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PUERTO RICO SHOULD NEVER BE THE 51st STATE-IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN NOTHING BUT A FINANCIAL DRAIN ON THE USA AND ALWAYS WILL BE

Another Blow to Statehood: Puerto Rico’s Political Reality Is Changing

Separation is a good (and growing) idea, but America’s national security matters, and that can be protected.

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For years, Puerto Rico’s statehood movement sold Americans on a simple idea: admission as the 51st state was only a matter of time. But a series of recent political, cultural, and fiscal developments—from congressional resistance in Washington to shifting public sentiment on the island—suggests that assumption is rapidly collapsing. What is emerging instead is a new and more realistic conversation, one increasingly centered on sovereignty and strategic partnership rather than permanent territorial dependence.

Many Americans are now realizing that Puerto Rico’s status debate extends beyond political rights or federal benefits. It involves issues of identity, culture, economics, and political viability. Moreover, the push for statehood is increasingly confronting real-world challenges.

The Cultural Turning Point: Bad Bunny and National Identity

The Super Bowl halftime show with Puerto Rican star Bad Bunny was more than just entertainment. It turned into a cultural spotlight that revealed something many Americans seldom think about: although Puerto Ricans have U.S. citizenship (imposed in 1917), they do not see themselves as Americans, and many Americans share this view.

This is not a new phenomenon. Puerto Rican identity has endured for over a century of American rule because Puerto Ricans resisted assimilation policies, English-only initiatives, and attempts to diminish their language and national culture. The maintenance of Spanish, national symbols, the national flag (once banned), and a unique political identity has historically served as a form of nationalist and civic resistance.

Following the halftime show, media outlets and lawmakers resumed open discussions about Puerto Rico’s status, including independence. Even members of Congress who previously sidestepped the issue are now publicly recognizing that sovereignty options are becoming more legitimate. The message Americans receive is straightforward: while Puerto Rico is politically connected to the United States, it considers itself a nation, culturally and nationally distinct.

The second setback to statehood was policy-driven, not cultural. Congress recently barred Puerto Rico from transitioning its local nutrition program (PAN) to the federal SNAP system. The main reason was financial: estimates suggested about $1 billion would be needed over ten years to fund the transition, excluding future spending increases.

This decision highlights a rising trend in Washington: limited willingness to increase federal responsibilities for Puerto Rico, especially amid ongoing debates over the federal deficit. Critics argued that committing another billion dollars would increase colonial welfare dependency rather than foster economic reform. Currently, Puerto Rico receives about $3 billion annually from the PAN block grant. Despite decades of federal support, poverty rates stay high, approximating 50 percent by many standards.

For conservative policymakers, this begs a question: if large-scale federal spending has not resolved Puerto Rico’s economic issues while under territorial status, why do they think statehood—which would significantly increase federal responsibilities—would lead to a different outcome? A 2014 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report even detailed the negative impacts of statehood for the United States (increased federal liabilities) and for Puerto Rico (economic destruction and loss of its tax base).

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Statehood’s Political Dead End in Washington

Perhaps the most evident indication came from veteran Congressman Steny Hoyer, a Democrat (and Democrats have strongly supported statehood), who has long been involved in status discussions. Hoyer explicitly recognized that statehood does not currently have the necessary Senate votes to pass, particularly the 60 votes needed to clear procedural hurdles.

Hoyer’s remarks reveal what insiders have quietly recognized for years: Congress shows no genuine drive to grant Puerto Rico statehood. Historically, this trend has persisted for over 128 years under U.S. governance, with Congress displaying minimal interest in the island’s statehood. How long is Puerto Rico going to be held in colonial limbo if Congress has already stated that statehood is not a viable option?

The Rise of Sovereignty Sentiment

Although Washington is losing interest in statehood, support for national sovereignty options is increasing. Recent votes and polls show that combined support for independence and free association has reached around 43 percent and continues to rise. Youth trends are particularly notable, with surveys in 2024 revealing strong pro-sovereignty feelings among younger Puerto Ricans reaching 60 percent, a group that will influence future elections.

This generational change is significant because younger voters feel less connected to postwar narratives of federal dependence. Instead, they see sovereignty, foreign relations, economic development, global trade, and international investment as means to promote national growth, prosperity, and opportunities. Relying on the corrupt, stagnant, and dying colonial regime and its empty promises is no longer an option.

This explains why the pro-independence movement is now a significant political force. For the first time in recent history (having overcome decades of repression and persecution), independence supporters and leaders are approaching U.S. policymakers as pragmatic strategists, exploring structured sovereignty arrangements, such as a Treaty of Friendship & Cooperation or free association agreements, similar to Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands, that maintain cooperation while ending territorial rule and reliance.

Beyond politics and economics, Washington policymakers are increasingly aware that any long-term solution must also address U.S. national security and strategic interests in the Caribbean, an area where sovereignty strategists argue they have already developed serious, workable proposals.

Security and Strategic Alignment

Supporters of Puerto Rican sovereignty understand that the United States has legitimate and enduring national security interests in Puerto Rico and across the Caribbean basin. The real question is not whether those interests exist, but whether continued territorial control is the most effective or fiscally responsible way to protect them.

With Congress acknowledging that statehood lacks the political support to advance and support for sovereignty rising, policymakers must begin considering realistic alternatives that better serve American strategic and economic interests. Maintaining Puerto Rico as a U.S. territory imposes hundreds of billions in long-term financial obligations on American taxpayers without necessarily enhancing regional stability or deterrence.

For this reason, pro-independence leaders and strategists have been developing a draft Bilateral Security & Defense Agreement for a sovereign Puerto Rico as a dependable U.S. ally and strategic partner in the hemisphere. In meetings with Republican and Democrat congressional staff, we consistently emphasize that a sovereignty framework built on alliance rather than dependency aligns with conservative principles of burden-sharing, fiscal discipline, and strategic realism.

Dependency Politics and the Status Quo

Both the pro-statehood PNP and the commonwealth-supporting PPD, Puerto Rico’s main territorial political parties, have historically depended on federal transfers to maintain their influence. Sovereignty advocates, in line with policymakers, contend that this approach intentionally sustains poverty, as federal aid encourages ongoing consumption without promoting significant economic reforms.

According to both parties, why develop a productive economy when we can get free money from the Americans? Consequently, this creates a political economy where colonial dependency is normalized, celebrated, and politically advantageous for the PNP and the PPD.

A New Alignment Between Sovereignty and U.S. Interests

For many conservative Americans, this ongoing debate likely feels familiar. Key conservative aims include self-sufficiency, lowering long-term federal expenses, and boosting economic competitiveness.

This is why figures like Representative Tom McClintock and others are openly talking about independence legislation for Puerto Rico. What is increasingly clear, both in Puerto Rico and in Washington, is that the status debate has entered a new phase. The old assumption that statehood is inevitable no longer matches political reality, fiscal constraints, or evolving strategic priorities.

As Congress reevaluates its options and Puerto Rican voters continue to shift toward sovereignty, policymakers have an opportunity to pursue a solution that strengthens U.S. interests while allowing Puerto Rico to take responsibility for its own future. The question facing Washington is no longer whether change is coming, but whether leaders will shape that change through a realistic, mutually beneficial partnership or continue defending a status quo that satisfies no one and solves little.

STERLING COOPER’S CEO OWNED AN AIRLINE THAT HAD A PUERTO RICO PRESENCE THERE AND THE ENTIRE CHAIN OF ISLANDS DOWN TO TRINIDAD TOBAGO..

The residents are mostly welfare dependent, have bad government that does not understand  business, , will for the most part not assimilate as AMERICANS and speak English either. So why become a UNITED STATE?

