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elizabeth warren
‘Ruthlessly Corrupt’: Democrats Take Aim at Trump's ‘Plunder’ of US Taxpayers in New Bill
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said the bill would stop Trump from "trying to snatch up billions of taxpayer dollars to line his own pockets and settle personal scores."
Apr 15, 2026
Four Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday unveiled legislation aimed at ending what they described as President Donald Trump's "plunder" of US taxpayers.
The Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act—cosponsored by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Dave Min (D-Calif.)—was crafted in response to Trump's effort to get the federal Internal Revenue Service to hand him a $10 billion settlement for the 2020 leak of his tax records and his demand that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) pay him $230 million over its past criminal investigations of him.
Among other things, the bill would bar both the president and the vice president, as well as their immediate family members, from collecting settlement payments from the federal government while in office.
The proposed legislation would also prohibit both the president and the vice president from filing administrative claims for damages while in office, and would only allow presidents and vice presidents to "collect compensatory damages awarded by a federal court if the court appoints an independent counsel to represent the agency and makes all proceedings public."
The bill allows former presidents and vice presidents to collect damages from the federal government, but only if the agency being sued "appoints career expert staff to lead the agency’s review or adjudication of any administrative claim brought by the former president/VP, and no official appointed by any president/VP is involved in handling the claim."
Additionally, any settlement made to a former president or vice president must be made public within seven days.
Warren said that the legislation was necessary to stop Trump from "trying to snatch up billions of taxpayer dollars to line his own pockets and settle personal scores."
Raskin accused Trump of exploiting the power of his office to "loot billions of dollars from American taxpayers," an operation that he described as the "ongoing scandal of this ruthlessly corrupt administration."
"The ‘Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act’ will prevent the president from pursuing the emerging MAGA grift of suing the government as a ‘plaintiff’ on bogus grounds," Raskin added, "and then settling the suit as ‘defendant’ for big bucks, a collusive settlement scam they recently executed with the disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who waltzed off with more than a million dollars for a bogus claim already dismissed by a federal court."
Flynn settled with the DOJ last month in a case in which he accused the government of "improperly and politically" targeting him, after he was charged with making false statements to the FBI in 2017.
The Democrats' bill has earned the endorsements of government watchdogs Democracy Defenders Action, Common Cause, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).
Debra Perlin, vice president of policy at CREW, praised the bill for establishing "common sense guardrails to protect against corrupt payouts to the president and the vice president during their terms in office and after they depart."
"Since returning to office, Donald Trump keeps finding troubling new ways to enrich himself at the taxpayers' expense," Perlin noted. "The president’s lawsuit against the IRS for $10 billion is emblematic of a pattern of self-dealing and corruption that appears pervasive in his administration."
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Warren Leads Demand for Probe Into Hegseth's Reported Efforts to Profit From Iran War
Democratic lawmakers said if reports of Hegseth attempting to buy defense stock weeks before the war are true, it "would be a profound conflict of interest" and a "betrayal of the nation paying the price for this war."
Apr 02, 2026
Senate Democrats are pushing for an investigation into US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following a report that he attempted to make a “big investment” in weapons stock just weeks before President Donald Trump launched an aggressive war against Iran.
Three Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee—Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) were joined by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Jeff Merkley to send Hegseth a letter on Wednesday.
They told the secretary that his reported attempt to broker the deal "would be a profound conflict of interest and a potential violation of your federal ethics agreement—and betrayal of the nation paying the price for this war and the troops you are sending into harm’s way."
The Financial Times reported earlier this week that Hegseth's "broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF... shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran.”
However, the purchase was reportedly never made because the massive bundle of stocks was not available to Morgan Stanley clients at the time.
A Pentagon spokesperson has also denied the story, calling it "entirely false and fabricated" and claiming that neither Hegseth nor any of his representatives ever approached BlackRock.
But, as the lawmakers noted, FT reported that the inquiry was significant enough for BlackRock to flag it internally.
