Out CNN anchor Anderson Cooper was stunned by a New York Times report that found Donald Trump’s personal wealth has grown by over $1.4 billion since he took office for the second time.
The estimate by the Times editorial board included earnings from cryptocurrency investments, licensing of Trump’s name, Amazon’s documentary on the first lady, and overseas real estate ventures.
“This amount is really greater than the sum total of everything he made from his inheritance, from being on The Apprentice, and from all the licensing deals while he was on The Apprentice.”
“And this is just the first year,” Cooper pointed out. “They’re open for business.”
Cryptocurrency investments, Buettner said, have been the Trump family’s biggest earners, estimating the Trumps have raked in about $800 million from those investments this year alone.
Buettner also pointed out the many conflicts of interest related to these earnings. “The cryptocurrency money comes to them anonymously… most of it comes from overseas entities.” He pointed out that a big deal with the United Arab Emirates utilized a Trump cryptocurrency to pay for a $2 billion investment.
“It was brand new and struggling and unproven, and they did that, that will put about 80 to 100 million dollars a year in the pockets of the Trumps.”
He said that after that, within a few weeks, Trump overturned a policy that “had long rejected the UAE’s pleas to get AI computer chips from us because they were thought to be too close to China.”
“He just did away with that,” Buettner said, “and then pardoned the fellow who was on the other end of the deal.”
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Green MP and former Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer was “heckled” in parliament when asking a question about LGBTQ+ inclusive relationships and sex education in primary schools.
During oral questions on Monday (19 January) Denyer, who is bisexual and represents Bristol Central, told the House she had heard from constituents who are worried the updated guidance on relationships and sex education “does not actually require primary schools to teach about same-sex relationships”.
“Will the Minister set out how she will ensure that all children learn, in an age-appropriate way, about a diverse range of relationships if it is left to schools’ discretion?” Denyer asked Georgia Gould, Minister of State for School Standards
“The charity Just Like Us found that only 19 per cent of LGBT parents say their child’s school openly discusses diverse relationships.”
As Denyer sat down to give way for Gould’s response, a voice can be heard saying “they’re primary school kids”.
In response to Denyer’s question, Gould said: “The new guidance sets out inclusion for all children and the recognition of those relationships.
“As the hon. Member will know, that is mandatory in secondary school, and we continue to take that work forward.”
Taking to social media afterwards, Denyer shared the clip and said she was “sickened but not really surprised that homophobia is alive and well on the bench behind me”.
“‘They’re primary school kids’ he says – as if no primary school kids have lesbian or gay parents!” Denyer added.
I was heckled by another MP while asking about inclusive relationship education in schoolsSickened but not really surprised that homophobia is alive and well on the bench behind me'They're primary school kids' he says – as if no primary school kids have lesbian or gay parents!
The Department for Education (DfE) finally published its long-awaited, updated statutory guidance on relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) back in July 2024, and set to come into force from 1 September 2026.
The guidance states sex education in primary school is “not compulsory” but recommends primaries teach sex education in years 5 and/or 6.
The curriculum for relationships education at primary level focuses “on teaching the skills and knowledge that form the building blocks of all positive relationships” with schools told to be “sensitive to pupils’ circumstances” and the different family types they can come from, including single-parent families, same-sex parent families and foster parents/carers.
“Teaching should illustrate a wide range of family structures in a positive way, and care should be taken to ensure that children are not stigmatised based on their home circumstances,” the guidance states.
Relationships and sex education is, however, compulsory in secondary school where it should “provide a clear progression from primary relationships education”.
The guidance was immediately criticised for telling schools to be “mindful” that there is “significant debate” about transgender identities, and staff “should be careful not to endorse any particular view or teach it as fact”. Critics likened such avoidant language to that of the much reviled, Thatcher-era Section 28, which banned the “promotion” of homosexuality in classrooms in England and Wales from 1988 until 2003.
Within the 42-page document, points 67 to 72 – equal to around a page in length – outline guidance that relates to “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender content”. However, the word “transgender” does not appear anywhere else in the document.
