The Trump administration has engaged in a lengthy campaign to discourage the use of antidepressants. The effort has been led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spent years spreading misinformation about these types of medications. The Trump administration has specifically targeted selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which include medications like Prozac, Lexapro, and Zoloft.

Kennedy’s claims about antidepressants mirror those of the Church of Scientology, which has a long history of disdain for psychiatry and has targeted psychiatric medications for decades. Kennedy has an ongoing financial relationship with a law firm connected to Scientology that has pursued numerous lawsuits against antidepressant manufacturers.

At a 2023 Scientology event, the church’s current leader, David Miscavige, described psychiatry as “the greatest evil on Earth.” Scientology’s main vehicle for targeting this “evil” is a nonprofit it founded called the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR). CCHR runs a museum in Los Angeles called “Psychiatry: Industry of Death” and has produced several documentaries. Among the group’s claims are that psychiatry was responsible for the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo, 9/11, and several mass shootings.

One documentary produced by CCHR focuses on the connection between antidepressants and mass shootings in the U.S. The documentary claims that many mass shooters take antidepressants and presents this as evidence that the medications are the cause. Experts say there is no evidence linking antidepressants to mass shootings. A study from Columbia found that around 4% of mass shooters had used antidepressants in their lifetime, which is less than the proportion of all adults in the U.S. who take antidepressants. The documentary also makes the false claim that “psychiatric drugs are among the most addictive on Earth” and compares some of them to cocaine.

Kennedy pushes many of the same myths about antidepressants. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Kennedy claimed that SSRIs were harder to quit than heroin. (Experts disagree with this comparison. “Antidepressants and heroin are in different universes when it comes to addiction risk,” Keith Humphreys, an addiction expert, told NPR.) Kennedy has also repeatedly suggested that SSRIs may be linked to mass shootings. In 2025, after a shooting at a school in Minnesota, Kennedy said in an interview on Fox News, “We’re launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence.”

In 2024, Kennedy said he wanted to create free “wellness farms” in rural areas where people “can go to get off of illegal drugs, off of opiates, but also legal drugs, other psychiatric drugs,” including SSRIs. This is similar to Narconon, a program run by Scientologists to help patients get off prescription medications they claim are addictive. Narconon facilities have faced multiple lawsuits from patients and families of patients who attempted or died by suicide after being taken off their psychiatric medication.

Kennedy’s financial stake in the anti-psychiatry movement

Kennedy’s connection to Scientology’s views on antidepressants is more than ideological — it’s financial.

In CCHR’s anti-SSRI documentary, a lawyer named R. Brent Wisner said, “There’s no question that there’s people right now who are in jail after committing violent crimes who never would have done that if they hadn’t taken these drugs. There’s no question that people right now are dead because of these drugs.”

Wisner’s law firm, Wisner Baum, has led dozens of lawsuits against the manufacturers of psychiatric medications and other psychiatric tools that Scientology has targeted. Kennedy referred clients to the firm and has a contingency fee agreement with them in which he receives a percentage of the payout if they win their cases. During his 2025 nomination process, Kennedy reported receiving over $850,000 in fees from Wisner Baum. He did not specify which cases generated those fees.

After senators criticized the arrangement, Kennedy said he would assign most of his payouts from Wisner Baum to “a non-dependent, adult family member,” rather than giving up the payments entirely. One of Kennedy’s sons, Conor Kennedy, also works at Wisner Baum as an attorney.

Kennedy’s campaign against SSRIs

Under Kennedy’s leadership, the Trump administration has launched a war on antidepressants.

On May 4, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced multiple initiatives to stop “psychiatric overprescribing” and encourage providers to deprescribe patients when appropriate. In a “Dear Colleague” letter, HHS encouraged providers to utilize “nonmedication approaches, such as family support, psychotherapy, nutrition, and physical activity.”

SSRIs, which are used to treat mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety, can be life-saving. Around one in six adults in the U.S. are on some type of antidepressant medication. SSRIs are the most common type of antidepressant.

Overprescription, which can refer to issues such as patients taking medications longer than necessary, is a concern in the medical community. But while the American Psychiatric Association (APA) said it supported research on the issues with prescribing and deprescribing, it objected to the Trump administration “framing the nation’s mental health crisis as primarily a problem of ‘overmedicalization’ or ‘overprescribing,’” stating it “oversimplifies a complex crisis.” The APA noted that many patients already “cannot access timely, comprehensive care,” and the initiative fails to account for other factors such as “barriers to psychotherapy.”

“Misrepresented evidence and spread misinformation”

The Trump administration efforts to discourage SSRI use began shortly after Trump started his second term. In a February 2025 order establishing Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again Commission, President Trump instructed the commission to “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription” of SSRIs and other medications to children. Multiple “MAHA” reports have since promoted the idea of the “overmedicalization” of children, including the usage of SSRIs.

In July 2025, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hosted a panel discussion about the use of SSRIs during pregnancy. The majority of the panelists promoted claims that SSRIs can lead to serious health risks for the mother and baby. Multiple groups of healthcare providers condemned claims made by the panelists, stating that “it misrepresented evidence and spread misinformation,” NPR reported.

Two members of the panel have connections to Scientology through Wisner Baum or CCHR. David Healy is a psychiatrist who has served as an expert witness for Wisner Baum in their lawsuits against antidepressant manufacturers. Another member of the panel, psychologist Roger McFillin, has posted on Substack about the “mass psychiatric drugging of America’s poorest children,” citing data from FOIA requests that was shared with him by CCHR.

“Scientology covert operative”

According to an article published by the Daily Beast, Wisner and Wisner Baum’s other partner, Michael L. Baum, are Scientologists. Popular Information could not independently verify their membership in the church, but there is evidence suggesting their involvement. Wisner is in the documentary produced by CCHR. Baum’s name appears in a stipulation of evidence from a criminal case against several prominent Scientologists over a 1970s conspiracy to steal records about Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. The stipulation describes Baum as a “Scientology covert operative” and says he was directed to “make weekly entries into [an Interpol office] where [he was] to methodically examine each file cabinet for any Interpol documents.”

The Genetic Literacy Project (GLP), a science advocacy nonprofit, says it asked Wisner Baum in 2019 to explain the firm’s connection to Scientology. GLP says that Wisner Baum did not respond and instead posted an article attacking GLP.

Scientology thanks Kennedy

Scientologists have praised Kennedy’s actions as HHS secretary to cast doubt on SSRIs.

The president of CCHR’s National Affairs Office called the May 4 initiative to stop “psychiatric overprescribing” an “extremely important step forward in correcting the nearly sole reliance on psychiatric drugs as mental health treatment—drugs which the latest scientific research finds do more harm than good.”

CCHR also issued a press release saying it “applauded the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for launching a significant initiative to address psychiatric drug prescribing,” though it encouraged HHS to go further.

Kennedy’s actions are a win a long time in the making for Scientologists.

Hubbard began waging war on the field of psychiatry in the mid-20th century after his book on the pseudoscientific psychological treatments at the core of Scientology was rejected by the medical establishment. In a 1969 article, Hubbard wrote that “the psychiatrist and his front groups operate straight out of the terrorist textbooks” and said that a psychiatrist “kidnaps, tortures and murders without any slightest police interference or action by western security forces.” He also wrote later that psychiatry was the cause of crime.

Today, Scientologists carry on Hubbard’s hatred of psychiatry. A page on the official Scientology website says “[psychiatry] is [a] staggeringly profitable business. But while psychiatrists rake in billions, society receives a new generation of life-long drug addicts and thus still more customers for psychotropic drugs.” The website claims the diseases antidepressants are meant to treat do not exist, calling it all “an elaborate and deadly hoax.”

Testifying before the House Appropriations Committee last week, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought said the US had spent $30 billion on the Iran War. The real cost is over $100 billion.

The Trump administration has offered Congress lowball war cost estimates before. On May 12, Pentagon comptroller Jay Hurst, testifying alongside Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, said the war had cost $29 billion. On April 29, Hurst said it was $25 billion. Despite repeated congressional requests, neither Hurst nor Hegseth has provided supporting documentation for the estimate. Vought hasn’t either.

The Trump administration itself has admitted that the war has cost far more than $30 billion. On June 24 — a week before Vought’s testimony — the White House formally requested $88 billion in supplemental funding from Congress, including $72 billion for the Iran War. No doubt Vought was aware of this funding request; after all, he wrote it — his signature appears on the second page.

Throughout the conflict, the cost of the Iran War has been habitually understated. Establishment media have parroted Hegseth’s defactualized cost estimates and similarly low estimates from establishment think tanks. The estimate that came closest to the Trump administration’s requested $72 billion for the war came from Popular Information. In May, we estimated the Iran War had cost $71.8 billion.

But that estimate was just for the war’s first 60 days, and the Trump administration plans on funding additional war costs through another reconciliation bill. In short — not all war costs are accounted for in that $72 billion figure. Another cost assessment is needed.

Despite de-escalation, costs continue to mount

Through four months, the US has spent more than $103 billion on the Iran War — larger than all but three countries’ military budgets. The figure refers only to direct war costs — the immediate budgetary costs directly tied to the war, including operations, personnel, and matériel.

This table provides an overview of the $103 billion in direct war costs incurred from February 28 to June 27, 2026.

Despite a lack of full-scale conflict, the US accrued $31 billion in war costs from days 60 to 120. Costs stem from US forces maintaining a wartime posture in the Middle East, enforcing a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz (after Iran had already shut down the Strait), and firing hundreds of munitions, including at least 49 Tomahawk cruise missiles during the June 10 strikes alone (FY2027 unit cost: $3.7 million). Iranian drones and missiles have inflicted additional damage to US military bases in the region and destroyed more US military equipment.

Other cost increases are related to data availability: New satellite imagery has revealed far more extensive damage to US military bases than previously known. (Under government pressure, US satellite imagery companies like Planet Labs have withheld imagery of large swaths of the Middle East, concealing damage to US military property.) The Trump administration’s supplemental funding request disclosed war costs incurred by nonmilitary US agencies, including for the State Department — $1.9 billion for diplomatic protection, civilian evacuation, embassy fortification, and equipment replacement — and the Department of Homeland Security — an additional $2 billion for operational costs incurred by the Coast Guard in assuming roles vacated by US military units to fight in the Iran War.1

Neither the Trump administration nor congressional Republicans have a plan to “pay for” the Iran War, either through a commensurate increase in taxes or reduction in spending.

Apparently, they don’t believe they ought to. “War is never paid for when you fight it,” House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-OK) said in a March interview. “We didn’t pay for World War II or Korea or World War I ... so I don’t think [the cost of the Iran war] should be offset.”

Rep. Cole is wrong. Taxes were levied in 1914, 1916, 1917, and 1919 to fund World War I; in 1940, 1941, 1942, and 1944 for World War II; and in 1950 and 1951 for the Korean War. Cutting taxes during major conflicts and financing them with the national debt is a post-9/11 contrivance, unique to the US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Iran. “How do you pay for it?” is a question imposed on many policies, but war is not one of them.

