Every morning in the Ohio Capital Journal’s free newsletter, The Eye-Opener, we round up the news and commentary from across Ohio and around the country and world that is catching our attention. We call this feature Catching Our Eye, republished here.

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Catching Our Eye

• Weaponizing the IRS. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Top Treasury Tax Official Ousted After Clashes With White House Over IRS Audits.”

The Treasury Department’s top tax policy official was forced out of his job after he warned that the White House was at risk of violating a federal law prohibiting senior officials’ involvement in IRS audits, according to people familiar with the matter.

Kenneth Kies, an assistant Treasury secretary and acting chief counsel of the Internal Revenue Service, is leaving those posts in the coming weeks. Kies warned that political officials risked breaching a law that limits who can influence tax enforcement.

• Trump’s ‘Mystery Money.’ The Wall Street Journal reports, “The Mystery Money Powering Trump’s Second Term.”

Presidents have always raised money from private donors—to run for office, throw inaugural balls and build presidential libraries. But Donald Trump has turned his second term into an unprecedented fundraising blitz, raising well over half a billion dollars from wealthy donors and stashing it in a sprawling network of nonprofits, cultural institutions and committees that he and his allies control.

Companies seeking lucrative contracts or favorable policies from the administration have poured millions of dollars into these funds, which have become a key tool for Trump to pursue his political and personal priorities. He has used them to oust his political opponents, change the cultural face of the nation’s capital and boost his post-presidency legacy.

In many cases, details about where the cash is coming from or how it is being spent are shrouded in secrecy, leaving big gaps in the public’s understanding of a significant dynamic at the center of Trump’s presidency.

The Wall Street Journal documented more than $781,948,878 in donations and other payments to Trump-linked groups since the 2024 election.

• ‘Gifts’ and graft. ProPublica reports, “FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval for Billion-Dollar Deals.”

Expensive Gifts: Despite regulating broadcast media, FCC commissioners have accepted pricey tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala from CBS or its parent company, now Paramount.

Conflict of Interest: Ethics experts say that by accepting the gifts, FCC commissioners are compromising the agency’s impartiality and should avoid acting on Paramount’s pending merger.

Mixing Business and Pleasure: After voting for a Paramount merger, Commissioner Olivia Trusty took tickets worth over $12,000. FCC Chair Brendan Carr has accepted tickets worth at least $63,000.

• Profiteering off the presidency, part infinity. CNN reports, “Trump promoted companies on Truth Social days after buying their stocks.”

President Donald Trump hopped on Truth Social last year to share some “very big and exciting news.” Nvidia, the computer chip manufacturing behemoth, had just announced plans to build AI supercomputers in the United States.

“All necessary permits will be expedited and quickly delivered” to Nvidia and similar companies, Trump vowed in the April 15, 2025 post to his more than nine million followers.

What the president didn’t disclose at the time was that days earlier, he had purchased between $200,000 and $500,000 of the company’s stock.

A CNN investigation found that Trump has promoted more than 20 companies on his Truth Social account days after buying stock in those firms – at times announcing government actions that could benefit the companies he just invested in.