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If Meme Coins Have ‘No Use,’ Why is Trump Charging for Them?
Following the recent declaration by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that meme coins have “no use,” and ahead of the first-ever White House crypto summit on Friday, March 7th, Public Citizen called for the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) to investigate whether Donald Trump’s meme coin venture constitutes gift solicitation, which would be illegal.
“If Trump’s meme coins have ‘no use’ and are marketed as a way to simply ‘celebrate’ his leadership, then Trump requiring payment for his memes may constitute illegal solicitation of gifts,” said Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate at Public Citizen. “As the White House cozies up to the crypto industry — which spent over a hundred million dollars to influence the 2024 elections — and Trump personally profits from a crypto venture, the conflicts of interest and potentially illegal abuses of power on display should concern every American.”
Public Citizen is closely tracking the crypto industry’s election spending and influence on elected officials, including Trump.
Additional resources include:
- Our comprehensive report on unprecedented crypto spending in the 2024 election
- Our reaction to Trump’s executive order on crypto and a national asset stockpile
- Our first complaint re Trump’s meme coin venture
For additional information on Trump’s meme coin or reactions to Friday’s summit, please contact Emily Leach, eleach@citizen.org to speak with an expert.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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China's Foreign Ministry Demands Maduro's Immediate Release, Rips 'So-Called' Trial
Lin Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said the US abduction of Nicolás Maduro "seriously violates Venezuela’s national sovereignty and destabilizes international relations."
Jan 06, 2026
A spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday demanded the immediate release of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from US custody and condemned the Trump administration's trampling of international law.
"The US disregards President Maduro’s status as head of state, blatantly prosecutes him, and puts him on a so-called 'trial' in a domestic court," Lin Jian wrote in a social media post. "This seriously violates Venezuela’s national sovereignty and destabilizes international relations."
"No country should put its domestic rules above international law," Lin added. "China calls on the US to release President Maduro and his wife at once and ensure their personal safety."
The U.S. disregards President Maduro’s status as head of state, blatantly prosecutes him and puts him on a so-called “trial” in a domestic court. This seriously violates Venezuela’s national sovereignty and destabilizes international relations.
No country should put its… pic.twitter.com/v1xQqE4Cqo
— Lin Jian 林剑 (@SpoxCHN_LinJian) January 6, 2026
The Chinese official's remarks came a day after Maduro said Monday during his first appearance before a federal court in New York City that he is "still president" of Venezuela—a sentiment echoed by the country's interim leader—and considers himself a "prisoner of war." Maduro pleaded not guilty to narcoterrorism conspiracy and other charges pursued by the Trump Justice Department.
During a press conference on Monday, Lin called the US abduction of Maduro a "clear violation of international law, basic norms in international relations, and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter," expressing a view widely held by legal experts.
"China calls on the US to ensure the personal safety of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, release them at once, stop toppling the government of Venezuela, and resolve issues through dialogue and negotiation," said Lin.
Under international law, sitting heads of state are immune from prosecution in other countries' courts. The Trump administration argues Maduro's leadership was illegitimate. But President Donald Trump, in his social media post announcing the weekend attack on Venezuela, described Maduro as president of the South American country.
"If the Justice Department plans to argue that Nicolás Maduro is not protected by head of state immunity," asked Francisco Rodríguez, a senior fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, "then why did President Trump announce his capture referring to him as 'President Maduro'—a designation that the US government had stopped using in 2019?"
An unsealed US indictment against Maduro characterizes him as "previously the president of Venezuela."
Chimène Keitner, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, wrote Tuesday that the Trump administration "appears to feel that its military and economic superiority allow it to act unilaterally in violation of international law, and that cooperation and alliances are overrated."
"That might seem appealing in the short term, but the world has already seen where unchecked expansionism and claimed spheres of influence lead," wrote Keitner. "The benefits of following agreed-upon rules have often been recognized only after significant harm caused by their disregard."
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Even as Trump Suggests US Taxpayers May Foot the Bill, How Bullish Is Big Oil on Venezuela?
"The appetite for jumping into Venezuela right now is pretty low," one industry source explained to CNN.
