Molly White

btw i don't really agree with the criticisms i'm seeing of the NYT's choice of phrasing with "pay-for-access operation". they're not avoiding describing unethical behavior, they are being specific about it.

plenty of things to criticize at the Times, but not sure this is one

relatively few of the crypto industry's contributions have been denominated in crypto

gift link
bsky.app/profile/stev...

Quid pro quo Cryptocurrency companies are reaping the benefits of their contributions to Trump and other pro-crypto politicians. Company Benefit Contribution Justin Sun and Tron SEC enforcement case stayed pending resolution Criminal investigation possibly paused $100 million to purchase $TRUMP memecoins $75 million to purchase WLFI tokens from Trump-owned World Liberty Financial $37.7 million to purchase $TRUMP memecoins (via HTX) Listed USD1 for trading on HTX Cumberland DRW SEC enforcement case dismissed with prejudice $100 million investment into Trump-owned Trump Media & Technology Group $100,000 to crypto-focused super PACs Ripple SEC enforcement case stayed pending resolution Joint request to return $75 million of previous SEC fine to Ripple $73 million to crypto-focused super PACs $5 million to Trump inauguration fund Coinbase SEC enforcement case dismissed with prejudice Relaunched bitcoin borrowing program previously shut down after SEC warnings $75 million to crypto-focused super PACs $1 million to Senate super PACs $1 million to Trump inauguration fund Sponsored Trump birthday military parade Andreessen Horowitz Four Andreessen Horowitz employees installed in formal or informal positions of influence at the White House $70 million to crypto-focused super PACs $5.35 million to Trump super PACs

Crypto.com SEC investigation ended with no action $10 million to Trump PACs Business partnership with Trump-owned Trump Media & Technology Group Gemini SEC enforcement case stayed pending reslution SEC investigation ended with no action $4.9 million to crypto-focused super PACs $2.6 million to Trump super PACs Kraken SEC enforcement case dismissed with prejudice Relaunched staking services which were shut down as part of a February 2023 SEC settlement $1 million to Trump super PACs $1 million to Trump inauguration fund $1 million to crypto-focused super PACs Circle SEC approved IPO Favorable stablecoin regulation $1 million to Trump inauguration fund $1 million to crypto-focused super PACs Robinhood SEC investigation ended with no action $2 million to Trump inauguration fund ConsenSys SEC enforcement case dismissed with prejudice $800,000 to crypto-focused super PACs Binance SEC enforcement case dismissed with prejudice Reported talks with US Treasury Department to remove compliance monitor Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao seeking pardon Listed USD1 for trading $2 billion investment from MGX denominated in USD1 Reported Trump family talks to acquire stake in Binance US

I've been tracking the quid pro quo between Trump and the cryptocurrency industry at www.followthecrypto.org/quidproquo

The article only mentions Crypto​.com's $10 million contribution to Trump's super PAC, but doesn't mention that after Trump took office, the SEC dropped their lawsuit against the company. His Truth Social company is now partnering with them to sell crypto ETFs.

Donor List Suggests Scale of Trump’s Pay-for-Access Operation

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/u...

When the cryptocurrency entrepreneur Eric Schiermeyer heard that President Trump was holding small group dinners with major donors, he saw opportunity. Mr. Schiermeyer reached out to a lobbyist with connections in Mr. Trump’s orbit, who arranged for him to attend a dinner with the president at his private Mar-a-Lago club on March 1 in exchange for donations to a pro-Trump PAC called MAGA Inc. totaling $1 million. The personal and corporate donations were among dozens of seven- and eight-figure contributions to MAGA Inc. from crypto and other interests revealed in a campaign finance filing on Thursday night that hinted at the access Mr. Trump accords those willing to pay. At the dinner, Mr. Schiermeyer, who had never given a federal political donation before, presented an idea for a cryptocurrency called “U.S.A. Token” that would be distributed to every citizen, according to interviews and a flier he distributed to attendees that sets out details of the proposal. He hoped it could be su

Cryptocurrency interests, which have benefited from the Trump administration’s dismantling of a yearslong government crackdown and from the Trump family’s financial interest in the industry, appear to have been the most generous industry, accounting for nearly $45 million in donations to MAGA Inc.An affiliate of the exchange Crypto.com gave $10 million, while the crypto services company Blockchain.com donated $5 million. The venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who are heavily invested in crypto, gave $3 million each. Ondo Finance, which has a partnership with the Trump family’s crypto company, donated $2.1 million to MAGA Inc., on top of $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

The scale of Trump's pay-for-access scheme outlined by the @nytimes.com is mindblowing. Crypto contributions resulting in business deals with the Trump family crypto businesses, oil companies buying influence and later reaping benefits from friendly policies, and a $1 million pardon.

“Free People Read Freely.” Read Librarian Tracie D. Hall’s Full TIME100 Speech The American Library Association Executive Director and TIME100 Icon spoke at the TIME100 Gala on April 26.

time.com/6276657/libr...

omg

Charlie Jane Anders, Lessons in Magic and Disaster (Tor Books, August 19) Big queer Practical Magic vibes from Charlie Jane Anders’ new contemporary fantasy novel about Jamie, ostensibly a New England academic but also a witch teaching her mother Serena witchcraft from a three-hundred-year-old book. As with many mother/daughter tales involving magic spells, there’s a dark family history snaking around their bond, and it will take more powerful spellwork than Jamie has ever harnessed to save Serena from her darkness.

