Harry Truman left the White House without any income other than his Army pension of $113 (£85) per month. The 33rd US president later wrote that it was wrong to "commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency".

George W Bush put his investments in a blind trust before running for president, and said in his last week in office that he had no idea how the 2008 economic crisis affected his net worth.

Donald Trump, in contrast, made at least $2.2bn (£1.7bn) in his first year back in office, according to a new financial disclosure report - a sum historians said was unprecedented and shattered the norm of US presidents avoiding financial conflicts of interest in the White House.

"There's just no precedent for this," said Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. "It's beyond anything we've ever seen in the presidency."

Trump's massive 2025 earnings laid bare just how much he has benefited from his return to office, through money-making ventures that often blurred the line between official government policymaking and private business dealings by the president, his family and close advisers.

Bibles, Home Alone and perfume: Six things about how Trump made money in 2025

Trump made more than $1bn from crypto in first year back in office

Trump made $1.4bn in the cryptocurrency industry alone, according to the mandatory financial disclosure that was made public on Tuesday.

Trump reported $635m in royalties from Celebration Coins, the entity thought to be behind the $TRUMP meme coin he launched just before starting his second term.

The president also reported more than $500m from the cryptocurrency business World Liberty Financial. The firm was founded by his sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, and the sons of Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy to the Middle East and Ukraine.

Trump's 2025 income was nearly four times higher than the $622m he reported in 2024, the year before he returned to office.

The White House has denied that Trump and his family were profiting from the presidency.

"Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged - or will ever engage - in conflicts of interest," White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement.

She added: "All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people – and any so-called 'reporters' pushing otherwise are recycling the same, tired, false narrative that Democrats and the legacy media have been pushing for a decade."

Past presidents have been involved in financial scandals that raised questions of corruption.

Historians point to the period after the Civil War, when officials in the treasury department under President Ulysses Grant were involved in scandals around gold sales and customs collection, among other controversies.

The interior department secretary accepted bribes in exchange for awarding oil leases during Warren Harding's presidency in the 1920s, an episode known as the Teapot Dome scandal.

But in those cases, the president was not directly involved or accused of personally enriching himself while in office.

Getty Images

President Truman refused lucrative corporate roles

In the modern era starting with Franklin D Roosevelt's presidency in 1933, several presidents have had relatives who sought to profit from their ties to White House.

Jimmy Carter's brother promoted a beer brand.

While Joe Biden served as vice-president, his son Hunter Biden made money from a Ukrainian energy company.

But historians said those past examples pale in comparison to the profits made by Trump and his family business since he returned to office.

"This is the big distinction between Trump and his family and other presidents," said Perry, the presidential historian.

"Making money hand over fist in office, it's not illegal but it is unethical. Most [past] presidents didn't want to do that."

AFP via Getty Images

Donald Trump Jr (right) and Eric Trump at the New York stock market last year

Before starting his first term in 2017, Trump handed control of his family business, the Trump Organization, to his adult sons. But the move broke with the precedent set by past presidents because Trump did not place his business interests in a traditional blind trust or divest from his real estate holdings and other investments.

Trump took similar steps ahead of his second term.

The Trump Organization said before his second inauguration that he would not be involved in the company's day-to-day dealings while serving as president.

Eric Trump said at the time that the Trump Organization would follow "robust ethical standards" during the president's second term.

Pardon for a crypto tycoon

Still, Trump has made a number of moves in the White House that have benefited his business as well as businesses tied to other senior administration officials.

Last July, Trump signed legislation supporting stablecoins, a form of cryptocurrency, just four months after World Liberty Financial launched its own digital currency venture. The firm made Trump at least $500m in 2025, according to his financial disclosure report.

Last October, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency firm Binance.

The move came as Trump praised the crypto industry in his first months back in office, after having dismissed it in the past as a "disaster waiting to happen".

Trump's family business and some close associates have profited in other industries beyond cryptocurrency since he returned to the White House.

Last year Trump struck a deal with the president of Kazakhstan giving an American company access to a major critical minerals project in the country, according to a New York Times report.

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr later took a minority stake in a company involved in the mining project. The investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald - which is run by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's sons - also worked on the deal.

On Wednesday, Trump attributed his profits in office to stock market gains and claimed he was not involved in his family's business dealings.

"I don't get involved in my personal [finances], we have funds that run my money," Trump told reporters. "I've made a lot of money before I became president, and they invest my money, and I don't talk to them."

Ethics watchdogs argued Trump's profits from cryptocurrency in particular were problematic.

"Of course it's a conflict of interest," Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer under George W Bush, told the BBC.

"This is a very, very troubling situation for the American people to see their president making so much money."

