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donald trump
‘Corruption Couldn’t Be More Obvious’: Trump Stacks Key Panel With Crypto and Gambling CEOs
"President Trump has given up on caring about protecting working class Americans and has given the keys to our economy to billionaire scammers."
Feb 13, 2026
Alarms are being raised amid reports that President Donald Trump is stacking a key regulatory committee with CEOs of online prediction markets, cryptocurrency firms, and sports betting apps.
As reported on Thursday by the right-wing Daily Wire, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is launching a new initiative called the Innovation Advisory Committee, which CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said would be tasked with ensuring "the CFTC’s decisions reflect market realities so the agency can future-proof its markets and develop clear rules of the road for the Golden Age of American Financial Markets."
Among the members of the committee are Tarek Mansour, CEO of online betting market Kalshi; Brian Armstrong, CEO of cryptocurrency hub Coinbase; Christian Genetski, president of the FanDuel sports betting app; and Matt Kalish, president of sports betting app DraftKings North America.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, education fund policy director at Demand Progress, said the committee's composition has deeply concerning implications for the future of the US economy.
"The corruption couldn’t be more obvious," said Peterson-Cassin. "It’s hard to see the CTFC succeeding at its mission to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis when it is influenced from the inside by a rogues’ gallery of billionaire CEOs responsible for monetizing and gamifying virtually every aspect of everyday life."
Peterson-Cassin added that the latest move shows that "President Trump has given up on caring about protecting working class Americans and has given the keys to our economy to billionaire scammers.”
The creation of the Innovation Advisory Committee wasn't the only news made by CFTC this week, as Barron's reported on Monday that the commission's enforcement division based in Chicago has now been completely gutted, as its entire litigation team has either resigned or been laid off.
One laid-off former CFTC attorney told Barron's that the gutting of the office will make it much easier for financial scammers to rip off Americans.
"If I was a different person I would launch a crypto scam right now," said the attorney, "because there’s no cops on the beat."
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Congressional Report Warns TrumpRx May Lead 'Families to Pay More to Big Pharma'
"The president should work with Democrats and Republicans to actually lower prescription drug costs for families," said Sen. Maggie Hassan, "rather than helping Big Pharma line its pockets."
Feb 13, 2026
Democratic members of the congressional Joint Economic Committee on Friday released a report warning that US families could end up spending thousands of dollars more on prescription drugs because of a website recently unveiled by President Donald Trump.
Launched last week with pharmaceutical companies, TrumpRx.gov is marketed as an aggregator to help patients save on prescription drugs by using manufacturer coupons or buying directly from manufacturers.
However, as the new report highlights, "many of the brand-name drugs listed on TrumpRx have significantly cheaper generic alternatives, which are excluded from TrumpRx. This means that TrumpRx steers families to pay more to Big Pharma when they could be getting the same medication at a much lower price."
"No matter what the president says, the bottom line is that TrumpRx directs families to buy expensive brand-name drugs when generic versions are available elsewhere at a fraction of the cost."
The report provides a chart comparing TrumpRx and generic prices, both for one prescription fill and the full annual cost. It also notes the difference. In some cases, the president's option is $10-50 more a year. However, there are also examples in which families could save hundreds or thousands of dollars with generic drugs.
For example, Colestid, a medication that lowers cholesterol, would cost $2,771.21 a year through TrumpRx, compared with $856.70 for the generic option, a difference of $1,914.51. The antidepressant Pristiq is $2,401.20 on the president's website, versus just $320.88 for the generic, a potential yearly savings of $2,080.32.
The biggest difference featured in the document is for Tikosyn, which helps patients maintain a normal heart rhythm. The TrumpRx annual cost is $4,032, whereas the generic is only $192.68, a difference of $3,839.32.
The report also stresses how extra costs from the president's site could stack up for households in which multiple people need medication:
- For example, if in one family a parent gets treatment for high cholesterol and their child gets treated for seizures, over the course of 2026 this family would pay $2,142 more if they use TrumpRx versus generic drug alternatives.
- For another family where one adult gets treatment for depression while the other receives treatment for menopause symptoms, over the course of 2026 this family would pay $2,493 more if they use TrumpRx versus generic drug alternatives.
"No matter what the president says, the bottom line is that TrumpRx directs families to buy expensive brand-name drugs when generic versions are available elsewhere at a fraction of the cost," said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee and the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care.
"The president should work with Democrats and Republicans to actually lower prescription drug costs for families," Hassan argued, "rather than helping Big Pharma line its pockets."