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GAY MEN RUN SILICON VALLEY-THE OPEN SECRET EXPOSED

Inside the Gay Tech Mafia

Gay men have long been rumored to run Silicon Valley. WIRED investigates.
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ILLUSTRATION: SAM WHITNEY; GETTY IMAGES
No one can say exactly when, or if, gay men started running Silicon Valley. They seem to have dominated its upper ranks at least the past five years, maybe more.
On platforms like X, the clues are there: whispers of private-island retreats, tech executives going “gay for clout,” and the suggestion that a “seed round” is not, strictly speaking, a financial term. It is an idea so taken for granted, in fact, that when I call up a well-connected hedge fund manager to ask his thoughts about what is sometimes referred to in industry circles as the “gay tech mafia,” he audibly yawns. “Of course,” he says. “This has always been the case.”
It had been the case, the hedge funder says, back in 2012, when he was raising money from a venture capitalist whose office was staffed with dozens of “attractive, strong young men,” all of whom were “under 30” and looked as though they had freshly decamped from “the high school debate club.” “They were all sleeping with each other and starting companies,” he says. And it is absolutely the case now, he adds, when gay men are running influential companies in Silicon Valley and maintain entire social calendars with scarcely a straight man, much less a woman, in sight. “Of course the gay tech mafia exists,” he continues. “This is not some Illuminati conspiracy theory. And you do not have to be gay to join. They like straight guys who sleep with them even more.”
Ever since I started covering Silicon Valley in 2017, I’ve heard variations of this rumor—that “gays,” as an AI founder named Emmett Chen-Ran has quipped, “run this joint.” On its face, a gay tech mafia seemed too dumb to warrant actual investigative inquiry. Sure, there were gay men in high places: Peter Thiel, Tim Cook, Sam Altman, Keith Rabois, the list went on. But the idea that they were operating some kind of shadowy cabal seemed born entirely of homophobia, the indulgence of which might play into the hands of conspiracy-minded conservatives like Laura Loomer, who, in 2024, tweeted that the “high tech VC world just seems to be one big, exploitative gay mafia.”
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Over time, though, the rumor refused to die, eventually curdling into something closer to conventional wisdom. Last spring, at a venture capitalist’s party in Southern California, a middle-aged investor complained to me at length about how he was struggling to raise his new fund. The problem, he explained, boiled down to discrimination.
I took him in as he spoke. He had the uniform down cold: a white man with a crew cut, wearing a tasteless button-down stretched over mild prosperity, and a fluent conviction that AI was, thank god, the next big thing. He looked exactly like the sort of man Silicon Valley has been built to reward. And yet here he was, insisting that the system was rigged against him. “If I were gay, I wouldn’t be having any trouble,” he said. “That’s the whole thing with Silicon Valley these days. The only way to catch a break,” he claimed, “is if you’re gay.”
Over the course of 2025, similar sentiments bubbled up on X, where Silicon Valley tech workers joked about offering “fractional vizier services to the gay elite.” Anonymous accounts hinted at an underworld of gay Silicon Valley power brokers who influenced and courted—“groomed”—aspiring entrepreneurs. At an AI conference in Los Angeles, an engineer casually referred to a top AI firm’s offices, more than once, as “twink town.”
By the fall, speculation intensified, and then a photo appeared on X of a group of Y Combinator–backed founders crowded near a sauna with Garry Tan, the incubator’s president. The image seemed innocuous enough: a few young, nerdy men in swim trunks, squinting into the camera.
But almost instantly, it set off a round of viral gossip about the peculiar intimacies of venture capital culture. Not long after, a founder from Germany, Joschua Sutee, posted a photo of himself and his male cofounders—apparently naked, swaddled in bedsheets—submitted as part of what seemed to be a Y Combinator application, a move that appeared designed to court a knowingly erotic male audience. “Here I come, @ycombinator,” the caption read.
The notion that Y Combinator was grooming male entrepreneurs makes little sense—for lots of reasons, and for one in particular. “Garry is straight straight straight straight,” says a person who knows Tan. “But he believes in the benefits of the sauna.” When I ask Tan for a comment, he is blunt—some founders were over for dinner and asked to use his recently installed sauna and cold plunge. From there, Tan says, “rejects” of Y Combinator “manufactured this meme that it was somehow more than that.”
And yet, similar rumors persisted and compounded, originating as often from outsiders (sometimes with dubious political motivations) as from insiders. When I call up my longtime industry sources to get their thoughts on the gay tech mafia, not only have they heard of it—they have highly specific notions of how it works.
These are credible people who believe seemingly incredible things. One San Francisco investor tells me that he believes the Thiel Fellowship is a training ground for gay industry leaders.
(When I run this notion past a couple of former Thiel Fellows, they tell me they met Thiel one time at a dinner, where he appeared “slightly bored,” says one of the fellows, a straight man. “I mean, I wish Peter tried to groom me.”) Meanwhile, people’s gaydars are practically overheating. I hear, more than once, that anyone in Silicon Valley who has achieved outsize success is probably gay.
Isn’t it strange, one San Francisco–based venture capitalist muses, how a certain defense-tech executive achieved so much success at a relatively young age? “Isn’t he gay?” the VC asks. “He must be.” I tell him he is mistaken—the executive is married to a woman. “Sure,” he replies. “But have you ever seen them together?” Another entrepreneur who raised capital from two well-known gay investors tells me that he’s accustomed to fielding scrutiny about his sexual orientation. “People say I’m gay,” he says. “There’s always jokes. Like, ‘How’d you get the money, bro?’”
Then there are the anonymous X accounts amplifying allegations of misconduct. Their posts are calibrated for attention: detailed enough to suggest insider knowledge of the Valley, vague enough to invite darker interpretations. I take the bait and, one afternoon in late November, spend nearly an hour texting one such account owner over Signal who agrees to speak to me only if I keep his handle secret.
This person describes the Valley as a place known for “ecstasy, psychedelic fueled gay sex stuff.” Has he experienced any of it himself? No. But he knows people who have—people who are “pretty afraid” and “young af.” He won’t name names, won’t connect me to anyone, but he swears that any negative rumor I’ve heard about gay men in Silicon Valley is true. He suggests a conspiracy so sprawling it rivals QAnon and implicates the entire US government. He gives me vague reporting advice: “It should be easy to find. 2nd page of Google type thing.”
Finally, frustrated by his evasiveness, I ask what he thinks will happen if he tells me what he knows. “I truly believe,” he says, “killed.” Then he offers a suggestion. The only way to expose this blockbuster of a tale is “project veritas style: Take a 20 year old dude, make an X acc[ount]. Send him to the right places in SF and you’ll break the story if you go deep enough.”
Men sitting in an office hot tub
ILLUSTRATION: SAM WHITNEY; GETTY IMAGES
The problem with conspiracy theories, even offensive ones, is that they are rarely wholly invented. They almost always arise from some fragment of truth, which imagination then contorts.
The difficulty with this particular rumor is that, while I was unable to substantiate darker allegations, parts of the story still resonate. In conversations with 51 people—31 of them gay men, many of them influential investors and entrepreneurs—a portrait emerged of gay influence in Silicon Valley that is intricate, layered, and often contradictory. It is a world in which power, desire, and ambition interweave in ways both visible and unseen, a world that is, in some ways, far richer—and more complicated—than the rumors themselves suggest.
Most of the people who speak to me for this story do so on the condition that their names be kept confidential. Some of it is just garden-variety caution. “It may not be wise for me to be talking to a reporter describing all these parties,” says one, “because people would be like, Geez, why would we invite you?” Other excuses are murkier: “It’s not so safe to speak about this in too much detail,” says a founder who works in AI. “Anyone involved is an operator or a VC, and it might lead people to wonder about who is getting advantages.” Amid the deflections and whispers, though, there seems to be an unmistakable truth: Gay men are rising.
“The gays who work in tech are succeeding vastly,” an angel investor, who is a gay man, tells me. “There’s the founder group of gays who all hang out with each other, because the gays always cluster together. By virtue of that, they become friends and vacation together.” Even more importantly: “They support each other, whether that’s to hire someone or angel invest in their companies or lead their funding rounds.”
Some of these networks have begun to spill into public view. There is a Substack called Friend Of, written by Jack Randall, who formerly worked in communications at Robinhood, that chronicles gay ascendence into the centers of power. “We run the tech mafia (see Apple, OpenAI),” Randall writes. “We hold top government posts (see the Treasury Secretary). We anchor primetime news and the NYE Ball Drop. Our dating app’s stock outperforms its straight peers. And in the US, gay men are, on average, better educated and wealthier than the general population.”
A new company called Sector aims to formalize this network. Founded by Brian Tran, a former designer in residence at Kleiner Perkins, Sector has a website that features photos of handsome men on beaches and at dimly lit dinners. One member describes it to me as a curated network where introductions unfold between well-heeled gay men with shared interests. “It’s up to you to decide,” the member tells me. “Is this professional, is it platonic, or is it something romantic?” In an interview with Randall, Tran said, “I think we could displace Grindr in the coming years.”
On any given week in San Francisco, Partiful invites float around the community. If there is a “regular Halloween party, the gays will have their own Halloween party, and Sam Altman will be there,” says Jayden Clark, a straight podcaster who hosts a tech culture podcast and was not invited to the gay Halloween party. (Altman attended dressed as Spider-Man, a nod to Andrew Garfield, who played the superhero and has since been cast as Altman in an upcoming film.) I hear of not one but two White Lotus–themed gay tech parties, both equally extravagant. “Girls are not present,” says that same angel investor. “They are just not there.”
There is also a “Gay VC Mafia” group chat that is, as one member describes it, “60 percent business” and “40 percent hee hee ha ha” about “classically gay topics.” With a steady churn of tech events aimed at gay men, the social incentives stack up fast. Connections blur—“professional, physical, or sometimes romantic,” as an AI founder puts it. The pull of this bubble is so strong, he continues, that it’s “an uphill battle to socialize with straight people.”
None of this is necessarily unfamiliar in the clubby world of Silicon Valley, where the smart, successful, and wildly rich have always formed in-groups. There’s the so-called OpenAI mafia and the Airbnb mafia, and before those the PayPal mafia—alumni of moonshot companies who bankroll the next wave of startups. So some of what reads as advantage is, on closer inspection, structural and unremarkable. San Francisco combines two things in unusual density: one of the country’s largest gay populations and a tech industry that has reshaped global power.
“For sure, gay men are overrepresented and have had an unbelievable run in the Bay Area,” says Mark, another gay entrepreneur who runs an AI startup. “In a city that has the most venture capital in the world, it isn’t surprising that this money is going directly to gay men.” (This perception, for what it’s worth, runs counter to statistics: Between 2000 and 2022, the years for which data is available, only 0.5 percent of startup venture funding went to LGBTQ+ founders.) “It’s not that there is some kind of gay mafia,” Mark continues.
“But if I told you who are my friends that I want to invest in, they happen to be gays. Who are the people without kids who can grind away on the weekends? It’s the gays.” (Sources identified in this story by a first name only, like Mark, preferred the use of pseudonyms.)
Imagine this, Mark says: You are a young, nerdy, closeted gay man. You grow up never quite fitting in. Your parents start asking questions. Why don’t you have a girlfriend? You tell them you’re too busy for a relationship. Eventually, you move to San Francisco, a city that, as one person puts it, is like “Disneyland for gay men.
” Your world opens up. You meet other people like you—men who are openly out, many for the first time in their lives. These men happen to be working at influential companies. They are building technology that is astonishing. And slowly it dawns on you: Maybe you, too—a person who has spent a lifetime overlooked and underestimated—can build something extraordinary. “Gays feel,” Mark says, “that they have something to prove.”
This is, more or less, the nature of how power and money have moved throughout networks since the dawn of time. And gay networks seem naturally aligned to the dynamics of venture funding, where established wealth meets emerging talent. “One of the key things to realize is that gays are different than straights in many different ways,” says a longtime gay venture capitalist.
“Gays are cross-generational.” While straight people tend to spend more time with people their own age, “that is not true with gay men. I can hang out with someone at an event who is 18 years old, and Peter [Thiel] might also be there.”
Just because you are gay and work in tech does not necessarily mean you are part of the so-called gay tech mafia. Much of the queer spectrum is conspicuously absent from events geared toward gay founders. “There are barriers within the community,” says Danny Gray, a leader at Out Professionals, a networking organization for LGBTQ+ businesspeople.
“Cis gay men are the biggest gay group within the acronym, and it is much harder for other letters.” Lesbians tend to be sidelined; when I ask the hyperconnected tech journalist Kara Swisher about the gay tech mafia, she says she wasn’t aware there was one. And even if you are a gay man, inclusion is not necessarily guaranteed. “I’ve found it hard to break into this group myself,” one gay investor tells me. “I probably need to lose 20 pounds.”
It may be that what outsiders perceive as the gay tech mafia is not gay people working in tech, or even, broadly speaking, gay men, but a small, self-selecting group with shared politics and sensibilities.
They are assumed to prize aesthetics and the masculine physique, scorn identity politics, reject DEI in favor of MEI—“merit, excellence, and intelligence”—and lean right-wing, if not MAGA. I’ve heard straight entrepreneurs describe them as “the Greco-Roman gays,” part of “an insular, hypermasculine culture” in which “women are seen as totally redundant and completely unnecessary.” (A woman who once worked for a gay Republican startup founder describes it like this: “You get about the same amount of misogyny, but not the sexual harassment. So that’s nice.”)
Where, then, might these almighty power gays be observed in their natural habitat? This is one of the guiding questions in my research, the answer to which perpetually evades me. When I ask a gay investor if perhaps I can attend one of these parties as a fly-on-the-wall observer, he tells me no, because it would be weird, given that I am—unfortunately for the purposes of this story—a woman.
“People will be like, ‘Is that your sister?’” he says. I float an idea past my editor that I attend a party disguised as a man. Perhaps, I suggest, we should discuss the budget for my makeover? While not entirely disinterested in the idea, my editor offers another suggestion, that he—a gay man—come along as a kind of chaperone, “for safety” purposes. Neither of us revisits the idea.
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ILLUSTRATION: SAM WHITNEY
