Mike Levin

This Forbes investigation is a must-read. Donald Trump pulled in roughly $1.4 billion from crypto in 2025, plus more than $200 million from real estate, and faced a projected tax bill north of $500 million. So his company donated the "development rights" to his Jupiter, Florida golf course to a land trust, argued the course was a natural habitat worth protecting, and kept right on running the club. Forbes estimates the write-off could land around $825 million. He has done this at least five times since 2005. New York's attorney general alleged two of those appraisals were inflated. In Doral, he claimed a deduction of up to $323 million, more than double what he paid for the entire resort. A month after the Jupiter deal, he sued the IRS. The settlement his own Justice Department signed bars claims against him over matters that "could be pending," language that appears broad enough to cover this year's taxes. A federal judge found the case was brought to manipulate the judicial process. And the man now running the IRS, who took the job as this deal was being assembled, has a home backing onto those same Jupiter fairways. This is absolutely ridiculous. Nobody should be able to use the presidency to write his own tax bill. forbes.com/sites/danalexande…

Daily reminder that Trump and Republican leadership are spending billions of your tax dollars on military operations against Iran that Congress never authorized, expanding Stephen Miller’s mass deportation agenda, and funding the president’s own vanity projects, while doing nothing to lower your grocery bill or make your life more affordable. In 2 days, you can help put an end to it.

New reporting shows a subsidiary of private prison company GEO Group just gave another $1 million to MAGA Inc., bringing its total to $5.4 million, part of $7.2 million to Republican committees this cycle.  Meanwhile Trump has made multiple stock purchases in GEO Group and the other major private prison company, CoreCivic. Since then, GEO and CoreCivic have scored billions of dollars in government contracts as the largest owners and operators of immigration detention centers, including a new $1.5 billion deal to keep running an ICE facility in Tacoma for the next decade. Taxpayers are actually paying twice. The administration is buying some of these private facilities outright, then paying these same companies to keep running them. DHS paid CoreCivic $739 million for the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego County, a property the county assessor valued at only $168 million. GEO Group just collected $950 million for three facilities in Adelanto and will keep operating them under a contract that could run through 2034.  The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that ICE never assessed whether owning these facilities is affordable in the long run and warned the purchases could result in waste. The companies walk away with billion-dollar paydays for the buildings and keep the contracts. Taxpayers get the bill. To summarize, the president owns stock in private prison companies. His administration hands those same companies billions and billions of your tax dollars. And at the same time, the companies pumps millions of corporate dollars into our elections for him and MAGA Republicans. Either we end this corruption, or this corruption will be the end of us. Do your part on November 3. scrippsnews.com/investigatio…

More than 180 Vote Centers are open in San Diego County TODAY, so don’t wait if you don’t have to! Fill out your ballot NOW, sign and date the back of your return envelope, and drop your ballot in an official drop box or walk it into your nearest vote center. And if your ballot didn't arrive for any reason or if you need a replacement, go to your nearest vote center ASAP to request a replacement ballot.  You can find select open vote centers and drop boxes near you at SDVote.com and OCVote.com! #BlueWaveIn3Days nbcsandiego.com/elections/sa…

Daily reminder that Trump and Republican leadership are spending billions of your tax dollars on military operations against Iran that Congress never authorized, expanding Stephen Miller’s mass deportation agenda, and funding the president’s own vanity projects, while doing nothing to lower your grocery bill or make your life more affordable. In 3 days, you can help put an end to it. #BlueWaveIn3Days

It’s time to VOTE if you haven’t already! This is perhaps the most consequential election of our lifetimes. In San Diego and Orange Counties, ALL vote centers are OPEN!

Every time someone in Trump’s orbit gets caught selling access, he doesn't punish them. He demands a cut for his library!  Alina Habba lands a $50 MILLION deal from the family of a billionaire begging for a pardon, signed while she was still advising the DOJ. The billionaire got his pardon. Previously, two of his top advisers took hundreds of thousands from a pro-Russian government, then dumped the money into his library fund. Trump called it “a very nice thing to do.” It's sickening and shameless. Every American who believes public office belongs to the public should be outraged. nytimes.com/2026/10/29/us/po…

