December 23, 2025 · View in browser

For almost a decade, North Carolina’s majority-Republican legislature tried six times to strip Democratic governors of control over the board overseeing the swing state’s elections. This year, it finally succeeded.

DOJ official Todd Blanche promised to dump his crypto holdings no later than 90 days after his Senate confirmation in March. But about a month into the job — before divesting — he issued a memo that ordered an end to investigations into crypto companies.

As Corey G. Johnson and Al Shaw report, Blanche also eliminated an enforcement team dedicated to looking for crypto-related fraud and money-laundering schemes. And his memo said the Justice Department would assist Trump’s crypto working group of experts and Cabinet members that went on to issue a list of recommendations aimed at making the United States the global leader in digital coins.

Blanche’s directives, while he still owned significant crypto investments, violated the conflicts of interest law and his ethics agreement, legal experts and former federal ethics officials told ProPublica.

When he did divest, records show Blanche transferred the investments to family members, a move experts said is technically legal but at odds with the spirit and intent of the law.

A staffer for Blanche said he and the Justice Department would not comment.

In late July, we published a short documentary about Juan José Ramos Ramos, Andry Omar Blanco Bonilla and Wilmer Vega Sandia, three of the more than 230 Venezuelan men sent by the Trump administration in March to a maximum-security Salvadoran prison. They and their families didn’t know if they’d leave the facility, known as CECOT, alive. After being released in July, the men spoke with us about the multiple abuses they say they suffered. 

El Salvador claims the men were under the jurisdiction and legal responsibility of the U.S. The U.S. claims it is not responsible for the conditions of the men’s detention in El Salvador. The Trump administration pledged millions of dollars to El Salvador to hold the deportees in CECOT.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that these men “are all members of the vicious Tren de Aragua gang. Tren de Aragua is one of the most violent and ruthless terrorist gangs on planet earth.” All three men denied being members in interviews with ProPublica. Neither Ramos, nor Blanco nor Vega were flagged as having a criminal conviction or pending charges in U.S. government data we obtained, and we found no criminal records for them either.

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