Interest on the national debt is an example of the Iran War’s indirect costs, which cover broader budgetary and economic costs like veterans care and inflation. Incorporating the full spectrum of war costs sends the Iran War’s total beyond $1 trillion over the next decade, according to Harvard University professor and public finance expert Linda Bilmes. Meanwhile, establishment media outlets like the New York Times are reporting $132 billion in combined direct and indirect war costs, not much higher than our $103 billion estimate for only the direct costs.

The $103 billion in direct costs itemized above has gone to what has become the most unpopular US war in history. Few Americans believe the Iran War is worth the cost.

A detailed methodology for the $103 billion estimate is available HERE.

Suggested citation: Popular Information, “The real cost of the Iran War: $103 billion in 120 days,” Stephen Semler, July 8, 2026, https://popular.info/p/cost-of-iran-war-120-days

On Monday, a joint investigation by Popular Information and Public Notice revealed that Kalshi has been heavily promoted by CNN and CNBC since Kalshi inked a financial partnership with both networks in December. The existence of this financial relationship, however, is inconsistently disclosed to viewers.

CNN’s response was included in the initial article. But after the story was published and spread rapidly on social media, Kalshi and CNBC also weighed in.

All three responses had one thing in common: they argued that Kalshi prediction markets are newsworthy, like other data included in journalism. CNN said that Kalshi data is “a complement to other reporting and data sources.” CNBC said that Kalshi data is “part of the broader set of market indicators.” Kalshi said, “in a world of echo chambers and clickbait, wisdom-of-the-crowd data can add additional context and perspective.”

This raises the question: if this data is being featured because of its news value, why does Kalshi need to pay CNN and CNBC to feature it?

Kalshi data is public. In the absence of a deal, there is nothing preventing CNN or CNBC from including it in their broadcasts. It only makes sense for Kalshi to pay CNN and CNBC if that secures more coverage than the networks would otherwise provide. Kalshi hinted at this in its statement, saying the deal with CNN includes “featuring our odds on Harry Enten’s show, along with other mentions across their programming” and the deal with CNBC provides “integration across their platforms, including a dedicated CNBC curated page on Kalshi.”

The CNN deal is exclusive, meaning CNN cannot mention Polymarket odds, even though Polymarket generally has more robust markets outside of sports.

Contrast this arrangement with how CNN reports on polling, which prediction market coverage generally supplements or replaces. CNN regularly reports on polls produced by companies without any kind of financial relationship because these polls are genuinely considered newsworthy. It is also free to report on polls from any source, not just one favored polling firm that pays CNN a fee.

CNBC discloses its financial relationship with Kalshi when it is “directly relevant to the story.”

The investigation by Popular Information and Public Notice documented more than 20 occasions where CNBC covered Kalshi on air or on its website but did not disclose their financial relationship. The deal between Kalshi and CNBC is extensive. CNBC invested in Kalshi and also receives a fee when it refers new users.

In response, CNBC says it “discloses commercial relationships when they are directly relevant to the story.” It defended the omissions, arguing that in those cases disclosure was not relevant

It is a puzzling position, because CNBC has included its disclosure in pieces that are substantively identical to pieces where the disclosure is omitted. For example, “As SpaceX IPO nears, traders think it’s a near-certainty Musk becomes the first trillionaire,” published May 29, includes the disclosure “CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and a minority investment.” But “SpaceX won’t reach Mars this decade, Kalshi traders say,” published June 15, does not.

Similarly, “Nearly 40% chance of stagflation by end of 2026, traders say,” published May 14, includes the disclosure. But “Inflation peaked in May as energy prices fell in June, Kalshi traders think,” published July 1, does not.

Asked to clarify how CNBC determines when its financial deal with Kalshi is “relevant” to its audience and who makes that determination, the network did not respond.

According to Kalshi’s statement, “People aren’t dumb; they hear and see these disclosures and can choose to use our data as added context or choose not to.” Kalshi did not address the numerous documented cases where the relationship between Kalshi and cable networks was not disclosed.

In December 2025, CNN and CNBC struck landmark deals with Kalshi, a leading prediction market. Since then, both networks have promoted Kalshi to viewers extensively, frequently vouching for its accuracy. The existence of a financial relationship between the networks and Kalshi, however, is disclosed to viewers inconsistently.

Since December CNBC has published 58 articles that do little more than advertise the existence of a Kalshi market related to a news event. The headlines include “Traders predict Michael Jackson hits top Spotify after biopic,” “Kalshi traders don’t see Hormuz traffic normal until July,” and “Traders say Karen Bass and Spencer Pratt will advance to runoff in high-profile LA mayoral race.” (Pratt did not advance.)

Since April, CNBC has employed a dedicated reporter to produce these articles. CNBC also maintains a page on its website featuring Kalshi prediction markets selected by CNBC editors, along with its web coverage.

Some of CNBC’s reporting about Kalshi includes the disclosure, “CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and a minority investment.” This means CNBC is paid every time it can convert a viewer to a Kalshi user. As an investor, the network also benefits if Kalshi’s overall valuation increases. CNBC is also paid directly by Kalshi for using its data, according to The Wrap.

In at least 22 cases, however, CNBC has written about Kalshi and not disclosed its financial conflict. In recent weeks CNBC has more frequently failed to include its Kalshi disclosure, including two pieces on June 10, one each on June 11, June 15, June 16, and June 23, three pieces on June 26, and one each on July 1, and July 2.

On air, where CNBC promotes Kalshi nearly every day, disclosure is also spotty.

On June 26, during a Squawk Box interview with California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, host Andrew Ross Sorkin brought up the fact that Kalshi gives Hilton a 9.5% chance of winning the election. Producers then cut to a Kalshi graphic depicting those odds while a Kalshi QR code was displayed on the screen. The hosts never acknowledged CNBC’s financial relationship with Kalshi during the segment.

Similarly, during a news rundown on June 23, CNBC correspondent Contessa Brewer claimed that “prediction markets are hot, hot, hot” and mentioned that in recent days Kalshi and Polymarket “handled billions of dollars in trading volume” without disclosing CNBC’s business relationship with Kalshi.

CNBC’s Fast Money and Squawk Box each recently hosted Kalshi co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour for extended soft-focus interviews. On June 24, for example, Squawk Box host Joe Kernen gave Mansour an open mic to portray Kalshi as a “pro-regulation company” that has kept its hands clean as “our competitors” have been mired in insider trading scandals.

While the interview did include the standard CNBC disclosure, Kernen did not ask Mansour about Kalshi’s recent insider trading scandals. Earlier that month, NPR reported former Congressman George Santos was under Department of Justice investigation for allegedly being involved with insider trading on Kalshi. Other high-profile incidents of insider trading on Kalshi involved political candidates and a MrBeast editor.

CNBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

CNN aired at least 115 segments promoting Kalshi

Since December, CNN has featured Kalshi in a segment called “The Odds” at least 115 times. In these segments, Harry Enten, CNN’s chief data analyst, frequently suggests that Kalshi predictions are more accurate than other sources. While polling relies on volunteers, Enten repeatedly reminds CNN viewers that prediction markets are driven by people who “put their money where their mouth is.”

On January 7, Enten highlighted that, in six days, the odds on Kalshi that the United States would buy part of Greenland by the end of Trump’s first term increased from 12% to 36%. Enten said this was proof that “the people putting their money where their mouth is” are “absolutely taking this seriously.”

“Whoa… way up there now to 36%,” Enten exclaimed. “A tripling in less than a week. My goodness gracious.”

Enten and his co-host, John Berman, then discussed that another Kalshi market at the time showed a 43% chance that Trump would acquire part of Greenland by any means, including militarily. Berman described it as “a pretty high chance” and said that 43% odds on a Kalshi market meant “a lot of people made bets.” Enten agreed, calling it a “very high chance.”

Berman didn’t say how many people made bets because he does not know and that information is not disclosed by Kalshi. Politics markets represent just 4% of all trading on Kalshi, according to a May 2026 Pew Research study — a fact never mentioned on air. (Sports accounts for 80% of Kalshi trading volume.)

Enten and Berman promoted the 43% chance of Trump acquiring part of Greenland as reflective of people “putting their money where their mouth is.” But an analysis of Kalshi’s own data shows the price increased from 30% to 39% between January 3-5, 2026, on just $24,000 worth of “yes” trades. The market was so thin that, on January 4, the “yes” odds briefly spiked to 60%.

During most segments of “The Odds,” a special ticker scrolls across the bottom of the screen promoting Kalshi markets on a wide variety of topics.

According to reporting in The Wrap and The New Yorker, Kalshi pays for CNN to promote its data. The deal is exclusive, meaning that CNN cannot report on Polymarket odds, even though Polymarket has a much more robust market on political topics. These segments conclude with the tag, “The Odds, brought to you by Kalshi prediction market.”

That boilerplate language makes it sound like Kalshi is a typical advertiser, when its relationship with CNN is more extensive. Kalshi regularly clips and promotes CNN’s “The Odds” segments on X, but excludes CNN’s “brought to you by” tagline.

“Prediction markets offer just one source of data that journalists can use in telling a story,” a CNN spokesman said in response to a request for comment. “It is used as a complement to other reporting and data sources, such as polling. It is not a replacement for other sources and has no impact on editorial independence.”

Political prediction markets are systemically flawed

Kalshi’s political markets, which dominate the coverage on CNN and are featured prominently on CNBC, are also the least accurate.

A February 2026 study by a researcher at the National Economics University in Vietnam analyzed 292 million trades across 327,000 contracts on Kalshi and Polymarket. The study, which has not yet been formally published, found that Kalshi’s political markets “compressed toward 50%,” meaning they systematically overvalue longshots and undervalue favorites. This is exactly what we saw with the coverage of Greenland, where a Trump pipe dream was promoted as something with a “very high chance” based on the Kalshi odds.

In another recent segment on CNN, Enten, citing Kalshi data, told viewers that Trump has an 8% chance of being featured on a $250 bill. That likely significantly overestimates the actual odds, since featuring a living person on U.S. currency has been illegal for the last 160 years. A bill to amend the law for Trump was introduced in February 2025, and although the Treasury Department has produced a mockup, no congressional action has been taken.

The author of the study theorizes that “political markets attract traders with strong, opposing convictions” which can drive the price “near 50–60% even when the true probability is substantially higher or lower.” The study argues that journalists and news consumers that take prediction market prices “at face value… are systematically misled.”

UPDATE (7/6, 11:15 a.m. Eastern): CNBC responds: “CNBC discloses commercial relationships when they are directly relevant to the story, as we do across our coverage of exchanges, data providers, and other market participants. Kalshi data is publicly available, and CNBC covers it as part of the broader set of market indicators we report on.”

UPDATE (7/6, 11:30 a.m. Eastern): In a statement, Kalshi said “we’ve always been open about our news partnerships, as have our news partners.” Kalshi, CNN, and CNBC have not disclosed the financial terms of either partnership. Asked for clarity, Kalshi said its deal with CNN involves “featuring our odds on Harry Enten's show, along with other mentions across their programming” and its deal with CNBC involves “integration across their platforms.” Kalshi added, “People aren't dumb; they hear and see these disclosures and can choose to use our data as added context or choose not to.” The statement from Kalshi did not address the numerous instances documented by Popular Information and Public Notice where no disclosure was included.

