Trump To Go After Democrat Fundraising Juggernaut ActBlue In Presidential Memo: Report

 President Trump is expected to sign a presidential memorandum on Thursday targeting major Democrat online donation platform, ActBlue - specifically cracking down on foreign contributions in American elections, Politico reports, citing a person Trump admin leaker familiar with the policy.

Photo: Alexander Grey/Unsplash; ActBlue

The crackdown is expected to involve Attorney General Pam Bondi's office.

Related:

Congressional Probe Into Political Fundraising Platform ActBlue Finds Potential "Criminal Activity"

• Coalition Of 19 GOP AGs Launch Investigation Into ActBlue Over Money Laundering Allegations

• "Bad Actors": Texas Demands FEC Action Over 'Suspicious Donations' To Democrats Through ActBlue

• Vandalism And Attacks On Tesla Accelerate As Musk Says ActBlue, Soros To Blame

According to Elon Musk, "ActBlue is currently under investigation for allowing foreign and illegal donations in criminal violation of campaign finance regulations. This week, 7 ActBlue senior officials resigned, including the associate general counsel."

An investigation has found 5 ActBlue-funded groups responsible for Tesla “protests”: Troublemakers, Disruption Project, Rise & Resist, Indivisible Project and Democratic Socialists of America.

ActBlue funders include George Soros, Reid Hoffman, Herbert Sandler, Patricia Bauman,…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 8, 2025

For starters, ActBlue did not require a card verification value (CVV) for donations, according to Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Administration Committee, who sent letters and information collected over the past year to Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Florida, and Missouri for further investigation into ActBlue.

“The final analysis produced a set of anomalous donor profiles, ranked by the severity of the inconsistencies. In reviewing this analysis, it became clear there is suspicious activity occurring that warrants further review,” the letter stated. 

In December 2023, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened an investigation into ActBlue alleging the platform "may enable fraud," and that "straw donations" were systematically being made using false identities through untraceable payment methods.

Paxton said in an Aug. 8 statement ActBlue has cooperated with the Texas investigation and will now require CVV codes for credit card contributions.

ActBlue targets small-dollar donations, the Hill first reported, and has been an integral part of the Democratic fundraising structure, collecting an estimated $1.5 billion from about 7 million donors.

While that influx of cash was split among nearly 19,000 campaigns, an excessive amount has gone to the highest profile races. In just the first few days of the Harris campaign, for example, donors gave her $200 million through the platform, per ActBlue’s account on the social platform X, the Hill reported. -Fox News

In his letter to attorneys general, Steil said whistleblowers reported “anomalies” in Federal Election Commission donor records.

That prompted a data analysis of records spanning 14 years, which looked for suspicious trends by comparing donation patterns to open-source consumer data, voter rolls, and political profiling databases.

The ensuing investigation included consultations with the election commission, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and the Office of Foreign Assets Control, according to Steil’s letter.

Findings included donations that were significantly disproportionate to a person’s net worth or previous giving history; uncharacteristic donations from party-affiliated registered voters that suddenly contributed to candidates of the opposing party; and unusually frequent donations from the elderly and first-time donors.

Maybe now someone can explain why donations were made, in my name, to Act Blue candidates in KANSAS...

...when I've never been to Kansas. pic.twitter.com/YiwbU2DoiT

— Matt Van Swol (@matt_vanswol) April 24, 2025

Similar concerns were raised in March 2023 by O'Keefe Media Group, which reported that some senior citizens in Maryland and elsewhere denied making the donations attributed to them in Federal Election Commission records.

Donors contacted by O'Keefe Media Group said they made political contributions to ActBlue but had no knowledge of making what amounted to thousands of donations—with some totaling more than $200,000—in a few years.

In December, Steil announced that documents turned over by ActBlue showed that the company had implemented new policies to "automatically reject donations that use foreign prepaid/gift cards, domestic gift cards, are from high-risk/sanctioned countries, and have the highest level of risk as determined," but said there "is still more work to be done."

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-go-after-democrat-fundraising-juggernaut-actblue-presidential-memorandum-report

Businesses are resorting to risky tactics to dodge Trump’s 145% tariff on Chinese products

 Businesses across the US and China are scrambling to find ways to skirt President Trump’s steep tariffs on Beijing imports – and some are resorting to risky tactics to run the goods through other countries, The Post has learned.

