Michael Chung

Insurance agent w/ Globe Life. Married to a woman out of my league, father to three cute kids, author, former professor & Buckeye journalist. #Bible#World#OSU

[Michael Chung @ProfMChung]

@RenoCiccotta This current GOP is not the Republican Party. Could you see Reagan buying fuel from Putin in midst of a war? This is a MAGA cult, the GOP lost its soul when John Kasich was forced out in 2016 for Trump and when John McCain died.

[Grok @grok]

Evet, olay gerçek. 11 Kasım 2026 Veterans Day’de Arlington’da Tomb of the Unknown Soldier nöbetçisi, Pete Hegseth ve ekibinin fotoğraf çektirirken gülüp konuşmasından dolayı “Tüm ziyaretçiler her zaman sessizlik ve saygı atmosferini koruyacaktır” diye uyardı. Pentagon sözcüsü askerin doğru ve saygılı davrandığını doğruladı. ABD’de birçok kişi nöbetçiyi kahraman ilan etti, kuralları herkese eşit uyguladığı için.

[Shaiel Ben-Ephraim @academic_la]

On November 11, the AP called Mississippi’s Senate race for Scott Colom. I’ve spent most of this year telling you how bad things are in this country, and I wasn’t wrong. But Mississippi is about to send a Black senator to Washington for the first time since 1881. Look at what that state was, and how recently.

1) Mississippi sent the first Black senator in American history. Hiram Revels was seated in 1870, in the seat Jefferson Davis had left to run the Confederacy. Blanche K. Bruce followed in 1875 and left in 1881. Mississippi didn’t send another Black senator for 145 years.

2) In 1890 the state rewrote its constitution to take the vote away from Black citizens. Six years later its own Supreme Court said so. The convention, the court wrote in Ratliff v. Beale, set out to “obstruct the exercise of the franchise by the negro race.”

3) Part of that constitution is still law. Section 241 bans people convicted of certain crimes from voting for life, and the framers picked the crimes they thought Black people were likelier to commit. A Fifth Circuit panel struck it down in August 2023. The full Fifth Circuit put it back in July 2024.

4) Statewide candidates also had to carry a majority of state House districts on top of the popular vote. That rule was written to stop Black-backed candidates. Mississippi voters got rid of it in November 2020.

5) Mississippi’s constitution banned interracial marriage until 1987, twenty years after Loving v. Virginia. The repeal got about 52% of the vote.

6) What about the 13th Amendment, the one that abolished slavery? Mississippi didn’t certify its ratification until February 2013.

7) In May 2016 a federal judge ordered Cleveland, Mississippi to desegregate its schools. That was 62 years after Brown v. Board of Education.

8) The Confederate battle emblem stayed on the state flag until 2020. Mississippi still marks Robert E. Lee’s birthday on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

9) The last Democrat to win a Senate race in Mississippi was John Stennis, in 1982. Stennis signed the Southern Manifesto against integration in 1956. Stennis voted against the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Before any of that, as a prosecutor, he won death sentences for three Black men whose confessions came from whippings.

10) Colom beat Cindy Hyde-Smith. She went to a school founded to avoid integration. In 2018 she joked she’d be “on the front row” at a “public hanging,” in the state with the most recorded lynchings in America. In 2023 she blocked Colom from becoming a federal judge.

11) On November 3, Colom was at the Ice House in Jackson waiting on results. By November 11 he led by 4,669 votes on NBC’s count with 98.7% in, the race was called, and Hyde-Smith conceded.

I’m pessimistic about this country. I think I’ve earned it, and so have you. But organizers in Mississippi did this against every barrier the state could build, and I’m not going to pretend it didn’t happen. If we can’t let ourselves feel good about a win like this, we’ve already given up.

[Brian Peotter @Brian_Peotter]

American Churches ranked from Growing to Dying

[Politician Pages @politicianpages]

The 11 Newly-Elected Democratic Senators

James Talarico - Texas
Annie Andrews - South Carolina
Abdul El-Sayed - Michigan
Juliana Stratton - Illinois

Cont.

[DC @D_L_Hopper]

A message to all sane Republicans:

He pardoned 1,600 violent criminals.
You said nothing.

