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Trump’s Son Wipes $600M From Family Fortune With Disastrous Bet Eric Trump posted a cringeworthy bid for his dad’s approval just hours before news of the staggering loss broke. One of Donald Trump’s sons got ahead of reports that he lost the first family more than $600 million by posting a cloying online tribute to his father. “I am deeply honored that at 5:01 a.m., Trump Force One will be the first plane to land at the newly renamed Palm Beach International Airport—now and forever President Donald J. Trump International Airport,” Eric Trump wrote on X in the early hours of Thursday morning. “There is no person who has done more for Florida and our country, and no one more deserving of this incredible honor,” he went on. “As a son, and someone who flies out of this airport nearly every day, I will forever be proud to see the initials ‘DJT’ on my boarding pass. Congratulations Dad — I’m happy to have played a big role in making this happen.” Eric Trump spearheaded efforts to rename the airport in his father’s honor. He also, according to a Bloomberg report published less than two hours after his post, played a big role in wiping hundreds of millions of dollars from his family’s holdings with a disastrous bet on the crypto industry. The American Bitcoin venture, which the younger Trump helped launch and now steers as chief strategy officer, has cratered since going public last year, the outlet writes, shedding over 95 percent from its September high. Things got so bad this week that the company had to pull an emergency maneuver, bundling every 15 shares into one, just to stay listed on the Nasdaq stock index. The price hit a record low on Wednesday. Bloomberg calculates that the crash has wiped out more than $600 million of Eric Trump’s stake in the space of 10 months. His brother Donald Trump Jr. also advises the firm. Their father raked in over $1.4 billion in crypto last year, the outlet adds. Eric’s move had been to bet big on Bitcoin itself. As the coin’s price sank and investors piled onto artificial intelligence last year instead, rival miners like Riot Platforms and MARA Holdings rented out their computing power to AI companies—and their stocks soared. American Bitcoin did not follow that lead, Bloomberg writes. It instead gambled that stockpiling the coin through the slump would eventually pay off. It hasn’t yet, even as Eric refuses to sell. “Just hold on, guys,” he said at a Las Vegas crypto conference in April. “Just hold on.” The Daily Beast has contacted American Bitcoin for comment on this story. https://www.thedailybeast.com/eric-trump-wipes-600m-from-family-fortune-with-disastrous-american-bitcoin-bet/?

🤖 OpenAI broadly released its new GPT-5.6 model after staggering the rollout of the powerful new model at the request of the U.S. government, Axios' Ina Fried and Madison Mills report.

🏡 U.S. home prices hit an all-time high in June, with the median sales price hitting a record $440,600, according to the National Association of Realtors. Go deeper.

✈️ PBI is now DJT. The FAA has alerted air traffic controllers that Palm Beach International Airport's three-letter identifier officially changed today to honor President Trump. Read the announcement. ps:How pathetic is it that a president has to have things named after him before he dies! But there's a madness to what he's doing, he knows no one will ever name anything after him when he passes any!!!!!

📊 Venture capital's record year Data: Q2 2026 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor; 2026 data through June 30. Chart: Dan Primack/Axios 💰 More venture capital dollars were invested in U.S. companies during the first half of 2026 than in any full year, Axios' Dan Primack reports from PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association data. U.S. companies raised $412.7 billion between January and June. That's a whopping 29% increase over what U.S. companies raised in all of 2025 and a 15% increase over the all-time record set in 2021. 💵 The boost was driven by mega-rounds, with over 81% of H1 2026 dollars going to deals of $100 million or more. This includes seven rounds of $1 billion+ in Q2. 🥊 Reality check: The only dark cloud is that Q1 significantly outpaced Q2, although Q2 is where most of the exit activity was found.

Praise the Lord for He is good!

Those are not from the Bible are they?