There is one place, though, that is mentioned again and again: Barry’s, the fitness bootcamp, which has become a gay mecca, thanks in part to the high-profile investor Keith Rabois, who has long been one of its most avid devotees, to the point of teaching occasional classes. And one Barry’s in particular keeps coming up: “The Barry’s in the Castro is ranked supreme,” says that same gay angel investor. “It is all guys, all gays, and everyone has abs.” (“From what I’ve learned working here, gay men do love to work out,” confirms a female employee at the Castro Barry’s.)
The fact is, most people seem eager to talk about this, no deceptions on my part necessary. Many of them reply almost immediately to my vague inquiries. Even more surprising is their willingness to talk at length. Calls often run for hours, blending measured observations about life in a masculine-dominated culture with tours through the most salacious industry intrigue of my entire career.
There can be an edge to the gossip, though—an implication that one of the most reliable paths to power in Silicon Valley may run through the bedroom. Some men are eager to hop on a call to ask what I may or may not have already heard about them. One gay founder tells me how a rumor has been circulating (a version of which I have, in fact, heard) that he and his husband slept with a gay investor in exchange for a down payment on their home. “Do people really think,” he wonders, “that we can’t afford a condo?”
Many have, at some point or another, been suspected of romantic involvement, even if they’ve never been in the same room together. When I call up Ben Ling, an investor and early Google employee, to ask about long-standing speculation that he might be a good match for Tim Cook—a pairing intriguing enough to be referenced in The Atlantic—he laughs. “People make up these rumors because they have nothing better to do,” he says. “Tim Cook does not know who I am.”
And while it is true that at least some of these men know and see each other socially, these meetups do not reliably lead to romance. A friend of Rabois tells me that Rabois likes to tell a story of the time, years earlier, when he invited Sam Altman as his plus-one to an event. “He said that Sam brought two phones and was texting on both of them the entire time,” the friend says. “Keith says it was the worst date he ever went on.” (Use of the word “date” has, by relevant parties, been disputed.)
For rising figures who have formed genuine friendships with powerful gay industry leaders, success sometimes comes with a penalty: the assumption that it is borrowed, not earned. Brad, a gay industry leader, has long lived with rumors about his friendship with Peter Thiel—rumors that followed him even as his career advanced.
“When I started working with Peter so long ago, people would be like, Oh, did you sleep with him? Blah blah blah.” The answer, he says, is no. And yet, “for some reason everyone felt perfectly comfortable asking me about it. Straight people were interested in it generally, but the people who were really fucking fascinated were other gay guys. Guys would be like: What does he have that I don’t have? So then they assume, Well, Peter must have thought you were cute.” (Thiel did not respond to requests for comment.)
Still, it’s naive to insist that intimacy with power is without its advantages. When Altman’s former boyfriend, early Stripe employee Lachy Groom, raised a $250 million solo venture fund while still in his twenties, some observers read the achievement less as an anomaly of talent, I’m told, than as an artifact of access. This interpretation, according to a gay investor close to both Groom and Altman, is not entirely fair:
“When Lachy and Sam were dating, Sam was kind of famous, but not nearly as famous as he is now, and Lachy was a person in his own right,” the investor says. “I did give a reference to [an investor in Groom’s fund] saying, ‘Yes, he’s unproven as an investor, yes, he’s young.
But he is in the network, and he is Sam’s ex-boyfriend.’ But Lachy didn’t date Sam to get these things.” (Groom declined to comment on the record, as did a representative for Altman.)
Meanwhile, when straight men attempt to tap into the gay network, the gay investors chat amongst themselves. Mark, who hosts dinner parties and events for the gay tech community in San Francisco, says that he noticed one man constantly RSVPing to his events. “We don’t have a purity test,” he says, “but someone said that guy is definitely not gay, he just goes to the gay man events because he wants deal flow.” It isn’t like straight men are excluded per se, but they are not exactly a welcome addition to the world of gay capital.
The joke, if a straight founder does show up, is: Just don’t tell anyone you’re straight.
“I have seen straight men do untoward things,” says a gay investor. “There is a straight guy who is not important enough to be named who would pitch all the gay investors, and in one meeting at the VC partnership he was talking to a gay general partner who I know. And in the meeting, this guy put his hand on the GP’s leg under the table. It is so inappropriate. It became a running joke, like, not this guy again.”
One person in particular has helped fuel the notion that being gay can benefit one’s career: Delian Asparouhov, the mischievous, 31-year-old cofounder of Varda Space Industries, who was once hired as Rabois’ chief of staff. Rabois, who helped Thiel start PayPal and was later a partner at Thiel’s venture firm, Founders Fund, was a subject of corporate scrutiny years earlier.
While at Square, Rabois was accused of sexual harassment by a male colleague, an episode that ultimately ended with Rabois’ departure from the company. (After an internal investigation, the company backed Rabois.)
In 2018, about 100 people attended Rabois’ wedding to Jacob Helberg, a former adviser at Palantir who currently serves as the US undersecretary of state for economic growth. The wedding was a multiday affair with a guest list that included many of the most important people in tech and culminated in a beachside wedding ceremony officiated by Sam Altman. (Rabois’ bad “date” with Altman resulted, apparently, in close friendship.)
During the wedding, Asparouhov gave a toast, which was later recalled by Fred, a longtime gay tech leader who was in attendance. “Delian said something like, ‘I’m the intern that Keith hired, and I would wear short shorts and tank tops at Square.’” Fred says he was sitting at a table with two famous tech executives. “We just raised our eyebrows,” Fred continues. “It was so embarrassing that Delian would say that at someone’s wedding. I mean, here was Keith getting married to Jacob.” (Other wedding attendees claim not to remember the contents of the speech but say it sounds like Asparouhov.)
Rumors of Asparouhov and Rabois’ dating lives have long traveled in industry circles, thanks in part to Asparouhov, who has fanned the flames online. (“Delian is like Gretchen Wieners,” explains Fred.) In 2022, a popular anonymous tech insider X account, Roon, tweeted that it was “crazy how venture capitalists have reinvented the Roman system of pederasty.” Asparouhov responded to the tweet almost immediately: “It only took a little gay and now I get to work on space factories,” he wrote. “Pretty reasonable trade.” Asparouhov, who is married to a woman, now says the tweet was “obviously a joke.”
But as Fred recounted, Asparouhov was known for wearing neon tank tops, short shorts, and mismatched shoes when he joined Square in 2012. “He would jump a lot—it was very odd,” says someone who worked at the company at that time. Others have similar recollections. OpenStore, the Miami-based company Rabois cofounded in 2021, which mostly shut down last year, seemed to be, according to John, who says he visited its offices, “almost like a harem, filled with jacked white men, all of them handsome and good-looking, straight and gay.
People were wearing kind of inappropriate clothing: really short shorts and tight shirts even though the AC was blasting.” Rabois, when I ask him for a comment, denies this categorically. “Attire was quite standard for Florida,” he says. “And I doubt more than two of the 100-plus employees could be reasonably described as ‘jacked.’”
Rabois has been known to take extravagant vacations—helicopter trips to Icelandic volcanoes, white-water rafting in Costa Rica. Exclusion can stir serious envy, as it did with one young gay tech consultant I speak with who says he has begun a kind of “micro-journalism” project to track the appearances of a couple of guys on Rabois’ Instagram. These are “low-level” workers, he says, who nonetheless are “always posting photos in St. Barts.” “Here I am doomscrolling on the A train, and I’m like, ‘How are these guys on a private jet?’”
But how far back do these rumors really go? Has Silicon Valley always been semi-secretly, kinda-sorta gay? More than once, I’m told to connect with Joel, a gay man who works in tech and who spent a lot of time among the older in-group of powerful gay men in Silicon Valley, more than a decade ago. “So,” I say when he answers my call, “are you a member of the gay tech mafia?” He laughs. “Maybe someone thinks I’m in it, which is why you’re calling me.”
When I ask Joel to explain how the gay tech mafia works, he tells me that it’s similar to people who “went to the same college or came from a similar background or a similar town.” And it indeed started, he says, with people like Rabois and Thiel, who, after they rose to power, “brought a lot of people along. Keith hired gays at Square, and Peter hired Mike [Solana] at Founders Fund. Then there was a cohort of Google gays that Marissa Mayer ran in 2010. And there is Sam, who is friends with Keith, and Sam was running in parallel, assembling other gays around him.”
Joel tells me about the parties at the time—the exact specifics of which remain off the record. But they were, in summary, what you might expect. “There was lots of drinking that would turn into weird situations. Random people hooking up. Generally, there was a sexual tone.” But this was years ago. These types of parties, at least from what I’ve heard, have either disappeared or moved entirely underground. (“Once you get to the end of your reporting, you will find that the real story is much less explosive,” says Mark. “Like all these wild orgies: If you do find out where they are, please tell me, because I’d like to go.”)
I tell Joel that I’ve heard from some young men in the tech industry who feel pressured to sleep around to get ahead. Was that true in his experience? “Mmmmm,” he says, and pauses. Then he bursts out laughing. “I mean, in all of this, there are weird gray areas. It can be very sexual. It is not all professional. A lot of people have dated or slept with each other.” He had experienced a kind of coercion firsthand. “I definitely felt pressured to do—not overtly illegal things. But they walked the line.” Joel is older now, and while he can see how someone might describe this as an abuse of power, he resists the framing.
The exchange of sex and status may not be the reason these men rose so quickly, but it can be a factor—if only because sex, as he puts it, “makes people become closer rapidly.”
As Silicon Valley has matured into the power center of the world, it has grown sharply cutthroat. Leverage is scarce, and ambition is often laced with a kind of ruthless opportunism. In gay circles, some feel the Valley resembles the old Hollywood casting couch. Many of the critics are rising gay entrepreneurs and investors themselves, for whom parts of the gay community seem steeped in the attitudes and values of the 1970s and ’80s. “There’s this feeling,” one observes, “that because there were years of historical oppressions only recently recognized, certain people think, ‘I can do this, or I deserve this, because no one will cancel me for it.’”
Image may contain Person Skin and Baby
ILLUSTRATION: SAM WHITNEY; GETTY IMAGES
This is a community that, as one young gay investor describes it, is “power-hungry, network-driven, and, at times, very horny.” The arrangement, he suggests, is tacitly understood by everyone involved: “Both sides know they are in the game and want something from each other. Which is fine, I guess, if you’re into that.” This is not, in his telling, the whole of the gay tech scene, most of which is a “lovely, amazing community that supports its people and their career progress
.” But alongside that exists a sexual undercurrent—one that, he insists, is impossible to deny and especially pronounced in AI circles. “It’s like a gay nepo thing,” he says. “While it’s not explicitly for sexual favors, there is an element at work in the background. Like, you’re young and you’re hot and I’m down to hook up.”
One gay man, Dean, describes moving through a professional world in which sexual suggestion flowed freely. Early on, it came from limited partners curious about his prospective fund; after he raised the fund, it came from founders seeking capital. In one instance, a potential limited partner proposed a meeting at his home. “He was like, ‘We don’t need to wear clothes, we can just sit around and talk about your fund in my hot tub.’” Dean frames these encounters as an irritation—ambient, expected, and largely inconsequential. “Sex is devalued in gay male culture,” he says. “Often, it’s just another piece of currency.”
After Dean raised his fund, he was occasionally approached by young men, “founders looking for money who indicated they were open to whatever it takes to raise it.” At events geared toward LGBT founders, young men would ask to grab drinks one on one. Sometimes, they’d send nudes on Instagram. “Like ‘Hey …’ with a winky face. And ‘Do you like that?’ And I’d be like, ‘No, that’s actually inappropriate,’” he says. It’s not confined to Silicon Valley, he adds. Having left tech for a different industry, Dean has come to see the entanglement of sex, power, and ambition as a recurring feature of certain pockets of gay professional life.
Another man who works in the queer tech space puts it this way: “There is an aspect of being queer and in business and in life and having relationships that can be frankly sexual and not sexual at the same time. You can turn off and do business with someone you were hooking up with yesterday.” Plus, he continues, there is the inescapable fact that much of gay male culture tends to be sexually charged. “Straight guys have the golf course. Gay guys have the orgy,” he says. “It doesn’t mean it’s problematic. It’s consensual, but it is a way we bond and connect.”
Of the 31 gay men I spoke to for this story, nine tell me they experienced unwanted advances from other gay men in the industry. Some of these advances were mild but annoying: repeated invitations to soak in hot tubs or explore wine cellars. Others involved unwanted touches. One person, an up-and-coming gay investor, tells me that he believes that turning down a sexual advance from a senior colleague cost him a job. Multiple sources speak of “sex pests” who send unsolicited dick pics and make overt come-ons.
“What demoralizes me in the conversations around the gays in tech in San Francisco is that none of this is entirely a secret,” says one gay investor who experienced an unwanted sexual advance. “People are aware this is an issue.” Another gay man who works in tech adds: “There is an element to this story that is a cautionary tale. You take a brilliant entrepreneur who has a great idea trying to make it in the world of venture capital. And then they have to put up with someone sending them dick pics and asking for an investment meeting. It shouldn’t be normalized. And right now, everything is so gray. Like, it’s our little thing, our little world. But it has a massive impact.”
Again and again, gay men working in tech ask me: Why has this story never been written? The question somewhat answers itself. Unfair stereotypes about gay men persist, and why else would sources insist on pseudonyms? I am warned, more than once, to be careful, that figures in Silicon Valley are “vindictive.” Even as many consider this culture of sexual pressure a feature of Silicon Valley life, it is, as someone else tells me, “a true minefield” to write about.
.
Gerald knows the feeling. He’s a young gay man in San Francisco, described by acquaintances as a “quirky individual” and a “social puppeteer.” Over a call, Gerald lays out the reasons he has hesitated to talk about his time in tech. “This is a complex subject,” he says, “and I don’t think readers can draw the distinction between some bad men being gay and all gay men being bad. It can be a slippery slope into homophobia.”
He won’t give his story to me.
Not yet. But he does tell me he suspects that other stories, in the coming months, will surface. “People have a difficult time articulating power with nuance,” he says. “This is not just one story. There will be many.” From what he’s told me so far, and from everything else I’ve heard—the heartfelt, late-night confessions over the phone; the insights shared quietly and kept off the record; the admissions of dozens of funny, brilliant, young gay men competing for, yes, power and money and recognition, but also for love, romance, and a place to belong in the heart of San Francisco—I believe him.