On Monday, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear Trump’s appeal of a 2023 jury verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. Trump has mocked, insulted, and degraded Carroll repeatedly since 2019. But in the end, every court rejected Trump’s defense. Trump will now have to pay Carroll $5 million.

On Tuesday, Trump released his 927-page financial disclosure, which revealed that he made at least $2.2 billion during his first year in office. While Trump is known for being a real estate developer, most of his income (around $1.4 billion) came from his crypto ventures. Much of this income comes from his most frivolous venture — the $TRUMP meme coin. But while the $TRUMP coin has proved great for Trump, most investors in the coin have taken losses. Since it first launched, the coin has lost around 97% of its value.

A Popular Information investigation revealed that Congressman Mike Collins (R-GA), who is currently running for the Senate, spent $400,000 in taxpayer money on ads that are virtually identical to his campaign ads. Collins used funds designated for his Congressional office to pay the same political ad firm that works for his Senate campaign.

The best of the rest

Across the country, local libraries and historical societies were forced to scrap plans to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary after DOGE cut their funding. The Trump administration then “redirected tens of millions of dollars from the DOGE cuts toward the president’s plans for a triumphal arch and a statuary garden of ‘American heroes’ in Washington, D.C.” (NOTUS)

The Trump administration won an agreement with Kazakhstan officials to give an American company “access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten,” a rare metal. According to the New York Times, sons of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trump were soon “doing business with partners in [the] deal that their fathers were negotiating.” (New York Times)

This week, Idaho became the first state to make the firing squad its primary method of execution. (The Guardian)

The manosphere is alive and well, influencing the thinking of a large swath of America’s young men. One survey found that more than 40% of young American men trust at least one misogynistic online figure. The 19th investigated how this has impacted the treatment of female professors on college campuses. (The 19th)

Numerical information

$500 million: Last year, White House officials quietly awarded a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million for the construction of Trump’s new White House ballroom, the Washington Post reported.

4 million: Number of people who signed up for Affordable Care Act insurance plans in 2026 that have dropped out. Prices have exploded since Republicans declined to extend healthcare subsidies last year.

$11.1 billion: The minimum amount the Trump administration paid 140,000 federal employees not to work.

Quote of the week

“In America we do not punish children for the sins of their fathers, but instead we wipe the slate clean”

— The ACLU’s Cecilia Wang after the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s bid to end birthright citizenship

Photo of the week

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump released his 927-page financial disclosure. The filing, which reveals the sources of his income, shows that Trump made at least $2.2 billion in his first year in office.

While Trump is known for being a real estate developer, the filing shows that most of his income now comes from his crypto ventures. According to the report, Trump earned around $1.4 billion from crypto-related businesses. In comparison, Trump “reported over $620 million in real estate, hotel and golf-related income.”

Much of Trump’s crypto-related income is from his most frivolous venture — the Trump meme coin, $TRUMP. Trump launched his meme coin, which is a type of crypto token tied to a celebrity or joke, on January 17, 2025, just days before his inauguration for his second term.

According to the financial disclosures, Trump’s meme coin business, CIC Digital LLC, “generated $636 million in income,” with the majority of it coming from “royalties from a license agreement with Celebration Coins,” Bloomberg reported. The income from Trump’s meme coin business includes money collected from the initial sale of 200 million tokens plus transaction fees that are siphoned off of each trade.

Trump’s reported earnings from the $TRUMP coin prove that the token is great for Trump. But investors in the coin are not reaping the same benefits. Since it first launched, the coin has lost around 97% of its value. The token reached a peak value of over $74 shortly after it launched, but, as of Wednesday, it sits at $1.66, according to Coinbase.

While the companies behind $TRUMP don’t disclose revenue, a Reuters investigation that used blockchain data found that buyers have plowed at least $1.2 billion into $TRUMP. But, based on the price of the coin as of April 30, these holdings were worth only $521 million. This amounted to “a loss of more than $700 million for buyers.” (The value of a $TRUMP token was around $2.40 on April 30, so investor losses are even larger today.)

A software project engineer, Fatime Elrgdawy, told Reuters that she put $2,000 of her savings into $TRUMP after her friend told her about an online post from Trump promoting the launch of the coin. Elrgdawy thought that “it must be a legitimate investment” if Trump was putting his name on it. But as of the end of May, her $TRUMP tokens were worth less than $120. Elrgdawy told Reuters that she now thinks the Trump meme coin “was just a pump and dump scheme.”

“I LOVE $TRUMP!!”

The $TRUMP coin has lost much of its value despite numerous efforts by the Trump family to revive interest. Trump has posted multiple times about the coin since its launch. “My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE!” Trump wrote on X on January 17, 2025. “It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING! Join my very special Trump Community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW.”

On January 31, 2025, Trump advertised the meme coin on Truth Social, writing, “I LOVE $TRUMP!!” On March 23, 2025, Trump promoted the token again on the platform, posting, “I LOVE $TRUMP — SO COOL!!! The Greatest of them all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The $TRUMP coin has also been promoted by Trump’s sons. On January 18, 2025, Eric Trump wrote on X that “$Trump is currently the hottest digital meme on earth.” The following day, Donald Trump Jr. echoed the same message.

Trump has also held multiple events to promote sales of his meme coin. On May 22, 2025, Trump held an event at his golf club in Virginia for the top owners of $TRUMP. The top 220 buyers of the coin were invited to a dinner with Trump at the golf club, “while the top 25 would attend a more intimate gathering with the president before dinner and go on a tour of the White House.” Trump promoted the event in a post on Truth Social. In April of this year, Trump held a crypto and business conference for top buyers of his meme coin at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump ends legal action against crypto exchanges that list $TRUMP

Since coming back to office, Trump has made a major effort to deregulate the crypto industry. A 2025 investigation by the New York Times found that, under the second Trump administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “had eased up on more than 60 percent of the crypto cases that were ongoing when Mr. Trump returned to the White House.”

The Trump administration has dropped prosecutions and investigations against crypto exchanges that have been favorable to his own crypto ventures. In February 2025, for example, the SEC announced that it was dismissing an enforcement case against Coinbase. In May 2025, the SEC dropped a lawsuit against Binance. The SEC also dropped a case against Kraken and an investigation into Robinhood’s crypto arm.

All of these companies have listed $TRUMP on their exchanges and promoted the token, dramatically increasing volume and boosting Trump’s returns.

Congressman Mike Collins (R-GA), the Republican nominee for a hotly contested U.S. Senate seat in Georgia, spent over $400,000 of taxpayer money designated for office expenses on TV ads that are virtually indistinguishable from his campaign ads.

Collins paid for these ads using funds provided for the operation of his congressional office. Although it is permissible for such funds to be used for “mass communications” to constituents, the House Communications Standards Manual states that such communications “should not be used for political or personal business.” Further, the manual states that mass communications paid for with office funds should contain “no campaign content” and “no content laudatory of a Member on a personal or political basis.”

“Congressman Mike Collins. Mike you were fantastic,” President Trump says at the beginning of one ad paid for with Collins’ office funds. A narrator then states, “Mike Collins is protecting Georgia by working with President Trump to pass the Laken Riley Act.” The 30-second ad concludes by playing Trump’s praise of Collins again. “He loves this state and he took this very personally,” Trump says. “Thank you, Mike.” The only indication that the ad is not a campaign ad appears in small type for four seconds: “PAID FOR WITH OFFICIAL FUNDS BY THE OFFICE OF MIKE COLLINS.”

Indeed, Collins’ Senate campaign is currently running an ad that is substantively identical. Both ads include the exact same quote from Trump praising Collins, paired with the same video. In his taxpayer-funded ad, a narrator says Collins is “protecting Georgia by working with President Trump to pass the Laken Riley Act.” In his campaign ad, Collins says he “wrote the Laken Riley Act… to protect Georgia families.”

Another reason why these ads were so similar: it appears they were created by the same political ad firm, Smart Media Group. On its website, Smart Media Group says it “powers winning campaigns” and is “trusted by all the top Republican committees.” The firm says it leverages data to produce ads that “help campaigns win elections.” The House Communications Standards Manual also prohibits the distribution of “content developed using campaign resources.”

According to the House Statement of Disbursements, where each member must report their office expenses on a quarterly basis, Collins’ House office paid Smart Media Group over $400,000 between October 2025 and March 2026. This includes a payment for $307,160 on March 16, 2026.

To put that figure in perspective, over the same six-month period, the average Congressional office spent about $33,000 on all mass communications. A Popular Information review of the spending of every House member from 2020 to the present found that the payment of over $300,000 to Smart Media by Collins’ office was the single largest recorded payment for advertising.

Meanwhile, on May 1, 2026, Collins’ Senate campaign paid Smart Media Group $400,910 for an ad buy.

Unsolicited mass communications paid for with Congressional office funds are prohibited within 60 days of an election. Collins’ taxpayer-funded ad ran through March 18, 2026, just before that 60-day cutoff ahead of the May 19 primary in Georgia.

Collins’ office did not respond to a request for comment.

Support accountability journalism

All unsolicited mass communications, including Collins’ ads, must receive an advisory opinion from the House Communications Standards Commission. Collins’ ads were approved, but the process is a rubber stamp handled by commission staff. There is no public record of any communication being rejected — or even elevated to the six-member commission for a vote.

The use of office funds to run TV and other video advertisements is a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to 2000, mass communications by Congressional offices were limited to mail. Since the 18th century, members were permitted to send mail using their signature as postage, a process known as “franking.” This was seen as a crucial mechanism “to convey information to their constituents about the operations of government and policy matters before Congress.”

In 2000, the definition of mass communications in the House was formally expanded to encompass “mailings, advertisements, automated phone calls, video or audio communications, and emails.” This opened the door to the kind of taxpayer-funded ads Collins is running.

Several other members of the House, Democrats and Republicans, produce video ads with office funds. One of the more brazen examples is Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA), who is a member of the House Communications Standards Commission. Collins’ conduct, however, stands apart due to the amount of taxpayer money he is spending, his use of campaign consultants, and the similarity of his taxpayer-funded communications to his campaign advertisements.

If Collins defeats incumbent Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) in the general election, he will have to change his conduct. There is no framework in the Senate that allows for the use of office funds for television ads.

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President Donald Trump has hit the end of the line. On Monday, the United States Supreme Court declined to consider his appeal of a 2023 jury verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. As a result, Trump will finally have to pay Carroll $5 million. And that could just be the beginning.

Carroll publicly accused Trump of sexually abusing her in an excerpt of her memoir published by New York Magazine in 2019. In the article, Carroll said that the incident occurred in the mid 1990s in New York City in a dressing room of the department store Bergdorf Goodman.

According to Carroll, she bumped into Trump at the entrance to the store, and Trump recognized her from her advice column and show. Carroll said that Trump asked her to give him advice on a present he was buying for a girl. Carroll recommended a handbag or a hat, but Trump suggested lingerie and they went to the lingerie department. According to Carroll, Trump told her to try on a bodysuit, but Carroll jokingly told Trump to try it on himself. Trump then led her to the dressing rooms.