Donald Trump's actions in Brazil are shameless. Some brief history: In 2022, Brazil's Trump-aligned president, Jair Bolsonaro, lost his reelection bid. He plotted to stay in power, and his supporters stormed government buildings in the capital. Sound familiar? Brazil held him accountable. So what did Trump do? Hit Brazil with a 50% tariff and sanctioned Brazilian officials to pressure them into dropping the case. Brazil refused. Bolsonaro was convicted and sentenced to over 27 years. Then his son Flavio ran for president, promising to free his father and pardon the rioters. On Sunday, he lost by more than four million votes. Independent observers confirmed the result, and dozens of countries recognized it. But the United States did not and Trump falsely claimed fraud. On Monday, Brazilian authorities ordered Flavio to surrender his passports in a money laundering probe. Then on Tuesday, Brazil's Supreme Court ordered police to investigate whether a donor network co-founded by Vice President JD Vance helped his campaign, which is a crime in Brazil.  That same day, Flavio fled on a private jet arranged by a White House official, and he is now in Miami with Trump's blessing. This is all totally insane. Will any Republicans speak up against it? wapo.st/4yQSXgz

There’s still time to vote early, so don’t wait! The midterms are only 4 days away. If you haven’t yet, fill out your ballot, sign and date the back of your return envelope, and drop your ballot in an official drop box or walk it into a vote center. If your ballot didn't arrive for any reason or if you damage it somehow, go to your nearest vote center to request a replacement ballot ASAP. You can find select open vote centers and your nearest drop box at SDVote.com and OCVote.com! #BlueWaveIn4Days

Important piece in the NY Times comparing the current AI investment boom to the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The risk here could dwarf the mortgage crisis. The nine largest tech firms have reportedly piled up roughly $3 trillion in debt off their balance sheets. Nvidia alone disclosed more than $530 billion. One analysis counted 176 circular deals worth $3.6 trillion, with companies lending each other money to buy each other's products. Private credit firms are tapping insurers that hold retirees' annuities to help fund it. The companies most tied to the AI build-out now make up about a third of the S&P 500. We all want a growing economy and secure retirements. That's exactly why we can't let hidden debt and tangled financing put workers, pensioners and taxpayers on the hook again.  Meanwhile the administration wants to let retirement savings flow into risky schemes, the opposite of what this moment demands. This deserves bipartisan attention now, before a correction becomes a crisis. nytimes.com/2026/10/25/opini…

Families are paying sky-high prices for gasoline, especially since the war in Iran began in late February. Over that same time, Donald Trump's personal oil and gas holdings grew to as much as $81.6 million. After the war started, his accounts bought up to $17.5 million more in oil and gas stocks.  This past weekend, he told a crowd that oil companies are making hundreds of billions of dollars off the turmoil. “I don't give a damn,” Trump said. “We're making a freaking fortune.” Whatever your politics, most of us believe the person making decisions about war and energy prices shouldn't be cashing in while those decisions squeeze working families.  When the president profits from the same crisis draining your wallet, that's corruption, and it eats away at the trust our country runs on. That's why I've never traded individual stocks in Congress, and why I co-founded the End Corruption Caucus. Members of Congress, the president, the vice president, and members of the cabinet should not own or trade individual stocks, full stop. cbsnews.com/news/trump-oil-g…

Daily reminder that Trump and Republican leadership are spending billions of your tax dollars on military operations against Iran that Congress never authorized, expanding Stephen Miller’s mass deportation agenda, and funding the president’s own vanity projects, while doing nothing to lower your grocery bill or make your life more affordable. In 5 days, you can help put an end to it. #BlueWaveIn5Days

Our country should never be a hiding place for the powerful running from accountability. Flavio Bolsonaro lost Brazil's presidential election on Sunday by more than four million votes. A day later, Brazilian authorities ordered him to surrender his passports in a money laundering investigation. Instead, he slipped across the border and flew to Miami on a private jet arranged by the Trump administration, reportedly at Trump’s own direction, with a fast-tracked green card coming soon. This is a disgrace. Millions of families wait years, some for decades, to follow the rules and earn a green card. Handing Trump’s political ally a shortcut around his own country's courts is morally bankrupt. Congress needs answers. Who ordered this and what was promised in return? nytimes.com/2026/10/29/world…

Since the war in Iran began, the average family has paid about $1,000 more in fuel costs. Over those same eight months, Donald Trump's oil and gas holdings grew to as much as $81.6 million, and he kept buying after the war started. He doesn’t give a damn about you. He said so himself.

Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse have waited decades for accountability. Last year, Republicans and Democrats came together almost unanimously to demand the release of the Epstein Files. A new must-read report compiles serious allegations from women who say they were assaulted by men in Epstein's orbit, including Donald Trump, along with new claims that a former Trump administration official helped arrange visas for young models before they met Epstein.  These women deserve to have their accounts examined by investigators who answer to the law and nobody else. So far, Ghislaine Maxwell is the only person convicted in connection with Epstein's trafficking of minors. The Justice Department has shown little interest in following the evidence where it leads, and won’t investigate allegations against Trump himself. I'm joining my colleagues in calling for an independent special counsel. If the allegations are false, an independent review is the fairest way to show it. If they're true, survivors deserve justice. time.com/article/2026/10/26/…

We should be able to trust that our foreign policy is made for the American people and nobody else. New reporting on Jared Kushner raises alarming questions that Congress must investigate. While Kushner served as a senior White House adviser, he was given access to accounts holding roughly $2 billion tied to the leaders of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, while at the same time he bent our policy in the Middle East toward their wishes.  Kushner denies everything. If the allegations are true, we are looking at one of the most serious cases of foreign influence over American policy in modern history, and the public deserves the full story. As co-founder of the End Corruption Caucus, I'm calling on Congress to open a full investigation with subpoena power and public hearings. nytimes.com/2026/10/26/books…

Daily reminder that Trump and Republican leadership are spending billions of your tax dollars on military operations against Iran that Congress never authorized, expanding Stephen Miller’s mass deportation agenda, and funding the president’s own vanity projects, while doing nothing to lower your grocery bill or make your life more affordable. In 6 days, you can help put an end to it.

Today we honor the life of the late Dolores Huerta. She was a legendary labor leader and activist, the founder of the United Farm Workers, and a powerful icon for generations of American women. Her fight for worker dignity, fair wages, safe working conditions, and gender equality shaped the labor movement for generations to come, and California will always be grateful. Rest in peace, Dolores.

This is corruption, pure and simple. The biggest winner from this rule change is Texas oil billionaire Jeffery Hildebrand, whose company Hilcorp built its fortune buying up old, leaky wells and ranks as the nation's top methane emitter by one analysis of EPA data. After never being a big political giver, he and his wife poured $15 million into Trump and Republicans. Then Trump made his wife an ambassador and put his former lobbyist in charge of rewriting this very rule at the EPA. It's also really stupid policy. Imagine your gas bill keeps climbing and the utility company finds a leak in the line to your house. Instead of fixing it, they decide to stop checking for leaks altogether. That's basically what the Trump administration just did to the whole country. Methane is natural gas, the same stuff that heats our homes and runs our stoves. A rule on the books was supposed to make companies find the biggest leaks and fix them. Now it's being gutted. Some of the worst offenders are small, older wells like Hildebrand's. They produce only about 6% of our oil and gas but account for up to half the methane leaking from the fields. Families living near these wells breathe that pollution every day, and methane drives about a third of the warming we're seeing. And letting wells leak won't lower what you pay at the pump one bit. Fix the leaks, save the energy, keep the air clean. That's common sense, and the opposite of the corruption and stupidity we're seeing. apnews.com/article/trump-met…

Today, Trump stood beside a tanker of Venezuelan crude oil and said “to the victor belong the spoils.” This is a line American leaders have spent more than a century working to retire. The phrase comes from an 1832 speech by a New York senator defending the spoils system of rewarding loyalists with government jobs, likening the prizes of an election to the plunder of war. Americans rightfully came to see that as corruption, and by the 1880s the spoils system gave way to merit-based hiring. The past hundred years carried that same idea onto the world stage. Roosevelt and Churchill pledged that the Allies sought no territorial gain from the war. After victory, America kept that promise and helped rebuild the nations it had defeated. The choice built the most prosperous era in human history. Open trade and a world where borders aren't redrawn by force made America safer and stronger. When other powers grab land or resources, from Russia to China, we have rightly called it out. My grandfather's generation won the largest war ever fought and walked away from the spoils. They believed America leads by example. Taking a cut of another nation's oil through a deal with a businessman who has faced corruption and money laundering investigations in several countries, while Venezuelans still wait for free elections, breaks faith with that legacy. It also is a lousy way to try and lower gas prices. washingtonsun.com/whitehouse…

It’s the final countdown. One week left until the midterms. Now is the time to vote early. Fill out your ballot ASAP, sign and date the back of your return envelope, and drop your ballot in an official drop box or walk it into a vote center. This is our chance to get Washington back to working for working American families. #BlueWaveIn7Days