While the Trump White House responded defensively to the Democratic report, with spokesperson Kush Desai claiming to MS NOW that "product listings on TrumpRx.gov are in no way an endorsement for use of any prescription drug over another" and accusing Democrats of "resorting to idiotic or simply ignorant lines of attack instead of simply giving the president credit where it's due," the panel members aren't alone is highlighting such cost differences.
The added cost for US families also isn't lawmakers' only concern about TrumpRx. Last month, shortly before the site's launch, Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.) Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), and Peter Welch (Vt.) sent a letter to the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General raising concerns about the new direct-to-consumer (DTC) platform.
"There appear to be possible conflicts of interest involved in the potential relationship between TrumpRx and an online dispensing company, BlinkRx, on whose board the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., has sat since February 2025," they wrote. "Moreover, legitimate concerns about inappropriate prescribing, conflicts of interest, and inadequate care have been raised about the exact types of DTC platforms to which TrumpRx would route patients."
The trio also expressed alarm about high prices, noting that "pharmaceutical manufacturers who will reportedly be participating in TrumpRx have spent billions of dollars in combined advertising expenses for drugs sold on existing DTC platforms."
"The pharmaceutical industry's outrageous DTC advertisements fuel demand for specific medications, which balloon healthcare expenses," the senators wrote. "We are concerned that DTC advertising, including in relation to TrumpRx, will steer customers to prescriptions that may be reimbursed by federal health programs, creating the potential for unnecessary or wasteful spending."
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Trump Sends Second Massive Aircraft Carrier to Middle East, Ramping Up Iran Threats
Analyst Mouin Rabbani said the deployment comes as “Netanyahu is seeking to... inject poison pills into the negotiations in order to ensure that they fail and thereby set the stage for a new armed conflict with Iran.”
Feb 13, 2026
President Donald Trump further escalated his threats to attack Iran on Thursday by deploying another massive aircraft carrier to the Middle East.
According to Axios, Trump decided to send the USS Gerald Ford to the region shortly after his Wednesday talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the seventh such meeting in just over a year since he returned to the presidency.
The Ford, America’s largest aircraft carrier, will take approximately 3-4 weeks to reach the Persian Gulf from Venezuela, where it was used as part of Trump’s operation to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro in January. It will join the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was sent to the region earlier this month.
Trump has said he wants to finalize a new nuclear deal with Iran by next month after ripping up the old one during his first term, and has threatened war if one is not reached.
Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian has said Iran is open to making a deal to limit its capabilities to develop nuclear weapons in the future and to allow weapons inspectors to ensure compliance with the deal.
“We are not seeking nuclear weapons, and we are ready for any kind of verification,” Pezeshkian said on Wednesday.
However, its leaders have said they are not willing to negotiate on their broader ballistic missile program, which they view as the only deterrent against attacks by Israel and the US.
Netanyahu, who met with Trump for nearly two and a half hours on Wednesday, has pushed the president to pursue maximalist demands that Iran is unlikely to accept.
"I said that any agreement must include... not just the nuclear issue, but also the ballistic missiles and the Iranian proxies in the region," Netanyahu said.
Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani said in an interview Thursday with Democracy Now that "what Netanyahu is seeking to do with this visit is to inject poison pills into the negotiations in order to ensure that they fail and thereby set the stage for a new armed conflict with Iran."
So far, this appears not to have worked, as Trump has said he is willing to negotiate on the narrower issue of nuclear weapons.
But, according to Rabbani, "it's really impossible to take any statement he says either seriously or literally because his subsequent actions could either be a very accurate reflection of what he said or the precise opposite."
"Trump seems to think that a deal limited to the nuclear issue may be preferable to going to war to tackle everything else," said Christian Emery, an associate professor of international politics at the University College London. "Yet opponents of US military action, which include all of Washington’s Middle Eastern allies except Israel, should still be worried."
"It is far from clear whether Iran will offer the kind of nuclear deal Trump would find acceptable, and Trump himself does not seem to know what else to do other than double down on military threats," Emery said. "That alone may scupper the talks."
"The danger here... is that Washington, encouraged by Israel, is looking at Iran as a substantially weakened power," Rabbani said. "It has taken note of the widespread unrest in Iran last month. And coming straight off the successful abduction of the Venezuelan president, they may believe that it's just going to be one and done and that there can be a limited clean conflict with Iran."
“But of course, Iran is a very different kettle of fish than Venezuela,” he continued. “Iran has already indicated that should there be a new armed conflict, it will observe neither strategic patience nor restraint or proportionality as it has in previous realms.”
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