The Trump administration is building closer ties to crypto
07:08 Share

Recruitment. For many, it can be cold, functional, or lacking that personal touch. But LHH believes it should be more. By connecting people to opportunity, not just skills to roles, beautiful things happen at work. A leader inspires. A team grows. The people you hire develop into the people you admire, making 90,000 hours of work in a lifetime time well spent.

Recruitment, development, career transition. LHH, a beautiful working world. Discover recruitment solutions at LHH.com slash beautiful. In a few minutes, what happened to the pledges to help historically black campuses from five years ago?

I'm David Brancaccio in New York. First on the program at Bitcoin 2025, said to be the world's biggest event devoted to digital currency, Vice President J.D. Vance and the White House AI and crypto czar David Sachs. Clear signal is that the Trump administration loves its crypto. Here's Marketplace's Samantha Fields.

The Biden administration was not exactly seen as being friendly to crypto. Almost every day, a new enforcement action was announced by agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission. Olga Karif at Bloomberg says because of that, for the last few years...

The overall impression a lot of investors got was that crypto is not a safe place to be. Just a few months into the Trump administration, Ari Redbord at TRM Labs says there's been a sea change. The SEC has dropped a number of Biden-era investigations and lawsuits. The White House announced a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

What we've seen is a real policy shift towards engagement rather than enforcement alone. Until recently, Redboard says most big banks had been reluctant to have much to do with crypto, but... Every one of them now is building something in the digital assets ecosystem, whether you're thinking about like buying Bitcoin through ETFs or issuing a stable coin.

All of this is helping crypto gain legitimacy, says Olga Karif at Bloomberg, and will likely help attract more institutional and individual investors. Because there is a perception of less risk in crypto, although of course crypto is highly volatile, very risky, but there is a perception that it's less so. Because of some of the messaging coming from the Trump administration. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace.

The prominent CEO who led the effort to cut government programs and federal jobs is criticizing the GOP's tax and spending bill currently before the U.S. Senate. The criticism is from an excerpt of an interview that Elon Musk gave to CBS. The interview slated for air this weekend on CBS Sunday Morning. Marketplace's Henry Epp has more.

Musk has rarely criticized President Donald Trump since pouring money into his reelection effort last year, but he told CBS he's not happy with the president's tax and spending bill. So, you know, I was like disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it.

And it reminds the work that the Doge team is doing. Doge is the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the group Musk led with the stated intent of cutting government spending. The group's website claims to have saved $175 billion. That's far short of Musk's original goal, and multiple news outlets have not been able to verify much of those claims. The GOP tax bill is estimated to raise the federal deficit by over $3 trillion over 10 years, far outstripping any cuts made by Musk's team.

I'm Henry App for Marketplace.

Looking to reshore your operations? Global conversations about tariffs make now the time to act. Puerto Rico is the ideal place, a U.S. jurisdiction with lower costs, made-in-USA labeling, and unmatched incentives. Join global leaders like Amgen and Eli Lilly in an ecosystem built over 75 years, home to top pharma and medical device production, a deep talent pool, and world-class bioscience infrastructure.

Puerto Rico, your cost-effective reshoring solution. Visit investpr.org slash reshore to get started. This Marketplace podcast is supported by Greenlight. As a listener of Marketplace, you're likely already building smart money habits for you and your family, trying to instill important lessons on saving and spending and the economy overall and the younger folks in your life.

But what about the older generation? Your parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles? As they age, they may need more support in managing their finances too. With Greenlight's Family Shield, you can take the next steps by protecting your senior loved ones from scams and financial fraud. Family Shield offers account monitoring, real-time alerts, and coverage, including up to $100,000 for deceptive transfer fraud and $1 million for identity theft, so you can keep your whole family financially safe and sound.

And with added safety tools like SOS and crash alerts, along with location sharing, you can keep an eye on both your family's wallet and their well-being. Take care of your whole family, from kids to grandparents, with Family Shield from Greenlight. Sign up today at greenlight.com slash marketplace.

After the murder of George Floyd five years ago and the social justice protests that followed, many corporations pledged to do more to support black communities that led to a flood of pledges and new investments in, for instance, historically black colleges and universities. Marketplace's Kimberly Adams checked up.

When businesses started looking around in 2020 for where to put the money they were allocating for corporate diversity pledges, many of them turned to historically Black colleges and universities. We were able to see a lot of folks making commitments to racial justice and also being educated about the underfunding of HBCUs.

Denise Smith is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. At that time, we saw this really big surge in donations to HBCUs. But it's tough to get a firm number for just how much was promised to HBCUs in total. The grants were often announced on press releases, bundled together with other announcements, says Mary Beth Gassman, who teaches at Rutgers, where she also directs the Center for Minority Serving Institutions.

I mean, I think the most substantial gifts were by philanthropist Mackenzie Scott, not giving as a corporation or foundation, but giving as an individual. Scott reportedly gave more than $500 million in no-strings-attached grants to at least 23 HBCUs.

But corporations made smaller pledges as well. For example, Morgan Stanley started up its HBCU Scholars Program, committing to spend about $12 million to offer full scholarships to five students a year at three schools.

We had all in 58 students in the program. 13 graduated this year. We're very proud of that. Susan Reed is the company's global head of talent. A number of them interned with the firm and two of the students from this graduating class will be joining Morgan Stanley as full-time employees later this summer.

Even companies that are pulling back on racial justice commitments in other areas to avoid the White House's ire seem to still feel safe giving to HBCUs. Here's Mary Beth Gassman at Rutgers again. One that I'm particularly interested in is Target because they promised a $100 million commitment to racial justice organizations and HBCUs were part of that.

In 2021, Target partnered with the United Negro College Fund to grant $5,000 scholarships to 1,000 Black students at HBCUs and gave those Target scholars additional funding as their studies progressed. I am. I am. I am. A Target scholar. And my future has no limits.

The program disappeared from the UNCF website for a while as Target publicly began to roll back some of its DEI commitments. But it recently resurfaced, with applications open for a new round this year. UNCF declined an interview for this story, and Target didn't respond to multiple requests for interviews.

Denise Smith at the Century Foundation says even though post-George Floyd corporate commitments have made an impact, many of those investments have tapered off. Unfortunately, what we're still seeing is that HBCUs have failed to maintain pace with non-HBCU institutions' donations.

Smith says, especially with funding cuts to the Department of Education and programs that support these institutions, it will take a lot more investment for them to thrive long term. In Washington, I'm Kimberly Adams for Marketplace. Thanks, Kimberly. In New York, I'm David Brancaccio. It's the Marketplace Morning Report from APM American Public Media.

This Old House has been America's most trusted source for all things DIY and home improvement for decades. And now we're on the radio and on demand. I think you're breaking into this wall regardless. I was hoping you wouldn't say that. I need to go and get some whiskey, I think. I would get the whiskey for sure. Subscribe to This Old House Radio Hour from LAist Studios, wherever you get your podcasts.