Trump Team Axes $7.4 Billion Biden ‘Slush Fund’

The Biden team may be out of power, but their fingerprints are still all over Washington’s money spigots. One of the most obvious examples just got shut down. This week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made it official: the Trump administration is pulling the plug on a $7.4 billion sweetheart deal that was handed to a shadowy nonprofit called Natcast — a group cooked up by Biden cronies during their last days in office to control semiconductor research money.

Let’s not kid ourselves about what Natcast really was. It wasn’t just a nonprofit. It was a soft landing pad — a taxpayer-funded lifeboat — for Biden loyalists who needed a new home before the lights went out in the West Wing. Instead of handing the CHIPS Act money to the actual government agency charged with overseeing semiconductor research, Biden’s team funneled it into a private shell stacked with their own people. And they did it on their way out the door, just days before Trump returned to power.

The timing wasn’t a coincidence. The Biden crew signed the Natcast agreement on January 16, 2025 — four days before Trump’s inauguration. It was a classic move: lock in the cash, tie the new administration’s hands with restrictive legal agreements, and hope no one notices until it’s too late.

But someone did notice. Lutnick and his team dug into the paperwork and found what they called a “semiconductor slush fund.” That’s not an exaggeration. Natcast wasn’t just staffed with ex-Biden officials — it was created by them, designed for them, and funded by them using taxpayer dollars. The so-called “selection committee” that chose the Natcast leadership was made up of people with deep ties to the Biden administration and even deeper ties to federal cash.

Take Jason Matheny, for example. He held several posts in the Biden White House. Or Don Rosenberg, who sits at a venture firm whose companies just happened to rake in over $100 million in federal grants. Brenda Wilkerson, another selection committee member, is more focused on social justice than silicon chips. This wasn’t a merit-based process. It was political patronage, plain and simple.

What makes this even more brazen is how Natcast was set up to dodge accountability. Instead of being housed inside the Commerce Department — where Congress and inspectors general could keep an eye on things — it was spun out as a private group. That way, it could operate behind closed doors, shielded from oversight, while burning through billions in public funds.

And the contract? It was written to be nearly untouchable. Annual payments were guaranteed if Natcast hit vague “milestones,” and the agreement blocked the government from pulling the plug without jumping through legal hoops. In other words, Biden’s team tried to lock in a decade of funding for their friends — no matter who was in power.

But now comes the unwind. Lutnick’s move doesn’t just stop the money; it reasserts control. The National Semiconductor Technology Center will now be run directly by the National Institute of Standards and Technology — a federal agency with a real mandate, not a backroom nonprofit built to keep the Biden machine alive.

This is more than just a bureaucratic reshuffling. It’s a message: the days of laundering taxpayer money through friendly nonprofits are over. The Trump administration is putting the brakes on the old D.C. game where losing elections doesn’t mean losing influence — just finding new ways to rig the system.

The CHIPS Act was supposed to strengthen American tech leadership, not bankroll political allies. Thanks to some timely intervention, the money will now go where it was meant to — into actual research, not into the pockets of political operatives looking for their next gig.

Washington will always have its insiders and its games. But every now and then, someone flips the table. This week, it was Lutnick. And for once, the swamp got a little shallower.