But once they entered the dressing room, Carroll alleged that Trump forced himself upon her. “The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips,” Carroll said. Carroll said that Trump pushed her up “against the wall with his shoulder” and pulled down her tights. Carroll alleged that Trump then “unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.” Carroll said she struggled against him before getting “a knee up high enough to push him out and off” and escaping the dressing room.

Trump’s Supreme Court appeal argued that testimony from other women who allege they were sexually assaulted by Trump and the infamous Access Hollywood tape where Trump bragged about assaulting women should not have been admitted as evidence. The Supreme Court found these arguments were not worth considering.

The Supreme Court appeal was the last gasp in a lengthy smear campaign against Carroll. Since 2019, Trump has mocked, insulted, belittled, and degraded Carroll in response to her claims. In the end, none of it worked. Every court rejected Trump’s defense.

For Trump, it is a humiliating legal and political defeat.

Support accountability journalism

Trump’s efforts to discredit Carroll began in 2019, in advance of the release of Carroll’s book. “I’ve never met this person in my life,” Trump said in a June 21, 2019, statement. “She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section. Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves or sell a book or carry out a political agenda.” Trump added that Carroll and others “should pay dearly for such false accusations.”

This turned out to be some of Trump’s most restrained commentary on Carroll.

In a June 24, 2019, interview with The Hill, Trump said he could not have sexually assaulted Carroll because “she’s not my type.” He said that Carroll was “totally lying.”

After Carroll filed a defamation suit against Trump in November 2019, he had little to say for an extended period of time. But he resumed his commentary on October 12, 2022, in a statement that referred to Carroll as “Ms. Bergdorf Goodman.” Trump called Carroll’s claims “a complete con job” and claimed the existence of the suit showed that the American legal system was “a broken disgrace.” According to Trump, Carroll “completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her.” He described Carroll as “a woman who I had nothing to do with, didn’t know, and would have no interest in knowing her if I ever had the chance.” Now, Trump said, “I have to… go through years more of legal nonsense in order to clear my name of her and her lawyer’s phony attacks on me.”

In an October 19, 2022, deposition, Trump described Carroll as “a whack job,” “a nut job,” and “a sick person.” He repeated the claim that Carroll was “not my type” but when he was shown a picture of Carroll, he mistook her for one of his ex-wives, Marla Maples.

The continued attacks prompted Carroll to file a second defamation suit, based on his more recent comments, in November 2022.

In an April 26, 2023, Truth Social post, which was later deleted, Trump asked, “Does anybody believe that I would take a then almost 60 year old woman that I didn’t know, from the front door of a very crowded department store, (with me being very well known, to put it mildly!), into a tiny dressing room, and …. her.” Trump suggested the incident could not have happened because “She didn’t scream” and “never made a police complaint.”

After a jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll and was liable for defamation on May 9, 2023, Trump posted that the “partisan Judge & Jury on the just concluded Witch Hunt Trial should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for allowing such a travesty of Justice to take place.” The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages, which every appeals court upheld and the Supreme Court declined to review Monday.

In another rant, posted later that day, Trump falsely claimed Carroll said “rape is sexy” during a CNN interview, calling the comments “incriminating.” In fact, Carroll said that “most people think of rape as being sexy” — noting that it is frequently used as a plot device in movies and television — which is why she does not describe Trump’s sexual assault as rape.

“She wasn’t raped, OK?” Trump declared during a May 10, 2023, CNN town hall, “And I didn’t do anything else either... because I don’t know who the hell she is.”

On January 4, 2024, Trump posted dozens of times on Truth Social about Carroll, repeating his previous attacks and attempting to paint her as overly sexual. Trump thought it was particularly notable that Carroll named a cat “Vagina.”

“I did nothing wrong, except defend myself from false, malicious, and defamatory accusations by somebody writing a book, and deciding to put this fake nonsense into it, probably for the publicity she would get,” Trump said as part of another long social media diatribe on January 17, 2024, as the second defamation trial began. “She was not damaged, I am the one who was damaged.”

During the second trial, Trump repeatedly accused Carroll of destroying evidence. What actually happened was that Carroll acknowledged deleting some of the death threats and other disturbing messages she received since filing the lawsuits. Trump’s lawyers claimed this was a basis for a mistrial, an argument which the judge repeatedly rejected.

On January 25, 2024, Trump testified briefly in the second trial, saying he “100%” stood behind his accusation that Carroll was a liar.

Trump lost the second trial as well, and the jury ordered him to pay Carroll $83.3 million. “Absolutely ridiculous! I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party,” Trump posted in response.

Trump’s attorneys have attempted to overturn the second Carroll verdict through a variety of means, including arguing that Trump defamed Carroll in his official capacity as president and was therefore immune from prosecution. Thus far, Trump’s efforts have been unsuccessful. In May, Trump’s lawyers asked the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to stay its ruling so Trump could appeal to the Supreme Court.

That appeal is still pending. In a Truth Social post Monday morning, Trump vowed to “continue the fight… with all of my power and strength.” But after the Supreme Court elected not to consider the appeal of the first Carroll verdict, the odds are not in Trump’s favor.

One of the key provisions of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” enacted on July 4, 2025, was a major cut to nutrition assistance for low-income Americans, known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The SNAP cuts amounted to about $18.7 billion annually — about as much as the federal government spent in one week of the Iran War. Although the deepest SNAP cuts have yet to take effect, the impact of these cuts has already been devastating, particularly for children.

In Arizona, for example, enrollment in SNAP programs has plummeted by more than 50% since the state began implementing the changes mandated by the Trump administration. In June 2025, there were about 375,000 Arizona children enrolled in SNAP. In May 2026, that number had plummeted to 178,000.

There are not 200,000 fewer hungry children in Arizona today. The cost of food in the state is increasing rapidly. The Trump administration, however, has implemented a policy designed to let those children go hungry. Overall, Arizona SNAP enrollment has plummeted from about 910,000 in June 2025 to 452,000 in May 2026.

One major factor is the “Big Beautiful Bill” reduces the federal government’s contribution to the administrative costs of SNAP from 50% to 25%. Although this reduction does not formally take place until October 2026, Arizona has reduced staffing in anticipation of the cut and other federal funding reductions. The number of people at Arizona’s Department of Economic Security [DES] tasked with reviewing SNAP eligibility has fallen from 1,370 in July 2024 to 880. The staff reduction has resulted in “a backlog, with people waiting longer to get qualified.”

In December 2025, there were over 18,000 SNAP applications in Arizona that were more than 30 days old. The backlog has persisted. As a practical matter, this means when state workers review the applications, the pay stubs and other eligibility documents need to be resubmitted, further delaying the process.

Another factor restricting enrollment is the fear that Arizona will soon have to pay a significant percentage of SNAP benefit costs. Previously, the federal government provided 100% of SNAP benefit costs to states. But under the “Big Beautiful Bill” states could be required to pay up to 15% of cost.

The state contribution is linked to the SNAP “error rate.” The Trump administration conflates the “error rate” with fraud, but that is inaccurate. The error rate refers to any overpayment or underpayment of SNAP benefits. This could occur due to error of the state agency and through no fault of the beneficiary. A family, for example, could be underpaid if they have a baby and the change is not processed quickly.

In 2023, established fraud claims amounted to just 0.06% of benefits. Sara Naomi Bleich, a researcher with Harvard University, says the new Trump administration rules will likely not reduce fraud at all since it targets error rates and not fraud.

The federal government will continue to pay 100% of SNAP benefit costs for states with error rates under 6%. In 2025, Arizona’s error rate was 10.8%. If that continues in 2026, the state could soon be on the hook for up to $300 million in SNAP benefits in fiscal year 2028.

To avoid this potential liability, Arizona has taken aggressive steps to reduce its error rate below 6%. This has made it virtually impossible for some eligible families to qualify for benefits. For example, Arizona is “now requiring applicants to complete phone interviews to prove eligibility.” But, due to staffing shortages, “it’s nearly impossible to get someone from DES to answer those calls.” If the interview is not completed, the applicants’ “benefits are cut and they have to reapply again.”

Adamary Olivas, a mother who applied for SNAP benefits, told KJZZ Phoenix that “daily calls to DES routinely went unanswered” and when she finally was able to speak to someone “the paperwork required to prove eligibility for food stamps had expired.” Olivas has been stuck in this loop since October. “We have to call and we call and call and they never answer so that’s the biggest issue,” she said.

Another factor is stricter eligibility requirements. The “Big Beautiful Bill” expanded work requirements to able-bodied individuals 55 to 64, veterans, people experiencing homelessness, young adults who were part of the foster care system, and caregivers with children 14 or older. But this accounts for a maximum of 150,000 people — far fewer than have actually lost benefits.

The pain behind the numbers

The SNAP cuts, along with higher food prices, have created “a lot more desperation and a lot more gut-wrenching hunger,” Jessica Berg, who runs a major food bank in Arizona, told Axios Phoenix. Natalie Jayroe, CEO of Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, told NBC News that it is “a frightening time for the folks we serve“ with “overwhelming uncertainty and anxiety.”

Jason Reed, President & CEO of United Food Bank, said flatly that “Arizona food banks cannot replace the scale of meals provided by the SNAP program.” Food banks already serve hundreds of thousands of Arizonans every month but “we are simply not equipped to handle the giant increase in demand,” Reed said.

More Arizona families find themselves in crisis. “I don’t have a job right now, that’s why I’m applying, and I’m needing it. I have kids and I’m still pending and it’s been taking more than 60 days,” Monice Soto told KJZZ Phoenix while waiting in line at a food bank. “We’ve been having a really really hard time trying to buy food.”

Tiffany Hudson, an Arizona mother, had previously been receiving $600 monthly from SNAP to supplement her income as a caretaker until her benefits were cut off without warning earlier this year. “It’s been really hard. We’ve been going to food banks every week,” Hudson, who has a 7-year-old son, told NBC News. “We’re eating less, we’re eating more frozen stuff.”

Thus far, the SNAP reductions in Arizona have outpaced the rest of the country. But the state could be a harbinger of what is to come nationally. Arizona has chosen to make major changes in anticipation of the new rules going into effect. But soon, every state will be forced to either absorb massive new costs or let many people, including children, go hungry.

A new class action lawsuit alleges corporate gas station owners in California are using an AI-powered algorithm to avoid competition and inflate prices.

Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the state’s Republican runoff for US Senate by nearly 30 points, delivering a resounding defeat to incumbent Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). As Attorney General, Paxton has been indicted on felony securities fraud charges, investigated by the SEC, impeached by the Texas House, and sued by the State Bar of Texas for professional misconduct. He was repeatedly accused of using his government position for personal gain — including by members of his staff.

In a cabinet meeting at the White House on August 26, 2025, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum praised President Trump for spearheading a rule change for the U.S. Park Police, allowing them to freely engage in vehicle pursuits. A few days ago, an innocent bystander was killed after being struck by a car fleeing a Park Police pursuit — the second fatality in less than a year stemming from Trump’s policy change.