Jan 06, 2026
While President Donald Trump has openly stated that the US will seize Venezuela's oil in the wake of the US military's abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, there are questions about just how much interest big oil companies have in the president's desire for plunder.
In a Monday interview with NBC News, Trump insisted that US oil companies would invest the billions of dollars needed to rebuild Venezuela's oil extraction infrastructure, and he even floated having US taxpayers reimburse them for their efforts.
"A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent, and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue," Trump explained.
However, other recent reporting indicates that oil companies are not gung-ho about the president's plans.
According to a Monday report from CNN, US oil companies have several reasons to be wary of making significant investments in Venezuela, including political instability in the wake of Maduro's ouster, degradation of the country's oil infrastructure, and the fact that the current low price of oil would make such investments unprofitable.
"The appetite for jumping into Venezuela right now is pretty low," one industry source explained to CNN. "We have no idea what the government there will look like. The president’s desire is different than the industry’s. And the White House would have known that if they had communicated with the industry prior to the operation on Saturday."
Another industry source told CNN that the president doesn't appear to understand the complexities of setting up major petroleum extraction operations, especially in politically unstable countries.
"Just because there are oil reserves—even the largest in the world—doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to produce there,” they said. "This isn’t like standing up a food truck operation."
The American Prospect's Ryan Cooper added some more context to oil companies' reluctance to go all-in on Trump's looting scheme, noting in an analysis published Tuesday that US fracking companies could feel real financial pain if Trump floods the market with even cheaper Venezuelan oil.
"The price of oil, about $58 at time of writing, is already dangerously low for American fracking companies, whose investments typically pencil out with prices at $60 per barrel or above," Cooper explained. "More oil on global markets means those prices would drop even lower, crushing the economics of drilling even further. The US oil industry needs Trump to swoop in and add another few million barrels a day of production like it needs a hole in the head."
Cooper added that while Venezuela has a large quantity of oil, its quality is very low, which could also hinder oil companies' ability to produce a profit from extracting it.
"The product is so gloopy that you have to cut it with some kind of solvent to get it to flow in a pipe," he wrote. "In short, it’s expensive to drill, transport, and refine, just like the fracked oil that is barely turning a profit right now."
Reuters reported on Tuesday that Exxon, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron are set to have a meeting at the White House this week to discuss the prospects of extracting oil from Venezuela.
An industry source told Reuters that "nobody in those three companies has had conversations with the White House about operating in Venezuela, pre-removal or post-removal to this point."
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5 Years After Jan. 6 Attack, Trump Assault on Constitution and Democracy Reaches New Heights
"This president's authoritarianism is a real and living threat to our democracy and it demands vigilance, and resistance from us all."
Jan 06, 2026
On the fifth anniversary of President Donald Trump's supporters storming the US Capitol over his reelection loss, and nearly a year after he pardoned those insurrectionists, congressional Democrats and other critics condemned the Republican leader's escalating assault on the country's Constitution and democracy.
"On his first day back in office, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 January 6 rioters, including violent criminals who bludgeoned police officers," Christina Harvey, executive director of the progressive group Stand Up America, said in a Tuesday statement.
"The message is unmistakable: Those who break the law for Trump are rewarded with pardons and protection, while those who enforce the law are punished for doing their jobs," she said. "That leaves all of us less safe. The American people deserve better."
Ahead of the anniversary, US House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) released two related reports: Where Are They Now: The Perpetrators of January 6th and the Defenders of Democracy Who Stopped Them, and One Year Later: Assessing the Public Safety Implications of President Trump's Mass Pardons of 1,600 January 6 Rioters and Insurrectionists.
On Jan. 6, 2021, bloody insurrectionary violence interrupted the peaceful transfer of power.Today, America is still caught in an epic struggle between selfish forces of rule-or-ruin autocracy & the unyielding defenders of constitutional democracy all over America.
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— Rep. Jamie Raskin (@raskin.house.gov) January 6, 2026 at 9:40 AM
Raskin—a former constitutional law professor who notably led Trump's historic second impeachment in the wake of the Capitol attack—also penned a Tuesday op-ed in the New York Times, arguing that January 6, 2021 "never ended."
