Yesterday’s News 2025 10 25

curated news excerpts & citations

Al Jazeera: Is Trump’s pardon of Binance boss Changpeng Zhao a conflict of interest?

Zhao is a convicted criminal who founded the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, found guilty of allowing site to be used for money laundering in connection to child sex abuse.
…

Over the course of seven years, prosecutors said Binance had facilitated more than 1.5 million virtual currency trades – totalling roughly $900m – which violated US laws and sanctions, including ones involving al-Qaeda and Iran.

In addition, investigators said drug traffickers and networks linked to child sexual exploitation used Binance to move and convert illicit funds anonymously. The exchange’s weak customer verification system and tolerance for high-risk transactions made it a hub for illegal operations, they alleged.

(Al Jazeera more…)

Atlantic: Trump Grants Clemency to One of the World’s Richest Men

The recent pardon is an overture to an industry that has made the president millions.

• BBC: What’s in Reagan advert that’s caused US-Canada trade talks collapse?

  AP: Trump says a Canadian ad misstated Ronald Reagan’s views on tariffs. Here are the facts and context

  ---

  

• Robert Reich: Trump’s illegal executions

  You or I could be next

  The United States is now executing people on the high seas whom Trump calls “enemy combatants.” He’s doing so without a declaration of war, without input from Congress, and without any findings that they pose a threat to the United States.
  (Robert Reich more…)

  ---

• Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – October 24, 2025

  Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has canceled House business again next week, meaning that over the last 17 weeks, the House of Representatives will have worked on Capitol Hill for just 20 days. It also means that the House will not be back at work before November 1, when at least twenty-five states have said they will not be able to provide the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits more than 42 million Americans rely on to put food on the table.

  Jennifer Ludden of NPR notes that about one of every eight Americans gets an average of $187 a month in food assistance. Most of those who use SNAP are children, older Americans, veterans, people with disabilities, and working people, chief executive officer Joel Berg of Hunger Free America told Ludden. “If the SNAP program shuts down, we will have the most mass hunger suffering we’ve had in America since the Great Depression.”
  …

  Republicans have embraced the destruction of the modern government, slashing SNAP benefits, Medicaid, cancer research, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), and so on. The Democrats are defending the government that has been in place since the 1930s, focused on leveling the playing field between the very wealthy and ordinary Americans.

  Trump is determined to resurrect the pre–New Deal system in the United States and refuses to entertain any notion that his vision will not work. That refusal to be crossed showed over the past twenty-four hours when he exploded over a Canadian advertisement aired last night that quoted an April 25, 1987, speech in which Republican president Ronald Reagan criticized tariffs as “trade barriers” that “hurt every American worker and consumer.”
  (Heather Cox Richardson more…)

  ---

• Re:Public: What’s the Trump Administration’s End Game for the National Parks?

  We saw it in Yosemite. But you have to look beyond the bathrooms.
  

  
  
  
  (Re:Public more…)

  ---

• Sarah Jones: Setting the Stage for Criminal Accountability for the Trump Regime

  ---

• War Horse: They’ve Never Been Arrested. Why Does the FBI List Thousands of Service Members as Potential Criminals?

  A Texas mom and National Guard member is suing the Army to clear her name—and upend the military justice system

  ---

  
  
  

  ---

  Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift

  Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda

  Trump Pardons Database

  Project 2025 Tracker

  DOGE Tracker

  ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew

  Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties

  1. The Impact Map
  2. United States Disappeared Tracker
  3. ICE Flight Tracking
  4. Regulatory Changes Tracker
  5. Trump Administration Litigation Trackers
  6. Far Right Groups Targeting Pride Month