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THE PRESIDENT’S BANK
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted conditional approval Friday for World Liberty Trust Company, National Association to become a federally chartered national trust bank. It is the first time in US history a sitting president’s family business has been granted federal bank status. The charter would let the company directly issue and redeem its USD1 stablecoin, a cryptocurrency pegged one-to-one to the dollar and currently worth roughly $4 billion in circulation, bringing that business in-house instead of relying on a third-party partner. The proposed bank would be headquartered in Bay Harbor Islands, Florida.
The company sponsoring the bank is World Liberty Financial, co-founded in late 2024 by the Witkoff and Trump families together. World Liberty Trust Company’s president is Zach Witkoff, son of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy. World Liberty Financial itself is 38 percent owned by an entity affiliated with President Trump and members of his family, and Trump has disclosed nearly $600 million in 2025 income from World Liberty token and equity sales, part of $1.4 billion in total crypto-related earnings across his family’s ventures.
Two other ownership details explain why critics call this more than an ordinary conflict of interest. Officials from the United Arab Emirates purchased a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial days before Trump’s inauguration, a transaction that drew scrutiny from government ethics officials at the time. And Changpeng Zhao, the Binance founder Trump pardoned in October 2025 after Zhao pleaded guilty to violating US anti-money-laundering law as the exchange’s CEO, now controls a company holding more than half of all USD1 tokens in circulation. A foreign government and a pardoned felon are the two largest forces behind the token this new bank will issue.
The OCC’s own approval letter addressed the conflict-of-interest question directly, and declined to resolve it. The agency stated that comments about potential Emoluments Clause violations tied to purchases of World Liberty tokens were “outside the scope” of its review, because neither World Liberty Financial nor its foreign investors are themselves the bank being chartered. It said it had secured written commitments from certain US and foreign investors promising not to seek control over the bank, though such commitments are voluntary and carry no independent enforcement mechanism beyond the agency’s own oversight. Comptroller Jonathan Gould, a Trump appointee, wrote that he and his staff had met their full statutory and ethical obligations in reviewing the application. Gould had already refused a January request from Senator Elizabeth Warren to delay the review until Trump divested from the company, telling her the OCC would proceed regardless.
Warren, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, called that January review “a sham.” After Friday’s approval, she said it showed a scale of conflict of interest without precedent, and called for the Senate’s pending crypto market structure legislation to close the gap. Democrats have tried to attach ethics provisions to that bill barring a sitting president from profiting off crypto ventures regulated by his own appointees. Republicans have rejected those provisions each time.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: A foreign government and a felon the president personally pardoned are now the two largest stakeholders behind a stablecoin about to be issued by a bank owned in part by the president’s own family, chartered by the president’s own regulator, who has stated in writing that he sees no conflict. The regulator has also said questions about whether this violates the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause are not his agency’s problem to answer. No other mechanism currently exists to force that question, since Republicans in Congress have repeatedly blocked legislation that would.
Sources: American Banker (US, financial trade — Gould’s January refusal to delay, “sham” quote, career-staff review detail); HNGN (US — Emirati 49% stake timing, Zhao pardon and token holding detail, GENIUS Act context); OCC Corporate Decision #1385 (US, primary source — Emoluments Clause scope determination, passivity commitment language); eciks.org (US — Witkoff family co-founding detail, Scott Alper director nomination); The Hill (US — Warren “unprecedented scale” statement, 38% ownership disclosure); Reuters via Investing.com (US — commenter concerns, career-staff supervision structure)
THE IRS SANCTIONS APPEAL
Trump, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and the Trump Organization sued the IRS and Treasury in January over a leak of the president’s tax returns to The New York Times and ProPublica during his first term. For 109 days, no attorney representing the United States government filed a single notice of appearance in the case. In May, the case abruptly settled. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche created a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for people claiming to be targets of a politicized Justice Department, and in a same-day addendum ordered the IRS to permanently end audits and inquiries into the Trump family.
US District Judge Kathleen Williams ruled July 13 that the lawsuit was “brought to manipulate the judicial process.” She found there had been no genuine adversity between plaintiff and defendant at any point in the case, citing the government’s 109 days of silence as central evidence. She sanctioned Trump and two of his attorneys and referred attorney Alejandro Brito to the Florida Bar. She also barred all parties, including the government itself, from citing the settlement in any future official proceeding.
The fund at the center of the case has since collapsed under separate political pressure. Republican Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis withheld support for Blanche’s own attorney general confirmation until he agreed in writing to permanently terminate the fund and narrow the audit-immunity terms, worried that Jan. 6 defendants could otherwise claim the money. Blanche signed that termination order August 2 and has since said “there were never commissioners” appointed and no money was ever paid out. Trump has continued to express support for the fund even after his own Justice Department killed it.
That confirmation fight ended with the Senate voting 50-49 to confirm Blanche as permanent attorney general on August 8; Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted against him, with Murkowski writing she had no confidence Blanche would “check the worst impulses of this administration.” Blanche was Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney before entering government, representing him in the hush money prosecution, the classified documents case, and the 2020 election interference case. During the confirmation fight, Democratic Senator Alex Padilla told NPR that Blanche was “continuing to act as if he’s still Donald Trump’s personal attorney.”