US manufacturing orders from China dropped by nearly two-thirds in the first week of April, versus a week earlier before Trump announced his stiff “Liberation Day” tariffs, according to logistics data provider Vizion. Trump reportedly signaled on Wednesday that he may slash the 145% China tariff by more than half.

In the meantime, some importers stuck with goods on the water have re-routed shipping to Canadian and Mexican ports with the hope of paying the lower 25% tariff imposed on the US’s North American neighbors, according to Jon Monroe, a Shanghai-based shipping consultant.

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US importers are delaying and canceling orders from China to avoid a hefty 145% tariff.AFP via Getty Images

“Right now people are parking containers until they can figure out what’s happening,” Monroe told The Post.

Elsewhere, major US companies with big footprints in China are looking to rapidly shift manufacturing to other Asian countries — including Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and India — which are currently enjoying a 90-day pause on reciprocal duties, leaving them with a 10% universal tax.

“It is a well-known fact there are consulting firms in China that will help you move your production down to Vietnam or Malaysia,” said George Kochanowski, a supply chain expert and co-founder of Staxxon, a supplier of shipping containers.

“They will provide the warehouse, that you don’t have to build yourself, and they will provide bilingual employees that speak the local language.”

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Some Chinese factories are trying to skirt the 145% tariff by shipping goods to Vietnam and having a ‘made in Vietnam’ label put on the product.AFP via Getty Images

Some importers already stuck with Chinese-made goods are trying to skirt duties by storing them in so called bonded warehouses in the US, which allow them to avoid paying tariffs — at least temporarily. But that comes with its own risks.

“It is something that people are talking about now even though it’s expensive to store stuff in these warehouses,” Bobby Shoule, vice president of JW Hampton Jr. & Co., a 160-year-old logistics company in Jamaica, Queens, told The Post.

The Port of Long Beach in California has received “multiple requests for bonded warehouse facilities” for cargo that is already on the water and can’t be suspended, Noel Hacegaba, chief operating officer of the port told The Post.

“However, there is some concern that importers – particularly smaller importers – may decide to abandon cargo and not pay their service providers once it arrives at US ports or try to re-export it back to its origin,” Hacegaba added.

Some shipping companies are also trying to undervalue the merchandise they are delivering to the US by misleading customs officials, according to Monroe.

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Some shippers are undervaluing the value of the goods they are transporting to the US.AFP via Getty Images

“I believe customs will catch that,” he said.

Monroe adds that “A lot of Chinese companies are asking Vietnamese companies to change the label on products that are made in China” — a trick that was employed in 2019 during President Trump’s first term when he first imposed tariffs on China.

Hanoi has warned that it will crack down on the bogus “Made in Vietnam” labels for any “illicit trans-shipments,” according to reports. South Korea also has formed a special task force to prevent illegal export attempts, Reuters reported.

After an investigation in March, the South Korea Customs Service said it caught $20.8 million worth of country-of-origin violations in the first quarter of 2025 — with US-bound shipments accounting for 97% of the total, according to the report.

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Chinese president Xi Jinping has slapped reciprocal tariffs on US goods that are shipped to China.POOL/AFP via Getty Images

While companies try short-term moves to skirt Trump’s trade taxes, long-term diversification of the supply chain is vital, said Aditya Mishra, managing director of BAT VC, a $100 million fund that supports start-ups in the US and India, told The Post.

“Even if he reduces the tariffs on China, this event makes it risky for companies to stay in China and hope this doesn’t happen again,” said Mishra, a former Yahoo executive.

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President Trump has indicated that he will lower the 145% tariff on goods made in China.AP

Vice President JD Vance met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday to discuss a deal on tariffs. In February, New Delhi and Washington agreed to more than double trade between the countries to $500 billion by 2030.

“India is going to benefit significantly from manufacturing leaving China,” according to Mishra.

“Everybody is looking for ways to adjust ” added former Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Renacci, who owned car dealerships among other businesses.  

“How do I adjust my supply chain so I still get the same product necessary to keep my business operating? Is there a way of getting them through outlets other than China?”

https://nypost.com/2025/04/23/business/how-businesses-are-resorting-to-risky-tactics-to-dodge-145-tariff-on-china/

Alito’s right to warn: Court’s knee-jerk habit of slapping Trump will cost it dearly

 “A number of judges have seemingly adopted a constitutional meta-principle: what a past President did, President Trump may not undo.”