He bulldozed the East Wing.
You said nothing.

He interfered with the release of the Epstein files. You said nothing.

He took over the Kennedy Center and renamed it after himself. You said nothing.

He accepted a $400 million airplane as a personal gift. You said nothing.

He threatened Canada, Cuba, Denmark, Greenland, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil. You said nothing.

He tariffed just about everyone but Russia, causing inflation and instability worldwide. You said nothing.

He attacked a nation during mediated negotiations. You said nothing.

His ill-conceived war killed 175 children on day one. You said nothing.

He alienated and insulted our allies. You said nothing.

His ICE Army terrorized and murdered U.S. citizens. You said nothing.

He committed murder on the high seas. You said nothing.

He co-opted the Justice Department and directed it to prosecute his political enemies. You said nothing.

It’s time to start talking.

[Karl Vaters @KarlVaters]

In my 40-plus years of pastoral ministry I’ve known and worked alongside hundreds of pastors. I’ve met thousands.

I can count the wolves in sheep’s clothing on one hand with fingers left over.

But there are some lies that even the 99+ percent of honest pastors have a hard time resisting. Here are five of them:

https://t.co/jJRe539Xme

[Michael Chung @ProfMChung]

@JamesRapien I really want Jessie Bates to come back

[David Axelrod @davidaxelrod]

This is how politics should work!

[The Tectonic @thetect0nic]

🇺🇲 Trump told 60 Minutes his fortune grew because of stocks. The Forbes journalist who calculated his wealth says the money came from somewhere else.

When Donald Trump was asked on 60 Minutes how his personal fortune had increased by nearly $3 billion, he offered a simple explanation: everyone had become wealthier. When interviewer Ross Douthat pointed out that his own net worth had not risen by anything approaching that amount, the president replied, “Well, you should have had stock.” Trump then insisted that he devoted almost no attention to his finances, that his sons managed his businesses and that he barely knew how much money he had accumulated. The exchange might have passed as another familiar Trump boast. Instead, it prompted an extraordinary 41-part examination by Dan Alexander, the Forbes senior editor responsible for calculating the president's wealth, documenting how political influence, cryptocurrency ventures, foreign investment and overseas licensing agreements helped transform Trump's financial position.

Alexander's central finding is that the stock market explains almost none of the extraordinary increase Trump invoked during the interview. According to Forbes, Trump's estimated net worth rose from $4.3 billion in the autumn of 2024 to $7.3 billion in September 2025. The magazine's more recent estimate, published in September 2026, places his fortune at approximately $7 billion, still $2.7 billion above its level when he won the presidential election. These figures represent estimates of net worth, which include the market value of assets and liabilities rather than simply cash received. Nevertheless, the underlying transactions offer a revealing account of how Trump's political comeback coincided with a transformation of his business model.

The story begins before Trump returned to the White House. In March 2024, Forbes estimated his fortune at $2.3 billion. By the autumn, it had risen to $4.3 billion, largely because Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, had entered the public markets. Alexander estimates that approximately $1.8 billion of that initial $2 billion increase came from Trump Media. The company's valuation depended heavily on investor enthusiasm surrounding Trump's political prospects rather than conventional measures of profitability. His electoral appeal had become an asset capable of generating billions in estimated personal wealth.

The next phase was more consequential. Shortly before the 2024 election, Trump and his family launched World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture that offered investors digital tokens while promising a transformation of financial services. Its ownership and revenue-sharing arrangements were unusually favorable to the president and his relatives. According to Alexander's examination of the original structure, after an initial $30 million threshold, 52.5% of certain proceeds were allocated to Trump, another 22.5% to family members and 12.5% to an affiliate of the family of Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime associate who subsequently became a central figure in his administration's foreign-policy negotiations. These figures describe the arrangement Alexander examined, rather than the distribution of every dollar earned by the venture.

The business initially struggled to attract investors. That changed after Trump's election victory. Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun, who had faced a civil fraud case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, announced a $30 million investment in November 2024 and an additional $45 million shortly before Trump's inauguration. His total commitment reached $75 million. Alexander argues that the investment helped establish the commercial momentum of World Liberty Financial at precisely the moment its principal political beneficiary was preparing to assume the presidency. Around the same period, Trump launched his own memecoin, adding another highly speculative asset tied directly to his public identity and political following.

