The Hits Keep Coming

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  In 2024, the book explains, the Democrats' problems involved reality, not just messaging.  Two years later, Republicans own the reality problems, including the Iran quagmire and the resulting economic pain.

JILL COLVIN and LINLEY SANDERS at AP:

Americans are deeply frustrated with President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy and rising prices, with most panning his performance and blaming his policies as higher costs threaten his party’s chances in November.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only 17% of U.S. adults approve of the Republican president’s handling of the cost of living. Just 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low.

A majority, 65%, of U.S. adults now blame Trump’s policies for persistently high costs more than factors outside of his control, signaling growing weariness over his aggressive use of tariffs and continued unhappiness with the war with Iran.

Hans Nichols at Axios:

Between the lines: Republicans decided against breaking for an early recess last week.The biggest thing to show for it: A historic — and bipartisan — college sports package that doesn't do much for those defending their seats in November. It faces long odds in the House.

 Otherwise it was a week of pain:

• Failed votes: A vote addressing Americans' concerns about data centers driving up energy costs failed today, as did another to curb congressional stock trades and enforce voter IDs.
• A line of attack that backfired: A major hearing with Jack Smith was overshadowed by a failed attempt by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) to link the special counsel and Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis.
• The Trump issue: Republicans have been tiptoeing around whether Trump's unpopularity will hurt the party in November, only for Texas nominee Ken Paxton to be caught blaming Trump's midterm convention for hurting his polling.
• NRSC Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said Paxton's analysis was "just wrong" and called the convention "a boost in the right direction."

Isaac Arnsdorf at WP:

Now, as dissatisfaction grows with Trump’s economic performance, questions about how he and his family profit from the presidency have taken on more bite. Some of the loudest complaints are coming from young, male crypto enthusiasts who were initially energized by candidate Trump’s embrace of the industry — and now are better equipped than the average voter to understand the ventures that earned the president $1.4 billion last year.

 ...

“What they basically did was a money grab,” said David from South Carolina, a participant in a focus group of independent and moderate 18-to-24-year-olds conducted this year for the Bulwark’s Focus Group podcast. “Why does he need to keep doing it? He’s literally a billionaire. Like, how much more money does he need?” The Washington Post is identifying participants in the focus group only by their first names in accordance with the ground rules for the session.

Six out of nine of the young men on that panel said they had heard of Trump’s memecoin. In another focus group, all eight had. The participants referenced a meme of a “Trump” playing card that cuts your portfolio by half and a viral, unverified story about a young man who lost his inheritance by betting on the Trump coin.

...

Trump won 43 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds in 2024, according to exit polls. Last month, his approval rating with voters under 30 dropped to 19 percent in a Fox News poll, which found 63 percent saying they would vote for a Democrat for Congress.

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“I always supported Trump, and he promised that he would be the crypto president,” Pinto said. “I was under the impression that would be for bitcoin — I never thought he would launch his own token.”

“The whole thing is a rug pull,” he added, using crypto slang for a scheme where someone creates a token, hypes it up and then cashes out.

In addition to his memecoins, Trump also owns a stake, the exact size of which is undisclosed, in World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture set up by his sons alongside the sons of Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff. The company offers stablecoins, marketing itself as a way around conventional banking.

Profiting from the Presidency

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. Trump is abusing his power to increase his wealth.

Ben Protess, Andrea Fuller, Eric Lipton and David Yaffe-Bellany at NYT:

President Trump reaped a stunning windfall in his first year back in the White House, including about $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses, a new filing shows.

All told, the president pulled in at least $2.2 billion, a figure that includes other parts of his vast holdings, such as his real estate assets. That compares to a minimum of $622 million his enterprises pulled in for all of 2024, before he returned to the presidency.

One of his biggest hauls in 2025 came when an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates bought nearly half of the Trump family’s main crypto company, World Liberty Financial, a transaction that blurred the line between foreign policy and private enterprise.

Mr. Trump also collected hundreds of millions of dollars from sales of his $TRUMP memecoin and World Liberty’s sale of its own digital tokens.

The results, detailed in Mr. Trump’s mandatory financial disclosure report for 2025 and released on Tuesday, pulled back the curtain on the president’s business operations. His crypto ventures, the report shows, are now some of his most lucrative enterprises, a remarkable turnabout for a man who once slammed crypto as a haven for drug dealers and scammers.

The president’s finances, which had been something of a mystery, highlight a conflict in his crypto business: Mr. Trump is a major crypto industry operator and its top policymaker.

Eric Lipton, Andrea Fuller and David Yaffe-Bellany:

A large chunk of the $2 billion haul President Trump took in last year came as hundreds of thousands of his fans and other investors bet on a speculative cryptocurrency called $TRUMP, hoping its value would soar with his return to the White House.