The best of the rest

This week, Texas’s Republican-controlled State Board of Education issued preliminary approval for a rewrite of the state’s social studies curriculum. The new guidelines deemphasize global history outside of Europe and exclude most negative aspects of U.S. and Texas history. The board also gave initial approval to a new reading list, which would include Bible stories for students as young as six. The board will take a final vote on both proposals on Friday. (The Texas Tribune)

The prediction market Polymarket has paid dozens of influencers to record videos of themselves placing and winning bets on what appears to be the Polymarket site. But a Wall Street Journal analysis of over 1,000 of these videos found that in many cases the bets were fake, placed on dummy websites created by Polymarket. (The Wall Street Journal)

On most issues, political polarization is at an all time high. Data centers, however, are a notable exception. Seventy percent of Americans oppose constructing data centers in their local area, including 75 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans. Lawmakers in red and blue states alike have passed legislation to restrict the construction of new data centers. (Grist)

A climate change study published more than two decades ago has long shaped views about how to combat climate change. The “wedge” study came out of Princeton and advocated for maintaining oil, natural gas, and coal in the energy system and attempting to mitigate their impact through carbon capture. This week, ProPublica reported that the study was heavily influenced by BP as a part of a larger effort by fossil fuel companies to shape climate change research to serve their interests. (ProPublica)

Numerical information

20: The total number of detainee deaths in ICE facilities this year, after a 63-year-old man died in custody in Laredo, Texas this month.

30 years: The sentence given to Daniel Sanchez Estrada for moving a box of anti-fascist zines after a protest at an ICE detention center in Alvarado, Texas.

38-2: So far this election cycle, 38 of the 40 candidates backed by Fairshake, the super PAC funded by top crypto companies, have won their primary elections.

Quote of the week

“These are the strongest, toughest men on earth. No women in the crowd, which is nice… You’ve got the muscles, you guys, you’ve got the big strong muscles.” — Trump, describing UFC fighters at a Pennsylvania rally this week

Photo of the week

Burgum said he was “shocked” to find out that Park Police were not able to pursue vehicles in all circumstances. The prior rules limited police chases to incidents involving violent crimes. But, Burgum announced, “we got that rule changed in 24 hours because of President Trump’s leadership.”

According to Burgum, “the next night” the Park Police had “so much fun” chasing “bad guys.” Trump and other cabinet officials laughed. He also characterized the new policy as “a lighter note.”

The Park Police union, linking to Burgum’s remarks, joined in on the fun on X.

10 months later, an innocent bystander — 46-year-old delivery driver Nolberto Meza — is dead. Meza died when his moped was struck by a vehicle being chased by Park Police. The chase would not have been permissible before the policy change because police were not pursuing suspects engaged in a violent crime.

Meza is at least the second fatality directly related to Trump and Burgum’s policy. In March, a Park Police chase resulted in the death of 18-year-old Josue Chavez when a vehicle “struck a tree and burst into flames.”

The policy change for Park Police vehicle pursuits was purportedly a temporary measure related to President Trump’s August 11, 2025 executive order “Declaring a Crime Emergency In The District Of Columbia,” which expired in 30 days. (In 2024, crime in DC was actually “the lowest it has been in over 30 years.”) But the new vehicle pursuit policy, formally issued on August 14, 2025, has never been rescinded or replaced.

In a September 24, 2025, letter to Burgum and Park Police Chief Scott Brecht, Congressman Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) said they had learned Park Police “personnel have nevertheless continued engaging in these high-speed pursuits.” Huffman and Ansari wrote that “it remains unclear what legal authority, if any, currently authorizes the USPP to conduct these dangerous chases, other than presidential fiat.”

The extreme danger of police chases

While Burgum played up police chases for laughs, the acute danger of police vehicle pursuits has been well-established. A report of the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 1990 described vehicles as “the deadliest weapon in the police arsenal.”

According to a study published by the American Medical Association, there were approximately 4,415 fatalities resulting from police vehicle pursuits between 2017 and 2021. Most of these pursuits were related to minor offenses. A 2023 report by the DOJ and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) found that “more than 90 percent of pursuits are initiated because of traffic violations.”

Police vehicle pursuits are extremely dangerous. According to the PERF report, “crashes occur in at least 30 percent of vehicle pursuits, and injuries or fatalities occur in 5 to 17 percent of pursuits.” Worse, more than 20% of serious injuries are inflicted on “persons not involved in the pursuit.”

The recommendation of the PERF report is that pursuits should occur only when both “a violent crime has been committed” and “the suspect poses an imminent threat to commit another violent crime.” This is close to the standard that existed for Park Police before Trump pushed for a change. Notably, a 2021 study in Virginia “found no evidence suggesting that reducing the likelihood of pursuits generates an increase in criminal activity.”

In light of this data, there has “been a several decadeslong trend in tightening pursuit policies.” The Trump administration’s policy allowing for more police chases is an aberration.

Suspects released from custody without charges

Initially, the 24-year-old driver of the car that killed Meza was charged with second-degree murder and the two passengers, a 19-year-old and a juvenile, were charged with unauthorized use of a vehicle. The car, a Honda Accord, had allegedly been stolen.

But the charges against the two adult men were dropped and they were both released from custody. (The status of the charge against the juvenile is unclear.) The U.S. Attorney’s office said it did not yet have enough information to make a charging decision. It is possible that charges against the men could be refiled later.

“[Nolberto] left here with dreams, goals, not for his life to be taken away in that way because I feel like this is not fair,” Marlin Meza, Nolberto’s sister, said. “I want justice for my brother.”

Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the state’s Republican runoff for US Senate by nearly 30 points, delivering a resounding defeat to incumbent Senator John Cornyn (R-TX).

Paxton’s victory was even more impressive considering the ethical controversies that have plagued his tenure as an elected official. As Attorney General, Paxton has been indicted on felony securities fraud charges, investigated by the SEC, impeached by the Texas House, and sued by the State Bar of Texas for professional misconduct. He was repeatedly accused of using his government position for personal gain — including by members of his staff.

Paxton began his political career more than two decades ago, when he was elected to the Texas House in 2003. He became a state senator in 2013 and then took office as Texas Attorney General in 2015. Paxton is married to another Texas state senator, Angela Paxton, although the couple is currently getting divorced.

Before Paxton’s political career began, he was a lawyer with less than $175,000 in assets. Now, he is a multimillionaire.

Along with ethical scandals, Paxton has pursued a far-right ideological agenda, enthusiastically embracing President Trump’s most controversial positions. He has played a key role in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, invalidate Obamacare, and roll back rights for LGBTQ Americans.

Paxton’s fate in the November general election could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. Over the next four months, the cost of the race between Paxton and the Democratic candidate, James Talarico, is expected to reach well into the nine figures.

Some Democrats believe that Paxton’s extreme ideology and political baggage make it easier for Talarico to win. However, in his two decades in public office, Paxton has yet to lose an election.

Indicted for felony securities fraud

Within months of taking office as Texas attorney general in 2015, Paxton was indicted by a state grand jury on felony securities fraud charges. The indictment alleged that Paxton recruited investors for tech start-up Servergy without disclosing that the company was compensating him. Paxton worked with Servergy in 2011, while he was still a Texas state representative. His undisclosed agreement with Servergy also led to federal civil charges, but those were dismissed by a judge in 2017.

The Texas charges took nearly a decade to resolve. Paxton reached a deal with prosecutors just before a trial was set to begin in 2024. Paxton agreed to pay $300,000 in restitution, perform community service, and complete ethics training.

Accused of abusing public office to cover up affair

Paxton has acknowledged engaging in an extramarital affair — a notable admission for a politician who emphasizes traditional family values. He was also accused of abusing his position as attorney general to cover it up.

In 2018, Paxton told his staff at the Texas Attorney General’s office that he had an affair with a woman who was then an employee for a Republican state senator. At the meeting, Paxton claimed the affair was over and he was committed to his marriage.

However, in 2020 eight members of Paxton’s staff issued a whistleblower report alleging that the affair was ongoing and that Paxton had abused the attorney general’s office in order to cover it up. This whistleblower report eventually led to a yearslong lawsuit and Paxton’s impeachment by the Texas House.

Most recently, in July 2025, Paxton’s wife filed for divorce on “biblical grounds,” citing “recent discoveries.” It is not exactly clear what those discoveries were, but the divorce filings state Paxton “committed adultery.” A trial related to the divorce proceeding, scheduled for this month, was abruptly cancelled on June 2.

Favors for a political donor

The whistleblowers on Paxton’s staff also alleged that, in 2020, Paxton abused his office to deliver favors to real estate developer and political donor Nate Paul. The whistleblowers claim that Paxton helped Paul after Paul gave a job to the woman with whom Paxton was having the affair. In a deposition, Paul acknowledged hiring the woman, but said it was not a favor to Paxton.

The whistleblowers claimed Paxton took unusual steps to help Paul through his office, potentially breaking the law. In two instances, Paxton intervened in legal cases Paul was involved in. In another, Paxton had his office issue a legal opinion which helped Paul avoid foreclosure on several properties throughout Texas. Finally, in 2020, Paxton paid a private attorney $300 per hour to investigate claims by Paul that state and federal authorities had committed wrongdoing when they raided his office and home the year before.

While no charges were filed against Paxton as a result of the whistleblower complaint, it did result in a lengthy lawsuit over whether Paxton retaliated against four of the whistleblowers by firing them. In 2023, Paxton reached a tentative $3.3 million settlement with the whistleblowers, but it was contingent on approval of the funds by state legislators — which was not granted.

In 2025, a judge ordered Paxton’s office to pay the whistleblowers $6.6 million. Paxton appealed this decision, but dropped his appeal a few months later. The payment still needs to be appropriated by the legislature, and may begin accruing interest if the whistleblowers are not paid soon.

Offering a sweetheart plea deal to a child sex abuser

In April 2026, Paxton’s office entered a plea deal with Adam Hoffman, who was charged with repeatedly sexually abusing a young boy, that resulted in Hoffman pleading guilty to two misdemeanors and spending only 30 days in jail.

The victim’s mother has publicly criticized the deal. In a statement, she accused prosecutors from Paxton’s office of using the promise of not having to testify again to manipulate her son into agreeing to the deal. She also said that the case was “treated differently” because Hoffman’s defense attorney, Gerry Morris, has also represented Nate Paul.

This deal drew significant criticism from Cornyn during the primary, and Talarico has moved to make it a key issue in the general election. Last week, Talarico held a press conference in which he accused Paxton of protecting Hoffman over the child he abused and demanded that the attorney general’s office release all of its files related to the case.

Impeached by Texas Republicans

After the proposed 2023 settlement of the whistleblowers’ lawsuit, the Texas House began investigating the whistleblowers’ initial complaint about Paxton’s affair and relationship to Paul. On May 24, 2023, the lawyers who conducted the investigation presented their findings and three days later, the Texas House — including a majority of Paxton’s fellow Republicans — voted to impeach Paxton, resulting in his suspension from office.

In September, House impeachment managers argued during Paxton’s Senate impeachment trial that his actions to benefit Paul were motivated by a desire to continue his affair, but hide it from his wife and his religious voters. They failed, however, to secure the necessary two-thirds of votes in the Senate. Paxton was acquitted and reinstated as attorney general.