The congressman highlighted that since returning to the Oval Office, Trump has "punished law enforcement officials en masse for doing their jobs," installing "insurrectionists in the highest ranks of the Department of Justice" and conducting a "bureaucratic purge—with firings and permanent demotions—of hundreds" of Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and prosecutors.
"These moves at the Justice Department," he wrote, "have cost the government thousands of collective years of investigative and prosecutorial experience, demoralized the civil service, and reduced our government to the moral level of a gangster state."
Raskin further pointed out that the president "granted clemency to dozens of people who had committed or been accused of violent and horrific crimes after January 6, such as plotting the murders of FBI agents, resisting arrest, assault, rape, burglary, stalking, stabbing, possession of child sex abuse materials, and DUI homicide."
Raskin also joined several other House Democrats—including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) and Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.), who chaired the select committee that investigated the Capitol attack—for an unofficial Tuesday morning hearing that featured testimony from former law enforcement, state officials, and other Americans who witnessed the MAGA mob violence.
Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) also plan to mark the anniversary outside the Capitol Tuesday evening. In a morning floor speech, Schumer noted that event, recounted his experience with the "mob of rioters," stressed that "we must never relent on speaking the truth" about the attack, and slammed the pardons as "among the most sickening things Donald Trump has done in office."
"These pardons were an explicit endorsement of using violence to get your way," Schumer said. "That is who Donald Trump is at his core: a man who’s happy to see violence work in his favor, to get what he wants. And in this chamber—especially in the House of Representatives—too many Republicans remain silent in the face of obvious evil."
Separately, Schumer has spoken out against Trump's recent illegal violence abroad: a boat-bombing spree that has killed over 100 alleged drug traffickers in international waters and the weekend abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which resulted in dozens of deaths.
"For two long hours we heard yesterday from the administration, and what we heard was little more than wishful thinking and no real answers," he said Tuesday. "We got no clear answer to any of the four questions I've been asking the administration for days."
"First, how many troops are we going to commit to Venezuela? Are there any limits? No answer," Schumer explained. "Second, for how long will we be committed to running Venezuela? No answer. Third, how much is this all going to cost? They said they had no cost estimate. And fourth, what country is next? Is Colombia on the table? Are we going to invade a NATO ally like Greenland? Where does this belligerence stop? I was very troubled, very troubled by their answer on this as well."
Schumer pledged Monday that this week he and other senators would force a vote on a bipartisan war powers resolution "that will affirm Congress' authority on matters of war and peace when it comes to Venezuela." So far, neither GOP-controlled chamber has been able to pass such a measure related to Trump's march toward war with the South American nation or his boat bombings.
On Saturday, Trump attacked Venezuela. Five years ago Trump attacked our Capitol. If Trump had been held accountable for the Jan 6 attack, there would've been no attack on Venezuela-nor anything else from this second term. My new article deanobeidallah.substack.com/p/the-straig...
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— Dean Obeidallah (@deanobeidallah.bsky.social) January 6, 2026 at 10:04 AM
In a Tuesday statement about the January 6 anniversary, Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the advocacy group Public Citizen, pointed to not only Trump's abduction of the Venezuelan leader but also how he's trampled on the rights of Americans, including by trying to deploy the National Guard in various US cities.
"Five years ago, a sitting US president incited violence against our nation in a shameless attempt to overturn a democratically held election. This day must live forever in our memory, so that we continue to seek accountability for the perpetrators and work tirelessly to safeguard our democracy from future lawlessness," Gilbert said. "As we reflect on the solemn anniversary of the insurrection, we must grapple with the reality that the same president is back in office."
"And that his disdain for the rule of law and disregard of the US Constitution are more brazen than ever, amplified by endless incendiary rhetoric and reckless actions," she continued. "From the unwanted and unlawful military deployments of the National Guard to US cities to the indefensible and brazenly unlawful kidnapping of a foreign leader for the benefit of fossil fuel corporations, this president's authoritarianism is a real and living threat to our democracy, and it demands vigilance and resistance from us all."
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