Media Must Cover Trump Making Financial Crime Legal

The Trump Treasury Department has just permanently exempted American companies from disclosing who actually owns them — effectively gutting the Corporate Transparency Act, a bipartisan anti-money-laundering law passed with overwhelming support in 2020. The rule doesn't just halt enforcement; it deletes all beneficial ownership data already submitted. What was required under the law? A name, address, birthdate, and a photo ID — a five-minute form designed to stop foreign oligarchs, cartels, and transnational criminal networks from hiding assets in anonymous shell companies. Marco Rubio, now Secretary of State, once called this law "the most significant anti-corruption and money laundering law in decades." The administration he serves just killed it. Sen. Elizabeth Warren called the repeal "a gift to cartels, criminals, and U.S. adversaries." Even Republican co-sponsor Chuck Grassley condemned it.

The contrast could not be starker. This same week, court documents revealed the Trump administration had infiltrated and surveilled progressive organizations whose members protested immigration raids in Minneapolis. If you organize against Trump, federal agents are watching you. If you launder money through a shell company, the Treasury Department just deleted your paper trail.

We call on the media to cover the gutting of the Corporate Transparency Act not as a regulatory footnote, but as what it is: a president making financial crime easier to commit — for oligarchs, cartels, and foreign adversaries — while simultaneously weaponizing the surveillance state against ordinary Americans who dissent. The public deserves reporting that names that double standard for exactly what it is.