Trump’s lawyers appealed Williams’s sanctions to the 11th Circuit on July 31. The Justice Department’s active defense of Trump’s private lawyers followed only after Blanche took permanent charge of the department, not before: newly installed acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter filed the DOJ’s own brief at the appeals court, arguing that Williams’s central finding “makes zero sense.” The brief contends a party would never file a public lawsuit to disguise a private collusive deal, since litigation invites the exact public attention collusion would try to avoid. McCotter’s credibility on process irregularities is itself freshly contested. Days before filing this brief, a separate federal judge, Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn, publicly criticized McCotter by name for “highly unusual” conduct in ordering the DOJ to drop an unrelated bribery case, writing that McCotter had substituted his own judgment for the professional opinions of officials across multiple federal agencies who had built that case.
Trump’s attorneys separately asked the 11th Circuit to immediately stay Williams’s sanctions order, calling it an “unconstitutional and unlawful gag order” on the sitting president. Williams had already declined to pause her own order pending appeal.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: The Justice Department is now using federal government resources to argue against a federal judge’s finding that the president colluded with his own government. That backing arrived only after Trump’s own former personal criminal defense lawyer was confirmed to permanently run the department. The department’s total absence from the case at trial was one of the judge’s core reasons for finding collusion in the first place. The official who filed the new brief was publicly rebuked by a different federal judge days earlier for a separate, similarly unilateral decision.
Sources: Law & Crime (US legal trade — DOJ brief language, McCotter filing, Trump appellate brief quotes, Garaufis rebuke detail); Yahoo News/Law & Crime (US — DOJ’s late entry into the case, McCotter appointment context); IBTimes UK (US legal trade — Garaufis ruling detail, Adani case background); The Hill (US — Blanche fund termination, Cornyn/Tillis confirmation-vote leverage); CNN (US — loopholes analysis, tax-penalty exposure); NPR (US — Padilla quote, Blanche’s personal-attorney history); Roll Call (US — 50-49 confirmation vote detail, Murkowski quote, Collins/Murkowski defection); U.S. Senate roll call records (US, primary source — August 8 confirmation vote); Daily Kos (US, legal analysis — 11th Circuit case number, legal argument structure); Democracy Forward (US, advocacy — original July 13 ruling detail, amici curiae composition)
THE PATTERN
A man was found hanging from a tree Saturday afternoon in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, in the back parking lot of Whiskey Kitchen on West Martin Street. The location sits two blocks from City Plaza, where the city’s 13th annual CaribMask Caribbean Festival was underway. A witness told a local outlet the man had been seen earlier that day walking alone and talking to himself, and that he approached a festival attendee to ask for water before continuing on. Workers in the area found him hanging shortly after 2:30 p.m. Raleigh police confirmed to local station WRAL that the death is being investigated as a suicide, and released a statement asking the public to avoid sharing unverified information while investigators work. No official statement identifying the man, his age, or a cause of death has been released.
The Raleigh case is the latest in a string of hanging deaths of Black people across the Southeast that have drawn sustained community scrutiny this year. In North Carolina alone: 16-year-old Congolese immigrant Juliana Nzita was found hanging from a tree in a Charlotte churchyard on May 8. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police ruled it a suicide, over family objections. Javion Magee, a 21-year-old truck driver, was found seated beneath a tree with a rope around his neck near a Henderson distribution center in September 2024. The state medical examiner ruled it a suicide in May 2025, after Magee’s family had spent months requesting a hate crime investigation. Cedric Tayuhe, 36, was found hanging in Harrisburg, North Carolina, in June. Outside North Carolina, 21-year-old Delta State University student Trey Reed was found hanging near campus pickleball courts in Cleveland, Mississippi, in September 2025. That death was also ruled a suicide. Civil rights attorneys requested an independent forensic review, which found blunt force trauma; they have cited that finding to dispute the official suicide ruling.
Four additional Mississippi cases tied to institutional-response scrutiny remain open or partially resolved. Tasia Fortune, 29, was found hanging from a tree behind an abandoned Jackson home on August 3. As of August 11, the state medical examiner still had not released a cause or manner of death. Jackson police have interviewed a person of interest, Terence Anderson, who denies involvement but told investigators he and Fortune had argued. Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, publicly rejects the suicide framing. Spivey says her daughter “did not do this to herself.” A Jackson city councilman has formally requested federal assistance with the investigation.
Khloe McDonel, 15, was reported missing in Jackson on July 18 and found shot to death in a city park on July 20. Her mother was not notified of her death until August 5, a 16-day gap Mississippi’s Department of Public Safety attributes to mandatory DNA-confirmation protocol. Capitol Police now say they believe McDonel was specifically targeted rather than a random victim; no suspect has been named.