HOW MUCH DO OLYMPIC ATHLETES GET PAID?

How Much Do Olympians Get Paid When They Medal? All About the Cash Prizes for Winners

Gold medalists Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea of Team United States on day two of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games on February 08, 2026 in Milan, Italy ; Breezy Johnson of Team United States competes on day four of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics on February 10, 2026 in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. Elsa/Getty ; Christophe Pallot/Agence Zoom/Gett
Gold medalists Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea of Team United States on day two of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games on February 08, 2026 in Milan, Italy ; Breezy Johnson of Team United States competes on day four of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics on February 10, 2026 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Elsa/Getty ; Christophe Pallot/Agence Zoom/Gett

NEED TO KNOW

  • Olympic athletes are not paid to compete in the games

  • However, some athletes are paid if they medal

  • A new $100 million donation will change the way Team USA Olympians are paid

It’s not just medals that Olympic athletes can walk away with — for some, there’s a tidy pile of cash involved.

While qualifying for the Olympics is an accomplishment of a lifetime, topping the podium and earning a medal is undoubtedly the ultimate goal for the thousands of athletes competing.

During the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis, the tradition of handing out medals — gold for first place, silver for second and bronze for third — was first introduced. The prize distribution continued through the years, though the medals’ designs differ depending on the Olympic host city.

The medals don’t just attract the eyes of the competitors, however, as their nearly unattainable allure attracts the public watching the Games from all over the world. While many are curious about their worth, questions are also asked about athlete payout in addition to receiving medals.

Whether athletes get paid to compete in the Olympics has been a commonly discussed topic over the years, with many Olympians opening up about their experiences trying to make ends meet while training to be the best in the world at their sport.

However, the compensation model will be changing a bit for the 2026 Winter Olympics after financier Ross Stevens donated $100 million to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC), promising $200,000 to each U.S. athlete who competes. The first half of the money will pay out 20 years after the first Olympic games they competed in, or when they’re 45, with the second half being a “guaranteed benefit for their families after they pass away.”

Read on to learn more about whether Olympic athletes get paid, how much medals are worth and the other prizes awarded on the podium.

Do Olympic athletes get paid?

Team USA's Katie Ledecky poses with her gold medal after winning the women's 1,500m freestyle final at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu via Getty 
Team USA’s Katie Ledecky poses with her gold medal after winning the women’s 1,500m freestyle final at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu via Getty

In short, Olympic athletes are not paid to compete. The International Olympic Committee explained in a statement to NBC Insider why a “for-profit business model” was never a goal for the Games.

If that was the case, the IOC hypothesized: “The event would be limited to those sports that generate the most significant revenues, and it would not involve athletes representing teams from 206 NOCs… It would not be Olympic Games as we know them.”

Still, athletes can profit in other ways. In fact, NBC reports that “Olympians are compensated directly from their country’s respective Olympic competition committee.”

This isn’t true for all athletes competing in the Olympics, however, as they’re primarily paid only if they medal. “Team USA athletes who medal will be paid by the country’s Olympic committee,” according to Forbes, “but a majority of American athletes aren’t paid to compete.”

According to USA Today, the U.S. payment process is deemed “Operation Gold” by the USOPC. Athletes earn $37,500 for gold, $22,500 for silver and $15,000 for bronze, which is the same as their earnings in the 2022 and 2024 Olympics.

In comparison to other countries, the payout for American athletes is on the lower end of the spectrum.

Singapore pays its athletes much more, offering their athletes $788,907 for what would be their first gold medal in the Olympic Games, per USA Today. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is offering $767,747 for gold, and Italy is celebrating those who place in their home country with $209,804 for gold medalists.

What do first-place athletes win at the Olympics?

Team USA's Simone Biles poses with the Olympic Rings and a goat charm on her necklace during the Artistic Gymnastics Women's All-Around Final medal ceremony at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Jamie Squire/Getty
Team USA’s Simone Biles poses with the Olympic Rings and a goat charm on her necklace during the Artistic Gymnastics Women’s All-Around Final medal ceremony at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Jamie Squire/Getty

Athletes are awarded a gold medal for winning first place at the Olympics, a tradition that began at the St. Louis Games in 1904. The medals are customized year to year — and according to the official Olympics website, the design “is the responsibility of the host city’s organizing committee.”

The 2024 Paris Olympics made history with its medals, which were designed by expert French jeweler Chaumet. For the first time ever in the history of the Games, the medals were adorned with the original iron used in the construction of the Eiffel Tower.

How much is an Olympic gold medal worth?

Gold medalist Kristen Faulkner of Team United States bites her medal on the podium during the Women's Road Race Tim de Waele/Getty 
Gold medalist Kristen Faulkner of Team United States bites her medal on the podium during the Women’s Road Race Tim de Waele/Getty

The medals handed out at the 2026 Winter Olympics are worth more than ever, according to CTV News, due to the rising costs of the material itself.

Gold medals have doubled in value since the Paris Olympics, with a cost of about $2,300 — even though the medals are not pure gold. Only six grams of the medal’s 506 grams are made of gold, the rest are silver.

How much are Olympic silver and bronze medals worth?

Team USA's Sha`carri Richardson poses with her silver medal during the 100 meter medal ceremony at the 2024 Paris Olympics Harry Langer/DeFodi Images via Getty
Team USA’s Sha`carri Richardson poses with her silver medal during the 100 meter medal ceremony at the 2024 Paris Olympics Harry Langer/DeFodi Images via Getty

Similar to the gold medals, silver and bronze medals aren’t 100% pure. The silver medal weighs around 500 grams, while the bronze medal weighs 420 grams.

Silver medals have almost tripled in value, coming in at $1,400. However, bronze medals, which are made of copper, are only worth about $5.60 each.

RANKING THE MOST AND LEAST EDUCATED STATE SIN THE USA…SOME SURPRISES?

The United States may be a democracy, but if knowledge is power, some states clearly have a stronger claim to the crown than others. Higher education is a privilege not everyone gets, yet those who do often gain access to higher incomes, greater job security, and more career mobility.

That opportunity gap isn’t evenly distributed. From high school graduation rates to graduate degrees, education levels vary widely across the country, shaping local economies and long-term quality of life. So which states are the most educated, and which are still playing catch-up?

The Smartest States

To rank the most and least educated states in America, WalletHub analyzed all 50 states using 18 metrics tied to both educational achievement and access. The analysis considers how educated a state’s population is, how strong its schools are, and how evenly opportunities are shared across gender and race. Higher scores point to states where education is both effective and widely accessible, while lower scores highlight deeper, more persistent gaps-shown on the map below.

WalletHub© WalletHub

Topping the list is Massachusetts, home to world-renowned colleges like MIT and Harvard. Nearly half of adults hold a bachelor’s degree, and a significant share have graduate or professional degrees. But the Bay State isn’t just about the Ivies-its public schools rank among the best in the country, and some state-sponsored programs even help make college more affordable.

