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Donald Trump made more than 1,100 trades in July, including shares in Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The Texas lawmaker who wrote the state’s abortion ban has admitted to an affair after his former mistress said he paid for her abortions. A man died in a burning car after fleeing from ICE agents in Michigan. And Ken Paxton kept taking money from a Baptist leader accused of sexually abusing boys and young men.
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Trump Made 1,156 Trades in July, Including SpaceX Shares
The presidency was always more of a side hustle.
In a financial disclosure released Tuesday by the Office of Government Ethics, Trump reported making 1,156 trades in July worth between $79 million and $270 million. He bought securities worth at least $43.6 million and sold off at least $35.6 million of them.
He bought shares in SpaceX worth between $15,001 and $50,000 on July 10 and sold shares in the company worth between $1,001 and $15,000 a week later. SpaceX is Elon Musk’s rocket company that depends on billions of dollars in contracts from the federal government.
Trump’s biggest trades were July 20, when his accounts sold between $5 million and $25 million each of Microsoft and Amazon stock. Three days later, the accounts bought back a far smaller amount from both companies.
Trump is the first modern president to refuse to put his assets in a blind trust, meaning he can see what stocks his money managers are buying or selling. The White House says the portfolio is managed independently by third-party financial firms, but Trump still knows what he owns as he makes policy.
Author of Abortion Ban’s Former Mistress Says He Paid for Her Abortions
Chuck E. Cheese is a place where a kid can be a kid, and where a Texas legislator can leave abortion money behind the dumpster.
In 2021, Republican Rep. Giovanni Capriglione was the lead author of the Human Life Protection Act that banned abortion in Texas after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. This week, he admitted to having an affair after the woman he was seeing for 17 years accused him of secretly paying for her abortions.
Alex Grace, a former exotic dancer, said the relationship began in 2004 when she was 18. She told the conservative site Current Revolt that Capriglione paid for multiple abortions, including one time when she was told to collect cash left near a dumpster behind a Chuck E. Cheese.
Capriglione had announced three days before Grace’s interview that he would not seek reelection. After the interview was published, he issued a statement admitting that he had “selfishly” had an affair “years ago,” but that his wife and family had forgiven him.
Capriglione called the abortion allegations “categorically false” and threatened to sue for defamation. He compared it to Dominion Voting Systems’ case against Fox News, which is interesting coming from a man who just confirmed half of what his accuser said.
A Guatemalan Man Died in a Burning Car After Fleeing ICE Agents in Grand Rapids
ICE posted a press release last week about arresting a guy with two unpaid parking tickets, but they’re real quiet about this one.
A man died Sunday morning in Grand Rapids after his car struck a tree and caught fire while ICE agents were pursuing him. The agents had tried to stop his vehicle near Hall Street and Century Avenue around 7 a.m., and he fled about a mile before the crash killed him.
Rep. Hillary Scholten identified the driver as Mario David Coronado Juarez. Neighbors said he was an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who had lived and worked in Grand Rapids for around seven years.
Grand Rapids police did not reveal ICE’s involvement until Tuesday. Local investigators said federal agents refused to share information about what happened before the crash, and that DHS and ICE are not responding to requests for comment.
Scholten has sent a letter to acting ICE Director David Venturella demanding to know why agents were chasing a man through a residential neighborhood at seven in the morning. Coronado Juarez was the second person to die while fleeing from ICE agents since August.
Ken Paxton Took Money From Baptist Leader Accused of Sexually Abusing Boys
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has built his political career on accusing LGBTQ+ people of being a danger to kids. He has also spent years taking money from a man accused of raping boys and young men.
Paul Pressler was a former Texas appeals judge who led the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. In 2017, a man named Duane Rollins sued him, alleging Pressler raped him in 1979 when he was 14 and Pressler was his youth counselor. Several other men stepped forward after the lawsuit was filed, with two joining it.
Paxton received donations from Pressler before and after the allegations, and the Presslers donated to his impeachment defense as recently as 2022, five years after the accusations surfaced. Paxton also highlighted Pressler’s endorsement during his 2013 race for attorney general, calling him a man he “admired and respected.”
Paxton is running for Senate against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico on a platform that includes accusing LGBTQ+ people of putting children in danger and creating a list of trans Texans by name. He might want to consider compiling a list of his donors first.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
More Than Half a Million Americans Registered to Vote in a Single Day. At least 550,000 Americans registered to vote or updated their registration on September 15, making it the second most successful midterm drive since National Voter Registration Day began in 2012. Community partners hosted more than 3,500 events across the country, amplified by Sabrina Carpenter, Kerry Washington, the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Chicago Bears. The registration push came despite the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to restrict voter drives, including an FBI raid this summer on the offices of an Ohio voter registration group over unsubstantiated fraud allegations.
DoorDash Will Pay a Record $131.5 Million to New York City Delivery Workers. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a $131.5 million settlement with DoorDash on Tuesday after a city investigation found the company had systematically underpaid more than 260,000 delivery workers, including some who were never paid at all. More than $115 million will go directly to workers, with payments beginning in late October. It’s the largest worker settlement in city history, and the largest food delivery worker settlement in U.S. history. DoorDash said in a statement it had “screwed up,” which is what you say when you forget a birthday, not when you steal from 260,000 people.
States Sue to Stop Trump From Paying Companies to Abandon Offshore Wind. Eight East Coast states sued on Tuesday to block the Trump administration from giving two energy companies $1.4 billion to halt offshore wind projects off New York and New Jersey and instead use the money for oil and gas. The administration has now pledged more than $4 billion to companies that are willing to abandon their wind leases. The states say the payments were illegally drawn from the Judgment Fund, which Congress created to pay court judgments against the federal government, not to pay oil companies to stop building windmills.
Fat Bear Week Has Returned. Fat Bear Week is back at Alaska’s Katmai National Park, where brown bears gorge on salmon all summer and the public gets to vote on which one did it best. The competition is a single-elimination tournament that garners nearly a million votes each year. Last year’s champ, Chunk, won even with a broken jaw, because nothing stops that bear from eating. He’s back to defend his title along with 15 other contestants, including a mother who adopted another bear’s cub and a bear named Gully who earned his nickname by eating seagulls.