Hegseth and other Pentagon officials confirmed by the Senate are prohibited by law from owning or purchasing publicly traded stock in the 10 companies that have received the largest Defense Department contracts over the past five years.
But the fund held stocks in several of these companies, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls, Boeing, RTX Corporation, and L3Harris Technologies.
Reports of the proposed deal by Hegseth's broker come as the Trump administration has faced other accusations of trading on insider information about the president’s next moves to win big on prediction market services. Platforms like Polymarket have seen bettors take home monster winnings by placing wagers predicting major military actions in Venezuela and Iran just hours before Trump launched them.
The lawmakers noted that while the war is costing American taxpayers more than $1 billion per day and has saddled Americans with soaring gas prices, it has proven highly lucrative for major defense contractors, whose stocks jumped significantly in the days after the war was launched, even as the rest of the market took a tumble.
The Trump administration is currently demanding another $200 billion to prosecute the war on top of a $1.5 trillion budget request to fund the Defense Department, which the lawmakers said would likely result in these companies’ profits and stock prices continuing to climb.
The US-Israeli war against Iran, launched on February 28, has been condemned as illegal by many international law experts and human rights groups, who have accused the US of violating the UN Charter and committing war crimes.
According to a report on Wednesday from the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a US-based human rights monitor for Iran, more than 1,600 civilians have been killed since the war began, including 244 children. At least 13 US troops have also been killed since the conflict broke out.
The lawmakers told Hegseth regarding his reported investment attempt: “If this report is accurate, it would appear to represent an appalling effort to profit off of your knowledge of the president’s plans for war.”
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Warren Says Trump Knows Iran War and Price Hikes Are Unpopular, So He's 'Trying to Rig' Midterms
"Trump knows Americans are angry that he's made everything more expensive," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Apr 01, 2026
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday accused President Donald Trump of trying to sabotage the 2026 midterm elections as his illegal war on Iran jacks up gas prices and threatens higher inflation throughout the economy, angering voters across the political spectrum.
The Massachusetts Democrat's warning came shortly after Trump signed an executive order aimed at restricting mail-in voting, a move that was widely seen as unconstitutional. Warren wrote on social media: "Trump knows his war with Iran is unpopular. Trump knows Americans are angry that he's made everything more expensive. Instead of reversing course, Trump is trying to rig the next election. It's illegal—and we will fight back."
Ben Raderstorf, a policy advocate at the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, said that "just like the war in Iran, the war against the midterms is extremely dangerous and will do so much damage to our elections and our democracy."
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday evening found that 66% of US voters—including 40% of Republicans—want a quick end to Trump's war on Iran, even if his administration doesn't achieve its vague and constantly shifting objectives, which have ranged from thwarting an imminent threat that analysts say was not present, to full-scale regime change, to destroying a nuclear weapons program that US intelligence has repeatedly found does not exist.
Reuters reported that two in three respondents to the new survey "said they expected gas prices to worsen over the next year, including 40% of Republicans."
While oil prices fell sharply on Tuesday after Trump declared that US forces would end their assault on Iran in "two weeks or maybe a few days longer," the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) estimated last week that the gas price surge stemming from the war was on pace to cost American drivers an additional $9.4 billion per month.
"Alabama is the most affected state in the nation, with residents spending an extra $52 per person, per month," ITEP found. "Other heavily impacted states include Mississippi ($51), Wyoming ($49), Kentucky ($47), and New Mexico ($44)."
Trump is expected to address the nation on the Iran war at 9 pm ET on Wednesday, more than a month into a military campaign that was not authorized by lawmakers and that has sparked a regional conflict, killing thousands and displacing millions.
The president told reporters on Tuesday that Iran "doesn't have to make a deal" to end the war, and Trump has privately told aides that he's willing to end the assault without securing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
“We leave because there’s no reason for us to do this,” Trump said.
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