The updated guidance states pupils should be taught “the facts and the law about biological sex and gender reassignment” and they should “recognise that people have legal rights by virtue of their biological sex which are different from the rights of those of the opposite sex with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment”.
However, schools should be “mindful” that “beyond the facts and the law about biological sex and gender reassignment there is significant debate”, the guidance says, and “should be careful not to endorse any particular view or teach it as fact”. The guidance goes on to give a specific example that schools should not “teach as fact that all people have a gender identity”.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg mocked current Treasury Secretary and former hedge fund manager Scott Bessent for his casual suggestion that retirees own dozens of houses.
Bessent, whose estimated net worth is in the hundreds of millions, was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, talking with Fox host Maria Bartiromo about how the administration will protect “mom and pop” landlords from large investment groups.
“Someone, maybe your parents for their retirement have bought 5, 10, 12 homes,” Bessent said, describing those “mom and pop” landlords.
Good news for the forgotten man. The mom and pop real estate investor who has purchased 12 homes can breathe easy, the Treasury Secretary is looking out for you. https://t.co/3y0O5oLpMA
Buttigieg brought up how Republicans in the Senate aren’t passing legislation to extend tax credits for certain health care plans into the new year, which means that many people will see their premiums increase dramatically. He suggested that the president could push Senate Republicans to vote for such legislation, but has not yet done so.
“Again, the president could dramatically lower health insurance premiums TODAY with one phone call to Senate leadership, but he refuses. Meanwhile, at Davos….” Buttigieg wrote on social media, sharing the video of Bessent.
Again, the president could dramatically lower health insurance premiums TODAY with one phone call to Senate leadership, but he refuses. Meanwhile, at Davos….
A Somali American woman who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 because she thought he would only attack LGBTQ+ people – and not people like her – now regrets voting for the GOP for the first time in her life.
“I feel as though the weapon I built is coming to kill me and my people,” clothing store owner Sahra Sharif told the Minnesota Reformer, explaining that she voted for Trump because he was “against the LGBTQ agenda.”
The mall her business is in gets few customers, and she only opens her store for several hours a day, hoping to earn enough to pay the rent, as Minneapolis is overrun with ICE agents who have taken to detaining any person of color they find in public alone.
“In my family, people rarely go outside unless it’s absolutely necessary; and if anyone does, it is considered a reckless thing to do,” she said. Several of her family members have been arrested in the ICE raids, including her son, who was deported to Somalia. Sharif herself is a U.S. citizen.
“Would you believe if I told you I voted for this man?” Sharif said. She then recounted how that happened. She didn’t vote in the past, but in 2024, she was visited by some volunteers for the Trump-Vance campaign who told her that “Trump would be good for business and against the LGBTQ agenda.”
“I was immediately hooked,” Sharif said, and she voted for Trump.
But now she has regrets.
“I never thought the man I put in office would come for my family, make me financially struggle, and cause me so much fear that I carry my passport when I go to the bathroom,” she said.
While Trump has expressed contempt for numerous immigrant groups, perhaps none has been the target of his disdain more than Somali Americans recently. This past December, he ranted at a Cabinet meeting about Somali Americans – and Somali American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in particular – calling them “garbage.”
“They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” Trump said. “We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”
“These are people who do nothing but complain,” he complained. “They complain, and from where they came from, they got nothing… When they come from hell, and they complain and do nothing but b**ch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”
“They all ought to get the hell out of here, they’re bad for our country,” he said.
He said that ICE has “bad public relations people” because they aren’t doing enough to make Americans dislike Somali people. He held up binders labeled “ACCOMPLISHMENTS,” and many of them that he read were just attacks on the Somali American population. He repeated exaggerated claims about Somali people committing fraud and even repeated racist tropes about Somali people having innately low IQs.
“Nineteen billion dollars at a minimum is missing in Minnesota, given to a large degree by Somalians. They’ve taken it,” he said. ”Somalians, can you imagine? And they don’t do it — a lot of very low IQ people. They don’t do it. Other people work it out and they get them money and they go out and buy Mercedes Benzes.”