The scale of the resulting business is striking. Alexander estimates that World Liberty Financial generated approximately $789 million in earnings during 2025, while the Trump memecoin contributed another $636 million. The president also retained substantial holdings of digital tokens, whose estimated value rose as the ventures expanded. In Alexander's breakdown of the $3 billion increase between autumn 2024 and autumn 2025, cryptocurrency earnings contributed more than $1 billion, while retained cryptocurrency holdings accounted for roughly another $1 billion. These categories involve different kinds of wealth: proceeds generated by business activity are not interchangeable with the estimated value of tokens that may remain restricted, volatile or difficult to sell at their quoted prices.

The foreign-investment dimension raises questions beyond personal enrichment. Alexander identifies substantial purchases associated with the United Arab Emirates, including a $25 million token acquisition by a company that had recently relocated there and a separate $100 million purchase by an Abu Dhabi-linked nonprofit. A further transaction, subsequently reported by The Wall Street Journal, involved associates of an Abu Dhabi royal who agreed to purchase a 49% stake in the Trump family's cryptocurrency venture for $500 million. Such transactions are particularly sensitive because the investors are connected to a region where Washington exercises considerable influence over security guarantees, advanced technology, financial regulation and diplomatic relationships.

The existence of these investments does not, by itself, establish an illegal exchange of political favors. It does, however, create an identifiable conflict-of-interest problem: foreign investors and politically connected business figures can establish substantial financial relationships with enterprises benefiting the sitting president while simultaneously having interests affected by his administration's decisions. The question is whether the financial incentives and governmental decisions can be meaningfully separated when the president retains an economic interest in the underlying businesses.

Cryptocurrency was only one component of the expansion. Trump's overseas licensing operations also accelerated, particularly across the Middle East. Alexander traces part of that development through Ziad El Chaar, a businessman who had previously worked with Dubai billionaire Hussain Sajwani before moving into Saudi-linked property development. As Trump's return to power became more likely, new agreements multiplied across the region, often involving developments associated with Gulf ruling establishments. Forbes estimates that Trump's annual licensing income rose from approximately $6 million in 2023 to $46 million in 2024 and $61 million in 2025. The estimated value of the broader licensing business increased from roughly $100 million in autumn 2024 to $500 million a year later.

Another significant component of Trump's reported wealth increase came from a courtroom rather than a commercial transaction. In August 2025, a New York appeals court eliminated the massive financial penalty imposed in the civil fraud case brought by the state's attorney general, while leaving important findings against Trump intact. Removing a liability of approximately half a billion dollars improved his estimated net worth without requiring him to generate an equivalent amount in new business income. Alexander includes that change in his accounting, alongside approximately $400 million in additional value attributed to the expansion of Trump's licensing business.

Taken together, Alexander's rounded figures identify more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency earnings, approximately $1 billion in retained crypto assets, $400 million in additional licensing-business value and roughly $500 million associated with the eliminated civil penalty. The categories explain the broad increase, although they should not be interpreted as a precise cash-flow statement. They also expose the weakness in Trump's suggestion that ordinary stock-market appreciation was responsible for his extraordinary financial gains.

Alexander examined that claim directly. Based on Forbes estimates, Trump's liquid assets in autumn 2024 totaled approximately $415 million, with only about 10% invested in conventional stocks. During the subsequent year, the S&P 500 gained approximately 14%, implying a gain of only around $6 million on that estimated portfolio. Meanwhile, Trump Media shares declined by roughly 10% over the comparable measurement period, reducing the value of his holdings by an estimated $226 million. On Alexander's calculations, the combined stock-market effect was negative by approximately $220 million. The market Trump credited for making him billions had, by this measure, reduced his estimated wealth.

Trump's other defense during the 60 Minutes interview was that he pays little attention to his finances and leaves the business to his sons. Alexander challenges that assertion using years of reporting on the Trump Organization. In a 2017 interview, Eric Trump acknowledged that his father received financial and profitability updates, potentially on a quarterly basis. Alexander also points to more recent reporting describing Trump's involvement in specific business decisions, including details of property operations and branding. None of this proves that Trump personally negotiated every cryptocurrency transaction or foreign licensing agreement. It does undermine the impression that his business interests have been placed entirely beyond his attention.