Nolan Wells, 18, died on Mississippi’s Horn Island on July 4 after a boat trip with high school friends. The friends were white. Wells was Black. Three people unconnected to Wells, his family, or the boating group have since been charged with threatening a judge, a witness, and local officials involved in the investigation, including a bomb threat against a Jackson County chancery court judge. The underlying investigation into Wells’s own death has produced no new public findings since early August.
One-year-old Kohen Wiley was shot and killed June 14 during a shoplifting call at a Senatobia, Mississippi, Walmart. The officer who fired was Sergeant Hunter Foster, promoted to that rank just two months before the shooting. Foster remains on paid administrative leave. No charges have been filed, and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation’s inquiry remains open more than two months later. Foster has a prior record of dispute: in a separate 2019 confrontation that turned violent, he was accused of exaggerating the danger a vehicle posed to officers. An independent forensic review commissioned by the Wiley family ruled the death a homicide. It found Wiley was shot from the side of his vehicle, not the front, contradicting the department’s account that officers fired because the car drove toward them.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Six Black Americans have died under circumstances their families and communities are actively contesting this year alone, across two states, involving hanging deaths, a police shooting of an infant, and a homicide with a 16-day notification delay. In each case, official accounts have moved toward closure faster than public accountability has followed.
Sources: The NC Beat (Raleigh, NC — festival witness account); Hoodline (Raleigh, NC — CaribMask event detail, prior-case roundup, Nzita and Reed case detail); WRAL (Raleigh, NC, CBS-affiliate broadcast news — direct Raleigh Police Department statement); ABC News (Jackson, MS — Fortune autopsy status, Spivey quote); NBC News (Jackson, MS — Terence Anderson interview detail); WLBT (Jackson, MS — McDonel notification timeline, DPS Commissioner statement); WJTV (Jackson, MS — McDonel “targeted” statement from Capitol Police); PBS NewsHour via AP (Nolan Wells threats prosecution, judge statement); The Intercept (Senatobia, MS — Kohen Wiley department history, officer status); Mississippi Today (Senatobia, MS — Foster’s name, promotion timing, 2019 prior-incident detail); Action News 5 (Senatobia, MS — Foster suspension confirmation, independent forensic review findings)
KUSHNER IN EGYPT
Jared Kushner held a rare, more than two-hour meeting Sunday with Hamas political bureau chief Khalil al-Hayya in El Alamein, Egypt, the first such direct engagement in weeks. Kushner was one of three envoys in the room, alongside mediating officials from Egypt, Qatar, and Türkiye. He is scheduled to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel on Monday, joined by Board of Peace director Nickolay Mladenov and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.
At stake is a 15-point, US-backed roadmap requiring Hamas to disarm and Israel to withdraw from Gaza, more than ten months into a Gaza “ceasefire” that has not stopped Israeli strikes inside the territory. Netanyahu rejected the plan outright last week, a rare public break with the Trump administration from Israel’s closest ally, vowing no Israeli withdrawal until Hamas is “genuinely” disarmed. Hamas has said it accepted the plan in principle but that implementation depends on Israel first meeting its own commitments, including troop withdrawal and halting attacks. A Hamas official told AFP the Egypt talks covered “Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement” and Egypt’s efforts to press Israel toward implementation. A source with knowledge of the Kushner meeting told CBS News the American position remains unchanged: Hamas must relinquish all governing authority, weapons, and military infrastructure, full stop.
Kushner met separately with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Sunday. A trio of envoys, including Kushner and former envoy Steve Witkoff, previously helped broker the underlying “ceasefire” in Egypt roughly a year ago. Roughly 2 million people remain in Gaza, an enclave now largely controlled by Israeli forces, with reconstruction stalled behind the disarmament standoff.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Israel, America’s closest ally, has now publicly rejected a peace framework the Trump administration built and is actively promoting. The president’s son-in-law is personally shuttling between Hamas and Netanyahu to salvage it. Whether Monday’s meeting in Israel produces movement will determine whether this remains a diplomatic story or remains a military one.
Sources: PBS NewsHour via AP (Egypt — meeting length, envoy trio, historical role in original ceasefire); NPR (Egypt — Netanyahu rejection detail, Kushner/Blair/Mladenov delegation); Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — Monday meeting purpose, Board of Peace framing); AFP via The New Arab (Egypt — Hamas official quote on Israeli violations); CBS News (US — American negotiating position, el-Sisi meeting)
NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION
🇮🇷 Iran: 3,636 killed
🇱🇧 Lebanon: 4,333 killed
🇮🇱 Israel: 1,200+ killed, ~5,400 wounded (includes 472 killed, 3,004 wounded in Gaza)
🇺🇸 US military: 18 killed, 687 wounded
🇵🇸 Gaza: 73,388+ Palestinians killed, 174,259 wounded
🛢️ Brent crude: $89.45/barrel
⛽ US gas: $4.06/gallon
Sources: HRANA (Iran), Lebanon MOPH, INSS (Israel), DCAS (US, disputed — see Aug 4 story), OCHA (Gaza), OilPrice.com, AAA. Casualty figures carried from the August 14 Evening Edition; not independently reswept this session. Brent and gas confirmed for today’s publication.
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789
