Citizen Cartwright

Trump’s crypto conflicts

The president's return to the White House “has opened lucrative new pathways for him to cash in on his power, whether through his social media company or new overseas real estate deals. But none of the Trump family’s other business endeavors pose conflicts of interest that compare to those that have emerged since the birth of World Liberty,” says The New York Times.

World Liberty, “has erased centuries-old presidential norms, eviscerating the boundary between private enterprise and government policy in a manner without precedent in modern American history,” the Times says.

A Trump business entity owns 60 percent of World Liberty, according to the company’s website, and is entitled to 75 percent of some revenue from coin sales, which could be converted into cash, the Times says.

“It’s one of the more successful things we’ve ever done,” Eric Trump, the president’s son who runs the family business, told the Times.

Trump now is not only a major crypto dealer; he's also the industry’s top policy maker, the Times says.

The range of conflicts of interest amid “World Liberty’s rapid ascent from fledgling startup to international force” include, according to the Times:

— World Liberty has directly benefited from Trump’s official actions, such as his announcement of a federal crypto stockpile that would include a digital currency the company has invested in.

— World Liberty has sold its cryptocurrency to investors overseas, including in Israel and Hong Kong, according to interviews and data obtained by the Times, creating a new way for foreign businesses to try to curry favor with Trump.

— Several investors in World Liberty’s coin managed companies that the federal government accused of wrongdoing.

— World Liberty proposed swapping cryptocurrencies with at least five start-ups, and often used the Trump name to solicit large payments as part of the deals. “Even in an industry with a disreputable history, the deals raised alarm among veteran executives,” the Times says.

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Canada’s election surprise after surprise aggression from U.S.

In elections on Monday, "Mark Carney achieved what seemed like an impossible feat just a few months ago, leading the Liberals to another victory after an election that was shaped by U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war and threats of annexation," says CBC News, Canada’s public broadcaster.

"It is a stunning political turnaround for a party who were widely considered dead and buried just a few months ago," says BBC News.

"The Liberals looked headed for a crushing defeat until the American president started attacking Canada’s economy and threatening its sovereignty, suggesting it should become the 51st state," says The Associated Press.

At the beginning of this year, Carney was a former central banker with no experience as a politician, says BBC News. By mid-March, he was being sworn in as prime minister — the first to never have held elected public office — after a resounding win in the Liberal leadership race.

Carney tried to define himself as a steady, mature outsider who's best to deal with the unpredictable president and map out a new economic and security relationship, says CBC News. Heading into the campaign, Carney didn't have a seat in the House of Commons. That changed on Monday as CBC News projected he's won the Ottawa riding (parliamentary seat) of Nepean.

During the campaign, Carney pointed to his time as the governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 global financial crisis and head of the Bank of England during the Brexit years as evidence that Canadians should trust him to steer the country's economy through turbulent times, CBC News says.

For the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, the party’s stinging defeat was compounded by the fact that he lost his parliamentary seat, which he'd held continuously for 20 years, to the Liberal candidate, says The New York Times.

It's not yet clear if the Liberals — who’ve been in power for almost a decade — will be able to secure a majority in Parliament as election results continue to come in. If they don’t win a majority, the Liberals may need to rely on one of the smaller parties to stay in power and pass legislation. The Bloc Québécois, which seems set to finish third, is a separatist party from French-speaking Quebec that seeks independence from Canada, says AP. The Liberals relied on the New Democrats to stay in power for four years, but that progressive party did poorly on Monday and its leader, Jagmeet Singh, said he was stepping down after eight years in charge.

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Celebrating the compassion and humility of Pope Francis

“He was a pope among the people, with an open heart toward everyone,” said Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, in his homily during the pope’s funeral on Saturday.

“His gestures and exhortations in favor of refugees and displaced persons are countless. His insistence on working on behalf of the poor was constant,” Re said.

Francis “strongly supported” transforming the Vatican post office into a free medical clinic for the homeless and undocumented migrants, where it averages 100 visits a day, says The New York Times. Showers for the homeless were set up near the clinic, along with tents distributed by an office of papal charities.

In 2019, Francis blessed a four-story Vatican property behind St. Peter’s Basilica as he opened a shelter that provides housing for about 50 people, says the Times. The pope often ate with the homeless and invited them to annual concerts at the Vatican.

The pope “gave immense emphasis to aid to the poor, not just the poor in Rome, but the poor around the world,” says Carlo Santoro of the Sant’Egidio Community, a Rome-based charity that runs the building, citing trips by a cardinal to take supplies to Ukraine. The most recent trip was earlier this month.

The pope also was outspoken about prison conditions, and one of his final public outings, four days before his death, was to visit inmates at Rome’s Regina Coeli prison.

I hope you have a second to click on this photo of the joy of the inmates as the pope greeted them.

The last people to bid farewell to the pope after the funeral mass at St. Peter’s and just before his burial on Saturday were a group of poor, homeless, migrant, transgender, and incarcerated people, each of them holding a white rose. The idea was that all the pope’s favorite people would be accompanying him in his final journey, says Vatican News. 

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Good news on coal, solar, innovation

There are about 20 free-to-read items in this week’s Fix the News. Among the items behind the paywall:

— Twenty-three countries have reduced their plans for building coal-fired power plants and 35 nations have eliminated coal from their plans entirely in the decade since the Paris Agreement on climate change, reports CarbonBrief. And China and India, the world’s largest coal consumers, have reduced their planned coal capacity by more than 60 percent.

 

As the fossil fuel that emits the most carbon dioxide when burned, coal long has been viewed by many as requiring a rapid phaseout, Carbon Brief says.

— “Despite state leadership opposed to climate action,” Florida passed California last year in new utility-scale solar capacity plugged into its grid, says Canary Media. 

— By twisting stainless steel like a towel, Chinese researchers have doubled its strength, making it as much as 10,000 times more resistant to metal fatigue and strong enough for aerospace uses, reports the website Interesting Engineering. The study is published in the journal Science.

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Trump’s latest proposal for Ukraine

The president and his top aides demanded on Wednesday that Ukraine accede to a U.S.-designed proposal that would essentially grant Russia all the territory it's gained in the war, while offering Ukraine only vague security assurances, says The New York Times.

The plan, which also would explicitly block Ukraine from ever joining NATO, was rejected by Ukraine President Zelensky.

It isn't clear whether the U.S. announcements are part of a pressure campaign to force Zelensky to make territorial concessions or whether they're intended to create a pretext for abandoning U.S. support for Ukraine, the Times says.

Vice President Vance said while traveling in India that the United States would “walk away” from the peace process if both Ukraine and Russia refused to accept the American terms. But Zelensky clearly was the target, says the Times.

European allies, who in recent weeks have been promising more military and economic support for Zelensky, have said Trump is essentially switching sides in the war, and that his real goal is to cast Ukraine aside and to find a way to normalize American relations with Russia. Trump and his top aides already have started discussing the prospect of lifting sanctions on Russia and entering energy and mineral deals with Russian President Putin, the Times says.

Whatever Trump’s motives, what happened Wednesday signaled the possible abandonment of the American commitment to Zelensky that the United States never would engage in talks that excluded the country from determining its own fate, the Times says.

The United States didn't release a text of its proposal, but European officials who've seen it say that under its terms the United States would recognize Crimea — which Russia seized illegally in 2014 — as Russian territory. Crimea was part of Russia for hundreds of years, but it was given to Ukraine by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev nearly seven decades ago, the Times says.

Here is a detailed rundown from historian Heather Cox Richardson.

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