Russia most likely used its fleet of banned oil tankers to help conduct a drone campaign over sensitive sites in Europe to map out weaknesses in air defenses, according to a report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The large-scale attack with ballistic and cruise missiles and drones damaged buildings and civilian infrastructure across the city. Many residents took shelter at metro stations.
Russia indicated that Ukraine may have used a ballistic missile in combat for the first time.
The Wall Street Journal reports that not only did President Donald Trump make a cool $1 billion off his connections to the White House, he managed to do it in a way that made his MAGA fans and supporters catch the short end of the grifting stick.Morten Christensen made a big bet on digital tokens sold by the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial (WLF) last year, hoping that a surge in value might be enough to help him retire. But the WSJ reports the value of those tokens instead tanked.“While Christensen and many like him lost big, the president made a fortune, netting $800 million from that crypto project, according to a financial disclosure he filed this week. “In crypto, people say a game is a game,” said Christensen, a digital-asset entrepreneur. “He played a better game than I did.”Others were much less generous over their losses.“My investment is trash now,” one user said of their WLF tokens."People backed Trump because they believed he would fight for them and were hoodwinked into thinking he cared about the working classes who brought him into power,” said a longtime Republican activist familiar with grassroots sentiment among Trump's MAGA base. “Seeing billions tied to crypto makes some loyal supporters uncomfortable and most of them have no idea what crypto is, let alone have the resources to invest in it. They feel this isn't public service anymore."“The president raked in cash by issuing new assets — World Liberty tokens and memecoins. But those who bought them at high prices had to suffer as their value went belly up, part of a wider crash in crypto,” reports WSJ. “Political followers and crypto true believers who bought into the Trump brand were left holding the bag. A crypto summer for the president was a crypto winter for them.”All told, roughly two-thirds of investors in Trump’s memecoin are currently in the red, according to crypto data provider Nansen, which tracks 1.48 million crypto wallets that bought the token since its January 2025 launch. Many fans spent thousands of dollars on Trump coins while the biggest spenders shelled out millions for the token. Nansen’s analysis of 26,663 wallets shows a whopping 85 percent of World Liberty’s $WLFI token buyers in the secondary market are underwater. This, said WSJ, was a big step away for a president who in 2021 described bitcoin as a “scam” that threatened the U.S. dollar. Now, however, Trump leads a White House that has pledged to make America the “crypto capital of the world.”“As his administration lightened regulation of the notoriously boom-and-bust sector, the Trump family’s sprawling crypto business reached into nearly every corner of the industry, drawing conflict-of-interest concerns from ethics watchdogs,” reports WSJ. “Bitcoin prices also plunged.”The White House, meanwhile, has sworn to unleash "an unrelenting, full-scale assault on the fraudsters, scammers, and corrupt operators who have looted billions from American taxpayers," with the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud moving "at unprecedented speed and ferocity to root out the waste, abuse, and criminal exploitation ... "that have drained billions from hardworking taxpayers."
"Balance of Power: Late Edition" focuses on the intersection of politics and global business. On today's show, Republican Congressman Mike Flood of Nebraska says he has an "open mind" to adding ethics provisions to crypto market-structure legislation, including limits on executives or family members operating in the space. Michael Cadenazzi, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, says the U.S. defense industrial base has suffered from decades of insufficient attention to capacity, leaving the country with bottlenecks, single-source risks and dependence on foreign suppliers. Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, says President Donald Trump's crypto ventures could violate the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause if foreign government money is involved, and calls his holdings a "clear conflict of interest" as his administration regulates the industry. (Source: Bloomberg)
Vice President Vance on Tuesday accused Democrats of heading toward communism, citing recent Democratic primary victories by democratic socialist candidates and claiming the policies they propose are “not raising taxes a little bit.” The vice president appeared on “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News, where host Laura Ingraham asked if democratic socialist candidates are going…
Sources close to the White House told RADAR Online in a Wednesday story that members of President Donald Trump’s stalwart followers are finally getting furious at all the money he keeps generating off the White House."People backed Trump because they believed he would fight for them and were hoodwinked into thinking he cared about the working classes who brought him into power,” said a longtime Republican activist familiar with grassroots sentiment among Trump's MAGA base. “Seeing billions tied to crypto makes some loyal supporters uncomfortable and most of them have no idea what crypto is, let alone have the resources to invest in it. They feel this isn't public service anymore."RADAR reports Trump triggered fresh criticism after financial disclosures showed he earned more than $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency ventures during his first year back in the White House, on top of other profits Trump has managed to grab for himself and his family in the last few months. First Lady Melania Trump herself also earned at least $10.7 million due to her controversial and critically-maligned documentary, "Melania."Another MAGA source speaking with RADAR Online added: "Many voters won't begrudge Trump's success, but these numbers are staggering. Critics inside the MAGA movement are calling it shameful and asking whether the presidency is becoming Trump's personal cash machine."Trump has also earned $290 million from his businesses including $77 million from Mar-a-Lago and additional profits from Trump National Doral, Bedminster and Trump National Washington DC. He additionally pocketed $86 million from settlements with media and social media companies like ABC, CBS, Meta, YouTube and X.“This isn't a cumulative number — it's in one year,” former Trump attorney Ty Cobb, who worked for Trump during his first term, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday. Cobb was referring to Trump earning between $1 billion and $2 billion from his cryptocurrency ventures since assuming office for his second term in early 2025. “This is an industry he has actively promoted and supported, and — on policy, executive orders related to it — is it legal? I don't believe so, and certainly I don't think it was contemplated by the Founders when they created the Emoluments Clause.”In April MS NOW News reporter Alex Tabet pointed out that people are investing in Trump’s cryptocurrency coin not because of its intrinsic value but because it grants them access to the president.“Let me break down how this Mar-a-Lago crypto conference works,” Tabet wrote. “So, the top 297 holders of this Trump Coin — which buying, by the way, enriches the Trump family — gets you invited to the conference. The top 29 buyers of the coin get a special VIP reception with President Trump, complete with champagne.”He added, “And if I were one of those 29 people, I'd be hoping it's a bottomless brunch because the value of the Trump Coin has been absolutely decimated. The coin is down more than 84 percent in the last year, down 96 percent from its peak. So, I wouldn't be surprised if some of those attendees today were using those champagne flutes to catch their tears.”
Right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson said he plans to build a new party after leaving the Republican Party last month. “I’m going to help build a third party,” Carlson told the Columbia Journalism Review in an interview published Wednesday. “There should be a good-faith effort to figure out what benefits the country.” Much of his frustration […]