Earlier this month, the lawyer who defended Paxton during his impeachment and securities fraud case endorsed Talarico, saying that Paxton “has lost sight of his core mission, which is to represent the people of Texas.”

Filing a lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election

Paxton was one of the loudest voices in Trump’s campaign to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. Just weeks after the election, Paxton filed a lawsuit against four battleground states that Biden won, claiming that their pandemic-era voting changes were unconstitutional and thus the states should be prevented from casting their electoral college votes. Trump had high hopes for the case, calling it “the big one.” The Supreme Court rejected the suit shortly after Paxton filed it, saying that Texas lacked standing.

Paxton spoke alongside Trump at the January 6 rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol building. In his speech, Paxton promised that “we will not quit fighting.” After the attack, Paxton falsely claimed that the riot was carried out by antifa, rather than Trump supporters.

Two years after Paxton’s failed lawsuit, the State Bar of Texas sued Paxton for professional misconduct, alleging that he had misrepresented the evidence he claimed to have about election integrity in the four battleground states. The suit could have resulted in Paxton’s disbarment, but it was ultimately dropped.

Pursuing frivolous “voter fraud” cases

From 2018 to 2023, Paxton pursued about 100 criminal cases against people he suspected of voter fraud, some of which involved the 2020 election. Voter fraud is rare in Texas and across the country.

In one case, Paxton accused a local official of illegally possessing 17 absentee ballots, but the lawsuit did not describe how or why he had them. The official named in the lawsuit called it ridiculous, saying to the Texas Tribune, “Nobody runs a ballot harvesting operation for 17 votes. Seventeen-hundred votes? OK, I get it. Maybe even 200 votes, but 17? Give me a break. You know, that’s just stupid.”

Ultimately, many of the cases fell apart after a ruling that the attorney general does not have the power under the Texas constitution to unilaterally pursue criminal charges without local prosecutors signing on to the cases.

Using consumer protection laws to pursue political targets

In 2024, ProPublica published a report detailing Paxton’s extensive use of laws meant to shield consumers from deceptive practices by corporations to target organizations that do not align with his political agenda. The report found that Paxton used consumer protection laws to launch over a dozen investigations over two years but not a single one was triggered by a complaint from a consumer.

Using this approach, Paxton sought to prevent an out-of-state hospital from providing care for trans youth and stop a decades-old non-profit from helping shelter migrants. Other targets included pharmaceutical companies who make medications used in gender affirming care, Covid vaccine manufacturers, and a media watchdog that published an article highlighting how ads for major companies appeared next to racist and antisemitic posts on X.

Leading the charge to nullify Obamacare as unconstitutional

In 2018, Paxton filed a lawsuit on behalf of Texas and nineteen other states arguing that the 2010 Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional. Because the 2018 lawsuit occurred under the Trump administration, the Department of Justice actually joined the plaintiffs in the case, arguing against Obamacare. Eventually, in 2021, the Supreme Court ruled against Paxton.

Blocking abortion access for a woman whose life was in danger

In 2023, Paxton threatened to prosecute any doctor who performed an abortion on Kate Cox, a Texas woman whose life was in danger from a non-viable pregnancy, despite a court order stating that she was eligible for an abortion under state law. Eventually, Cox was forced to leave Texas in order to get an abortion.

Encouraging clerks to deny same-sex marriage licenses

Since the beginning of his tenure as attorney general, Paxton has worked to claw back LGBTQ rights. In 2015, during his first year in the office, Paxton told clerks they could refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in all 50 states and that pro bono lawyers would be available to help them.

Blaming “transgenderism” for Charlie Kirk’s murder

After Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September 2025, Paxton released a statement blaming Kirk’s death on “transgenderism,” among other “corrupted ideologies,” and calling it a “cancer on our culture.”

A new federal lawsuit alleges that gas station companies across California are engaged in an illegal conspiracy, powered by AI software, to raise prices.

The class action lawsuit claims the corporate owners of over 1,700 California gas stations — including Marathon Petroleum, 7-Eleven, Walmart, and Circle K — are using Kalibrate, an AI-powered platform, as part of “a conspiracy to extinguish retail price competition.” Kalibrate, the complaint argues, “relies on the data of competing gas stations to coordinate high prices and wring more money from the pockets of consumers throughout the state.”

According to the complaint, gas stations that use Kalibrate software charge between 6 cents and 30 cents more per gallon. In California, “a single cent increase at the pump will drain a whopping $134 million from California drivers’ wallets every year across the state.”

As the lawsuit notes, gas stations traditionally “competed for customers by aggressively undercutting one another’s retail prices.” Independent operators “chase one another’s prices down as far as they were able (taking account of their costs), in the hope of convincing more drivers to fuel at their pumps.”

Kalibrate encourages gas station owners to abandon this system and allow their AI software to automatically determine prices. The software, known as Kalibrate Fuel Pricing, connects directly to gas station signs and pumps. “Kalibrate promises that if gas stations surrender their pricing decisions and competitively sensitive cost and volume data to Kalibrate Fuel Pricing, the software will enable them to avoid competing with other area stations and to charge higher prices to consumers,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit quotes extensively from Kalibrate’s interface and marketing materials. In one striking example, the plaintiffs highlight a feature that allows gas stations to coordinate a “restoration,” which the complaint describes as “a phenomenon where nearly all gas stations in an area raise their prices contemporaneously and by a large amount.” Kalibrate’s software “includes a feature that allows customers to initiate or join these market-wide price hikes.”

Kalibrate’s marketing materials warn gas station owners that when faced with “falling oil prices… it’s critical to avoid a race to the bottom.” The company advises gas stations to avoid “sacrificing margin” to increase their volume of sales.

Prospective customers, according to the lawsuit, are told that using Kalibrate will give them “complete visibility on your competitors.” The company’s marketing materials also warn gas station owners that lowering prices could trigger “a downward spiral and has negative implications for everyone operating in that market.”

Notably, the lawsuit claims “Kalibrate also has shown potential customers the confidential, non-public, competitively sensitive information of competing gas stations—including non-public, competitively sensitive fuel sales volumes—that Kalibrate would make available to them.”

Kalibrate touts that its software will help operators “squeeze out profits” by selling fewer gallons of gas at higher prices. In one example highlighted by the company, a station using Kalibrate’s software sees its volume of sales decrease by 2.2% but its profits increase by $587 per week.

Although the lawsuit is focused on California, “Kalibrate Fuel Pricing is widely used in the United States.” Kalibrate claims that it “sets fuel prices for ‘8 of the top 10 fuel retailers in the USA,’ and for 14 of the top 20 convenience store chains.”

The new law at the heart of the lawsuit

The lawsuit against Kalibrate and its customers is based on AB 325, an amendment to California’s antitrust laws that went into effect on January 1, 2026. Under AB 325, it is “unlawful for a person to use or distribute a common pricing algorithm as part of a contract, combination in the form of a trust, or conspiracy to restrain trade or commerce in violation of this chapter.” A “common pricing algorithm” is defined broadly as “any methodology, including a computer, software, or other technology, used by two or more persons, that uses competitor data to recommend, align, stabilize, set, or otherwise influence a price or commercial term.”

“Kalibrate Fuel Pricing is software used by two or more persons that uses competitor data to recommend, align, stabilize, set, and influence gasoline prices,” the complaint alleges.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue that AB 325 “was enacted to make clear that companies cannot evade liability for fixing prices by delegating their illegal trusts to an algorithm.” In other words, just because AI allows gas stations to avoid meeting in the proverbial “smoke-filled room” to fix prices, it doesn’t make their conduct permissible.

The new law was passed in response to companies like RealPage, which uses an AI-powered algorithm to set rents in apartment buildings. A lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2024 accused RealPage of selling “software to landlords that collects nonpublic information from competing landlords and uses that combined information to make pricing recommendations.” RealPage allegedly cost renters $3.8 billion in 2023, according to a 2024 report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Under the Trump administration, the DOJ settled its case against RealPage in exchange for some modest reforms on how the software operates. 10 states, however, are continuing their litigation against the company.

A network of purportedly progressive super PACs, spending millions in Democratic primaries across the country, is funded by a Republican dark money group, the American Prosperity Alliance (APA).

Newly filed FEC documents reveal that three PACs that claim to oppose Trump and Republican policies — Lead Left PAC, Real Change PAC, and California Blue PAC — are wholly funded by Conservative Americans PAC, another super PAC. Conservative Americans PAC, in turn, received all of its funding this cycle, over $30 million, from the APA.

The APA is a key part of the GOP financial infrastructure. It was established in 2022 and received $5.5 million in seed funding from the American Action Network, a non-profit associated with the House Republican super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund. Brian Walsh, a top aide to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R), is a senior advisor to the APA, according to a 2024 report in NBC News. Walsh was a founder and former president of the Congressional Leadership Fund and former president of the American Action Network.

Since 2022, the APA has raised over $100 million from undisclosed sources. Millions of dollars were routed from the APA, usually through intermediaries, to the Congressional Leadership Fund and its sister organization, the Senate Leadership Fund. The APA has also funneled cash to MAGA Inc, President Trump’s super PAC, the Republican Convention, and a host of other Republican groups. The APA does not have to disclose its donors because it is organized as a 501(c)(4) non-profit group.

Earlier this month, Popular Information connected Lead Left PAC, Real Change PAC, and California Blue PAC to the Congressional Leadership Fund through shared vendors, personnel, and addresses. Lead Left, for example, listed its address as a mailbox at a Staples at 2241 North Monroe Street in Tallahassee, Florida. Of the roughly 48,500 distinct political committees that have filed with the FEC since 2016, only two others share an address with Lead Left. Both of those committees are connected to the Crosby Ottenhoff Group, the political compliance firm founded by Caleb Crosby, the treasurer of the Congressional Leadership Fund.

The money trail, however, removes any remaining doubt about the true motivations of Lead Left and the other sham PACs. They have sought to bolster Democratic candidates that Republicans believe will be weaker in the general election, including fringe candidates with repugnant views.

In Texas’ 35th District, for example, Lead Left spent over $1 million supporting Maureen Galindo in the Democratic primary. Galindo, a sex therapist, pledged to transform ICE detention centers into a “prison for American Zionists” and a “castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists.” Galindo’s campaign raised less than $11,000, of which $4,100 was a contribution from the candidate.

Galindo lost to Democrat Johnny Garcia in the May runoff. But in Maine, Real Change PAC spent $500,000 boosting Matt Dunlap, who won the primary in Maine’s 2nd District. Dunlap is not a fringe candidate; he currently serves as Maine's state auditor. But establishment Democrats supported his chief opponent, state Senator Joe Baldacci (D). Republicans are betting that Dunlap, a more progressive candidate endorsed by Our Revolution, the group founded by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), will be easier to defeat in November.

Popular Information previously reported that Real Change PAC sent a message to supporters from a cavalryllc.com email address — the domain of one of DC’s top Republican communications shops. The CLF spent over $10 million in the 2024 cycle buying digital ads through Cavalry LLC.

