Victorian Greens:

Seriously though, Pauline Hanson and Gina Rinehart holidaying together should be really scary to Australians. When politicians get into bed (a $2000 per night bed in this case) with billionaires, the needs of everyday people get pushed aside.

One Nation, Labor, the Liberals - they're all the same.

They work for their billionaire mates in mining, property, gambling ... They don't work for you.

I can't begin to tell you how much I hate this prick, DreamcastGuy.

This guy is an anti-Xbox grifter. And this is something that is confirmed because he admitted it to Parris Lilly in person. He told him he does it because it got him more views.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 1, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson

Jul 02, 2026

Today President Donald J. Trump took his first flight on the new Air Force One, a gift from Qatar. The Constitution prohibits presidents from accepting gifts from foreign governments without the consent of Congress, so Trump’s announcement he would accept the $400 million plane from a foreign country raised a bipartisan outcry.

The Pentagon then stepped in to say it would accept the plane. So, officially Qatar gave the plane to the Pentagon, but a source told Aileen Graef of CNN they expect the plane, newly painted in red, white, and blue like Trump’s private jet, to leave the service of the United States when Trump leaves the White House, going to Trump’s presidential library.

Trump told reporters he was “excited about the first flight. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. They just completed it, they made it appropriate for a president—that means the security and all the different bells and whistles they put on—very complex stuff. But it’s really quite something.”

“Frankly,” he said, “we couldn’t build a plane like this because we wouldn’t be willing to spend the kind of money necessary. They spent top dollars.” As Marina Dunbar of The Guardian noted, the plane is a retrofitted Boeing 747-8, built in the United States.

Yesterday Sarah Blaskey and Jonathan O’Connell of the Washington Post reported that last summer, White House officials awarded a no-bid contract for $500 million for the construction of a ballroom where the East Wing of the White House used to be. In turn, the company that got the contract, Clark Construction, told the White House it would award no-bid contracts to at least eleven subcontractors for services including demolition, fencing, excavation, and so on.

To avoid requirements for competitive bidding, the White House said the ballroom was covered by the office of the Executive Residence, which is responsible for routine repairs, buying furniture, and paying entertainment expenses. A federal judge has rejected this same justification for the demolition of the East Wing in the first place, saying the president’s authority to make changes to the White House does not include knocking down one of its wings and building a ballroom in its place.

At one point, Trump said officials from Clark Construction had offered to build his ballroom for free, but for months after he first knocked down the East Wing, he insisted that private donations would pay for the ballroom. On March 31, Trump told reporters: “This is taxpayer-free. We have no taxpayer putting up 10 cents.”

But on June 16, Blaskey and O’Connell reported that more than three weeks before Trump made that announcement, Clark had provided the White House an estimate of $600 million for the project, with more than half of it coming from taxpayers.

On June 28, Paul Sonne and Eric Lipton of the New York Times reported on a deal from September 2025 in which Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trump secured from the president of Kazakhstan access to one of the largest untapped reserves of tungsten in the world.

An obscure U.S. company, Kaz Resources, won access to resources of a metal the U.S. needs for missile warheads, fighter jets, and computer chips. Before the deal went through, officials from the Trump administration advanced applications for as much as $1.6 billion in federal funding for the company.

Then an investment firm partly owned by Trump’s sons Don Jr. and Eric took a 20% stake in a corporate entity related to the project, and the investment firm run by Lutnick’s sons Brandon and Kyle, Cantor Fitzgerald, helped to raise $210 million for a related entity, likely pocketing millions in fees.

The deal was signed on November 6.

Sonne and Lipton used the Kazakhstan deal to illustrate the self-dealing of the Trumps and Lutnicks, identifying at least fourteen companies with ties to the Trumps and Lutnicks that are working with the federal government on mining deals for materials on which the U.S. depends. The administration has either provided or is considering providing more than $8.9 billion in taxpayer money to those companies.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai denied any impropriety in the dealmaking, saying in a statement: “The only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people. Securing and reshoring America’s critical supply chains has been a top priority for President Trump, and Secretary Lutnick along with the rest of the administration continue to take historic action to safeguard America’s national and economic security.”

The Trumps have also done well over the past 18 months in the cryptocurrency business.

Yesterday a federal filing showed that Trump took in about $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency ventures last year. Bernard Condon of the Associated Press reports that Trump made more than $500 million from the World Liberty Financial venture with his sons and Zach Witkoff, who is the venture’s chief executive officer and the son of Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. Much of that money came when an investment fund associated with the leadership of the United Arab Emirates bought almost half of World Liberty Financial.

Trump also made more than $600 million from meme coins stamped with his face.

In office, Trump has pushed policies that help the cryptocurrency industry and avoid regulations.

In her [citation needed] newsletter, financial journalist Molly White noted that “[e]ven the jaw-dropping $1.4 billion figure is only a partial view into Trump’s opaque crypto empire.” She points out that the phrase “value not readily ascertainable” shows up more than 100 times in yesterday’s filing.