Trump and sons' stake in crypto firm worth $5bn

Tax records reveal Trump's foreign bank accounts

Follow the twists and turns of Trump's second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher's weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

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For years, both parties told New Yorkers there was never enough money for housing, schools, child care, health care, or working people.

Then he came in, inherited a projected $12 billion budget gap, and within months put forward a balanced New York City budget without raising property taxes or making across-the-board cuts to services.

It was not magic. It took savings, new revenue, and support from Albany.

That is why he is becoming a problem for both Republicans and Democrats.

Republicans do not want people believing government can actually work for working people.

And the Democratic establishment does not want people asking why they accepted excuses for so long.

He is forcing people to see that the money was never the only problem. The priorities were.

 

BREAKING: THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU! Republican Rep. Troy Nehls responds to reporter asking about struggling Americans by bragging about eating steak and lobster tails and sneering that poor Americans just don't work hard enough!

Republicans have spent months insisting to their constituents that they understand the economic pressures facing ordinary Americans. Congressman Troy Nehls of Texas just gave them a little public relations problem.

Asked by a reporter on the steps of the Capitol how House Republicans plan to convince voters they are fighting for affordability while they are back in their districts over the Fourth of July, the cigar-chomping Nehls opted to talk about his dinner menu.

"I'm going to get me a couple big lobster tails. I'm going to get me some nice rib eyes," Nehls said, describing plans to celebrate the holiday with family and neighbors while honoring "the greatest president in my lifetime, Donald J. Trump."

That's one way to answer a question about affordability, isn’t it?

Nehls went on to acknowledge that fuel prices have risen because of the U.S. attack on Iran but waved off concerns about fuel prices as temporary.

Then the interviewer pointed out an inconvenient fact.

"Do you think the 60 percent of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck can afford lobster tails and rib eyes and all of that?" he asked.

Nehls' response was breathtaking.

"Maybe not. Maybe that 60 percent of Americans don't work as hard as I do either. I mean, I don't know."

So, according to the Texas congressman, Americans struggling to afford groceries, gas, rent and health care may simply need to work harder. If he’d kept on talking, maybe he would have gotten to “bootstraps.”

He didn't consider things like stagnant wages, soaring housing costs or rising insurance premiums, all of which have squeezed household budgets across the country. Instead, he suggested the problem may lie with the people struggling to pay the bills themselves.

This is the kind of response that perfectly captures why so many voters believe Washington politicians are out of touch with everyday life.

Most Americans hearing the word "affordability" don't picture lobster tails and rib eyes. They picture electric bills, rent payments, prescription drug costs, and the cost of filling up their vehicles.

But Nehls was kind enough to say the quiet part out loud for us.

How many more Republican politicians hear that millions of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and don't see an economic problem, they see a work ethic problem.

And they wonder why voters are frustrated, and the approval rate of Congress hovers between 10 and 30 percent.

Bon appétit, Congressman. Your cigar stinks, by the way.

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 And yet another article from the Washington Post decrying the march of the left. But now centrists, Tom Souzzi and Josh Gottheimer have come up with an answer-a manifesto promising to adhere to the core republican values of capitalism, law enforcement and fiscal responsibility to counter Democratic Socialists embracing M4ALL and affordable housing. Raise your hand if you'll vote for capitalism and law enforcement that has brought rising prices and thousands of illegal ICE detentions.

"Democrats Are in a Civil War—and the Far Left Is Gaining Ground Centrists have been ‘wringing our hands’ are scrambling to beat back insurgents In Colorado, allies of longtime Rep. Diana DeGette are pouring money into a late round of ads to help defeat a Democratic socialist in next week’s primary election. In Los Angeles, Democratic Mayor Karen Bass shook up her campaign team this week in her tough re-election bid against a Democratic socialist challenger. And in Michigan’s race for a U.S. Senate seat, Democrats have discussed consolidating the primary field in hopes of beating Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive populist candidate whom party-establishment figures see as a risky bet in the general election. The party’s centrists are alarmed. “The left, the DSA, and the right, the MAGA movement, they’re both very well organized, and those of us that oppose those policies are talking to each other at cocktail parties and wringing our hands,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Long Island Democrat. “But we got to get organized.” “I agree that people’s economic anxiety is real, and we have to address it—I just happen to disagree with their solutions,” Suozzi said.

In the aftermath of the New York races, 10 House Democrats including Suozzi signed a centrist pledge of “bringing common sense back to the Democratic Party” by committing to fiscal discipline and capitalism over socialism. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat who signed the pledge, said the left was “using Tea Party tactics and trying to divide up the country and pray to socialist ideals.”

