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Trump made $1.4bn from crypto in one year. Is Justin Sun the man who helped him do it?

The entrepreneur is known in Washington as the financial power behind the president’s crypto fortune. How did Sun’s business love-in with the Trump family spiral into dueling lawsuits?

The most infamous financial scandal in US presidential history – the 1920s Teapot Dome affair – involved then president Warren G Harding’s interior secretary, Albert Fall, taking roughly $400,000 in bribes. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $6m today. Last year, Donald Trump made at least $2.2bn; his single year of income is on the order of 200 to 300 times larger than the bribe that defined “presidential corruption” in the American imagination for a century.

It’s taken for granted that Trump flogs items like Bibles and gold sneakers as a way to wring more money from his loyal base. But of the president’s $2.2bn, at least $1.4bn came from his crypto businesses. That’s an extraordinary achievement, even for an unscrupulous sitting president. How exactly did he do it without any prior background in crypto?

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

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An Extraordinary White House Meeting

A new book sheds light on President Trump’s affinity for fossil fuels.

© Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times

An oil refinery in Punto Fijo, Venezuela. In a meeting with the president, the Chevron chief executive pushed for an extension of the company’s license to operate in the country.
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Twitter Turns 20: Two Decades of Memes, Movements and Hot Takes

The first tweets from the public appeared on July 15, 2006, several months after a soft launch. It was rebranded as X after being acquired by Elon Musk.
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Trump rails against New York’s statewide datacenter moratorium

AI-friendly president shared a post saying governor Kathy Hochul should scrap the one-year policy ‘IMMEDIATELY’

Donald Trump railed against the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, for pausing the construction of large new datacenters, the resource-intensive facilities that power artificial intelligence.

New York became the first US state to enact a moratorium on new datacenters on Tuesday, when Hochul signed an executive order mandating a one-year statewide pause on so-called “hyperscale” datacenters.

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© Photograph: Matt Roberts/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Matt Roberts/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Matt Roberts/Shutterstock

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Trump admin puts Americans in Congo on "do-not-board" list, barring return

The Trump administration on Monday barred US citizens in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from returning home amid an Ebola outbreak that continues to outpace response efforts.

Reuters first reported late Monday that Americans currently in the DRC or those who have recently traveled to the Ebola-stricken country have been put on a "do-not-board" list. They cannot travel back to the US until they have spent 21 days in a third country. The order, taken under a transportation authority known as Title 49, was independently confirmed by Politico on Tuesday.

Both outlets noted that roughly two dozen Americans who had been set to board flights home on Tuesday have already been blocked by the new rule. It remains unclear if the bar also applies to government workers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has at least two dozen employees working in the DRC.

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© Getty | GLODY MURHABAZI

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Trump Sharply Cuts the Size of Two National Monuments in Utah

Native American tribes and environmental groups are expected to challenge the move to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments.

© Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket, via Getty Images

A hiker in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah.
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Trump Cuts Habitat Protections for Endangered Species

The rule change ends a safeguard that had been in place for 50 years and could hasten the demise of imperiled animals.

© Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Piping plovers need undisturbed beaches to nest and raise their young.
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E.P.A. Moves to Loosen Limits on Pollution From Trucks

The Trump administration wants to roll back some Biden-era restrictions on smog-causing emissions from heavy-duty vehicles.

© Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Trucks at the Port of Oakland. The new proposal would rescind a 2022 rule designed to significantly reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides, which cause smog.
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Trump’s Plans for Nuclear Power Lurch Ahead

Recent technological advances have brought the president’s goals a bit closer to reality.

© Josh Edelson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, center, visited the National Reactor Innovation Center near Idaho Falls, Idaho, last month.
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New Rules Require Election Changes for States to Get Terrorism Grants

Federal officials said they would withhold some money unless states pursue paper ballot systems, verify citizenship and conduct costly audits.

© Emily Elconin for The New York Times

Courts have already blocked similar efforts by the administration to withhold funding, saying the Constitution does not grant the executive branch power over elections.
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‘Why take those jobs away?’: the unionized workers decrying Trump’s war on wind

Workers proud of their efforts to grow renewable energy say US president pursuing ‘personal vendetta’ at their expense

Donald Trump has blamed everything – from “national security” issues, the deaths of birds and whales, and cancer – in his decades-long campaign against windfarms. But as the Trump administration continues to undermine the industry, what worries workers most are their jobs.

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has issued an executive order aiming to halt all wind-energy leases and permits, attempted to issue stop-work orders on wind projects under construction, and paid more than $2.6bn in settlements to buy out wind energy leases. And hundreds of workers have been affected.

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© Photograph: Al Drago/Getty Images

© Photograph: Al Drago/Getty Images

© Photograph: Al Drago/Getty Images

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U.S. to Overhaul Radiation Safety Rules to Spur Nuclear Expansion

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans to end longstanding guidance that radiation exposure be “as low as reasonably achievable.”

© Audra Melton for The New York Times

The proposed rule changes could make it cheaper and easier to build and operate new nuclear power plants in the United States.
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Another Trump Administration Payment to Stop Offshore Wind Farm

It was the fourth such deal struck by the administration to get companies to forfeit their offshore wind leases.

© Matthew Brown/Associated Press

Duke Energy is one of the nation’s largest utilities. Here, a Duke Energy wind farm project in Rolling Hills, Wyoming.
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In Europe, Tesla Sales Are Rising Despite Views on Elon Musk

Price cuts and low-interest-rate loans are luring buyers, including people offended by the company’s chief executive.

© Michael Nguyen/NurPhoto, via Associated Press

A Tesla Supercharger station in Germany. Tesla’s sales have rebounded sharply in Europe alongside sales of all electric cars.
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US's climate.gov site, taken down by Trump, relaunched by nonprofit

Over decades, researchers in the US government and programs it sponsored built up a tremendous number of climate resources, from comprehensive analyses to massive datasets to basic explainers meant to inform the public. And people within the government built the climate.gov website to make it all accessible. But if you try to navigate there today, you get redirected to the climate page of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and are greeted with the following message:

In compliance with Executive Order 14303 (“Restoring Gold Standard Science”), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s June 23, 2025 Memorandum (“Agency Guidance for Implementing Gold Standard Science in the Conduct & Management of Scientific Activities”), 15 USC § 2904 (“National Climate Program”), 15 USC § 2934 (“National Global Change Research Plan”), and 33 USC § 893a (“NOAA Ocean and Atmospheric Science Education Programs”), you have been redirected to NOAA.gov. Future research products previously housed under Climate.gov will be available at NOAA.gov/climate and its affiliate websites.

Climate.gov was essentially gone, and the team that deleted implied that it happened because climate research somehow failed to uphold what the administration was calling "gold standard science."

But the people who put together climate.gov didn't go away. While the government didn't hesitate to delete inconvenient climate information, dedicated volunteers outside the government managed to preserve copies of much of the material, which the federal government is prohibited from copyrighting. The volunteers and former climate.gov admins got together and launched climate.us. On Tuesday, the team announced that it had completed the project to restore everything lost when climate.gov shut down.

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© NASA

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