The Washington Post reports in an interactive investigation that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have assembled a portfolio of more than a dozen defense technology start-ups benefiting from Pentagon priorities their father’s administration put in place, deepening the entanglement between the president’s family finances and national security policy.
Most of the investments have come since Trump’s reelection, and the companies have collectively generated at least $3.2 billion in direct government business since the sons invested, plus another $3.1 billion in future contract options. Some have earned spots on shortlists of preapproved contractors eligible to bid on nearly $200 billion in future Pentagon work.
The portfolio spans established players like SpaceX and Anduril, which together account for 97% of the direct government cash tallied, as well as smaller start-ups building drones, humanoid robots, and quantum computers. Trump Jr. joined 1789 Capital, a firm run by Vance strategist Chris Buskirk and Trump donor Omeed Malik, within days of his father’s election win. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said there are “no conflicts of interest,” and Pentagon spokesperson Joel Valdez said no company has received preferential treatment.
Ethics lawyer Kathleen Clark disagreed with that framing, saying it is reasonable to doubt Pentagon drone policy serves the public interest given the family’s financial stake in it. She argued the sons should recuse themselves from such deals, though she stopped short of endorsing a law banning presidential relatives from investing in companies that pursue government contracts.
Clark tied the arrangement to what she described as a broader dismantling of anti-corruption safeguards across the executive branch during Trump’s second term, warning that officials might now hesitate to act against the family’s financial interests.
At The National, Nada Maucourant Atallah and Nada Homsi report from Naqoura, Lebanon, on a United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon-approved aid convoy that was recently turned back by Israeli forces before reaching roughly 7,000 Lebanese residents cut off in occupied border villages
The convoy, sponsored by French charity L’oeuvre d’Orient and led by one of France’s senior Eastern Churches representatives, waited for hours in no-man’s land as Unifil negotiated entry, only to be denied without explanation.
Charity director Vincent Gelot said aid deliveries to the isolated villages are never guaranteed, noting his organization has completed around 15 missions since the war began and that even convoys led by the Pope’s ambassador to Lebanon have been turned away.
Residents said Israel closely regulates movement and information from the villages, with Debel official Joseph Attieh saying “the media is the weapon they fear most because it shows the world our reality on the ground.”
An American evangelical group led by Franklin Graham has delivered monthly aid shipments from inside Israel to village outskirts, a parallel channel that residents and aid workers see as part of Israeli efforts to influence the isolated population.
At Politico Europe, Veronika Melkozerova has covered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy firing Army Commander-in-Chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi on Tuesday, a week after ousting popular Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. Zelenskyy described a dysfunctional relationship between the two men. The move followed nationwide protests demanding Fedorov’s reinstatement and Syrskyi’s removal, though Zelenskyy has so far declined to return Fedorov to his old post, offering him another government role instead.
Zelenskyy thanked Syrskyi for his role in defending Kyiv and Kharkiv in 2022 and leading the 2024 incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, calling for an updated defense strategy going forward.
Fedorov has refused any post besides defense minister, according to officials familiar with the talks, and it remains unclear whether he has accepted Zelenskyy’s latest offer.
Fedorov congratulated Drapatyi as a “breath of fresh air” and thanked Syrskyi for accomplishments he said are now “part of history,” while urging Ukraine to “move even faster” in correcting past mistakes.
It remains uncertain whether Syrskyi’s removal will be enough to quiet the protests that have spread across Ukraine since Fedorov’s ouster.
A new review published in Current Psychiatry Reports by researchers at the Uniformed Services University has found that alcohol use remains one of the most consequential and least addressed behavioral health challenges facing the active-duty force, with rates of binge and heavy drinking that continue to exceed civilian levels despite years of Pentagon investment in prevention.
The review, led by Kathleen Huber and colleagues, draws on the Department of War’s Health Related Behaviors Survey and finds that 34% of active component service members reported binge drinking, compared to 26.5% of civilian adults, and that 9.8% met the threshold for heavy drinking, defined as bingeing at least once a week over the previous month. The Marine Corps has the highest rates of binge and heavy drinking among the services, while the Air Force has the lowest. Between 2019 and 2023, alcohol related disorders accounted for more than 70,000 incident diagnoses, or 7.3% of all mental health diagnoses in the active force, with the highest incidence among men aged 20 to 24 and those in combat occupations like infantry and artillery.
The authors link heavy drinking in the military to a mix of individual, cultural, and structural forces. Widespread belief that military culture supports drinking correlates strongly with negative outcomes, including risky driving and lost productivity, and troops consistently overestimate how much their peers drank, a normative misperception that itself predicts heavier consumption over time.