A fourth sham PAC, Progressive Champions PAC, has spent $1.5 million attacking Cait Conley, a Democratic candidate in New York’s 17th Congressional District. Progressive Champions PAC’s ads claim that Conley is “not progressive” and tie her to President Trump.

Progressive Champions PAC is so new that it has not yet had to disclose its funders. But there is little doubt it is part of the same GOP network. On Saturday, Progressive Champions PAC and the other three sham PACs filed their FEC reports in the same 32 second window — all using the same Republican compliance software, Crimson Filer.

Conley is facing off against Democrat Beth Davidson in the June 23 primary. The general election is expected to be one of the most expensive and hotly contested races in the country. The incumbent, Congressman Mike Lawler (R-NY), is one of three Republicans who represent a House district won in 2024 by former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Progressive Champions PAC’s ads, which are also running online, claim that Conley is “not progressive” and tie her to President Trump.

A Popular Information investigation, however, reveals that Progressive Champions PAC is tied to the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), the super PAC of the House Republican leadership. Progressive Champions PAC is part of a network of sham “progressive” PACs attempting to influence key Democratic primaries across the country.

Previously, Popular Information reported that Real Change PAC, another sham PAC, sent a message to supporters from a cavalryllc.com email address — the domain of one of DC’s top Republican communication shops. The CLF spent over $10 million in the 2024 cycle buying digital ads through Cavalry LLC.

The FEC’s detailed e-filing records, available through the agency’s API, reveal that Real Change PAC and Progressive Champions PAC were created five minutes apart — Real Change PAC on May 11 at 5:35 PM and Progressive Champions PAC on May 11 at 5:40 PM.

The timing is not the only data point linking the two super PACs. Real Change PAC has been active in New Jersey and Maine. Progressive Champions PAC just booked a major ad buy in New York. But, as Cook Political Report’s Erin Covey noted, both super PACs list Bryant Bank, a small community institution in Alabama, as their bank of record.

According to FEC records, over the last 10 years, Bryant Bank has only been used by a handful of committees, all connected to Alabama. The most prominent political customer of Bryant Bank is Congressman Gary Palmer (R-AL). Palmer has used Bryant Bank for his joint fundraising committee, Palmer Victory, since 2016 and also uses Bryant Bank for his main campaign committee, Gary Palmer for Congress, and his leadership PAC, Conservative Promises.

Notably, Gary Palmer co-founded the Alabama Policy Institute in 1989 and served as the organization’s president from its founding until he ran for Congress in 2014. When he left, Palmer turned over the reins to Caleb Crosby, who was working at the Alabama Policy Institute as its CFO. “Caleb has the passion and the knowledge to lead the Alabama Policy Institute and take the organization to the next level,” Palmer said.

Today, Caleb Crosby is the treasurer of the CLF.

Previously, Popular Information linked another sham PAC active this year, Lead Left, to Crosby. Lead Left spent nearly $900,000 supporting Maureen Galindo, a Democratic House candidate in Texas. Galindo, a sex therapist, pledged to transform ICE detention centers into a “prison for American Zionists” and a “castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists.” Her campaign has raised less than $11,000, of which $4,100 was a contribution from the candidate.

Lead Left listed its address as a Staples in Tallahassee, Florida that had only been used previously by two committees. Both of those committees were connected to the Crosby Ottenhoff Group, the political compliance firm founded by Crosby.

There is another clue linking both Progressive Champions PAC and Real Change PAC to Republican infrastructure. Both super PACs recently filed form F99, changing their filing frequency from quarterly to monthly. When they did so, FEC metadata shows both forms were submitted using Crimson Filer, “the premiere compliance filing software for Republicans.”

One sticking point in the peace negotiations with Iran is the status of $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets. The Trump administration is reportedly pursuing a plan to “use Iranian assets to help U.S. Gulf allies recover from damage caused by Tehran’s regime during the Iran war.” The move highlights Jared Kushner’s conflict of interest as a top negotiator for the Trump administration while also being the private equity manager of billions of dollars in funds from foreign governments.

Polymarket’s CEO once bragged that the prediction market company is a “global truth machine” that is “solving misinformation.” However, Popular Information found this week that Polymarket sponsored X posts from a network of 16 far-right influencers pushing election conspiracy theories. The influencers, who have a collective audience of 13 million, include far-right content creator Benny Johnson and a former InfoWars host who spent time in jail for his role in January 6.

Following Popular Information’s reporting, Polymarket said that the X posts pushing election conspiracy theories violated company marketing guidelines and asked the influencers to remove the “paid partnership” label from their posts. As of Wednesday afternoon, seven posts Popular Information highlighted were deleted entirely and six had the label removed.

The best of the rest

An analysis by the Marshall Project and MS NOW found that under the second Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained “at least 500 babies and toddlers.” Between January 2025 and March 2026, on an average day, ICE held 25 children aged three and under in custody. (The Marshall Project and MS NOW)

A woman is suing a religious hospital after it delayed care for her ectopic pregnancy, which she alleges resulted in her losing her fertility. This happened despite the hospital being in Illinois, where “reproductive rights are enshrined in law and medical providers are required to offer emergency care regardless of religious beliefs.” (The Guardian)

GEO Group, one of the largest private operators of immigration detention centers in the U.S., is suing the state of Colorado to block a recently passed law that requires regular health inspections of its facilities. Lawmakers say they proposed the law after hearing reports that detainees were living in unsafe conditions and receiving inadequate medical care at detention centers in the state. Popular Information has reported on similar conditions in California. (Colorado Public Radio)

Until a few months ago, the Trump administration had been punishing energy companies in India for buying Russian oil. One of the main companies affected by this policy is owned by the Ambani family. A few months after Donald Trump Jr. met with Anant Ambani late last year, the family made a massive investment in a Texas oil refining start-up in which Trump Jr. had secretly acquired a stake. The investment coincided with Trump easing sanctions and allowing the purchase of Russian oil, a major win for the Ambanis. (ProPublica)

Numerical information

4.2%: Inflation reached 4.2% in May, the highest level seen since early 2023.

22%: A report released this week by Social Security’s trustees indicated that Social Security is “on track to become insolvent by the end of 2032,” in which case monthly checks for beneficiaries would be cut 22%.

$250 million: The amount of money spent on bombs dropped on Iran on Wednesday night alone, according to President Trump.

Quote of the week

“The deal could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now.” — Vice President JD Vance on the timeline for a deal with Iran to end the war

Photo of the week

On Monday, Popular Information revealed that a network of at least 16 online influencers was pushing election misinformation in posts on X sponsored by Polymarket, a popular online prediction market. The posts claimed, without evidence, that the Los Angeles mayoral election was “rigged” against reality TV star Spencer Pratt, a Republican candidate. The influencers pushing these conspiracies — including former InfoWars host Owen Shroyer and far-right content creator Benny Johnson — have a collective audience of 13 million.

Polymarket did not respond to Popular Information’s request for comment for Monday’s story, or to a similar inquiry from Semafor. The company has previously used sensationalism on X as a way to generate engagement and interest.

But, after Monday’s investigation gained traction, Polymarket determined that the X posts violated its policies. “Our existing marketing guidelines explicitly prohibit affiliates from providing misleading or false information, and we will continue to monitor and ensure compliance with our paid contributors,” Polymarket told Popular Information in a Wednesday statement.

Content creators partnering with Polymarket agree to publish a certain number of posts promoting the company each month. Polymarket has informed creators that posts promoting election conspiracies violate their agreement and is requesting the “Paid Partnership” label be removed.

As of Wednesday afternoon, seven of the Polymarket-sponsored X posts flagged by Popular Information had been deleted entirely, six had the “Paid Partnership” label removed, and three had not been changed.

Polymarket declined to comment on whether it was ending its overall partnership with far-right influencers or whether its actions were limited to the specific posts with election misinformation.

Communities across the country are fighting new data center projects due to concerns about environmental impacts, energy usage, and water consumption. But states are not just allowing these data centers to be built. In many cases, they are providing billions of dollars in tax breaks to incentivize data center construction.

Thirty-eight states offer companies some sort of tax incentive for data centers, which house the technological infrastructure that powers AI models, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. States provide a variety of incentives, including waiving sales tax on construction materials or computer equipment.

Many of these tax breaks have been in place for years, but as the AI industry has grown exponentially, the cost of the tax breaks has ballooned. Some states are now forfeiting billions of dollars in tax revenue.

Data centers provide limited long-term economic benefits to communities because they create very few permanent jobs. According to a 2025 Business Insider analysis, while data centers provide job opportunities while they are being constructed, “even the largest data centers generally employ fewer than 150 permanent workers.” In some states, the tax breaks “can amount over time to more than $2 million for every permanent, full-time job.” In Illinois, for example, a Microsoft data center “received more than $38 million in data center sales tax exemptions but created just 20 permanent jobs,” according to CNBC.

Meanwhile, the AI industry is engaging in a furious lobbying campaign to keep these tax breaks in place. Many of the companies involved in the effort, including Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Google, are highly profitable and have market caps of over a trillion dollars.

A 100% sales tax exemption for 40 years in Ohio

At the end of May, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) announced that he was putting a tax break for new data centers on pause after it created a massive hole in the state budget. Ohio projected that the tax exemption would cost $136 million in fiscal year 2025, but it ended up costing over $1.5 billion. Agreements with Amazon, Meta, and Google included 100% sales tax exemptions for up to four decades on any facility built in Ohio.

The data center industry has a heavy lobbying presence in the state. According to the state’s lobbying database, the AI industry employs at least 37 lobbyists in Ohio, with Google (22), Meta (8), and Amazon (7) topping the list. The Data Center Coalition, a trade group whose members include major companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, employs three lobbyists in the state. (Some lobbyists represent multiple companies.) A nonprofit created by the Data Center Coalition called Connected Ohio has spent between $8,600 and $10,298 on Facebook ads promoting data centers since the start of May, according to Signal Ohio.

In 2014, Amazon signed an agreement for a full sales tax exemption under an affiliate, Vadata Inc. The agreement, which could last through 2055, was originally estimated to cost the state “$77 million in uncollected tax revenue,” but “the state could end up foregoing 20 times that much,” Bloomberg reported.

Virginia’s $1.6 billion tax giveaway

In fiscal year 2025, Virginia lost an estimated $1.6 billion due to tax breaks for data centers. The cost of Virginia’s tax breaks for data centers has increased dramatically in recent years. In fiscal year 2017, the tax exemptions cost the state $65 million. In 2023, it was $750 million, according to Good Jobs First. This is “an increase of 1,051% in just six years.” When the tax exemption was approved in 2008, it was estimated to cost the state around $1.5 million per year.

The Virginia state budget is currently held up over disagreements between lawmakers over whether to keep the data center tax breaks in place. They are authorized through 2035, but some lawmakers want to begin to phase them out sooner.

The AI industry has launched an aggressive campaign to keep the tax breaks in place. According to the Virginia Public Access Project database, the Data Center Coalition has donated over $400,000 between 2024 and 2026. Virginia Connects, a group established by the Data Center Coalition, spent “at least $700,000 on digital marketing in the state in fiscal year 2024,” Mother Jones reported.