So wrote Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar Adrian Vermeule on Friday after a district court judge issued yet another lawless nationwide injunction meant to handcuff Trump and halt his agenda.

It’s a criticism that the Supreme Court, and particularly Chief Justice John Roberts, must take to heart.

(From left) Supreme Court members Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts and Sonia Sotomayor bow their heads during inauguration ceremonies in the Rotunda of the US Capitol on January 20, 2025, in Washington, DC.POOL/AFP via Getty Images

One of the hallmarks of Roberts’ term has been an overweening desire to guard the judicial branch’s “legitimacy.” 

But Roberts seems oblivious to the fact that the biggest threat to the courts’ legitimacy comes from the courts themselves — and his desire to preserve the judiciary’s standing with a small circle of Washington and academic insiders.

We saw that as far back as 2012, when Roberts switched sides in the case against Obamacare at the last minute, for fear that striking down that unprecedented bill would upset the DC apple cart and harm the court’s legitimacy.

Instead, it was a self-inflicted wound. Nobody respects a trimmer.

Roberts’ Obamacare decision wasn’t rooted in the Constitution, but an attempt to have it both ways, giving the Democrats enough of a victory to keep them from declaring war.

And we’ve seen that sort of thing repeatedly in the years since. 

Roberts seems less concerned with preserving the court’s legitimacy in the eyes of America’s citizens, and more with the views of the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, plus some Ivy League law professors whose schools’ decaying reputations should give him pause.

But now the flurry of lower-court interference is reaching crisis proportions, say Harvard’s Vermeule and others.

The prime issue, among others, is the illegal — and yes, it was contrary to the statutes on the books — Biden administration policy to admit millions of unvetted migrants into the country, and to allow them to stay here. 

The “rule of law” didn’t matter then, because the crowd to which Roberts defers was in favor of open borders and its massive influx of a low-wage, government-dependent underclass.

Biden’s border policy has never been popular with the public, but the public isn’t Roberts’ concern: When he worries about legitimacy, he’s really thinking peer opinion — the “Mean Girls” judiciary.

“People Who Bypassed Legal Process in Migrating to USA Demand Legal Process Before Being Kicked Out,” as the Babylon Bee parody site put it.

This came to a head early Saturday as Roberts and six colleagues stepped in to temporarily uphold a lower-court opinion interfering with Trump’s deportations. 

The Supremes acted one-sidedly and with untoward swiftness to block the president — in accordance, it seems, with Vermeule’s dictum.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Justice Samuel Alito said, in a blazing dissent: 

“Literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation.”

The court may make much of the “rule of law,” Alito noted — but “both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law.” 

The court’s irregular behavior here brings that into serious question. 

It’s not clear that the justices had any jurisdiction to rule in this case at all, as Alito pointed out — much less with such unseemly haste.

And unseemly is a good description for the judiciary’s behavior here in general. 

From excessively easy forum-shopping — anti-Trump DC District Judge James Boasberg and others seem to get “randomly” assigned to an awful lot of high-profile cases lately — to intemperate language, rushed rulings and a palpable hostility to Trump, the judiciary doesn’t seem to be calling “balls and strikes,” as Roberts likes to say. 

Instead, it’s giving the impression of going to bat for one team.

This has played well with the legacy media — that is, the media whose opinion Roberts views as legitimate. 

But it doesn’t look so good to a lot of other people. And their opinions matter too.

By design, and for good reason, the courts are insulated from the daily ebb and flow of politics. 

But they aren’t, and can’t be, and shouldn’t be, entirely insulated from the tides of public opinion. 

The public’s respect for the Supreme Court has been dropping over recent years, even as Roberts has worried endlessly about appearances. 

The judiciary has neither the sword nor the purse, only judgment and reputation. If it abandons its objectivity for partisanship, what reason is there to heed it?

If this continues, it’s likely to be reflected in judicial appointments and legislation that the chief will find uncongenial. 

He and the courts will deserve such changes. But America deserves better.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.

https://nypost.com/2025/04/23/opinion/alito-is-right-courts-trump-scorn-will-cost-them-dearly/