“He has poured his energy and creativity into the exploitation of the presidency — into finding out just how much money people, corporations and other nations are willing to put into his pockets in hopes of bending the power of the government to the service of their interests.”

“A review by the editorial board relying on analyses from news organizations shows that Mr. Trump has used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion. We know this number to be an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view. And they continue to grow.”