Lindsey Graham, longtime senator from South Carolina and Trump ally, dies at 71 https://abcnews.com/Politics/sen-lindsey-graham-south-carolina-dies-71/story?id=134688641

The Ju;y 2026 issue of the Recorder contains an article by Darla M. Tucker that mentions that La Sierra University has been rated high in educational quality by the 2026 Forbes Evaluation of U.S. colleges and Universities. The comment was accurate, as far as it went. In short it was selective. It would have been much better journalism if it had more fully reported on the SDA colleges in general, and not confined its reporting to one issue and one school. The following aspects of the Forbes report shows that our colleges are in deep trouble. Our members need to understand and deal with the entire reality. The 2026 Forbes rankings of Adventist institutions from most to least financially healthy: La Sierra University – B+ with a GPA of 3.32 Walla Walla University – B with a GPA of 3.00 Adventist Health University – C+ with a GPA of 2.45 Southwestern Adventist University – C+ with a GPA of 2.35 Southern Adventist University – C+ with a GPA of 2.31 Andrews University – C with a GPA of 2.01 Kettering College – C- with a GPA of 1.97 Union Adventist University – C- with a GPA of 1.79 Washington Adventist University – D with a GPA of 1.57 Oakwood University – D with a GPA of 1.32 Pacific Union College – D with a GPA of 1.30 From a June 12, 2026 article in Spectrum: https://spectrummagazine.org/news/la-sierra-and-walla-walla-universities-top-list-of-us-adventist-higher-ed-finance-rankings/

🏗️ 1 for the road: Construction surrounds White House Photo: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP On the South Lawn, a helipad is being built for Marine One, which has been scorching the grass. "It's got the seal of the White House on it ... in carved granite," President Trump told reporters Monday. "It's really a beautiful thing." Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images On the North Portico, workers yesterday draped tarps around scaffolding on the towering stone columns. The tarps, partially see-through, evoke the ornate stone columns beneath. Trump said on Monday: "We've taken about 150 years of paint off of the columns ... If you don't strip the paint off, it gets worse and worse and worse." (AP) Photo: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP The ballroom, seen here from the Washington Monument, is going up fast. Trump's plans to build a 250-foot-high "Triumphal Arch" in the nation's capital won initial approval yesterday from the National Capital Planning Commission. Members put off a decision on whether a federal law that limits building heights should be applied. Keep reading.

8 men indicted in planned drone and sniper attack on White House UFC cage-fighting show COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Eight men were indicted on murder and terrorism conspiracy charges Thursday for their alleged roles in a thwarted drone and sniper attack on the UFC cage-fighting show staged at the White House in June. https://apnews.com/article/trump-ufc-show-attack-plot-3b1142773319ce650a916e61901ad35b?

🚲 E-bike injuries surge Data: NEISS. Chart: Brad Jennings/Axios E-bike sales in the U.S. have more than quadrupled over the past five years, but a spike in ownership has also meant a spike in injuries — especially among young people. About 41% of all emergency visits for e-bike injuries in 2024 and 2025 involved patients ages 10 to 19, Axios' Brad Jennings reports from National Electronic Injury Surveillance System estimates.

🦾 AI chip rush Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios Nearly every major AI company is either making or considering making homegrown chips to reduce reliance on Nvidia and cut costs. Reality check: Designing a chip is one thing. Securing the manufacturing capacity, memory and packaging needed to produce it at scale is much harder, Axios' Ina Fried and Madison Mills write. Read on.

🏛️ MAGA figures flock to Charlie Kirk murder hearing Prominent MAGA and conservative figures are descending on a Utah courthouse this week to attend the preliminary hearing for the man accused of murdering Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, Axios' Alex Isenstadt and Marc Caputo report. Why it matters: The show of support in Provo underscores that, nearly a year after his assassination, Kirk remains a unifying figure across the Republican Party and the MAGA movement. Among those who have joined Kirk's family members this week in attending hearings for accused killer Tyler Robinson are: Donald Trump Jr. Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R). Conservative influencers Jack Posobiec and Graham Allen. Rush Limbaugh's widow, Kathryn Adams Limbaugh. The latest: Prosecutors are using this week's preliminary hearing to try to persuade a Utah judge there is sufficient evidence to send Robinson to trial on aggravated murder charges, which could lead to the death penalty. Keep reading.