That culture is reinforced by tax free, discounted alcohol sold in on-base stores and by inconsistent enforcement of existing policies. Some structural fixes have been slow to arrive. A ban on late night alcohol sales at exchange stores took effect for the Navy and Marine Corps in 2013 but was not extended to the Army and Air Force until 2024, following recommendations from the Pentagon’s Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee.
Deployment itself is not a reliable predictor of drinking, the review notes, but specific features of the deployment experience are. Combat trauma, PTSD symptoms, and exposure to life-threatening situations or atrocities all raise the risk of heavy drinking and alcohol use disorder, consistent with what researchers call the self-medication hypothesis, in which troops drink to manage trauma-related distress. Unit cohesion only complicates the picture further.
Strong bonds among service members are tied to lower rates of PTSD and suicidal ideation after deployment, but among Marines, cohesion also predicts higher alcohol use even as it predicts fewer disciplinary violations, suggesting the same social ties that protect mental health can normalize heavy drinking.
The costs extend beyond individual health. Alcohol related emergency department visits and hospitalizations occurred at a rate of 75.3 per 10,000 person years between 2009 and 2018, with more than 17% involving co-occurring injuries. A 2006 cost analysis estimated that alcohol use among TRICARE Prime beneficiaries cost the department $1.2 billion annually, with roughly two-thirds of that tied to lost readiness and misconduct among the active-duty force. Researchers have estimated that interventions like brief counseling programs or a 20% price increase on base alcohol sales could each save $75 million to $129 million a year, and one Air Force prevention program returned $4 to $6 for every dollar spent.
Despite this evidence, the review concludes that treatment access remains a persistent gap. No routine biochemical screening exists for alcohol use, unlike the random urinalysis testing required for illicit drugs, leaving identification dependent on self-report or command referral, both of which are vulnerable to stigma.
Nearly 44% of service members said they worry leadership will treat them differently if they seek mental health care, and only 16% of those with moderate to severe alcohol use disorder received medication in 2017, though that figure had risen from 9% in 2010. A 2023 policy change allowed some service members to seek behavioral health care, including alcohol treatment, without notifying their command, and the Brandon Act similarly guarantees confidential referrals for anyone requesting a mental health evaluation, though the review notes little systematic study of either policy’s impact.
The authors call for more research into two underserved populations: women, who reported lower rates of binge drinking than men but showed comparable or higher rates of dependence symptoms at lower levels of consumption, and military aviators, for whom an alcohol-related diagnosis can trigger immediate suspension from flying duty and whose drinking may go undetected because standard screening tools perform poorly in that population. The reviewers conclude that closing the gap would require treating alcohol use not as an isolated behavioral problem but as one shaped by military culture, deployment stress, and institutional barriers to care, all of which carry direct consequences for force readiness and lethality.
As part of a joint investigation at Inkstick, Creede Newton reports that the Brussels arm of a Hungarian influence organization tied to former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán appears to have violated Belgian transparency law. Documents obtained through a collaboration with the UK-based Hope not Hate, the Belgian outlet De Morgen, and the Hungarian outlet Átlátszó, shows that MCC Brussels’s founding entities were wholly controlled by the Hungarian Mathias Corvinus Collegium, yet its beneficial ownership filings named only lower-level administrators. Tax lawyer Michel Maus said the omission “constitutes a potential violation of corporate and association legislation,” which could bring fines up to 40,000 euros or criminal charges. Hungary’s new government moved to dissolve MCC’s state funding by July 31, pushing the network toward US donors to survive.
Allie Hansen argues that the Trump administration’s earthquake relief for Venezuela did little to offset years of damage done by US sanctions and its installation of a client government. The earthquakes near Caracas killed roughly 4,500 people and left tens of thousands missing, and while Washington pledged $300 million in aid, the same administration has seized control of over $8 billion in Venezuelan oil exports with little public accounting. Interim leader Delcy Rodriguez has postponed elections and seen her approval collapse to 25%, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio has issued direct orders to her government, leading critics to call him Venezuela’s “viceroy.”
At The World, Carolyn Beeler and Hannah Chanatry document how wildfire smoke drove Toronto’s air quality to some of the worst in the world last week, with fine particulate levels reaching roughly 25 times World Health Organization guidance. Emergency room visits for breathing trouble doubled at the city’s largest hospital system, and physician Samantha Green warned the smoke could trigger “an inflammatory cascade leading to heart attacks, to strokes.” Forest Service scientist Mike Wotton links the fires to a month of hot, dry weather that climate change is making more common, and experts urge better masks and home air filtration as fire seasons lengthen.
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Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.
The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.
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Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
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