Washington Edition

This is Washington Edition, the newsletter about money, power and politics in the nation’s capital. Today, crypto reporter Emily Nicolle looks at tonight’s dinner for top holders of the $TRUMP memecoin. Sign up here and follow us at @bpolitics. Email our editors here.

Tonight’s the Night

The hot ticket around town tonight — at least in some circles — is held by the top 220 or so biggest holders of Donald Trump’s $TRUMP memecoin, who get to dine with the president himself and hear his thoughts on the future of crypto.

Attendance at the dinner was organized through a weeks-long promotion, which saw traders buy and hold as many Trump coins as possible to rise up the president’s leaderboard. The token has already spun off more than $300 million in trading fees paid to companies linked to Trump and affiliated entities, according to data firm Chainalysis.

The guest list for the gathering at Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia, hasn’t been released. But Justin Sun, the China-born founder of the Tron blockchain who was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023, has announced that he will be there.

Sun also is an investor in another Trump-linked crypto project called World Liberty Financial, having put around $75 million into the project as of January. A month later, lawyers for Sun and the SEC told a court they’d begun talks around a potential settlement of his case.

(Sun may be best known for paying $6.2 million for a banana duct-taped to a wall.)

Other Trump memecoin holders who’ve said they’re coming include Vincent Liu, chief investment officer of crypto investment firm Kronos Research, Sangrok Oh, founder and CEO of digital asset manager Hyperithm, which is based in Tokyo and Seoul, and Morten Christensen, who runs an airdrop tracking site and is in Mexico, Bloomberg’s Muyao Shen has reported.

Many of those in attendance likely hail from outside of the US, an analysis by Bloomberg News found.

The dinner has drawn fire from Democrats and some watchdog groups. They argue that Trump’s ties to the crypto industry create multiple conflicts of interest — particularly as lawmakers debate legislation to regulate the sector.

What’s happening tonight “is in effect putting a ‘for sale’ sign on the White House,” Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal said during a webinar hosted by the group Accountable.US.

A group of House Democrats, meanwhile, has introduced a bill that would block the president, senior elected officials and their families from issuing, promoting or owning a controlling stake in a cryptocurrency.

The White House has dismissed such concerns.

“The president is abiding by all conflict-of-interest laws that are applicable,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said today. “It's absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency.” — Emily Nicolle

Don’t Miss

The Trump administration barred Harvard University from enrolling international students, delivering a major blow to the school after the government froze billions of dollars of federal funding.

While Trump shepherds his signature tax-cut bill through the Senate, he may have to reckon with a more demanding constituency: customers for the ballooning amount of US debt.

US businesses are under mounting pressure to import goods while Trump’s higher tariffs are on pause and simultaneously navigating increasingly complex filing rules when their cargo crosses the border.

Job openings in research and development are plunging as the Trump administration cuts funding to government agencies, private contractors and universities.

Applications for unemployment benefits fell to a four-week low, adding to evidence that the job market remains healthy in the face of growing uncertainty tied to trade policy.

Sales of previously owned homes unexpectedly dropped in April to the slowest pace in seven months, restrained by affordability constraints and highlighting a lackluster start to the key spring selling season.

Trump’s announcement that he’s weighing a public offering of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sent their shares soaring, extending gains this year for investors to almost $50 billion.

The Trump administration issued a report blaming the rise in chronic diseases in the US on unhealthy food ingredients, chemicals, overreliance on medication and corporate spending.

A federal judge blocked Trump’s efforts for now to shutter the Department of Education, including a plan to slash the workforce in half and remove thousands of employees.

The Supreme Court divided evenly in a major case over the separation of religion and government, thwarting an effort in Oklahoma to create the nation’s first faith-based charter school.

The Senate voted to block a California program banning gasoline-powered cars and other vehicles by 2035, sending the measure to Trump’s desk for his signature.

The president will attend the Group of Seven summit in June as tensions over trade and his efforts to halt Russia’s war in Ukraine cloud US ties with some of its closest allies.

Senate Republicans are warning Russia that they’re prepared to pass punishing sanctions if President Vladimir Putin refuses to engage in ceasefire negotiations with Ukraine or breaches an eventual agreement.

High-profile departures at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission couldn’t have come at a more turbulent time at the US derivatives regulator.

Watch & Listen

Today on Bloomberg Television’s Balance of Power early edition at 1 p.m., hosts Joe Mathieu and Kailey Leinz interviewed Matthew Whitaker, US ambassador to NATO, about US attempts to end the war in Ukraine and defense spending by European allies.

On the program at 5 p.m., they talk with Rohit Kumar, national tax office co-leader at PWC Washington, about the House-passed tax-cut bill and what’s ahead for the legislation.

On the Trumponomics podcast, host Stephanie Flanders, Bloomberg’s head of government and economics, leads a panel from the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha to explore the question of what Trumponomics means for the Middle East. It turns out the answer may be —as Trump would put it — a lot of winning. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Chart of the Day

The tax-cut and spending bill passed by the House this morning gives people 65 and older a bonus $4,000 deduction within certain income limits in place of dropping taxes on Social Security benefits. That could be a significant boon to areas of the country with a large share of seniors. For instance, some of highest concentrations of retirees in the country are in southwest Florida, the communities of the Villages in central Florida, parts of Arizona, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In 2023, the latest data available, Florida's 17th congressional district had more than 236,000 residents 65 and older. In aggregate, people in that congressional seat collected $533 million a month in Social Security payments that year. The increase in the standard deduction in these areas would create a significant uptick in disposable income. The legislation still has to make it through the Senate. — Alex Tanzi

What’s Next

April new home sales will be reported tomorrow.

The Memorial Day holiday in the US is Monday.

The Conference Board’s index of consumer confidence will be released on Tuesday.

Capital goods orders in April will be reported Tuesday.

The March S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller composite price index for single-family homes also will be released Tuesday.

Minutes of the Federal Reserve’s May meeting will be released next Wednesday.

Seen Elsewhere

To ramp up deportations of migrants in the US illegally, government lawyers are dropping deportation court cases, allowing Homeland Security officials to make arrests in the hallways of immigration courts, the Associated Press reports.
The Treasury Department said the Mint will stop making pennies after it runs out of the blanks used to make them, and as the coins fade from circulation businesses will have to start rounding up to the nearest 5 cents, the Wall Street Journal reports.