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The Warner Bros.-Paramount merger championed by the Trump administration has hit some legal roadblocks.

A White House teleprompter operator appears to have made over $100,000 betting on President Trump’s speeches.ABC News, citing unnamed sources, reports that a longtime staffer for the president, Gabriel Perez, was placing bets on Trump’s speeches on the prediction market Kalshi, sparking an investigation from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC.Perez, a technical assistant, has operated Trump’s teleprompter since 2016, and is now speaking to federal investigators over allegations that he profited from inside knowledge. Perez allegedly bet on several of Trump’s speeches over three months, including the president’s prime-time address in December 2025, his remarks at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January 2026, and a Trump speech in March at a Medal of Honor ceremony.Kalshi reportedly alerted the CFTC about suspicious activity on its “Mentions” market, which allows bets on whether certain words, topics, or phrases come up in public speech.“Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC, and we are cooperating and assisting regulators,” the lead lawyer for Kalshi, Bobby DeNault, told ABC News in a statement.“The White House has strict ethics guidelines that we expect all staffers and officials to follow,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said to ABC News. “The staffer in question is fully cooperating with the CFTC.”In late March, the White House warned its staffers not to bet on world events in prediction markets.Perez usually is the last person to see Trump’s prepared speeches, even taking last-minute edits from the president. In some cases, investigators found that Perez would change his bets while Trump was in the middle of a speech after the president skipped over certain words.After meeting with regulators in the last few months, Perez acknowledged making the trades, and the CFTC alerted federal prosecutors in New York, who decided against a criminal investigation. CFTC regulators are reportedly willing to settle with Perez, allowing him to return his profits and refrain from any future bets.In April, a special forces soldier involved in capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was charged with using confidential intelligence to win $400,000 on the prediction market Polymarket. It seems some in the Trump administration see their positions as a way to make money, even trading in national secrets.

Ted Pick has been suggesting the bank is eyeing M&A targets. Here are a few suggestions from a former Morgan Stanley beat reporter.

Learn how industrial humidification systems help facilities protect products, cut energy waste, and maintain precise indoor moisture. The post The Business Case For Industrial Humidification Systems appeared first on DCReport.org.

Stock-market volatility in country-specific indexes tends to spike after their national teams play, according to a new analysis from data-modeling firm Polybridge.

The prediction market platform on Thursday launched 13 contracts that let users bet on the outcome of clinical drug trials.

The cost of the Iran war could well exceed $100 billion now that the conflict has reignited.The Trump administration has not officially released any figures related to the total cost of the war, but U.S. intelligence officials have predicted that the overall cost thus far could be greater than $100 billion, Wired reported Wednesday.The hesitation on the final count boils down to whether or not the Pentagon decides to replace part of its airfleet that was damaged or destroyed in the war, according to insiders that spoke with Wired. If it does, the cost will go up. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service tallied 42 lost or damaged U.S. aircraft in a May 13 report, including an Boeing E-3 Sentry that costs upward of $270 million, an MQ-4C Triton drone that costs around $618 million, and four F-15E Strike Eagle fighter aircraft that cost roughly $65 million a pop.The exact cost of the war has been difficult to pin down. Late last month, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, told the House Appropriations Committee that the U.S. had spent $30 billion on the Iran war. But even he must have known that figure was wildly inaccurate, considering that he had written and signed a formal request “on behalf of the president” for $88 billion in supplemental defense funding from Congress days earlier, including a $72 billion increase for the war effort.An independent review of U.S. expenses through the four-month war was published last week by Popular Information’s Stephen Semler, who found that Trump officials had dramatically lowballed Congress on the real cost of the conflict (Semler also co-founded the U.S. foreign policy think tank Security Policy Reform Institute).In order to build an independent analysis of the Pentagon’s expenditures, Semler analyzed procurement information, operating and support data, open-source intelligence, statements from U.S. officials, and media reports.Over the first 120 days of the conflict, Semler tallied $28.5 billion in mobilization, administrative, and immediate combat costs; $46.7 billion spent on missiles, interceptors, and bombs; $20.3 billion on damaged or destroyed military assets; $2.9 billion on Israel’s bombs and interceptors; and an additional $4.8 billion on war costs to nonmilitary U.S. agencies. All in all, Semler estimated that the true cost of the U.S.-Iran war is closer to $103 billion.Yet no one in charge of the government—from the White House to top congressional Republicans—has posited exactly how the U.S. will pay for the war. Whereas taxes were raised in previous wars (such as World War I, World War II, and the Korean War) in order to fund conflict, the current administration has so far offered no such solution.

The move comes amid a multibillion-dollar standoff between the Swiss commodities giant and DR Congo tax authorities.