Politics

Trump’s family is betting big on crypto — and it’s not difficult to see why

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

Trump’s family is betting big on crypto — and it’s not difficult to see why

Former President Donald Trump in a livestream on X this past Monday announced his family’s latest project: World Liberty Financial, which intends to function as something of a crypto stock exchange.

Trump’s embrace of this emergent, often scandal-plagued sector isn’t a particularly novel development. In fact, it’s highly predictable, as for roughly a decade crypto’s underlying premises have relied, to a surprisingly heavy degree, on right-wing political thought.

The relationship between crypto and the right stems in large part from how crypto seeks to shift financial transactions beyond the purview of centralized, democratic systems. The right-wing nature of this pivot has been noted by everyone from left-leaning scholars and academics to right-leaning venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen, who has observed that crypto is “quite literally right-wing tech that is far more aggressively decentralized and far more comfortable with entrepreneurialism and free voluntary exchange.”

For roughly a decade crypto’s underlying premises have relied, to a surprisingly heavy degree, on right-wing political thought.

I came around slowly to acknowledging this political alignment. I graduated college directly into the housing crisis, when distrust in banks and the politics surrounding them reached a critical mass thanks to movements like Occupy Wall Street. Cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin specifically — arrived at this moment, too. Like countless others of all political affiliations, I was curious about cryptocurrencies, eager to entertain philosophies and technologies that promised better answers for how to distribute wealth and, by extension, money itself.

Intriguing projects would pop up in sectors like journalism and health care, often more related to the blockchain than crypto. And yet, the crypto critiques from this initial era have outlasted the majority of these projects themselves. When these projects failed, the autopsies did not reveal oh-co-close brushes with new liberating financial processes but, rather, predatory practices that sought to get marginalized groups “drinking the crypto Kool-Aid.”

If Trump’s embrace of crypto seems like some novel development, consider the very title of the late, brilliant David Golumbia’s book, published weeks before the 2016 presidential election, “The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right Wing Extremism.” For the remaining years of his life, Golumbia would argue that, messy and unsexy as democratic and financial processes may be, they were more trustworthy than cryptocurrencies, which sought to sidestep such regulatory processes entirely. Moreover, Golumbia regularly argued that “The economic framework on which cryptocurrencies depend emerges from right-wing and often antisemitic conspiracy theories about the nature of central banking.”

I found simpler, less technical perspectives from writers like Stefan Eich, a political theorist and author of what for me was a crucial article“Old Utopias, New Tax Havens: The Politics of Bitcoin in Historical Perspective.” Eich’s basic argument is convincing and plainly stated, “The attempt to remove money from political control is itself a supremely political act that raises profound questions of legitimacy.”

What a surprise, then, that an entity founded upon removing one’s assets and actions from political scrutiny would wind up in the Trump universe. What a surprise that Trump would eventually come around to a sector full of political acts that raise, in Eich’s words, “profound questions of legitimacy.”

Since the World Liberty Financial announcement, there has been a rush to compare the Trump family’s new crypto venture to the various steaks and universities that dot the ex-president’s resume of shady financial pursuits. The juxtaposition is apt, and it is not difficult to see how World Liberty Mutual could be yet one more way to funnel MAGA cash into Trump’s pocket. As noted crypto critic Molly White wrote ironically on X: “equitable access to finance is when we screw you all over equally.”

Personally, I think the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling from July is a more apt comparison than his roster of tacky ripoff products. The court essentially said presidents are immune from prosecution, and crypto has almost no regulatory oversight. Voila!

Many scholars saw this coming. For a while, cryptocurrencies have been called a solution in search of a problemand they now seem to have been useful in answering this question: what sector has a rabid base and a right-wing lean that could help grant an authority figure the ability to “remove money from political control?”

Problem solved.

Patrick McGinty

Patrick McGinty’s novel about crypto, Town College City Road, will be published in the fall of 2025 by The University of Wisconsin Press.

Politics

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

Published

18 hours ago

September 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

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Politics

Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.

Published

2 days ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.

In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.

Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.

Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.

“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.

Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.

“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.

He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”

Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.

“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”

The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.

In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.

“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.

He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”

The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.

“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.

Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.

“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.

He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”

While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.

“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”

Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.

Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.

“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.

He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”

Politics

Missouri Supreme Court pauses GOP gerrymander, likely netting Democrats 1 House seat

Published

3 days ago

September 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.

The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.

Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.