🇨🇳 Pharma's China tradeoff Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images The life sciences world is split over how the U.S. should respond to China's quick biotech advances — specifically over whether Washington needs a more protectionist playbook to preserve American dominance, Axios' Caitlin Owens reports. It's both cheaper and faster to do early-stage drug development in China than in the U.S. That reality is now being reflected in the places pharma giants like Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer are spending their money. Zoom in: Skeptics warn that the strategy of rapidly snapping up Chinese-developed experimental drugs is shortsighted or even dangerous. It risks hollowing out the American biotech base, and it won't stop China from eventually competing directly with large pharmaceutical companies. Others take the view that the China work will yield another source of high-quality drugs. "American patients deserve access to groundbreaking new drugs," Atlas Venture partner Bruce Booth wrote in a blog post. "The origins of drugs have never really mattered, nor should they."

AI have-nots and know-nots Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Stock: Getty Images A staggering class divide now separates how Americans experience artificial intelligence, Axios' Zachary Basu reports: For frontier power-users, AI feels like a revolution: a force capable of conjuring companies, building software and solving complex problems at warp speed. For the average person, it feels more like an evolution: a smarter search bar, a faster inbox, an ambient tech layer that saves time — but not much else. Why it matters: Trillions of dollars in economic value — and the livelihoods of millions of workers — are being staked on a technology that most Americans neither trust nor fully understand. It's a new chapter in America's digital divide — the AI "haves," "have-nots" and "know-nots" — with profound implications for the future of wealth, work and power. 🤖 Zoom in: The newest frontier models are designed for an agentic world of coding, research and cybersecurity that most Americans will never see, let alone operate. OpenAI's Sol and Anthropic's Fable now sit atop the pyramid of elite AI obsession, prized for running long coding and research loops with minimal human intervention. Prominent developers have spent the week personifying the two models — debating their temperaments, work ethics, even their personalities, the way sports fans argue over rival athletes. "My overall feel is that Fable is a 'wise owl' who is very thoughtful and very well spoken," tweeted AI researcher Peter Gostev. "GPT-5.6-Sol is like a rottweiler who will grab the problem by the throat and not let go until it is done." Reality check: The people fluent enough to judge Sol against Fable on a coding benchmark are a tiny slice of the country. For most Americans, those names and metrics mean nothing. Millions of people encounter AI passively or unknowingly — through search summaries, AI-generated content, customer-service bots and invisible features inside apps. Nearly half of U.S. adults now use AI chatbots. But the most common use is basic information search — the same job Google has done for two decades, a world away from autonomous coding agents. OpenAI counts more than 50 million paying subscribers in its weekly ChatGPT user base of more than 900 million. The population running agentic coding tools is a fraction of that fraction. 👀 Between the lines: Even among the elites living the frontier AI revolution, there's a pecking order. Sol began as a restricted preview for OpenAI's trusted partners and select organizations before broader rollout, making early access itself a status marker inside AI circles. Fable was pulled offline globally for nearly three weeks in June under U.S. export controls. Its more powerful sibling, Mythos, remains restricted to a small number of trusted organizations. The result is a hierarchy inside the hierarchy: free users, paid users, power users, preview users and an insider class testing capabilities the rest of the world can only read about. Zoom out: The AI industry ultimately needs broad social permission for the transformation it's selling — more data centers, deeper workplace automation, and AI embedded in schools, government and daily life. Yet as AI adoption has climbed, trust has fallen: 63% of Americans say AI is advancing too quickly, and just 16% expect it to benefit society over the next 20 years, according to Pew Research. The clearest gains are being captured by investors, tech giants and power users, while ordinary Americans are being asked to absorb the disruption to jobs, energy and information feeds. 👓 What to watch: The Trump administration's Labor Department published a national AI literacy framework in February, aimed at helping workers "share in the prosperity that AI will create." OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Amazon helped pool $500 million in June for RAISE US, a workforce retraining initiative led by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and former Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb. But basic literacy efforts can only go so far: Frontier users have better tools, earlier access, deeper technical context and hundreds of hours of trial-and-error with systems that change every few weeks.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY July 10 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial begins In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial begins with John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law. read more Sponsored Content by REVCONTENT 1980s 1985 Two bombs sink the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace’s flagship vessel 21st Century 2018 Last of Thai soccer team rescued from cave Black History 1893 Pioneering Black doctor performs successful open-heart surgery Crime 1992 The Exxon Valdez captain’s conviction is overturned 1889 “Buckskin” Frank Leslie murders his lover Inventions & Science 1962 U.S. patent issued for three-point seatbelt U.S. Presidents 1850 Millard Fillmore sworn in as 13th U.S. president 1832 Andrew Jackson vetoes re-charter of the Second Bank of the U.S. World War II 1940 The Battle of Britain begins 1943 Allies land on Sicily