But while Mr. Trump amassed an eye-popping $636 million from the cryptocurrency, known as a memecoin, many of his followers who heeded his call to purchase the coin came out losers.

That outcome, documented by an independent analysis of trades and fees paid out from $TRUMP token sales, is drawing renewed attention this week, as Mr. Trump for the first time has detailed the extraordinary $1.4 billion in revenue he secured just from the cryptocurrency industry since he returned to the White House.

The president’s 927-page financial disclosure showed how Mr. Trump and his family reaped huge financial rewards in 2025 through his money-losing Trump Media venture and a separate cryptocurrency firm called World Liberty Financial, even as routine investors suffered vast losses.

...
“It is hard to wrap your head around that the president of the United States would engage in this level of self-enrichment at the expense of so many of his supporters,” said Lee Reiners, a former Federal Reserve Bank examiner who now studies cryptocurrency issues at Duke University. “This is a president of the United States who has made more money off crypto since he took office than he made in any prior year in his entire business career.”

Corruption 2026

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.

Ben Berkowitz at Axios:

 A hypothetical $1,000 invested in various stock and crypto assets on Jan. 19 — the day before Trump took office — would have produced sharply different outcomes by year's end.On the stock side, a $1,000 investment in the Nasdaq would be worth about $1,184, while the same investment in the SOCL ETF would be worth $1,272 and in Trump Media shares would be worth $331. On the crypto side, a $1,000 investment in the global cryptocurrency market cap would be worth $842, while the same investment in dogecoin would be worth $327 and in Official TRUMP would be worth $114.

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The intrigue: The retail investing public may not have done well with Trump assets in 2025, but the president and his family, by all accounts, did just fine.Forbes estimates the billionaire president's net worth has more than doubled, fueled by gains in his various crypto investments.

The magazine reports Donald Trump Jr.'s net worth rose sixfold in 2025, based also on crypto gains. In fact, just Wednesday morning, as the year closed, TMTG said it would launch a new crypto token for its shareholders.

Dave Michaels, Sadie Gurman and Aruna Viswanatha at WSJ:

 President Trump’s first year back in office turned the world of white-collar enforcement upside down. 

The Justice Department, focused on White House priorities such as immigration enforcement and violent crime, has stepped back from the kinds of complicated investigations into foreign bribery, money laundering and public corruption that former department leaders often cited among their greatest successes.

Along with that shift, administration officials have undone a number of notable Biden-era white-collar prosecutions. In some, the department dropped charges against executives that were pending. In others, Trump has used the pardon power to forgive a string of top company officials charged with or convicted of crimes related to their businesses.

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One of the most notable shifts has been in foreign bribery cases. Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act fell off a cliff this year.

The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which share authority to investigate violations, brought about 33 cases a year against companies or individuals between 2015 and 2024, according to data maintained by law firm Gibson Dunn. This year, the Justice Department brought six new FCPA cases. The SEC brought none.

Trump said the law hurt U.S. companies operating abroad and ordered a six-month freeze on new cases. Justice Department officials responded by closing nearly half of open foreign-bribery investigations and saying future cases should be connected to U.S. strategic interests, including the fight against transnational drug cartels.

The Justice Department also has backed away from the Biden administration’s enforcement of anti-money-laundering laws against big cryptocurrency exchanges that were accused of allowing users in sanctioned countries such as Iran to trade with Americans.

 

Trump Family Gets Richer

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.

David Uberti, et al. at WSJ

When President Trump ran for re-election in 2024, he and his family already had vast business interests stretching from Manhattan office towers to a golf course in Ireland to hotel deals as far away as Vietnam.

The president’s second term has brought a major expansion of that empire, with forays into cryptocurrency, communications, financial products and now, a fusion-power deal. Ventures launched since Trump’s re-election generated at least $4 billion in proceeds and paper wealth for the family as of December, according to company statements and securities filings.

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The recent expansion has made the Trumps a major player in the crypto world. They have launched a host of new ventures and products, from memecoins to data centers. The president is also pushing to relax regulations on the industry. The biggest crypto venture is World Liberty Financial. It has sold about $1.4 billion worth of WLFI tokens, a digital asset it created, The Wall Street Journal has reported. The firm also has launched USD1, a “stablecoin” whose value is pegged to the dollar and which generates significant interest income. The Trumps have a major stake in this business which is ultimately controlled by Trump and his family members through a complex ownership structure. The president has about 70% ownership of the stake through his trust, disclosures show.iness. World Liberty’s site says it is 38% owned by an entity called DT Marks Defi LLC...

In addition to their ownership interests in these businesses, the Trumps are co-founders or operators of many of them. Trump and his sons co-founded World Liberty. The Trumps receive 75% of net proceeds when World Liberty sells tokens, plus a cut of stablecoin returns. That revenue share would translate into about $1 billion in proceeds so far for the Trumps. The Trumps’ unsold tokens were worth about $3 billion as of December

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