A little further up the East Coast is Vermont, the second-most educated state in America. Small but mighty, the Green Mountain State boasts nearly universal high school graduation and a large share of adults with bachelor’s degrees. Top-ranked colleges and broad access to postsecondary education give residents plenty of opportunities to keep learning, making lifelong education feel like a community tradition.

Heading down south, Maryland rounds out the top three most educated states. The Old Line State boasts strong high schools that prepare students to become highly educated adults, many of whom hold bachelor’s or graduate degrees. Free community college programs open doors for scholars, while the state’s universities rank among the nation’s best. Maryland also keeps things fair, with one of the smallest gender gaps in bachelor’s degree attainment and policies that encourage learning year-round.

Quality vs. Quantity

Education isn’t just about how many diplomas are hanging on the wall: it’s also about how strong the system is behind them. This study evaluates states across two dimensions: quantity (the number of degrees residents earn) and quality (school performance and overall system strength).

Here are the top 10 most educated states in America, along with their educational attainment and quality of education rankings:

Overall Rank State Educational Attainment Rank Quality of Education Rank
1 Massachusetts 1 4
2 Vermont 3 9
3 Maryland 4 3
4 Connecticut 7 6
5 Colorado 2 38
6 New Jersey 10 1
7 Virginia 6 11
8 New Hampshire 5 14
9 Minnesota 8 20
10 Washington 9 21

The most educated states tend to strike a balance, pairing high levels of college completion with strong public schools, colleges, and universities. But the two don’t always move in lockstep. Some states, like Colorado, turn out plenty of graduates despite a more middle-of-the-pack system quality. In contrast, others, such as New Jersey, boast top-tier schools that haven’t fully translated into the highest levels of adult degree attainment.

More Education, More Money?

WalletHub© WalletHub

At a glance, the pattern is hard to ignore: states with higher education rankings tend to land higher in median household income as well. The green dots-states that rank highly in both education and income-cluster toward the top left of the chart, reinforcing the idea that strong schools and a well-educated population often go hand in hand with economic prosperity.

But the story isn’t perfectly linear. The blue states rank highly in education but lag in income, suggesting that degrees don’t always translate immediately into higher household earnings. On the flip side, the gray states post stronger income rankings despite lower education standings-likely benefiting from industry mix, natural resources, or other economic advantages.

Meanwhile, the red cluster shows the toughest reality: states that rank lower in education often also lag in income, underscoring how deeply intertwined opportunity and earning power can be.

In the end, education isn’t the only factor shaping a state’s wealth, but the overall upward trend makes one thing clear: more education generally means more money.

USA DECLINING BIRTHRATES CALL FOR BOOT-CAMPS TO BOLSTER THE DECLINE

Social media users are denouncing the idea of “marriage bootcamps” as “ridiculous” and “demographic control” online after an unadopted policy plan from the conservative think tank that helped create Project 2025 proposed the camps as a way to boost birthrates.

The online report, titled “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years,” published Jan. 8 by The Heritage Foundation, lays out ways the group says the United States can “restore the family home,” including through monetarily incentivizing couples to have children and stay married, among other efforts.

The report has since drawn some criticism online, much of it aimed at the “marriage bootcamps” outlined in the plan that would end with people who participated in the program taking part in a communal wedding.

What’s in the Heritage Foundation report? Call for more marriage, babies.

In its report, the Heritage Foundation calls on the Trump administration and Congress to consider a plethora of proposed actions that they say would help reverse the declining birth rate in the United States, which they call “America’s family crisis.”

Overall population growth has slowed “significantly,” with an increase of just 1.8 million people between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025, according to U.S. census estimates released on Jan. 27.

There were about 519,000 more births than deaths in the United States between July 2024 and July 2025, representing similar growth as the year before, the Census Bureau said. The birth rate is higher than during the pandemic, but it still “represents a significant decline from prior decades,” according to the agency.

The report outlines The Heritage Foundation’s plan to combat this, including reforming current programs related to welfare, higher education, surrogacy and more, while placing family building and marriage at the focus of both American lives and politics.

Some of the other major suggestions in the report include:

  • Reviewing grants, policies, and regulations that the federal government is involved with to “measure how it helps or harms marriage and family.”
  • Financially incentivizing marriage and childbearing by placing $2,500 into investment accounts for newlyweds.
  • Rerouting the current $17,670 adoption tax credit to married parents for each of their own newborns, as long as one parent is employed.
  • Reforming educational curriculum to teach life skills like relationship management, parenting basics, and financial literacy.
  • Revising higher education subsidies to allow Americans to “avoid pointless debt, start their careers earlier, and form families sooner.”

‘Marriage bootcamps’ and a communal wedding

The report also floated the idea of “marriage bootcamps” that aim to cover topics like communication, money management and conflict resolution for “cohabiting couples with children.”

The successful completion of the program would conclude with couples “ready to walk down the aisle at a communal wedding,” the report states, and a potential $5,000 monetary incentive − funded by foundations or private donors − for couples to get married. Additionally, newlyweds would leave with a mentor couple to guide them through marriage following the wedding.

Delano Squires, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing, told USA TODAY that programs supporting marriage like this already exist, and federal funding has in the past been designated for marriage education, including by the Administration for Children & Families. Ideally, he added, the program would create and support a culture of marriage in what he called “marriage deserts,” or places where people want to get married but aren’t.

“We know that in some of these neighborhoods, particularly low-income, working-class neighborhoods, people are not getting married before having children. But you can find a critical mass of cohabiting couples, right? So, they have kids together, they live together. Oftentimes, their finances are mixed up together,” Squires said. “How about we … work with them to move them from, as old folks would say, shacking up to settling down.”

Paul Eastwick, relationship psychology expert and author of “Bonded by Evolution: The New Science of Love and Connection,” said that while he views the mentor couple idea as potentially beneficial for newlyweds, he is unsure how successful the overall bootcamps would be based on the usefulness of similar past programs, like former President George W. Bush’s Healthy Marriage Initiative.

“It’s kind of based on a broken idea about what makes for good relationships, or at least what prevents bad relationships. Because the assumption was, if we just give people the skills, they’ll like do coupledom better,” Eastwick said.

However, there’s a risk that the delivery of these skills and marriage tips, such as in a classroom format, might not resonate with people trying to manage their marriage or be beneficial in the end, he added.

“There’s good evidence that therapy can work, but a lot of ways that therapy works, it’s not like teaching skills in the abstract. It’s not like you take a class and you get an ‘A’ and now you’re ready to be married,” Eastwick said. “That’s not where most of the goodness or the badness of a relationship comes from.”

Alternatively, Eastwick said he is more concerned with loneliness than marriage when it comes to a lack of socialization and relationships in the U.S. Getting people to spend time together and form connections in person would be his first step to reduce that loneliness that could eventually result in more relationships, he added.

“We don’t want to go back to where we were stigmatizing people for wanting to be single,” Eastwick said. “But if you’re single and looking, if there are creative ways of helping these people to find each other that aren’t swiping, I think that’d be great.”

Social media users react to ‘Saving the Family’ plan

The Heritage Foundation’s plan is a recommendation to the Trump administration that has not been adopted. The camp is also designated as being for cohabiting couples with children.

But the report is still receiving mixed responses from some social media users who view the plan as a potential way for the government to control aspects of their personal lives.

“It’s every bride’s dream,” says user @wiscocowboy sarcastically in a TikTok video. “A forced communal wedding.”

 

COSTCO HAS FIGURED OUT HOW TO STOP RETAIL THEFT!

As rampant shoplifting across the US has forced store closures and inflicted billions of dollars in losses on retailers, one industry giant appears to have cracked the problem.

Costco has largely defied the retail theft surge that has plagued chains such as Walmart and Target – because it runs its stores differently.

S

In its most recent annual report, Costco explained how its business model keeps losses low.

‘By strictly controlling the entrances and exits and using a membership format, we believe our inventory losses are well below those of typical retail operations,’ the report for 2025 said.

Unlike Walmart or Target, Costco doesn’t let just anyone wander in off the street.

Shoppers must show a paid membership – often with photo ID – before they’re allowed through the door. Once inside, there’s usually just one way in and one way out, and every purchase is checked against a receipt before customers leave.

These all add up. Fewer entrances mean fewer blind spots. Receipt checks make it much harder to walk out with unpaid items. And because everyone inside has already paid to be there, there’s far fewer anonymous shoppers  – a key driver of retail theft.

The contrast comes as US retailers are estimated to have lost more than $47 billion to shoplifting in 2025.

A Costco worker checks a receipt at the store exit in Teterboro, New Jersey, on February 28, 2024 – a small step that makes walking out with unpaid items harder

According to the National Retail Federation, the average number of shoplifting incidents rose 93 percent in 2023 compared with 2019, while dollar losses increased by 90 percent over the same period.

Companies including Target, Walgreens, Whole Foods, and Nordstrom have previously cited retail crime as a factor behind store closures.

Costco has long said shoplifting has been a much smaller problem for them than for competitors. During an earnings call in 2023, then chief financial officer Richard Galanti told investors: ‘Thankfully, it’s not a big issue for us.’

Speaking to Daily Mail after the call, Galanti said Costco’s theft rate sat between 0.1 and 0.2 percent – roughly ten times lower than the retail industry average.

‘Our shrinkage has historically been low,’ he said. ‘And we’ve gotten better with time.’ Shrinkage is an industry term for stock losses, including theft.

While theft has never been a major problem for Costco, losses were more than twice today’s level roughly 30 years ago, showing how the company’s approach has steadily tightened.

Beyond store design, he said Costco’s bulk-buying model also helps. Large items like multi-packs of groceries or household goods are far harder to steal than small, high-value products that are often targeted in other stores.

In the US, Costco membership costs $65 per year for a standard Gold Star or Business membership, or $130 for an Executive one.

Executive members also get 2 percent cashback on most purchases- paid yearly – and can also start shopping an hour earlier.

Bulk items stacked high on both sides of a Costco aisle reflect the retailer’s simple design – fewer frills, fewer blind spots

A shopper packs a car with purchases outside Costco, whose focus on large, high-volume items reduces the risk of unpaid goods leaving the store 

Those membership fees allow Costco to operate on thin margins while keeping prices low – and investing in security without locking up everyday items.

While Costco experiences low levels of in-store theft, it has not been immune to crime altogether.

In late 2025, the company suffered a high-profile cargo theft involving a hijacked $400,000 shipment of live lobsters.

Financially, the retailer remains on solid footing. In early 2026, Costco shares are up more than 13 percent year to date, rebounding from a dip in 2025 and buoyed by strong January sales growth of 7.1 percent.