A lobbying blitz pays off in Wisconsin

Tax exemptions for four data center projects in Wisconsin will cost the state over $2 billion in sales tax revenue, including “$1.5 billion in forgone state sales tax revenue” while the data centers are under construction, and “$369 million annually once the facilities are built.” The companies behind the projects are Microsoft, Oracle, Meta, and Epic.

Wisconsin lawmakers approved a sales tax exemption for data centers in the state’s 2023-25 budget. The tax exemption received over 200 hours of lobbying support from companies and business groups, according to Wisconsin Public Radio, including 41 hours of lobbying from Microsoft. In a statement to Wisconsin Public Radio, Microsoft argued that the “incentive makes the state more competitive with other states trying to attract data centers.”

Between 2023 and 2025, Microsoft spent $244,800 on lobbying in Wisconsin, according to the state’s lobbying database. Amazon also spent $60,000 on lobbying in Wisconsin in 2025. Both companies listed legislation related to data center tax exemptions among their lobbying interests.

A Texas-sized tax break

In fiscal year 2025, tax exemptions for data centers cost Texas over $1 billion.

The tax breaks were originally approved long before the surge in data centers. Between 2014 to 2022, the state lost “between $5 million and $30 million” in revenue per year because of the tax breaks, the Texas Tribune reported. But the state is now projected to lose at least $1.3 billion in the current fiscal year. As recently as 2023, the comptroller’s office estimated that the tax breaks would cost $180 million in the 2027-28 budget.

The Texas legislature will debate the tax exemptions for data centers beginning this summer.

The Data Center Coalition has created a nonprofit, Texas Connects, that has begun an ad campaign advocating for data centers, the Tribune reported. Between the 2023 and 2025 sessions, “[c]ompanies that own, operate or rent from data centers collectively added at least 15 more lobbyists,” according to the Tribune. Google and Meta are both planning new data centers in Texas. According to E&E News, Meta spent $1.3 million on the Texas primary elections and Google has “donated tens of thousands of dollars” to lawmakers in the state over the last two years.

The backlash

Multiple other states are considering altering or repealing tax exemptions for data centers. Last week, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D) announced that he is temporarily pausing the processing of new applications for data center tax exemptions starting July 1.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, lawmakers have introduced proposals in at least 28 states to “substantially amend existing tax breaks.” At least seven states, including Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Washington, have considered legislation that would repeal tax exemptions for data centers entirely.

The Iran War is more than 100 days old — and there is no resolution in sight. Although Trump has claimed for weeks that a deal is imminent, the fighting has intensified.

One of the primary sticking points in the peace negotiations is the status of $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets. In a June 5 interview on CNN, Mohsen Rezaei, a top military adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, said the money was “a test of trust that Iran wants to have with Trump – this is a test that America must pass.” Rezaei described the $24 billion as “our own money, not America’s money.”

According to reports, Iran is seeking the immediate release of $12 billion as part of an interim deal that could set the stage for a long-term agreement. Bloomberg reports that the negotiations, which are co-led by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, have “bogged down“ over the issue.

Now, according to CBS News, the Trump administration is pursuing a plan to “use Iranian assets to help U.S. Gulf allies recover from damage caused by Tehran’s regime during the Iran war.” As a starting point, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is seeking “comprehensive estimates from Gulf allies of the costs associated with repairing damage caused by Iran since the conflict began.” The money could also be used “for rebuilding and repair efforts related to any future damage inflicted by Iran.”

The initiative, Bloomberg reports, “risks further chilling negotiations on a truce extension, reopening the Strait of Hormuz and paving the way for more detailed talks over Iran’s nuclear program.”

The move to divert Iran’s frozen assets to other nations highlights the acute conflict of interest between Kushner’s dual role as a top negotiator for the Trump administration and the private equity manager of $6.2 billion in funds from foreign governments. Many of the potential top recipients of frozen Iranian assets — including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar — are also Kushner’s top investors at his private equity firm, Affinity Partners.

As Kushner navigates these issues, Middle Eastern governments are paying Kushner tens of millions in fees annually. Kushner was also reportedly seeking additional funds from these same governments — although those efforts have purportedly been put on hold. These activities would be illegal, but the Trump administration insists that Kushner is merely acting as a “volunteer” and not an employee of the federal government.

The idea that Kushner can repeatedly represent the United States in high stakes international negotiations and retain his status as a volunteer is not consistent with the Department of Justice’s longstanding interpretation of the law.

Prior to the beginning of Trump’s return to the White House, Kushner seemed to understand this. He pledged not to be involved in a second Trump administration. In February 2024, Axios’ Dan Primack asked Kushner whether accepting billions in investments from public investment funds run by the governments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE would make it “very difficult… to do any sort of foreign policy work” in a second Trump administration. “I’m an investor now,” Kushner replied. “I served in government, and I think my track record is pretty impeccable. Now I’m a private investor.”

Ian Brekke, the Chief Legal Officer at Affinity Partners, has defended Kushner’s conduct, saying that Kushner has “complied with ​all applicable laws” and “always operated in the best interests of the United States.” This is unfalsifiable. Kushner does not reveal the substance of his conversations with Middle Eastern leaders, his advice to Trump, or his positions during closed door negotiations with his Iranian counterparts or mediators. The American public has no idea whose interests Kushner is advancing — and that is the problem.

On March 24, the New York Times reported that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Kushner’s single largest investor, “has been pushing President Trump to continue the war against Iran, arguing that the U.S.-Israeli military campaign presents a ‘historic opportunity’ to remake the Middle East.” More than two months later, with Kushner in a top negotiating role, the war continues.

Coverage of the Trump administration’s plans to transfer Iranian assets in CBS News, Bloomberg, Reuters, Fortune, and CNBC did not include any discussion of Kushner’s dual role. This is part of a broader pattern of the media ignoring or downplaying his historic conflict of interest.

Polymarket, one of the dominant players in the prediction market industry, promotes itself as a source of objective truth. In 2024, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan called his company a “global truth machine“ and bragged the company would be “actually solving misinformation.” After Polymarket became the official prediction market of X, Coplan said the partnership joined together the “two top truth seeking apps on the internet.”

However, as Semafor first reported, in the wake of the California primary election last Tuesday, Polymarket has sponsored posts from far-right influencers on X pushing election conspiracies and disinformation. Popular Information has uncovered a network of at least 16 influencers1, with a collective audience of 13 million, publishing election-related misinformation in posts sponsored by Polymarket.

The conspiracies involve the Los Angeles mayoral primary. Like other California races, all candidates compete in a single primary and the top two candidates advance to the general election. Early returns on election night showed incumbent Karen Bass (D) leading the field and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt (R) in second place. Pratt has gained a following through viral AI-generated videos depicting him as Batman and Bass as the Joker.

But California’s vote-counting process has been slow and later returns have favored another candidate, Nithya Raman (D), over Pratt. Many Californians vote by mail, and these ballots take longer to count. Based on the breakdown of the mail-in ballots, most analysts expect Raman, not Pratt, to advance to the general.

In numerous Polymarket-sponsored posts, far-right influencers, without evidence, claim that Raman’s improving fortunes are evidence of fraud. Former InfoWars correspondent Owen Shroyer, who has over 470,000 followers on X, posted that “California just keeps counting until the Democrat wins.” The post was labeled as a “paid partnership” with Polymarket.

Previously, Shroyer was a named defendant in a defamation lawsuit filed by the family of a child killed at Sandy Hook and was found liable by default. Shroyer was also sentenced to 60 days in jail for his role in the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. “In the months prior to January 6, Shroyer spread election disinformation paired with violent rhetoric to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of viewers,” prosecutors wrote. “Shroyer helped create January 6.”

Another right-wing content creator, Benny Johnson, wrote in a Polymarket-sponsored post that the declining odds for Pratt reflected people’s belief that “Democrats are going to dramatically rig it.” Johnson, a serial fabulist, has repeatedly pushed false claims about the LA mayoral in recent days, including the claim that California has created a “system of fraud specifically designed to manufacture votes in races you need to win and make the fraud untraceable.” In another post, Johnson said the “election cheat machine in California is so wildly unconstitutional and fraudulent it’s not even funny.” Beyond LA, Johnson asserted that in California, an overwhelmingly Democratic state, it was impossible to believe that Republican “Steve Hilton isn’t in the lead for Governor.”

In other cases, Polymarket sponsored posts by pseudonymous accounts with large followings pushing disinformation about the LA mayoral election. Posts sponsored by Polymarket asserted the LA election officials were “openly cheating,” “SCAMMING Spencer Pratt,” and “rigging it.”

Many of the Polymarket-sponsored influencers also frequently post bigoted content. Kangmin Lee, for example, posts about election conspiracies and disparaging posts about Black Americans. “Everyone is feeling the black fatigue,” Lee posted on June 7.

Polymarket’s sponsorship of election disinformation is consistent with its overall approach of using sensationalism on X to drive interest in its product. Front Office Sports reports that Polymarket and Kalshi “post on social media like they’re troll accounts“ and “are shitposting their way to legitimacy.”

Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment.

Kalshi removes some, but not all, sponsored election misinformation

According to the CEO of Kalshi, Polymarket’s chief competitor, the company is “replacing debate, subjectivity, and talk with markets, accuracy, and truth.” But Kalshi has also been sponsoring posts by right-wing influencers with misinformation about the LA mayoral election.

In one Kalshi-sponsored post, @GuntherEagleman, an account with 1.7 million followers, wrote “They are stealing it, aren’t they?”.

Kalshi told Semafor that these posts violate their “affiliate marketing policies“ and it has asked the creators to remove them. The @GuntherEagleman post, and a couple of similar sponsored posts, have been deleted.

But other posts raising doubts about the California electoral system remain. “We should all fly to LA and vote for Pratt,” @WallStreetMav wrote in a Kalshi-sponsored post on June 2. “Nothing can stop us, they don’t require voter ID.” In a June 5 post, @WallStreetMav asked, “Has anyone found a Democrat statistician or mathematician who can provide a legitimate explanation for how out of 24,000 ballots, Spencer Pratt received ZERO?”

That post is based on a thoroughly debunked rumor. The LA Times explained, “Voting data pushed out by the Associated Press came as two separate updates one minute apart, with Bass’ and Raman’s votes in the first and Pratt’s in the second.”

George Santos under investigation, loses sponsorship deal

Pushing election misinformation is not the only scandal the prediction market industry has been dealing with recently.

Last week, Kalshi reported former Congressman George Santos (R), who was convicted of fraud and then had his sentence commuted by Trump, to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for “suspicious trades“ made ahead of Trump’s February State of the Union address. Santos “boasted he’d be going to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, then bet against his own attendance.” Ultimately Santos did not attend the event, blaming a flight delay.

The Santos case is an example of just how easy it is for insiders to game prediction market bets. On his own podcast in March, Santos called prediction markets “easily manipulable,” but argued “It is not a crime to do prediction market.” According to Santos, “there will always be advantaged players in this game and it’s very hard to understand who they are.”

In response to Santos’ referral to the DOJ, Polymarket announced George Santos would no longer be a paid content creator for the company.