Also on Tuesday, Trump shared a video on social media of a podcaster who claimed that Somali people “have an average IQ of 68,” a claim that Muslim American organizations have condemned as racist.
One 2024 Bayan Research Center survey of Somali Americans nationwide found that 23% planned to vote for Trump, while 55% planned to vote for Kamala Harris.
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Following a trip to Denmark, Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) highlighted the dangerous effects of President Donald Trump’s threats to invade Greenland.
As the Washington Bladereports, over the weekend, McBride — the first out transgender person to serve in Congress — was one of 11 members of Congress who traveled to Copenhagen, where, as she told MeidasTouch this week, she met with the leaders of Greenland and other European countries.
In a statement, McBride noted that the purpose of the bipartisan delegation — which included Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE.), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), as well as Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Don Bacon (R-NE), and Sarah Jacobs (D-CA) — was meant “to reaffirm our support in Congress for our NATO ally, Denmark,” according to the Blade.
“At this critical juncture for our countries, our message was clear as members of Congress: we value the U.S.-Denmark partnership, the NATO alliance, and the right of Greenlanders to self-determination,” McBride wrote in a Sunday Facebook post.
The trip came as Trump ramped up his calls for the U.S. to take control of Greenland. In recent weeks, the president has signaled his willingness to use military force to annex the Danish territory.
Over the weekend, PBS Newsreported on a leaked text exchange with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in which Trump said he “no longer feel[s] an obligation to think purely of Peace” since he was not awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, while reiterating his claims that Denmark cannot protect Greenland from Russia and China. (Støre confirmed the message on Monday.)
As The New York Times notes, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also suggested during a Sunday appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press that the U.S. could take Greenland by force.
However, according to the Times, Pentagon officials said Tuesday that they have not been instructed to plan an invasion. And while he continued to demand control of Greenland during his Wednesday speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said the U.S. would not take the territory by force, the Times reports.
But in her interview with MeidasTouch, McBride highlighted the effects Trump’s bluster has already had, nonetheless.
“What people here at home have to understand is, it’s easy to turn on the news and look at all of this and just dismiss it as political games and traditional Trump saber rattling,” she told the outlet. “[But] this is existential for the people of Greenland, for the people of Denmark. The fear is palpable. Kids are not sleeping in Greenland because of their fear that the United States will invade. This mere discussion is having an effect.”
McBride: This is existential for the people of Greenland and Denmark. Kids are not sleeping in Greenland because of their fear that the U.S. will invade. pic.twitter.com/2UTd6O27Pz
Indeed, amid Trump’s threats, Denmark and eight other U.S. NATO allies — including Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, and the U.K. — deployed troops to Greenland over the weekend. Trump retaliated by threatening to impose steep tariffs on the countries, leading global markets to plummet on Tuesday.
McBride added that Trump’s manufactured crisis is also tarnishing the U.S.’s reputation.
“Denmark historically has had some of the most pro-American sentiment among the public there. That has dropped from above 80 percent to single digits because of this administration’s reckless, cruel, and frankly stupid — as our Republican colleagues have said — stupid approach to trying to seize Greenland,” she said, likely referring to Tillis’s recent speech from the Senate floor.
McBride: Denmark historically has had some of the most pro-American public sentiment. That has dropped from above 80% to single digits because of this administration’s reckless, cruel, and frankly—
“There is nothing that we could seek economically or militarily that Greenland and Denmark are not willing to provide us if we simply ask,” McBride said. “There is no reason for us to seize Greenland and doing so would fundamentally undermine our NATO alliance, which has been the greatest force for peace and security for 80 years.”
McBride also refuted Trump’s recent claim on Truth Social that NATO would not come to the United States’ aid if we were attacked.
“That is not only untrue, it is historically inaccurate,” she told MeidasTouch. “The only time that Article 5, our collective defense, has been invoked by NATO is after 9/11 in defense of the United States. And do you know which country in Europe lost more people per capita than the United States in Afghanistan in defense of under NATO – was Denmark.”