Ground Zero's Final Tower Construction crews broke ground yesterday on the final office tower at the new World Trade Center campus, nearly 25 years after the 9/11 attacks destroyed the complex. American Express will be the sole tenant of 2 World Trade Center upon its completion, currently slated for 2031. The 55-story glass tower will accommodate up to 10,000 employees across nearly 2 million square feet of office space (scroll for mock-ups). At 1,226 feet tall, it will stand 550 feet shorter than One World Trade Center, directly to the west. American Express has not disclosed project costs, but New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) expects the development to create 3,200 jobs and generate $6B in economic activity. Officials began soliciting proposals to rebuild the World Trade Center campus eight months after the terror attacks. The first new building, 7 World Trade Center, opened in 2006, and the landmark One World Trade Center opened in 2014. See the reconstruction timeline here.

🏞️ Life in the park Beth's kids at Yosemite in 2011. Photo: Beth Wilder Speaking of readers, we're constantly delighted by our engaged and thoughtful Finish Line audience. Here's a wonderful note we received from reader Beth Wilder of Birmingham, Ala., yesterday in response to our callout for photos taken at America's national parks: "I was raised by an avid outdoorsman, and we spent our family vacations in the 1960s and 1970s traveling in our old Kingswood station wagon to national parks around the country. My husband and I did the same thing with our own children in the late 1990s and 2000s. We bought our kids National Park passports when they were young, and all of them have spent the past 25+ years filling them up." "Little did we know when we visited Yosemite in 2011 that one of our kids would return in 2024 to make the valley his home. He is a park ranger and now works as a crew chief on the Helitack search and rescue team. His dream job, and he's only 32 years old!"