 

TRUMP FAMILY MAKING BILLIONS ON NEW BUSINESS VENTURES…

Trump’s Profiteering Hits $4 Billion

In August, I reported that the President and his family had made $3.4 billion by leveraging his position. After his first year back in office, the number has ballooned.

Donald Trump opening a bank safe.
Illustration by Erik Carter
At the start of Donald Trump’s first term, he promised that he and his family would never do anything that might even be “perceived to be exploitive of office of the Presidency.” By contrast, his second term looks rapacious. He and members of his family have signed a blitz of foreign mega-deals shadowed by conflicts of interest, and they’ve launched at least five different cryptocurrency enterprises, all of which leverage Trump’s status as President to lure buyers or investors. Ethics watchdogs say that no other President has ever so nakedly exploited his position, or on such a scale. Trump recently explained to the Times why he cast aside his former restraint: “I found out that nobody cared.”
Is Trump right about the public’s nonchalance? Last summer, I tallied how much money he and his immediate family had made off his high office. My method was conservative. It seemed unfair to begrudge Trump the profits from the many businesses he owned before entering the White House. So I excluded from my calculation preëxisting hotels, condos, and golf courses, along with plausible extensions of those long-standing businesses. Likewise, Trump is hardly the first President to trade access or potential influence for political fund-raising, and he generally cannot spend such money on personal expenses, so I set that aside, too. Lastly, I left out funny-money assets he couldn’t readily cash out without setting off a fire sale that would eviscerate their value, such as his shares in the company behind Truth Social, his social-media platform.
Even excluding all that, by August, the Presidential profiteering reached $3.4 billion. (You can review my judgments in the article, “The Number.”) And since then the First Family has kept busy. The end of Trump’s first year in office seemed an opportune time for an update. Did the family business slow down or speed up for the Trumps?
AMERICAN BITCOIN REDUX
Many investors and consumers understandably distrust cryptocurrency and digital finance. Crypto heists are alarmingly common, and the best-known uses of digital currency are money laundering and casino-like financial speculation. President Trump himself, before his most recent campaign, maintained that Bitcoin “seems like a scam” and that crypto “can facilitate unlawful behavior.” But an association with a sitting President can furnish a valuable credibility boost. Think of the premium that investors will pay for U.S. Treasury bonds compared to notes from some little-known bank. That appears, in a nutshell, to be the Trump family’s strategy with crypto.
The Trumps’ first windfall since my August tally occurred through American Bitcoin, a company that mines new bitcoin with the intent to hoard it. (Under the algorithm that created bitcoin, miners get paid in new tokens for the computer work of tracking digital transactions.) Last spring, Eric and Donald Trump, Jr., contributed their family name—and nothing else of obvious value—to a complicated series of transactions that yielded them approximately a thirteen-per-cent stake in American Bitcoin. Eric, who is now listed as its co-founder and chief strategy officer, has become the company’s public face. If Eric and Donald, Jr.,’s father had lost the 2024 election, surely no one would have handed them such a large stake in a business that they had virtually no experience in and to which they had contributed so little—so their stake should be categorized as Presidential profit. In August, I calculated that the brothers’ thirteen-per-cent stake in the company’s computer hardware alone added at least thirteen million dollars to the family’s profiteering tally.
In September, the company floated shares on the stock market, capitalizing in another way on the cachet of the Trump name. American Bitcoin merged with a penny-stock bitcoin miner as a way of going public without the cost—or scrutiny—of an initial public offering. And the stock market, as expected, has put a far higher price on the company, in part because it owns a stockpile of bitcoin. The brothers’ stake now appears to be worth around two hundred million dollars. A caveat: Eric Trump, as a large and active investor in American Bitcoin, must report any sale of shares, and that might trigger a selloff. So it seems excessive to add it all to the Presidential-profit ledger. I will add only the approximate value of Donald Trump, Jr.,’s stake: about a hundred million dollars.
The number in August: $3.4 billion
Additional profit: $100 million
New total: $3.5 billion
WORLD LIBERTY FINANCIAL, BINANCE, AND PAKISTAN
The Trumps have made even more money since August through World Liberty Financial, a digital-finance startup heavily linked to the family. Its website lists the President as a “co-founder emeritus” and displays his photograph prominently; Eric, Donald, Jr., and Barron Trump are all listed as co-founders. Steven Witkoff, the President’s old friend and diplomatic envoy, is also listed as a co-founder emeritus, and his son Zach is C.E.O.
In May, World Liberty began selling a form of crypto known as a stablecoin. Unlike digital currencies such as bitcoin, which rise and fall in price, a stablecoin is supposed to hold a fixed value in dollars. Before July, when President Trump signed the first legislation regulating stablecoin, some of the best-known examples, such as TerraUSD, had turned out to be Ponzi schemes. (In December, a New York court sentenced TerraUSD’s co-founder to fifteen years in prison.) But World Liberty promised that its stablecoin, USD1, will always be worth exactly one dollar. Buyers can transfer USD1 to move money or make payments, and any holder can redeem USD1 for dollars. In between, while USD1s are circulating, World Liberty invests the cash that it is holding in U.S. Treasury bonds, in much the same way a savings bank might invest deposits. At current interest rates, World Liberty can expect to earn more than four per cent annually on the volume of USD1 in circulation.
Last spring, a company owned by the rulers of the United Arab Emirates bought two billion dollars’ worth of USD1. The transaction raised alarms about the appearance of a payoff—because the U.A.E. was simultaneously seeking approval from the Trump Administration to acquire sensitive American artificial-intelligence technology. (President Trump soon granted that approval.) The Emiratis immediately used the stablecoin to invest in Binance, the largest crypto exchange, which has its own interest in influencing Trump. In 2023, Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, known as C.Z., pleaded guilty to violating anti-money-laundering laws, served a brief prison sentence, and agreed to stop running the company. At the time of the two-billion-dollar stablecoin payment from the U.A.E., he was petitioning Trump for a pardon. Binance, as the holder of the stablecoin, can determine how long World Liberty continues earning four per cent a year on that two billion dollars. In other words, Binance controls how much profit the Trumps will make from the two-billion-dollar stablecoin sale. In October, Trump granted C.Z.’s request for a pardon. (David Wachsman, a spokesman for World Liberty, told me that Binance cannot “exert control or influence over World Liberty Financial.”)
Binance is currently seeking to end federal monitoring that had been imposed when he was convicted for violating anti-money-laundering laws. Now the company is goosing the Trumps’ stablecoin profits in another way. On December 11th, Binance dropped its fees for certain crypto trades if they were conducted in USD1. Then, on December 23rd, Binance began paying users of its platform to hold USD1: Binance announced that, for the next month, it would give users a bonus equal to about 1.7 per cent on up to fifty thousand dollars’ worth of USD1 holdings. If this return rate were annualized, it would yield an eye-popping twenty per cent. And, on January 23rd, Binance announced a combination of new giveaways to USD1 holders which roughly extended that offer. Many users leapt at these opportunities. In the months preceding Binance’s maneuvers, the total volume of USD1 in circulation had held steady at about two billion dollars. On December 25th, shortly after Binance announced its first giveaway, World Liberty announced that USD1’s volume had crossed three billion dollars. It has now climbed to roughly five billion, and most of that expansion appears to have taken place on the Binance platform.
Representatives of Binance and World Liberty both denied any wrongdoing. They told me that Binance and its competitors have often paid holders of other stablecoins in order to attract traders, and that several smaller exchanges also provide benefits to holders of USD1. A Binance spokeswoman said in a statement that the services it provided to World Liberty “are available to other projects on equal terms.” A spokesman for World Liberty said that USD1’s growth “reflects genuine market adoption.” But Molly White, a computer programmer who is a prominent critic of the crypto industry and tracks such offers, told me that crypto exchanges have seldom, if ever, paid stablecoin holders as high a return rate as Binance is providing for USD1, or offered bonus returns on such large quantities. She said that Binance “seems like they are just giving away free money,” and that the company’s enrichment of the Trumps, through World Liberty, looked like “a very blatant quid pro quo” for the President’s pardoning of C.Z. (In response to detailed questions about my reporting for this article, Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, told me, in an e-mail, that “the failing liberal media is only pushing the same old garbage narratives” and that “President Trump has always put—and will always put—the best interests of the American people first.”)
Last spring, the government of Pakistan reportedly enlisted C.Z. as an adviser on the use of crypto. And, on January 14th, Pakistan—which has its own interests in influencing the Trump Administration—signed an agreement to incorporate USD1 into an officially regulated digital-payment system. A spokesman for World Liberty told me that, at the moment, Pakistan is only exploring the potential use of USD1 in handling “international remittances,” and that the country’s interest in USD1 “has nothing to do” with its relations with the Trump Administration. Still, it is hard to imagine that, without the imprimatur of the U.S. President, such a novel stablecoin would be embraced so quickly at the highest levels of the Pakistani government. So this deal, too, depends on Trump’s Presidency.
Now that World Liberty has seen an increase of three billion dollars in the value of its stablecoin in circulation, it can reasonably expect to earn four per cent a year on that extra sum—three hundred and sixty million dollars, if that circulation holds up in the three years Trump has left in office. According to the fine print on World Liberty’s website, a company affiliated with the Trumps is entitled to about thirty-eight per cent of that interest, which would come out to about a hundred and thirty-six million dollars in additional Presidential profit.
Running total: $3.5 billion
Additional profit: $136 million
New total: $3.64 billion
FROM APPLIANCE REPAIR TO CRYPTOCURRENCY
The Trumps have also received a windfall from World Liberty through a different form of crypto that it has sold: digital “governance” tokens, which provide buyers a loosely defined right to vote on the company’s future. Unlike stablecoin, these tokens carry no promise of redemption for any fixed amount of dollars; you can sell one for a price that rises or falls like a stock. Yet, unlike a stock, these digital tokens do not entitle a buyer to any equity in World Liberty; nor to any share of its profits, raising many questions about why an investor might want to own them—other than for World Liberty’s connection to the Trumps. Some purchasers may hope that, if the Trump Administration further loosens security rules, the tokens will eventually become a form of ownership. Others may be seeking to buy influence.
After my August tally, World Liberty found an improbable new taker for its tokens: a company that had gone public, in 1991, as Appliance Recycling Centers of America. In 2019, it made a radical transition into biotechnology, declaring that it would attempt to develop a nonaddictive alternative to opioids. In 2024, it transformed again, adopting the name Alt5 Sigma Corporation and shifting its focus to processing digital payments.
In August, Alt5 Sigma refocussed yet again—to buying World Liberty’s digital tokens. It agreed to trade the leadership of its board (and a substantial minority of its stock) to World Liberty in exchange for a pile of digital tokens, then said to be worth about seven hundred and fifty million dollars. Zach Witkoff became Alt5 Sigma’s chairman, and the company announced that it would appoint Eric Trump as a director.
As part of the same convoluted transaction, the new Alt5 Sigma—cashing in on the Trump name and the broader crypto boom—also sold about seven hundred and fifty million dollars’ worth of new shares to outside investors expressly for the purpose of buying even more World Liberty tokens. Alt5 Sigma didn’t name the buyers; a securities filing said only that the investors included “a select number of the world’s largest institutional investors and prominent crypto venture-capital firms.” After this transaction, Alt5 Sigma’s stockpile of World Liberty tokens rose to about 7.5 per cent of all the tokens in circulation, and its share had a nominal value of about $1.5 billion. Alt5 Sigma is pitching its stock as an easy way for ordinary investors to indirectly own World Liberty tokens—essentially turning its common stock into a bet on the Trump family’s future endeavors in crypto. White, the crypto critic, noted that top executives of World Liberty were now running a second company whose mission appeared to be buying World Liberty’s own governance token. These sales enrich the Trump and Witkoff families. She called the arrangement “a mind-boggling conflict of interest.” (Wachsman, the World Liberty spokesman, told me that Alt5 Sigma’s original board had independently decided to stockpile the governance token before Witkoff became chairman; Wachsman added that World Liberty’s USD1 business “aligns with” Alt5 Sigma’s payment processing “roadmap.”)