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A single hugely powerful "technology company" has secured a massive foothold across key parts of the US federal government. Its software now "supports operations" ranging from military battlefield decision-making to agricultural data management and immigration enforcement.

That company is Palantir Technologies. Over time, it has built deep and seemingly irrevocable relationships with federal agencies. Early work in intelligence and defense has evolved into wider deployments.

Public records show contracts that consolidate data systems.

Possibly most concerning is the rapid reliance on Palantir In defense, the US Army alone has consolidated dozens of prior arrangements into a single agreement with Palantir potentially worth up to $10 billion over ten years.

Beyond defense, the US Department of Agriculture has now signed a $300 million agreement with Palantir to modernize farmer data systems under its “One Farmer, One File” initiative. Capturing complex data on private individuals with little real oversight.

Then there's immigration and homeland security, Palantir’s "platforms" are behind data integration at agencies like ICE and DHS, systems handling billions of records for enforcement purposes, with capabilities for cross-referencing travel, immigration, they see it all.

A recurring feature is the gradual expansion from "pilot projects" to enterprise wide platforms. Some integrations reportedly operated for years before formal agreements were in place, building absolute institutional reliance on Palantir.

The cumulative effect is significant: disparate government datasets, military, agricultural, fiscal, health and immigration, increasingly converge on common analytical platforms operated by a single private entity.

The idea that a single powerful privately led Tech giant would have such a massive impact on the operation of the ants most powerful institutions, reads like something from a mediocre sci-fi novel.

It's not.

Welcome to the future.

~

Chay Bowes

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While most Americans are scrolling their feeds, something almost unimaginable is rising out of the dirt in Shackelford County, Texas — a place with barely a few thousand residents.

It's called the Stargate Frontier Campus, and the numbers behind it sound like science fiction.

The Stargate Frontier Campus is a 1.4 GW AI data center development under construction in Shackelford County, Texas, part of the broader Stargate initiative led by OpenAI, Oracle, and infrastructure partners. Developed by Vantage Data Centers, the project is valued at over $25 billion and spans approximately 1,200 acres — featuring 10 single-story hyperscale facilities totaling 3.7 million square feet. Blackridge ResearchBlackridge Research

That's roughly the size of 64 football fields, under one project, in one rural Texas county.

And it's not the only one.

In Michigan, a $16 billion campus nicknamed "The Barn" is being built in Saline Township near Ann Arbor — fully leased to Oracle for OpenAI's workloads, and described as the largest economic development investment in the state's history. Oracle alone is expected to spend an additional $30 to $40 billion on servers, networking equipment, and AI chips for that single site. Blackridge Research

In Louisiana, the state government approved $3.3 billion in tax breaks just to convince Meta to build its massive Hyperion AI Campus there — a facility designed to run hundreds of thousands of next-generation AI chips, powered partly by on-site natural gas and up to 1.5 gigawatts of solar energy. Blackridge Research

Across the country, the United States is now experiencing the largest wave of data center construction in its history, with more than 4,000 operational data centers already running and hundreds more under development. Blackridge Research

Here's the part that should worry every American 

These facilities are being built to train and run artificial intelligence at a scale never seen before — and whoever controls this infrastructure may control the next era of global power, economics, and military technology.

But ordinary families living near these mega-projects are asking simple questions: Who pays for the electricity these monsters consume? Who pays for the water? And what happens to small towns that suddenly become ground zero for a multi-billion-dollar tech war?

This isn't a distant headline anymore. It's happening in farm towns, small counties, and quiet suburbs — right now, while most people are unaware it's even happening near them.

A short clip of bodycam footage from Claremore, Oklahoma has been making the rounds online, and it shows no fight, no threat, and no scene.

It shows a calm and quiet man being arrested.

The man is Darren Blanchard and his offense was speaking a few seconds past the three-minute timer set for public comments.

The meeting in question, held by the Claremore City Council, centered on a proposed data center campus spanning roughly 270 to 300 acres of his community, a project known as Project Mustang.

Residents filled the room that night to weigh in. Blanchard spoke up against the data center, but went over the clock by a few seconds.

Officers told him to leave, and when he asked to present his paperwork first, the cuffs came out.

The whole exchange landed on tape, and getting that tape was its own ordeal. One local who requested the footage was first told it would cost $1,750, then ended up paying $120.

Blanchard's attorneys have reportedly moved to dismiss the trespassing charge.

They also want the city attorney to step aside, pointing out that he was in the room and witnessed the arrest himself. That detail hasn't been confirmed in court records yet.

The legal question underneath all this is genuinely unsettled. Public comment exists. So residents can speak directly to the officials who represent them.

Whether blowing past a timer by a handful of seconds rises to the level of a trespassing arrest is far from clear.