Driving in the Fog (Illustration by Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.)   View in browser Twice a day, all across the country, the National Weather Service launches a fleet of latex balloons into the stratosphere to collect what’s known as “upper-air data”—detailed measurements of temperature, humidity, and pressure. Before they pop, the balloons collect information that guides the world’s forecasters, and helps the rest of us figure out how to prepare for the days ahead. Lately, though, the NWS has reportedly been sending up fewer balloons than it once did, eroding meteorologists’ confidence in their own predictions. These lapses point to a broader phenomenon. Partly as a result of staffing cuts and funding reductions, government-sourced information has been slowly disappearing. Some organizations have halted surveys and tracking projects; others have deleted archives and databases. Taken together, this new reality risks clouding our understanding of the economy, public health, and the environment—all of which could make it harder to assess the state of the country and the world. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which houses the National Weather Service, lost about 15 percent of its staffers last year through layoffs and buyouts. Meteorologists told Politico that those cuts have affected the schedule of NWS weather-balloon launches in the western United States, creating “sizable data holes for crafting severe weather forecasts.” CBS News reported that similar reductions in weather-balloon launches have been happening elsewhere across the country, and that meteorologists now have fewer data to work with. Accurate forecasts are essential in preparing for large-scale disasters; they can even save lives. Alan Gerard, a weather analyst and former NWS meteorologist, emphasized on his Substack earlier this week that although the precise impact of these launch changes remains unclear, “meteorologists’ confidence in the models and their own ability to analyze some situations has been damaged by the lack of upper air data.” (A NOAA spokesperson told me that “the majority of upper air sites are operating on schedule,” that “any sites conducting fewer launches are due to temporary resource or equipment constraints,” and that “NOAA’s weather model performance shows no evidence of overall degradation on any approved launch schedule.”) The administration’s cost-cutting has also affected some of the global data collection that the U.S. used to fund. When the Trump administration pulled funding for some foreign-assistance programs last year (this is estimated to have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide), the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization ended up cutting more than 100 of its programs. Some were focused on monitoring outbreaks of disease and infestation among animals—and among the pests its investments helped track was a parasitic fly called the New World screwworm, which has been disrupting cattle farming in Central America and Mexico over the past few years. Last month, it crossed into the United States, endangering the country’s already dwindling supply of beef. Monitoring alone may not have stopped the screwworm’s spread—and there is no evidence to suggest that U.S. funding cuts led to the current outbreak—but cataloging these flies’ movements has long been a crucial part of prevention. In making certain data private or changing collection methodologies on the orders of the president, this administration is effectively punching holes in the public record. Data.gov removed nearly 3,400 data sets during the first month of Donald Trump’s second term, scrubbing information from the Census Bureau, the Office of Justice Programs, the CDC, and more. The CDC tracks pregnancy risk in the U.S. in an effort to prevent infant mortality; staffing reductions have reportedly made that information inaccessible. Since 1995, the USDA has been tracking the number of American households experiencing food insecurity; the Trump administration discontinued a survey of that data in September, claiming in a press release that this information was “politicized” and “costly” to produce, and did “nothing more than fear monger.” The government’s data are far from infallible (and, as history has shown, can be manipulated). But the cumulative effect of these recent changes is an erosion of public understanding—and potentially of good policy making. The Federal Reserve, for example, bases its interest-rate decisions around the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs data, among other sources. Last year, when the government shutdown delayed the release of that data, then–Fed Chair Jerome Powell likened the experience to “driving in the fog.” It was the first time in 77 years that the BLS failed to release the U.S. unemployment rate. Relying solely on private data, the Fed was forced to cut rates without a comprehensive read of the American labor force. Earlier this year, when the Trump administration axed an online archive called the CIA World Factbook, which compiled information about countries around the world, my colleague David A. Graham wrote that its demise was yet another component of the White House’s broader war on information. “Democracy,” he explained, “requires voters having access to accurate and shared information so that they can assess the claims that the government makes.” When missing balloons magnify inaccuracies in weather forecasts, they lend credence to the idea that the government’s information may be getting more unreliable—and that, just maybe, we don’t need to keep funding NOAA after all. In this way, partial information blackouts can generate more and more distrust in American institutions, creating a vacuum where conspiracy theories can thrive. Transparency may not put a full stop to misinformation, but it can be a powerful remedy. Related: America is losing the facts that hold it together. Donald Trump’s war on reality

