Did Putin pay for Trump Jr.’s wedding? A Russian oligarch with ties to Vladimir Putin helped fund the May wedding of President Donald Trump’s son, ProPublica reported yesterday.

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• Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson were married on May 24 in a three-day party in the Bahamas. Umar Kremlev paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make it happen, according to ProPublica, including assigning his team to plan the event, renting the private island, and funding a fireworks show.
• Bettina wrote that their “dear friend” had “very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us after our wedding” in a post on Instagram.

Who is Kremlev? He is president and secretary general of the International Boxing Association, which is funded by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom.

• Just days ahead of the wedding, Kremlev was part of a delegation accompanying Putin to China.
• In April, Putin bestowed him with Russia’s “Order of Friendship.”

A spokesman for Don Jr. said that “Umar is a personal friend of Don,” and “not someone he has a business relationship with.”

“Donald Trump is in Putin’s pocket,” leftists have cried ahead of every major election for the last 10 years. This is clearly not true. He has not handed Ukraine over to Russia, for example. If the Russian collusion story were true, Putin would not need to give generous gifts to Trump’s son. You don’t bribe people already in your pocket.

But accepting a lavish wedding after-party from a Russian oligarch is foolish. The whole Trump family has a blind spot when it comes to accepting gifts from evil people.

• Using a Qatari jumbo jet as Air Force One is the worst such example.
• Powerful leaders may think they know what they are doing, but God commands them: “Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous” (Deuteronomy 16:19).

American law restricts what gifts a president can accept. Is giving to the president’s son a way to get around these? This was and is a major issue with Hunter Biden. The same biblical principle must apply to all presidents and their families.

• Proverbs 4:14-15 warn, “Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away.”

Putin and his cronies are vicious, evil men who use violence and murder to control Russia. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote:

The closer our president and our nation gets to Putin, the further it gets from what is good and what is right—the further it gets from God! That is deadly dangerous!

Putin will stay true to his character and prey on President Trump and America as he has preyed on others. And the nation will deserve the consequences for cozying up to him. Mr. Flurry warned how serious the “horrifying consequences” are of accepting gifts like this in “Don’t Accept Gifts From Terrorists.”

SCOTUS Blocks Trump’s Mail-in Ballot Rules

Yesterday, the Supreme Court stopped the Trump administration from implementing its United States Postal Service mail-in ballot plan, which was meant to strengthen election integrity before the midterms in November.

• The plan would require the Postal Service, a federal agency, to send ballots only to names and addresses verified by state governments. A lower court had issued an injunction to stop the plan, and the Supreme Court decision leaves that in place—right after the justices in late August allowed key parts of the same executive order to proceed.
• In March, President Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of confirmed U.S. citizens in each state and directed the Postal Service to withhold mail ballots from anyone not on a separate, federally screened list—a departure from the routine voter lists states already provide to usps.
• A Boston judge blocked this plan, ruling that this measure sets voting rules, which the Postal Service has no authority to do.

The unsigned Supreme Court majority opinion said the administration was “unlikely to succeed on the merits” and sided with the 23 states, led by California, that had sued the administration. Reports say Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor joined.

• Justice Brett Kavanaugh voted to keep the rule blocked for the 2026 midterms and wrote a short concurrence saying that election officials lacked time to implement it, but he left open the chance it could be lawful later.
• Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, arguing, among other things, that the Postal Service has broad power to regulate the mail.

Election fraud remains a major issue in American politics.

• 3,069,002: That was the total number of “possible illegal votes” tallied in the third volume of Dr. Peter Navarro’s 2021 study on electoral fraud in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential elections.
• 312,992: That was the official margin of victory for Joe Biden in these six states, just 10 percent of that total. Therefore, the margin of error was 10 times greater than the margin of victory.

The one and only way that American citizens control their government is through elections. If their leaders are determined by anything other than citizens voting, Americans do not actually have a republic.

It is an open secret that Democrats stole the 2020 election from President Donald Trump. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has consistently asserted since 2020, including in his book America Under Attack, that Donald Trump was the actual winner of the 2020 election and said repeatedly that Bible prophecy showed he would return to power. That was fulfilled in the 2024 elections.

• Mr. Flurry based his forecast on 2 Kings 14:26-28, which state that an end-time antitype of King Jeroboam ii would have to “war” to recover something of great importance that has been stolen from him.

The Supreme Court was instrumental in helping President Trump accomplish this victory in 2024, particularly with its rulings on Trump v. Anderson, Trump v. United States, and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Yet the radical forces trying to blot out America’s republic have not disappeared.

France, New Protector of Finland

Finland became the 10th European nation to join France’s Forward Nuclear Deterrence Initiative on Monday.

• Finland is now a participant in France’s forward-deterrence framework and may take part in exercises or host French nuclear-capable assets.

Rivaling the U.S.: Although France has framed its Forward Nuclear Deterrence Initiative as supplementary to America’s arsenal, adding a separate nuclear weapons strategy reveals growing distrust between Europe and the United States.

• France, especially under its current president, has pushed for European military enhancement and independence. In 2018, Macron said a “true European army” is needed to protect “ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America.”

Macron may hope to lead this “true European army.” However, Bible prophecy reveals that Europe’s military unification project will be hijacked by Germany, led by a dictatorial strongman. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in 2024:

Like Macron, Germany is actively promoting the construction of a European military. However, it does not want to give the impression that this army is in opposition to nato and the U.S.

But it is. That is exactly what this is about!

Few realize that the expansion of Europe’s nuclear umbrella is preparing the way for Europe to not only assert independence from America but to attack it. Mr. Flurry explained how Bible prophecies reveal the future of trans-Atlantic nuclear strategy in “French Bombs, Europe’s Nuclear Umbrella and a Prophesied Betrayal.”

IN OTHER NEWS

German efforts in the Arctic to heat up: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz noted on Monday while visiting Rovaniemi, Finland, that Russia is militarizing the Arctic, that the region “has become a geopolitical hotspot,” and that the era of “high north—and low attention—is over.”

Russia weaponizing American AI: Individuals backed by the Russian government have used Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence tool to make drones capable of independently selecting and killing targets, enhance cyberattacks, and improve propaganda campaigns to polarize Western nations, the company announced on Thursday. These reports are the latest evidence that American adversaries, including Russia, China and Iran, are exploiting U.S.-made AI tools against the Western-led international system.