It’s unclear what kind of due diligence the Trumps or Witkoff had done. Alt5 Sigma failed to file its required third-quarter financial report on time. In October, the company, also without explanation, announced that its C.E.O. had been “removed of his duties.” A month later, Alt5 Sigma said that it had “determined to conclude” the employment of its chief financial officer, who had acted as interim C.E.O. Then, in December, the company switched to a new auditor, and—following questions from the Financial Times about that firm’s checkered record—replaced it, too. Recently, it emerged that in May—months before the deal with World Liberty—a Rwandan court found a subsidiary of Alt5 Sigma criminally liable for money laundering, among other violations. Stock-market regulators, for unspecified reasons, also forced the company to replace Eric Trump with another World Liberty executive as a director on its board—although Eric remains a board observer and a strategic adviser. Alt5 Sigma’s stock, after rising to more than eight dollars on the news of the deal with World Liberty, has now tumbled to about two dollars a share. In an e-mailed statement, Alt5 Sigma said that it remains “excited about our future and our ongoing partnership with World Liberty Financial.”
For the Trumps, though, the Alt5 Sigma deal has already paid off. According to the fine print of World Liberty’s website, after deducting certain expenses, seventy-five per cent of token sales go to a company affiliated with the Trump family, and seventy-five per cent of seven hundred and fifty million dollars comes out to five hundred and sixty-two million.
Running total: $3.64 billion
Additional profit: $562 million
New total: $4.2 billion
A BAD BET ON BITCOIN
In fairness, I will note that the decline in the price of bitcoin since August may have lowered my previous calculation of the Trumps’ Presidential profits at Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company behind Truth Social. Although the social-media platform has yet to demonstrate any profit, it has capitalized on its anomalously high share price by quietly selling large sums of stock to institutional investors (who could flip it after a jump in its volatile price). By August, the company had used the proceeds to stockpile about $3.1 billion in cash and bitcoin. Since the President then owned about forty-two per cent of Trump Media, I previously estimated that his interest in those assets added $1.3 billion to his Presidential profits. Judging from the amount of bitcoin and cash on Trump Media’s balance sheet in its most recent quarterly report, that number may have fallen by about a hundred and fifty million dollars, to $1.15 billion.
Even with that setback, though, the Trumps have made a net total of about six hundred and fifty million dollars from crypto since August. That pushes his total gain since he first sought the Presidency to more than $4 billion.
Running total: $4.2 billion
Fluctuation in bitcoin value: -$150 million
Over-all gain from crypto: $646 million
New total: $4.05 billion
NUCLEAR FUSION, BANK SHAKEDOWNS, AND A MALDIVES RESORT
The Trumps have also continued to cash in on the Presidency in other ways—often while engaging in stark conflicts of interest. But it is premature to quantify those profits.
On December 18th, for example, Trump Media used its bags of cash and bitcoin for a stunning new gamble on, of all things, nuclear fusion. Trump Media agreed to merge with TAE Technologies, a privately owned company, founded in 1998, that is one of several firms attempting to develop the first economically viable power plant using nuclear fusion. When the deal closes, Trump Media shareholders will own half of the joint company. The President will be the largest shareholder, with more than twenty per cent of the stock. Devin Nunes, the chief executive of Trump Media and a former Republican congressman, is expected to become one of two co-chief executives.
For TAE, the merger provides badly needed capital. The company has already raised and spent $1.3 billion in its quest to make fusion work, and, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Trump Media said that it has agreed to pay TAE up to three hundred million dollars before the merger is finalized. The conflict of interest here is glaring: the President himself will be deeply invested in a company that is competing for federal-government permits and funding.
For the Trump family, this could be the most profitable deal of his Presidency, if TAE turns out to be the outfit that solves the daunting challenges of supplying energy from fusion. At the very least, reducing the company’s identification with Truth Social could make it easier for Trump to cash out some of his shares. On the other hand, if fusion does not become viable for decades, Trump Media may end up squandering that pile of cash and bitcoin.
After squeezing tens of millions of dollars out of several major media companies last year to settle legally tenuous lawsuits, President Trump this month filed a new suit—against JPMorgan Chase. He is demanding five billion dollars, alleging that the bank acted out of political bias when it closed his accounts after the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. Last year, the Trump Organization filed a smaller suit making similar allegations against Capital One. Both banks have called the claims meritless. But, like the media companies, both banks are regulated by his Administration, creating an incentive to settle.
In real estate, the Trumps continue to profit from a partnership with Dar Al Arkan, a major Saudi developer with a history of close ties to the royal family. On November 17th, the Trump Organization announced an agreement to license its name to Dar Al Arkan for a planned Trump International Hotel Maldives, which is to include about eighty “ultra-luxury beach and overwater villas.” Emanuel Schreiner, the chief executive of RVS Hospitality, a consulting company, told me that the demand for privacy in the luxury market often drives the rental rates for such villas in the archipelago above ten thousand dollars a night during the peak season, and the Trump Organization’s fees might range from two to ten per cent of revenue—a hefty sum, although the specifics remain to be seen. The Trump Organization added that it planned to finance the project by selling digital tokens that would allow buyers to participate in the profits—an idea that would appear to violate U.S. securities laws.
The next day, Trump welcomed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s ruler, to the White House. It was the prince’s first visit since his agents killed and dismembered Jamal Khashoggi—the Saudi dissident, Washington Post columnist, and Virginia resident—inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, in 2018. At a press conference, an American journalist asked about the murder. Trump berated the questioner for daring to “embarrass our guest.” As the prince stared down at his hands, Trump, contradicting U.S. intelligence agencies, declared that bin Salman “knew nothing about it.” The President deprecated Khashoggi as someone “a lot of people didn’t like.” Trump also announced that he intended to sell advanced F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, that he intended to approve export licenses to sell advanced computer chips for artificial intelligence to the kingdom, and that the U.S. had even taken a step toward providing nuclear technology.
More Saudi deals followed. Earlier this month, the Trump Organization said that it was licensing its name to Dar Al Arkan for a new golf club, a luxury hotel, and a number of mansions in Diriyah, near Riyadh. The Trump Organization also sold the use of the President’s name for a Trump Plaza development in Jeddah which will include townhouses, condos, office space, retail stores, a Trump Grill, an artisanal bakery, and a health club (featuring a cigar bar). Ziad El Chaar, the chief executive of Dar Al Arkan’s international arm, DarGlobal, told Reuters that the two Trump projects would have a combined value of ten billion dollars. Extrapolating from the President’s disclosures about similar deals, the Trumps stand to make tens of millions from each of these projects.
Before the 2024 election, Donald, Jr., who has little business experience outside of the family’s real-estate holdings, sat on the board of directors of only one company: Trump Media & Technology Group, where his father was chairman. Since the election, however, about half a dozen other companies have rushed to enlist him as an adviser or director. Some are startups at which his compensation has not been made public, such as BlinkRx, an online pharmaceutical retailer. He is also an adviser to two competing prediction markets, Polymarket and Kalshi. (He has invested in Polymarket, but the company has said that it does not pay him any additional compensation.)
At other companies he has joined, Donald, Jr., already appears to be making millions. GrabAGun, an online weapons retailer, gave him stock that is currently worth nearly a million dollars, if he still holds it. (At the time of my calculations in August, the stock was worth about two million, and he has been under no obligation to disclose any sale.) A penny-stock brokerage called Dominari Securities granted Donald, Jr., and Eric shares with a current market value of more than six million dollars. PublicSquare, an online marketplace often described as “anti-woke,” gave Donald, Jr., shares with a current value of about a hundred and thirty thousand dollars. A company called Mixed Martial Arts Group Limited named him a strategic adviser and paid him options with a current value of about $1.3 million. Unusual Machines, a startup drone manufacturer, named Donald, Jr., to its advisory board shortly after the 2024 Presidential election; factoring in a steep discount on a private placement of shares, the company gave him stock with a total current value of more than five million dollars.
Arthur Schwartz, a spokesman for the President’s son, told me that “the premise that Donald Trump, Jr., would not be financially successful if not for his father’s political success is dumb and does not pass the smell test.” Still, the financial health of several of these ventures—including the prediction markets, the pharmaceutical retailer, the online weapons seller, and the drone manufacturer—will depend, in no small part, on decisions made by the federal government. This past October, for example, Unusual Machines announced that its drone parts were included in a major order from the U.S. Army, and critics have asked whether the family connection to the Commander-in-Chief played a role in the contract. Donald, Jr., and all of the companies he works with have repeatedly said that he does not advise about regulatory matters or lobby his father’s Administration. But he may not need to do so. Allan Evans, the chief executive of Unusual Machines, recently likened Donald, Jr.,’s advisory role to Oprah Winfrey’s former position on the board of Weight Watchers. “What does Oprah need to do? Not a lot,” Evans told Bloomberg News. The Trump name alone, he said, provides “credibility to rise above the noise.”
THE LOSERS
The drone contract made Unusual Machines a rare bright spot for investors who bought what the Trumps have been selling during the President’s first year back in office. Unusual Machine’s stock briefly tripled to eighteen dollars a share in late 2024, on the news of Donald, Jr.,’s affiliation, and then fell back down to below five dollars a share. But after the Army announced its drone order Unusual Machines eventually regained that peak for a short time, vindicating bets on the value of the Trump family connection.
The other five publicly traded companies that made Donald, Jr., an adviser or director have so far disappointed investors. Shares in the parent company of PublicSquare have fallen to about a dollar from a peak of above seven dollars when it signed up Donald, Jr. GrabAGun has tumbled to around three dollars a share from more than thirteen. Dominari Holdings soared from around three dollars a share to eleven dollars last February on news of its affiliation with the Trump brothers. Those shares currently trade for less than four dollars a share. Shares of Mixed Martial Arts Group soared to $1.80 a share when he signed on in September; they now trade for less than half that.
Last July, excitement about Dar Al Arkan’s partnership with the Trumps helped propel shares of the Saudi developer’s stock—which trades in London under the name of its international subsidiary, DarGlobal—to a peak of more than ten dollars a share. But concerns that overbuilding in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf markets may create a glut of luxury hotels and residences have now dragged DarGlobal’s shares back below eight dollars.
The share price of Trump Media & Technology Group has fallen by more than sixty per cent since Trump’s Inauguration. Trump non-fungible tokens, the digital cartoons that were his first dabble in crypto, have fallen in value by eighty per cent, and the $TRUMP meme coin—the kind of crypto he hyped last spring by offering its biggest holders an exclusive dinner and a tour of the White House—has lost about about ninety per cent of its value. World Liberty’s digital tokens, which started trading this past September, have fallen in price by about a third, and shares in American Bitcoin have plummeted in price by about eighty per cent since their début, also in September.
Indeed, for most Trump investors, the year has been brutal. But, if you’re someone who can trade your family name for an interest in a business, you still come out ahead—no matter how it fares. For the President and his family, the money-making shows no sign of slowing.
THE NEW NUMBER: $4.05 billion ♦

MOST AIRLINE CRASHES CAUSED BY DEI HIRES!