💰 AIPAC's next test AIPAC is spending big in Missouri to quash former Rep. Cori Bush's attempted comeback, but Bush's supporters are convinced this time it won't succeed. Why it matters: The left has high hopes that Bush can ride a wave of anti-establishment energy to prevail in her rematch against Rep. Wesley Bell, who ousted her two years ago with AIPAC's help. 📺 United Democracy Project, AIPAC's super PAC, has spent $865,000 on television ads supporting Bell in Missouri's 1st District so far, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. That makes it the biggest ad spender in the race so far, followed by the center-left New Democrat Coalition's PAC's $500,000 and the Bell campaign's $475,000. Bush's campaign has spent just $30,000 on ads, per AdImpact. No outside groups have spent money in support of her yet. 💥 Flashback: This all bears a striking resemblance to last cycle, when Bush was the incumbent and Bell, then a local prosecutor, was challenging her from the center. AIPAC spent more than $9 million to defeat Bush. 🤔 Yes, but: Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for the left-wing group Justice Democrats, which is supporting Bush, said things will be different this cycle. "Since they bought this seat last cycle, AIPAC has become a kiss of death to the politicians they support," Andrabi said. Bush is "the model for so many candidates this cycle of exactly the type of fighter against the corporate establishment that Democratic voters are demanding and electing." The former lawmaker told us: "People are really upset that so much money came into our district and was used to influence who became the representative this Congress." ⏰ There's still time before the Aug. 4 primary for the cavalry to come to Bush's aid as it has for DSA-aligned candidates in Colorado, New York and elsewhere this year. Justice Democrats, which spent $2 million supporting Bush last cycle, "will be doing everything we can to help her take this seat back from AIPAC and deliver it to the people of St. Louis where it belongs," Andrabi said. — Andrew Solender

🌵Dems divided in Arizona The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is baffling fellow Democrats by pouring money into yet another competitive House primary — this time in Arizona. Why it matters: The DCCC has racked up a spotty record in its attempts to intervene in Democratic primaries this cycle, leading some House Democrats to question why they're paying dues to the campaign committee. 🚨 Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who previously criticized the DCCC for intervening in California, told us she is "frustrated" to see the practice in her own backyard. Another House Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity to criticize leadership, told us, "The DCCC's endorsement, I think, hurts the message." 🗳️ Two primary candidates in California and Maine backed by the DCCC's endorsements and ad spending have already lost their races. The group's big success was in Texas' 35th District primary, in which DCCC-supported sheriff's deputy Johnny Garcia beat sex therapist Maureen Galindo, who had come under fire for antisemitic comments. "If someone has the DCCC's endorsement, I don't think that's very helpful for them. It may even work against them," said the House Democrat who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 🚗 Driving the news: The DCCC is running a $200,000 joint ad buy with Marlene Galán-Woods in Arizona's 1st District, its largest primary investment to date this year, according to ad-tracking firm AdImpact. The ad states: "We need Democrats willing to actually fight for us, courageous leaders who are going to stand up against MAGA Republicans, leaders like Marlene Galán-Woods." The former journalist and widow of Republican former state Attorney General Grant Woods faces a crowded Democratic primary field, including former state Rep. Amish Shah, the nominee for the seat in 2024. The highly competitive, Phoenix-based battleground seat is currently held by Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), who is retiring to run for governor. 💬 What they're saying: Former Arizona state Sen. Sean Bowie told us he was "surprised" the DCCC threw its support behind Galán-Woods, noting that she is a former Republican and Shah beat her for the nomination two years earlier. "Why her over someone like Amish?" Bowie asked. 📢 What we're hearing: There is lingering resentment between the DCCC and Shah over strategic decisions he made in 2024, several Democratic sources told us. The DCCC found Shah difficult to work with, chafed at his preference for door-knocking over making fundraising calls, and was unhappy with his refusal to run negative ads, the sources said. Zoom out: The DCCC is "hyperfocused on winning general elections," Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) told us, adding that the district is "a must-win seat" to gain the House majority and "regardless of who wins the primary, they're going to have massive support from DCCC." The DCCC referred us to a past statement by its chair, Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), praising Galán-Woods as a "trusted voice who spent 20 years in broadcast journalism speaking truth to power" and "the common-sense fighter Arizonans deserve." — Andrew Solender and Jeremy Duda

A democratic socialist in Wisconsin tests how far left voters want to go in a battleground state Over the last month, Democratic socialists have notched victories in the liberal strongholds of New York City, Washington, D.C., and Denver. Read More.

How a push to disarm Hezbollah is deepening divisions in Lebanon and raising fears of civil war A deal between Lebanon and Israel was billed as paving the way for peace. But in Lebanon, it is deepening longtime divisions and raising fears of political paralysis or even a return to civil war. Read More.