McBride: The president said that NATO would not be there for us if we were attacked. The only time Article 5 has been invoked was after 9/11, in defense of the U.S. Do you know which country in Europe lost more people per capita than the U.S.? Denmark. pic.twitter.com/KORfGWZQXM
A 28-year-old Indianapolis woman will plead guilty after threatening to kill anti-trans Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC).
Shayla Addison has been charged with two counts of Influencing a Federal Official by Threat after sending multiple texts to Mace’s campaign number that included threats like, “Come outside b**ch we’ll kill you” and “Tread lightly,” according to a press release from the Southern District of Indiana U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“By sending the messages, Addison intended to retaliate against Victim 1 on account of Victim 1’s performance of official duties,” the release explains.
Addison also emailed Mace, saying, “We will kill you and blow that whole building up b**ch come outside,” and wrote threatening comments on her Instagram such as, “I hope you got mace… cause you gone need it” and “Shut up h** I’ll kill you.” Addison made all of the threats on the same day, according to the release.
The release did not name the lawmaker, but the South Carolina Daily Gazette reported that text message screenshots shared by a Mace spokesperson matched the quotes from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Court records examined by the Gazette found that Addison has agreed to plead guilty. She faces up to 10 years in federal prison, though officials have reportedly agreed to recommend a sentence on the “low end” of that.
Mace recently lamented having to adjust her life due to the many threats she gets. “I’m not able to move around freely anymore, and it’s troubling, but that’s the world that we live in,” she said, adding, “We all have the right to have our viewpoints, but we don’t have the right to bring harm to somebody.”
“I have had to change everything about the way that I live,” Mace continued. “I basically live in hiding… I can’t run errands. Life is just different, and it’s difficult.”
She then declared, “No one should live in fear because of their political or religious beliefs.”
Mace, however, has made it clear she does not believe transgender people have the same right to live without fear or threat. The self-described “proud transphobe” has built her political brand around vicious anti-trans rhetoric, including publicly bullying her trans colleague, Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE).
Mace has called trans people “the most egregious, most vile, violent people on earth,” adding, “They are mentally ill and should be in a straitjacket with a hard-steel lock on it.”
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Amid speculation of President Donald Trump’s mental decline, several Democratic U.S. House representatives recently voiced their opinions on the matter. Their responses were video recorded by Pablo Manríquez, editor of Migrant Insider.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said, “The president has been acting in increasingly erratic ways. It is really damning when we think about the degree to which media outlets reported on Joe Biden, yet we are seeing behavior from Trump that is alarming and everyone is pretending this is normal. For our global partners, what they also see is the result of not just one man but the entire government apparatus and a party that is willing to watch someone decompensate in front of the world and do nothing about it.”
AOC: The president has been acting in increasingly erratic ways. It is really damning when we think about the degree to which media outlets reported on Joe Biden, yet we are seeing behavior from Trump that is alarming and everyone is pretending this is normal.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) said, “I honestly don’t think he was equipped to be sworn into office in the first place… This is literally based upon what some actual doctors were telling me were signs, and so we have tried to investigate this.”
Rep. Della Ramirez (D-IL) said, “We have a physically unstable, mentally ill man running the White House. You’re starting to see the consequences of it. The American people are hurting. Everything is more expensive. People are dying in the streets. He is becoming richer, and he doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. He should resign.”
.@PabloReports: How big of a factor is Trump’s cognitive decline given what we’re seeing in Davos?
Ramirez: We have a physically unstable, mentally ill man running the White House. You’re starting to see the consequences of it. The American people are hurting. Everything is more… pic.twitter.com/BbUbAUUFkK
Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) said, ” It’s very significant. Sadly, cognitive decline doesn’t get better. It’s only going to get worse in the weeks to come.”
.@PabloReports: How big of a factor is Trump’s mental decline after what he has been saying in Davos?
Beyer: It’s very significant. Sadly, cognitive decline doesn’t get better. It’s only going to get worse in the weeks to come. pic.twitter.com/ukbriNgOa4
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