Former White House lawyer says female and minority pilots caused 66% of pilot-error crashes since 2000, despite being less than 10% of workforce 😬

Image for article: Former White House lawyer says female and minority pilots caused 66% of pilot-error crashes since 2000, despite being less than 10% of workforce 😬

arambe Harambe

Jan 26, 2026

According to a new op-ed from former White House lawyer Daniel Huff, DEI in the airline industry is still putting thousands of people in danger.

His analysis of every plane crash caused by pilot error since the year 2000 revealed something insane:

President Trump ordered the DOT to end its DEI practices early in his presidency, but that has not stopped airlines from continuing to engage in the practice. According to Huff’s report:

Delta CLO Peter Carter declared in January 2025 that the airline is ‘steadfast’ in its DEI commitments, calling them ‘critical to our business.’

United’s training academy maintains its goal of ensuring 50% of graduates are women or minorities.

Southwest still pledges to ‘recruit, hire, and retain a diverse and inclusive workforce.’

American agreed not to impose illegal quotas, but that leaves plenty of wiggle room.

 

 

Just a few examples cited:

Atlas Air Flight 3591

 

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)

 

According to the NTSB, this crash was caused by Conrad Aska, a black pilot who had a reputation for getting “extremely flustered and could not respond appropriately” when faced with unexpected situations in the simulator.

Experts reporting on the NTSB investigation described Aska’s “piloting performance as among the worst he had ever seen.”

The entire crew perished in the crash.

The 2025 Potomac River midair collision

 

 

Remember this one? 67 people died in this tragedy after a female helicopter pilot ignored repeated air-traffic-control instructions and collided with an American Airlines jet.

Huff is a senior advisor for The Heritage Foundation’s infamous “Project 2025,” former counsel to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, former general deputy assistant secretary for enforcement at HUD, and a senior legal advisor to the first Trump admin.

That means you’re either going to think he’s got a point, or he’s a racist/sexist Nazi, depending on your political views!

DENMARK’S GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED GREENLAND’S BIRTHRATE SECRETLY…

Denmark’s Dirty Little Secret About Population Control in Greenland

AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
Denmark has controlled Greenland since 1721. Indigenous peoples lived there for thousands of years before that. In 1953, the world’s largest island transitioned from colony to become part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Today its domestic affairs are considered self-rule, while Denmark is responsible for Greenland’s foreign policy, defense, and currency.

But with regard to Greenland and the women who have lived there, Denmark has had a dirty little secret centered on population control: a relatively recent birth control practice that was forced on thousands of women, for which the country only apologized in September 2025.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a group of independent researchers released a report that followed a two-year investigation. That investigation found that Denmark — from 1966 through 1992 — forced sterilization on more than 4,500 women and girls in Greenland, some as young as 12 years old. Many, if not most, were never told.

In the name of population control, doctors implanted an intra-uterine device (IUD) in the unsuspecting patients.

Revelations of this birth control program only came to light in 2022 through a podcast called Spiralkampagnen. While the revelations first emerged three years ago, Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, only issued an apology to Greenland in the Fall of 2025.

She said, “We cannot change what has happened. But we can take responsibility…On behalf of Denmark, I would like to say sorry,” while granting that the women and girls injured by the program had “experienced both physical and psychological harm.”

Outraged critics of the program described it as “systematic discrimination.”

The CFR said that to compile its report, researchers took testimony from 410 cases, 349 of which involved health consequences for the affected women. Hundreds of the victims were from Greenland’s Indigenous population, but the program impacted over 4,000 women and girls in total. While the researchers revealed that patients had the IUDs implanted without consent, in some cases women and girls received injections that left them infertile.

Denmark controlled Greenland’s healthcare sector until 1992. Now, the authors of the investigation’s report have called for authorities to consider whether this pattern of abuse violated Danish and human rights law. Lawyers for 143 women filed a lawsuit over the program. Reports are that 138 of the plaintiffs were minors when they were sterilized.

Last month, the Associated Press reported that Denmark agreed to “compensate thousands of Indigenous women and girls in Greenland over cases of forcible contraception carried out by health authorities over decades starting in the 1960s.”

The Danish health ministry said “women who were given contraception against their knowledge or consent between 1960 and 1991 can apply for individual payouts of 300,000 Danish kroner (about $46,000)” starting in April of this year.

This program in Greenland is not the last time Denmark has found a way to use ghoulish birth control practices to address a societal issue.

In Denmark today, the number and proportion of people with Downs Syndrome are vastly lower than other countries. You might think that Denmark has found a cure for Downs, but that’s not the case. Instead, the country has instituted universal screening among pregnant women for early detection of Downs Syndrome among their babies.

In 2019, in a country of over 6 million people, only 18 children were born with Downs in Denmark. This demonstrates the dramatic impact abortion has had on that population. The average number of babies born with Downs at present is roughly 21-34 per year.

Pundits, myself included, have been having a little fun with the prospect of the U.S. taking control of Greenland at the expense of such a small country as Denmark, but I’m not laughing now. Stories like these provide proof that even a small country can foster the worst kind of inhumanity, and for that reason alone, it should be taken seriously.

FORECLOSURE FILINGS ARE UP AND APPEAR TO GROW EVEN MORE!

Banks seize 367,000 homes as housing pain spreads across US… and it is about to get much worse

The past year was difficult for homeowners — but experts warn that 2026 could be even more challenging.

Foreclosures — when a bank or lender takes back a home after missed mortgage payments — rose 14 percent from a year earlier.

In total, 367,460 US properties faced foreclosure filings in 2025, meaning they were in some stage of being taken over by a lender, according to ATTOM’s data.

Experts warn even more homes may be seized in 2026. ‘If the job market weakens, and it may very well, then we could unfortunately down the road see the increase in the foreclosure rate significantly accelerate,’ said economist Michael Szanto.

Indeed, the outlook for the housing market — and the wider economy — is increasingly bleak. In total, the US added only around 584,000 jobs in 2025, making it the weakest year for job growth outside a recession since 2003.

As foreclosures rise, neighborhoods are flooded with discounted, bank-owned homes, dragging down nearby property values. For homeowners, that often means losing equity simply because of where they live.

A surge in foreclosure filings are a symptom of deeper financial problems: homeowners squeezed by higher taxes and interest costs are falling behind, as they fail to pay other debts, such as credit cards and car loans, as well.

That dynamic is reviving fears of a downturn reminiscent of 2008.

Foreclosure is when a bank or lender takes back a home because the owner hasn’t made the required mortgage payments

Economist Michael Szanto

If Americans are struggling to pay their mortgages, they’re likely cutting back on essentials like food, transportation, and healthcare — an affordability crunch that weighs on economic growth.

Foreclosures were most concentrated in a handful of states in 2025, with Florida topping the list at one filing for every 230 homes — an unsettling sign in a state already grappling with soaring insurance and housing costs.

Szanto explained that Florida’s condo crisis was partly responsible: ‘Florida is being uniquely affected by a massive rise in assessments for older condo buildings in response to the tragic Surfside collapse.’

Delaware followed closely at one in every 240 housing units, while South Carolina wasn’t far behind at one in 242.

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Illinois and Nevada rounded out the top five, each posting foreclosure filings on roughly one out of every 248 homes, underscoring that financial strain is spreading well beyond any single region.

A closer look at metro areas paints an even starker picture. Among the 225 metropolitan regions with at least 200,000 residents, Lakeland, Florida, stood out with the highest foreclosure rate in the country in 2025, with one in every 145 homes entering the foreclosure process.

Columbia, South Carolina followed at one in 165, while Cleveland, Ohio ranked third at one in 187.

Florida appeared again on the list with Cape Coral (one in 189), joined by Atlantic City, New Jersey, where one in every 192 housing units faced a foreclosure filing — signaling mounting stress in both Sun Belt and legacy markets alike.

Las Vegas was one of the cities that saw the most concerning foreclosure rates in 2025

Las Vegas was one of the cities that saw the most concerning foreclosure rates in 2025

Amongst the metro areas most affected by foreclosure filings was Cleveland, Ohio (pictured)

Amongst the metro areas most affected by foreclosure filings was Cleveland, Ohio (pictured)

Among the 225 metropolitan regions with at least 200,000 residents, Lakeland, Florida (pictured) stood out with the highest foreclosure rate in the country in 2025

Among the 225 metropolitan regions with at least 200,000 residents, Lakeland, Florida (pictured) stood out with the highest foreclosure rate in the country in 2025

Rob Barber, CEO at ATTOM

The pressure was also evident in the nation’s largest metro areas.

Among cities with populations exceeding one million, Jacksonville, Florida posted the worst foreclosure rate in 2025, with one filing for every 200 homes.

Las Vegas wasn’t far behind at one in 210, followed by Chicago at one in 214 and Orlando at one in 217, highlighting that even major housing markets are increasingly feeling the strain.

‘The main weakness of our housing market is still a major supply shortage combined with factors like higher mortgage rates locking out many would be new homebuyers,’ said Szanto.

While the data seems concerning, Attom’s CEO Rob Barber says it simply reflects a ‘continued normalization of the housing market following several years of historically low levels’.

Last month, ATTOM’s data showed the number of homeowners falling behind to be rising every single month.

In November, 35,651 properties had a foreclosure filing — up a staggering 21 percent from just one year earlier.