CURRENT EVENTS May 22 - July 5

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As Trumps Monetize Presidency, Profits Outstrip Protests​

The president and his family have monetized the White House more than any other occupant, normalizing activities that once would have provoked heavy blowback and official investigations.

🎁 —> https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/...e_code=1.J08.3hXs.vO6_iLtnSwBQ&smid=url-share

“When Hillary Clinton was first lady, a furor erupted over reports that she had once made $100,000 from a $1,000 investment in cattle futures. Even though it had happened a dozen years before her husband became president, it became a scandal that lasted weeks and forced the White House to initiate a review.

Thirty-one years later, after dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million directly in her pocket — 280 times the Clinton lucre and in this case from a person with a vested interest in policies set by her husband’s government. Scandal? Furor? Washington moved on while barely taking notice.

The Trumps are hardly the first presidential family to profit from their time in power, but they have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House. The scale and the scope of the presidential mercantilism has been breathtaking. The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and are opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join, all in the past few months alone.

Just last week, Qatar handed over a luxury jetmeant for Mr. Trump’s use not just in his official capacity but also for his presidential library after he leaves office. Experts have valued the plane, formally donated to the Air Force, at $200 million, more than all of the foreign gifts bestowed on all previous American presidents combined…”
 
nycfan said:

As Trumps Monetize Presidency, Profits Outstrip Protests​

The president and his family have monetized the White House more than any other occupant, normalizing activities that once would have provoked heavy blowback and official investigations.

🎁 —> https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/...e_code=1.J08.3hXs.vO6_iLtnSwBQ&smid=url-share

“When Hillary Clinton was first lady, a furor erupted over reports that she had once made $100,000 from a $1,000 investment in cattle futures. Even though it had happened a dozen years before her husband became president, it became a scandal that lasted weeks and forced the White House to initiate a review.

Thirty-one years later, after dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million directly in her pocket — 280 times the Clinton lucre and in this case from a person with a vested interest in policies set by her husband’s government. Scandal? Furor? Washington moved on while barely taking notice.

The Trumps are hardly the first presidential family to profit from their time in power, but they have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House. The scale and the scope of the presidential mercantilism has been breathtaking. The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and are opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join, all in the past few months alone.

Just last week, Qatar handed over a luxury jetmeant for Mr. Trump’s use not just in his official capacity but also for his presidential library after he leaves office. Experts have valued the plane, formally donated to the Air Force, at $200 million, more than all of the foreign gifts bestowed on all previous American presidents combined…”
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“…
The White House has defended Mr. Trump’s actions, brushing off questions about ethical considerations by saying that he was so rich that he did not need more money.

“The president is abiding by all conflict of interest laws that are applicable to the president,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. “The American public believes it is absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency. This president was incredibly successful before giving it all up to serve our country publicly.”

But saying that he is abiding by all conflict of interest laws that are applicable to the president is meaningless since, as Mr. Trump himself has long noted, conflict of interest laws are not applicable to the president.…”
 

Casualties in Trump’s war on the arts: the small museums keeping local history alive​

Institutions in Los Angeles and beyond have seen millions in grants wiped away almost overnight. What happens when they can’t tell their stories?

www.theguardian.com

Casualties in Trump’s war on the arts: the small museums keeping local history alive

Institutions in Los Angeles and beyond have seen millions in grants wiped away almost overnight. What happens when they can’t tell their stories?
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

“…
As the Trump administration directed federal agencies to cancel grants that did not support the president’s new priorities, which focused on funding “projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity” and targeted anything broadly deemed “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion), millions of dollars dedicated to preserving local history and culture suddenly disappeared.

Shortly after IMLS grants were terminated, so too were those awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). By Friday 2 May, a spreadsheetcreated by writer and theater director Annie Doren was being passed around the internet, aiming to catalog every organization that had lost their NEA funding. With more than 500 organizations on the list, the question shifted from who lost their funding to who didn’t.

… While organizations of all kinds were impacted, it is the small and midsized institutions that lack endowments, prominent donors, and broad outreach whose futures are particularly in jeopardy. The cuts have affected a broad swath of projects – from a documentary film-maker in Fresno making a film about a woman who has played Harriet Tubman in civil war reenactments for 30 years; to a dance performance about south-east Asian mothersin New York City, to an organization that brings films, book clubs and other cultural events to rural Montana….”

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Some organizations have secured at least short-term funding to continue projects that often provide cultural spaces around which flagging communities can regenerate. But many have not. And these were all already committed funds upon which these small community groups were reasonably relying, not denials of future grants, not that anyone much seems to care.
 
nycfan said:
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I hope Texas requires this copy of the Ten Commandments to be posted. Not one of those sanitized versions that some egg-headed liberal academic "translated" so as to not offend anyone.

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nycfan said:


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Everything that is old is new again.

The Swedish warship Vasa, built in the 1600s, sank on its maiden voyage in 1628 due to instability caused by its high center of gravity and excessive weight in the upper structure. A light gust of wind capsized the ship, and water flooded through the open gun portals, causing it to sink.
 


Similar stories in other red states, as well. But a lot of Northeastern and Midwestern blue states don’t really have the sorts of ballot initiative options like you see on the West Coast and a lot of the South.
 
WaynetheDrain said:
Dumbest son of a bitch that has ever occupied that office.
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But the real issue is that Joe Biden was getting senile and his staff was really running the country (and quite well, I might add), and his successor Kamala Harris wasn't chosen in the primaries (and was a woman of color besides!), so people had no choice but to vote for a guy who was a disaster in his first term and who openly said he would raise tariffs and start a trade war and claimed that black immigrants in Ohio were eating people's dogs and who was backed by a radical plan to gut the federal government called Project 2025 and an ultrawealthy loon named Elon Musk who actually gave people money to vote for Dear Leader. Who could ever have guessed that his second term would be such a disastrous shitshow with the most harmful effects of what he's doing yet to come? I mean who could have predicted such a thing? Not Trump voters, apparently.
 
Mulberry Heel said:
But the real issue is that Joe Biden was getting senile and his staff was really running the country (and quite well, I might add), and his successor Kamala Harris wasn't chosen in the primaries (and was a woman of color besides!), so people had no choice but to vote for a guy who was a disaster in his first term and who openly said he would raise tariffs and start a trade war and claimed that black immigrants in Ohio were eating people's dogs and who was backed by a radical plan to gut the federal government called Project 2025 and an ultrawealthy loon named Elon Musk who actually gave people money to vote for Dear Leader. Who could ever have guessed that his second term would be such a disastrous shitshow with the most harmful effects of what he's doing yet to come? I mean who could have predicted such a thing? Not Trump voters, apparently.
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While it’s a major problem that they voted for the shitshow, the much bigger problem is they don’t have the awareness to realize what a shitshow it is.
 
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