The broader institutional question is whether the presidency has become inseparable from the commercial value of the Trump name. Investors in his cryptocurrency projects are not merely purchasing conventional financial assets. They are participating in enterprises whose visibility, perceived influence and commercial prospects are closely associated with the president of the United States. Foreign developers licensing his brand are likewise entering business relationships with a family whose patriarch controls American foreign policy. The financial arrangements may be formally private, but the political circumstances surrounding them are impossible to ignore.

Trump ended the interview by pointing out that he does not take the presidential salary, which is set at $400,000 annually. Alexander's response was to compare that amount with the billions added to Trump's estimated fortune. The comparison is rhetorically powerful, although the distinction between annual income and an increase in estimated net worth matters. A billionaire can experience an enormous increase in paper wealth without receiving that amount in cash. The relevant issue is the financial benefit derived from businesses operating alongside the presidency, not whether a presidential salary is collected.

The timing adds a new political dimension. Trump's interview came immediately after Republicans suffered devastating midterm losses, with voters expressing dissatisfaction over the Iran war, economic conditions and the administration's priorities. As Democrats prepare to exercise greater congressional oversight, the president's foreign business interests, cryptocurrency transactions and financial relationships with politically connected investors are likely to face renewed scrutiny. Congressional investigations could examine ownership arrangements, financial disclosures, foreign counterparties and the relationship between private transactions and public decisions. Such scrutiny would need to establish evidence of improper conduct rather than presume that every profitable transaction constituted corruption.

Alexander's investigation leaves a question that Trump's answer to 60 Minutes did little to resolve: how should Americans assess a presidency in which the officeholder's political power and personal business interests have become so closely intertwined? The available financial evidence points overwhelmingly toward cryptocurrency ventures, overseas commercial agreements and changes in legal liabilities as the principal drivers of Trump's extraordinary wealth increase. His explanation that stock ownership made the difference does not withstand the numbers published by the very magazine whose estimates prompted the question.

Sources: @DanAlexander21 's November 8 investigation and Forbes wealth assessments published in September 2025 and September 2026; CBS News/60 Minutes, November 8, 2026; reporting by The Wall Street Journal on the Abu Dhabi-linked investment in World Liberty Financial.

[Michael Chung @ProfMChung]

@theradugroup Join us

[The Radu Group @theradugroup]

Celebrating wins and growing together! 👏 Thanks to RAD Michael Chong and our Agency Owner Mallory for leading our agency meeting, recognizing top performers and team success.

Ready to join a team that cheers you on? 📩 Message us!

#TheRaduGroup #NowHiring #CareerGrowth

[Michael Chung @ProfMChung]

@theradugroup Come join us

[The Radu Group @theradugroup]

Practice together. Grow together. Station training at The Radu Group gives our team time to sharpen their skills, learn from one another, and build confidence for their next client conversation. 💼👏

#TheRaduGroup #GlobeLifeLND #TeamTraining #CareerGrowth #NowHiring

[Michael Chung @ProfMChung]

@theradugroup Come join us

[The Radu Group @theradugroup]

Mallory and our Agency Directors at the College of DuPage Benefits Fair! 💙 Proud to partner with COD to help employees understand supplemental coverage and how it can complement their existing benefits.🤝

#TheRaduGroup #GlobeLifeLND #CollegeOfDuPage #BenefitsFair

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

A nation’s progress is also measured by how it welcomes all people with disabilities and particular needs. Their lives are not a burden on society. They are a blessing, because they can help us to remember the foundation of the dignity of every human being and what is truly important in life. #ApostolicJourney #Argentina

[Michael Chung @ProfMChung]

@CharlieG__ I’m guessing a second round pick was too high for them.

[Michael Chung @ProfMChung]

😢

[Adam Schefter @AdamSchefter]

Trade: Falcons are sending former Pro Bowl safety Jessie Bates to the Jacksonville Jaguars in exchange for a 2027 2nd-round pick and a 2028 5th-round pick, sources tell ESPN.

[Justin Spiro @DarkoStateNews]

“Jim Harbaugh stole a national championship.”