🤑 Money laundering for all (who can afford it)

🔥 Today’s Lever story: A bill written by Elon Musk’s own lawyers could soon help corporate criminals looking to evade accountability. 

👇 Spend four minutes reading this 995-word newsletter to learn about: 

• How Trump is bringing money laundering back into style.
• Big Pharma’s love for medicinal psychedelics.
• Seattle’s foray into housing for the people, by the people.
• The secret corporate loophole behind Trump’s “no tax on tips” bill.

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💸 Congressman Joe “You Lie!“ Wilson wants Trump’s face on your money. The Republican who got 15 minutes of fame screaming at former President Barack Obama is trying to get another 15 minutes with legislation that would force the government to mint a $250 bill with Trump’s face on it. The proposal follows other Republican legislation that would carve Trump’s face into Mt. Rushmore.

🍄 Magic mushrooms, brought to you by Big Pharma. A federal review of hundreds of medical studies found that psychedelic drugs likely do help fight chronic pain and depression. In the race to allow doctors to prescribe psychedelics, lobbying is already ramping up. Otsuka Pharmaceutical, which spent over half a million dollars lobbying on psychedelics and other issues in 2024, recently acquired Mindset Pharma to become the premiere "psychedelics stock” for investors. The psychedelics industry, boosted by Big Pharma, is projected to $12 billion globally by 2030.

🤔 Let the lobbying shenanigans begin. Trump’s promised “no tax on tips” legislation doesn’t outline what constitutes a tip — it instead empowers Wall Street mogul-turned-Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to issue “a list of occupations which traditionally and customarily received tips” — and then shield those from taxes. For example, Bessent could reclassify Wall Street fees as tax-free tips from customers paid to asset managers. The possibilities are endless — and endlessly corrupt. 

🇺🇲 The blueprint for America’s Oligarchy. Do you find yourself reading the news every day and wondering: How the hell did we get here? Check out this shoutout of The Lever’s audio series Master Plan, where we follow how the 1971 Powell Memo paved the way for today’s corporate takeover of American democracy.

🔍 Check our work — we link to all our sources in the web version of this newsletter.

Last fall, the share of credit card users making just the minimum payment hit a new high of 10.7 percent. (Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)

Closing the “missing middle” in housing. Seattle became the first city in the country to commit to building community-controlled social housing — and they’re funding it with a tax on companies that pay their employees million-dollar salaries. The initiative aims to help the “missing middle” — renters who cannot afford market-rate rentals but who do not qualify for subsidized housing, in a city where rent has nearly doubled since 2010.

The proposition already drew fierce opposition from Amazon and Microsoft, the mega-corporations that have driven up the cost of real estate and priced out lower-income tenants in the Emerald City.

President Donald Trump gestures before departing from the White House, Friday, March 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Money laundering and tax evasion for all who can afford it. Amid a huge rise in tax evasion and money laundering scams, Republicans are deregulating cryptocurrency, killing off corporate transparency rules, and downsizing the agency that audits tax returns. 

The Senate just voted to exempt crypto from the regular rules. At Big Crypto’s urging, the upper chamber just voted to kill a rule that would have subjected the cryptocurrency industry to the same tax disclosure rules as normal brokers. The 70-27 bipartisan vote shows the power of crypto campaign cash. And reminder: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) promised the industry favors while stumping for former Vice President Kamala Harris at a fundraiser last fall. 

Farewell to the Corporate Transparency Act. Trump’s Treasury Department just declared that it will refuse to enforce the anti-money-laundering law requiring shell corporations to tell law enforcement who their actual owners are. Trump’s own Justice Department defended the 2021 Corporate Transparency Act, which was upheld by a Trump-appointed federal judge and the U.S. Supreme Court. But now Trump is celebrating as his administration halts enforcement of the law.

Defunding the tax police. As the Internal Revenue Service potentially loses half its staff, employees are warning that the agency’s audits of the wealthy could soon end. For every dollar the IRS spends, it generates between $5 and $12 in revenue — and when the agency audits filers making $10 million or more, it returns $13,000 every hour. Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission is dismantling itself as you read this.

• Trump’s pick to lead the IRS is a congressman-turned-corporate-tax-fraudster who previously co-sponsored legislation to abolish the agency. During his first term, Trump drove federal civil tax enforcement to a record low. 

Trump’s own scuffles with efforts to halt money laundering and tax evasion. In 2015, the Trump Taj Mahal was fined $10 million for money laundering violations. Meanwhile, The New York Times found that Trump built his real estate wealth with the help of dubious tax schemes — including sham corporations — and by outright lying on his tax returns. And the Trump Organization was ordered in 2023 to pay $1.6 million in fraud fines for evading taxes by compensating executives with lavish off-the-books gifts.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is in damage-control mode, claiming that cheap goods — which Trump promised to deliver — are no longer “the essence of the American dream.” Remember when a sweatered Jimmy Carter tried to make the same argument? Yeah — it didn’t work out so well.

🐕 Yes, you look like your dog. We choose canine companions who resemble us  — it’s science.

❤️‍🩹 Leftover cash in your flexible savings account? Splurge on this list of FSA-eligible goods before your 2024 insurance dollars disappear on March 15. 

😋 Gotta catch ‘em all. A Pokémon-shaped Flamin’ Hot Cheeto just sold in a New York auction for $87,000.

“It’s their government. What leverage do we have?” recently asked House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Well, the Revolving Door Project has answered — a lot, actually.