Tether, which mints the world’s most widely used crypto token, is likely one of the most valuable private companies on earth, with an estimated value of $200 billion, exceeding the total share value of McDonald’s.

The company’s token, known as USDT, is a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar that has become the backbone of a parallel banking system pervading parts of the world. The token has also become a key tool for money launderers for industrial-scale scam centers, which operate out of grim office complexes across Southeast Asia. Tether’s assistance in law enforcement investigations has become highly sought-after by agencies around the world struggling to address surging crypto crime.

Because of Tether’s barebones workforce — it employs just a few hundred people — the stablecoin giant’s low overhead helps to produce astonishing profits. These riches have made Tether a rainmaker in global finance, becoming a bigger buyer of U.S. government debt than Saudi Arabia or South Korea.

Trump Tower Tbilisi, a 70-story luxury apartment complex planned for the capital of Georgia, a former Soviet republic at the far reaches of Eastern Europe, is the latest jewel in the first family’s $2.7 billion property empire. Eric Trump, 42, posted an AI rendering on X in May, gushing that it “marks our first project in the region” and that “we are so excited to bring it to life!”

One of the Georgian groups the Trump Organization named on the project, Biograpi Living, is co-owned by 70-year-old Paata Gamgoneishvili, a joint investigation by the Daily Beast’s sister Substack PunchUp and The Newsground can reveal.

A former federal prosecutor who was fired because he had made critical blog posts about Donald Trump during his first term as president has sued the top U.S. law-enforcement officials in the nation and South Florida, saying in a lawsuit filed Friday they violated his free-speech rights when he was summarily terminated last year.

Will Rosenzweig, 40, was fired by then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi last September after Trump supporters called for his firing in social-media posts after publicizing that the prosecutor had posted negative statements about the president when Rosenzweig was working as an attorney for a private law firm in Washington, D.C. — a few years before he was hired by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami.

Miller faces an overwhelming number of accusations from Emily Moreno, including claims that he threw hot water at his ex-wife and held a gun to her head when they were married, and that he broke his two-year-old daughter’s collarbone. An in-depth investigation from Mother Jones revealed an apparent pattern of behavior that dates back to high school, when a fellow student said Miller threw her down a flight of stairs when she refused his sexual advances. He has also been accused of violence by a college classmate and his ex-girlfriend, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who filed for a temporary restraining order against him on Monday. (In 2021, after Grisham published an op-ed in the Washington Post detailing abuse by her boyfriend, whom she did not name but described as a White House staffer, Miller sued her for defamation. He later dropped his suit, and the pair signed a nondisclosure agreement.)

A US federal appeals court has ordered the Trump administration to halt construction of the US president’s $400m White House ballroom, in a fresh blow to the controversial project.

Donald Trump, who demolished the historic East Wing of the White House last year to make way for planned ballroom, has repeatedly touted it as “a gift” to the US people.

But in a major setback in a case testing ⁠his presidential authority, the Washington-based US ⁠court of ​appeals for the District of Columbia circuit upheld a preliminary injunction in a divided 2-1 order on Friday.

President Trump is once again attempting to put restrictions on who is automatically guaranteed citizenship after being born in the U.S., just weeks after the Supreme Court struck down his attempt to end birthright citizenship.

On Thursday, the president signed two executive orders, this time taking a more narrow focus on so-called "birth tourism."

The first order aims to exclude babies born to members of foreign terrorist groups or employees working for foreign governments, such as ambassadors.

The state of New Mexico filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the U.S. Department of Justice and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, accusing federal leadership of obstructing state authorities from investigating sex crimes associated with deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein. Submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the complaint contends that federal officials repeatedly rejected requests for crucial investigative documents from New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, taking actions that “actively harms victims and undermines the public interest”.

The legal filing landed alongside the release of preliminary findings from New Mexico’s ongoing probe into Epstein’s former Zorro Ranch estate near Santa Fe. State prosecutors stated in court documents that they “faced sustained resistance” when seeking the type of routine information sharing that previously took place between state and federal law enforcement agencies. Although New Mexico originally paused a 2019 investigation at the behest of federal prosecutors, state investigators reopened the matter earlier this year to review unredacted case materials under federal transparency legislation.

State officials argue that federal inaction severely hampers local efforts to evaluate alleged abuses and hold potential accomplices accountable. In preliminary correspondence cited in the lawsuit, Torrez emphasized that “The USDOJ’s continued withholding of unredacted records is causing real and escalating harm to the NMDOJ’s criminal investigation,” adding that state prosecutors view the months-long delay as an “unreasonable delay under any rule of reason”. The lawsuit asserts that New Mexico remains one of the few jurisdictions positioned to prosecute surviving associates or “provide some sense of justice to survivors”.

A federal judge has tossed out the Energy Department’s proposed policy that would have required people to re-confirm their interest in older Freedom of Information Act requests.

In an Aug. 5 order, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson vacated Energy’s “Still Interested Inquiry” notice from nearly a year ago. DOE had proposed requiring anyone with a FOIA request submitted prior to Oct. 1, 2024, to email the agency if they were still interested in having their request processed. Otherwise, Energy said it could close out the request.

The nonprofit American Oversight filed the lawsuit challenging the legality of the policy. In a statement, American Oversight Executive Director Chioma Chukwu said Jackson’s ruling is “a victory for transparency, accountability, and the public’s right to know.”

The FCC voted on Thursday to remove the cap on TV station ownership in the U.S., delivering a big win to media companies aligned with President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

Supporters of the cap immediately said they will challenge the FCC’s action in court. They argue that only Congress has the authority to make such a change.

While the legal battle plays out, the rule change will likely mean that big station group owners like Sinclair will buy up more TV stations, furthering a shift from local to national ownership.

Thursday’s party-line vote repealed the national broadcast ownership rule, which bars a single company from reaching more than 39% of U.S. TV households over the public airwaves.

Last month ICE agents shot and killed two immigrants in separate street encounters, again spotlighting the agency's lack of body cameras.

Days after the shootings, federal contracting records reviewed by Scripps News show the Department of Homeland Security put in an order for more than $30 million worth of body cameras from Axon Enterprises, one of the many publicly traded companies with stocks that appear in President Trump’s recently filed 2025 financial disclosure report.

The 927-page document shows $1.26 million in 24 trades of Axon stock in Trump investment accounts.

Axon is just one company Trump listed as buying and selling stock that also received government contracts to carry out his immigration agenda.

Thousands of people turned out for the 10th World Dog Surfing Championships over the weekend, an annual event in Pacifica, California, south of San Francisco. And the photos from the event are adorable.

Wealthy Republicans on the west coast received an emailed invitation in July to an upcoming fundraiser titled “Keep the Senate”. The email, obtained by the Guardian, described the event as a “private roundtable and dinner with the National Republican Senatorial Committee” where donors can pledge $50,000 for seats at the head table, and mingle with legislative heavy hitters from Capitol Hill including the Senator majority leader, John Thune, and Mike Rogers, who is running for Senate in Michigan with Donald Trump’s endorsement.

One of the organizers listed on the invite was the defense industry tycoon Palmer Luckey, the 33-year-old co-founder of sprawling weapons manufacturer Anduril Industries.

The invitation is one of dozens of emails obtained by the Guardian that unravel Luckey’s vast Maga political fundraising over the last seven years. An aerial image from a Skydio drone. Move fast, kill things: the tech startups trying to reinvent defence with Silicon Valley values Read more

A longtime GOP donor and activist who spoke on condition he not be identified in order to preserve his political relationships said Luckey was now the “godfather of Republican fundraising on the west coast”.