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Welcome to the Saturday Wrapup, where I give you my thoughts on the week’s biggest news as I consume my caffeine with you.
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Trump said he’d drain the swamp, but it turns out he was just building a ballroom on it.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in May 2025 threatened to revoke government licenses that were essential to the survival of Dish Network co-founder Charlie Ergen’s company, EchoStar. The following month, Ergen met privately with Trump and Carr and the investigation was dropped after Ergen pledged $25 million for Trump’s White House ballroom.
In a private meeting on June 11, Trump and Carr asked Ergen about his political donations and if he donated to candidates of both parties. EchoStar said in a regulatory filing later that Trump “encouraged the parties involved to reach an amicable resolution.”
Ergen donated $12.5 million twice, once in December 2025 and again in February 2026. He asked that both be kept anonymous, but they were revealed when the Washington Post acquired the ballroom’s internal donor spreadsheet.
Trump said the ballroom would be “paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine,” but the donor list shows he has not put up any of his own cash. Donations to the 89,000-square-foot ballroom have totaled $333 million from 67 donors, including at least $77 million in anonymous gifts.
Jared Kushner’s White House job was unpaid, but he made up for it.
Dutch intelligence hacked Jared Kushner’s iPhone and found he was accessing a secret Dubai bank account with hundreds of millions of dollars routed through Azerbaijan, according to an excerpt from Matthew Cole’s book published in Vanity Fair. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE ruler Mohamed bin Zayed poured some $2 billion into at least two accounts held by Kushner during his tenure as a senior adviser to Trump.
The Dutch were able to access Kushner’s phone after turning a captured Russian military hacker into an informant. The hacker gave them access to screenshots of Kushner’s iPhone and directed them to a GRU server in Rostov. The Dutch then exploited a weakness in the phone and watched his screen in real time.
One account at First Abu Dhabi Bank, run by a UAE charity backed by the government, was used to funnel about $750 million laundered through Azerbaijan. A second account held about $1 billion in the Israeli Central Bank, deposited at the urging of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Two national security advisors, a White House chief of staff and a former CIA director all told Cole that no one in the administration had authorized Kushner to access a foreign government bank account. Kushner is now a volunteer diplomatic envoy in the White House, negotiating with many of the same governments that allegedly paid him.
Measles is currently spreading faster than the CDC is responding to emails.
Health officials in California and Washington asked the CDC in May to approve a rapid test that can diagnose 500 cases of measles in eight hours. The CDC denied the request after two months of waiting, citing “other competing priorities,” according to a letter from the West Coast Health Alliance to CDC Director Erica Schwartz.
There are no rapid tests available on the market in the United States for measles because the disease was declared eliminated in 2000. Public health laboratories currently rely on lower-volume testing methods like individual PCR tests, which cannot process the large batches needed during a major outbreak.
The letter asking Schwartz to reconsider was signed by health officials from California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington. The alliance also urged the CDC to develop testing protocols for other high-priority pathogens to be better prepared for future outbreaks.
The CDC has confirmed 4,410 cases of measles so far in 2026, the worst year for the disease in more than 35 years. Public health experts have linked the surge to falling childhood vaccination rates, which have declined since Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took office and began altering vaccine guidance.
Even Myrtle Beach has standards now, apparently.
Trump-branded merchandise stores are closing down across the country as supporters stop buying, according to The Sun. A Knoxville, Tennessee store owner said his sales dropped from $200,000 a month to $20,000 before he closed in September.
Rick Kligman, owner of two Trump merchandise stores in Myrtle Beach, is selling $40 worth of products for $9.99 in grab bags. He said he doesn’t want to be left with thousands of dollars worth of merchandise he can’t sell.
Ron Solomon, president of the MAGA Mall, estimated that only 20 Trump merchandise stores are still in operation. He warned that the Trump merchandise business would not survive unless one of the president’s family members carries the brand forward.
Right-wing billionaires are quietly gobbling up more media outlets, while smaller outlets unable to keep up shut down on a nearly daily basis. If left unchecked, the rich and well-connected get to do their dirt in the dark and escape all accountability. But AlterNet America doesn’t answer to them. We only answer to you, and that means we can cover these stories the way they need to be covered. But our editorial independence is only possible with the support of our paying subscribers.
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