Annalee Newitz, Automatic Noodle (Tordotcom Publishing, August 5) This cozy near-future novella speaks to me as someone who watched our Brooklyn neighborhood’s restaurants take care of each other during covid lockdown, but Annalee Newitz’s new book will appeal to anyone who connects food with community. As San Francisco recovers from a devastating war, a band of recently reactivated robots take over a ghost kitchen to make the tastiest hand-pulled noodles in the Bay—because even when you’re living through unprecedented times, you gotta eat.

"Big queer Practical Magic vibes" and a cozy robot noodle shop... be still my heart

and for my fellow e-book friends, both are sold DRM-free via Tor Books!

omg i didn't realize both @charliejane.bsky.social and @annaleen.bsky.social had new books coming out, and they both look so good 🤩 there goes some of my august book budget!

You can set it up in Add feed > Google News

beautiful!

Feedly launches strikebreaking as a service The company claims to have not considered before launch whether their new protest and strike surveillance tool could be misused.

www.citationneeded.news/feedly-launc...

oop, thanks!

the Inoreader browser extension does this :)
www.inoreader.com/blog/2015/04...

Blogroll A list of blogs Molly White likes to read.

it’s a little more than a button click, but you can get pretty close with www.mollywhite.net/blogroll/

GitHub - molly/citation-needed-theme: Theme for CitationNeeded.news Theme for CitationNeeded.news. Contribute to molly/citation-needed-theme development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com/molly/citati...

it’s a slippery slope

There are tools out there like FetchRSS, though I haven’t experimented with them much

it’s not built-in, but with a little custom code anything is possible 😁

Curate your own newspaper with RSS Escape newsletter inbox chaos and algorithmic surveillance by building your own enshittification-proof newspaper from the writers you already read

www.citationneeded.news/curate-with-...

sometimes in an interview someone will ask me for my “secret” for staying on top of crypto news, and the secret is literally just RSS

Citation Needed has a full-text RSS feed for free and paid subscribers alike, so consider adding it to your feed reader! www.citationneeded.news/rss/

And consider signing up for a pay-what-you-want subscription to help me continue this work.
www.citationneeded.news/signup/

Escape enshittification Using RSS is a way to regain control over the information you read online. Instead of letting platforms like Twitter or TikTok control what you see based on engagement metrics meant to prolong your time on the platform and subject you to endless ads, you can subscribe only to the sources and writers you want to read. Unlike enshittified social networks, your RSS feed will give you exactly what you signed up to read — no promoted posts, no algorithmic deboosting for posts that dare to link to articles, no ragebait from people you don’t follow. RSS offers readers and writers a path away from unreliable, manipulative, and hostile platforms and intermediaries. In a media landscape dominated by algorithmic feeds that aim to manipulate and extract, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is choose to read what you want, when you want, without anyone watching over your shoulder.

RSS offers readers and writers a path away from unreliable, manipulative, and hostile platforms and intermediaries

Support writers As always, support writers when possible. The RSS feed can make it easier to miss subscription prompts or donation requests that appear on a website outside the content feed. If you regularly read a writer or publication through RSS, consider subscribing to their newsletter directly, purchasing a paid subscription, or making a one-time donation if accepted. Many newsletters (including this one) allow you to sign up for a paid subscription and turn off email delivery, so you can support the writer financially while reading through your RSS reader and avoiding inbox clutter. This is how I read most of my newsletters.

And don’t forget to support writers — whose subscription reminders may be less noticeable in RSS feeds. Most newsletters allow you to pay for a subscription but disable email delivery, if you (like me) prefer to read in your RSS reader rather than your email client.

Read! With your RSS reader configured, you now have your own custom newspaper — or several. I heavily use the folders functionality in my feed reader to create several “custom newspapers” for different purposes. I have a Subscriptions folder for all the newsletters and media outlets I pay to read, and I usually read almost every entry. A broader Newsletters folder contains a wider array of writers, and I read only the articles that interest me. My News folder usually has thousands of unread articles (often from high-volume publishers like Wired), and I skim through headlines without reading every article. My Food folder holds over 100 food blogs, and I browse it for dinner ideas.

Some publishers provide full-text articles in their RSS feeds, so you can read everything without leaving the reader. Others publish only an excerpt, requiring you to click through to the website to read the page. I often click through regardless, because I like reading articles as their web designers intended.i But on sites cluttered with ads and cookie banners, a full-text RSS feed offers relief. For more privacy-minded readers, reading articles in your RSS reader can also reduce ad tracking, click surveillance, and other privacy invasions.

3. Read! As you use RSS more, you can make different “newspapers” for different purposes.

What about sites without RSS feeds? One hiccup you may encounter is a website you love that doesn’t provide an RSS feed. I encounter these rarely, as many content management systems provide RSS feeds out-of-the-box, sometimes without writers realizing they’re there. Publishers sometimes need to enable RSS functionality, and some will happily do so if you ask nicely. (I’ve successfully asked at least one newsletter writer I subscribe to to turn on their RSS feed on beehiiv, which doesn’t provide feeds by default but can be made to do so with a click.)

Some paywalled email newsletters lack RSS feeds due to subscription-gated feeds not being universal (though they exist — shoutout to 404 Media). This leaves writers with the choice of exposing all their paywalled writing for free on an RSS feed or not offering a feed at all. Fortunately, many RSS readers can ingest email newsletters, typically by generating a custom email address for newsletters to be sent directly.h When that newsletter sends an email, it appears in your RSS reader alongside your normal feeds. And if your RSS reader doesn’t offer this service, there are third-party tools like Kill the Newsletter tha can accomplish the same task.

Some websites don’t publish RSS feeds — often paywalled websites or newsletters. Increasingly, RSS readers are incorporating features that allow you to send newsletters to your feed reader via email, and there are also services like Kill the Newsletter that can do this for you.