Donald Shaw of Sludge, an outlet dedicated to examining special interest spending in politics, reported today that the day before Trump paused his tariffs for 90 days, his investment accounts took advantage of the market lows caused by the tariffs to buy as much as $12.8 million worth of stocks. His announcement of the pause caused a huge spike in stock values, with the S&P jumping nearly 10%, one of the biggest gains in the history of that index. Trump neglected to report the transactions for almost a year past the required deadline, but the penalty for a late filing, Shaw notes, is only $200.

Journalist White notes that Trump is “essentially day trading,” including in companies operating in sectors where “the Trump administration is actively focused on setting policy.” She notes that Trump owns between $12.5 million and $58 million in NVIDIA and between $9.5 million and $46.5 million in Amazon, both companies “whose fortunes rise and fall based on decisions made in the White House.”

Yesterday’s filings also showed that Trump took out a loan for more than $50 million last year, but as Zach Everson of Public Citizen noted, we don’t know why he needed the money, how he used it, what assets he used as collateral, how much he borrowed, or when it’s due.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said: “Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged—or will ever engage—in conflicts of interest…. All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”

Using information from Reuters, economic analyst Steve Rattner graphed the gains and losses of the Trump family and investors in crypto ventures. The numbers show the Trumps taking about $2.3 billion in income since the beginning of Trump’s second presidency. The numbers show investors in those ventures losing about the same amount.

Eric Lipton, Andrea Fuller, and David Yaffe-Bellany of the New York Times broke some of the cryptocurrency numbers down, noting that the Trump family structured its crypto ventures so Trump made money on the front end, taking hundreds of millions of dollars in transaction fees, for example. Then, when his coins plummeted in value, the investors who were left holding the bag suffered vast losses.

Cryptocurrency expert Lee Reiners, who used to examine Federal Reserve Banks, told the reporters: “It is hard to wrap your head around that the president of the United States would engage in this level of self-enrichment at the expense of so many of his supporters. This is a president of the United States who has made more money off crypto since he took office than he made in any prior year in his entire business career.”

On June 23, 2026, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) outlined the “unprecedented corruption of [the] Trump White House” in the first 500 days of the president’s second term. “This is a national crisis,” Murphy said, “and we should start acting like it.”

“The pay-to-play schemes. The pardons for donors. The contracts for friends. The favors for Trump’s children. The use of inside information to make money. This is not a disconnected series of scandals. This is a system.

“Government is supposed to serve us. It is supposed to lower costs, supposed to protect our families, strengthen our schools, make life better for people.

“But Donald Trump believes that government exists to serve him—to make him richer, to protect his friends, to reward his donors.

“That is why he doesn’t have time for you. He doesn’t have time to solve real problems because he’s making money for himself and his friends.

“And he’s betting that the corruption will be so constant that we stop hearing it. That the outrage will just turn into exhaustion, and the exhaustion will just turn into acceptance.

“We can’t let that happen.

“Because once corruption becomes normal, it becomes permanent.

“The White House is not a business opportunity. The presidency is not a license to steal from the American people. The government of the United States doesn’t exist to make Donald Trump rich.

“It belongs to the American people. And after 500 days of corruption, Democrats and Republicans in this body, along with the American people, should start acting like it.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

no-paywall link here:

This video, created by Mike Nellis, features commentary on the internal turmoil and alleged financial "grifting" occurring within Turning Point USA (TPUSA) following the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Turning Point USA has turned Charlie Kirk's death into a fundraising machine, and now even its own insiders are calling it what it is: a grift. Loyalty-pledge mailers, pyrotechnic tours, a reported quarter billion raised, and nothing to show for it but infighting. This is the whole movement in a nutshell. Carnival barkers cashing in while they offer you nothing real on jobs, rent, or healthcare. I didn't agree with Charlie Kirk, and I never wanted him killed. But exploiting his death to bilk your own supporters is shameless, and the midterms are coming.

Key takeaways from the video:

Allegations of a Grift: Nellis analyzes a video from a former TPUSA insider named Mason, who claims that Erika Kirk (Charlie's widow) and the TPUSA leadership are exploiting Charlie Kirk's death to aggressively fundraise through mailers and campus tours (0:00-0:45, 5:45-6:50).

Distrust in Leadership: The video highlights that some former TPUSA staff feel the organization has become a "train wreck" under Erika Kirk's leadership and are suspicious of the methods used to cement her as the organization's head, including the use of AI-generated content (1:45-2:15, 5:15-5:45).

Broad Critique of the MAGA Movement: Nellis uses this situation as a case study to argue that the entire MAGA political movement is built on self-interest and financial exploitation rather than meaningful policy solutions. He contends that figures within the ecosystem—from Donald Trump to influencers like Riley Gaines and Tucker Carlson—are motivated by personal gain or attention (2:45-4:45, 7:15-9:50).