The News You Need on Wednesday, May 20, 2026.
Trump is spending his presidential time insider trading and hiding his (questionably existent) tax returns. Netanyahu has seized a lot of land from other countries. China cozies up with Russia.
Trump Corruption Watch
Trump’s Stock Trades Reveal a Keen and Well-Timed Interest in Pharmaceuticals
KFF Health News
Scott: A few things became much clearer with Donald Trump’s latest quarterly stock trading disclosure.
One is that Trump seems to be spending a sizeable chunk of “executive time” that fills much of his daily schedule playing the stock market.
The other is that he has a real penchant for figuring out when a company is about to benefit from a decision he is on the verge of taking, and rushing to buy their stock before his decision becomes public, so he can benefit from it too. And that’s the very definition of insider trading.
This in turn explains why Trump has been so fixed on disabling insider trading detection and enforcement mechanisms at the Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice.
Here’s an excellent first take at Trump’s very well timed plunge into the pharmaceuticals market.
The trades for Lilly—a company valued by the stock market at just under $1 trillion—stand out. That’s because the timing of Trump’s purchases coincides with several favorable government decisions benefiting the drugmaker’s GLP-1 business, including progress toward a long-held goal: qualifying the drugs for reimbursement from Medicare, the government health insurance program primarily serving seniors, when they are prescribed for weight loss.
The disclosure forms—which bear Trump’s distinct signature—give ranges rather than exact dollar amounts for the trades. They show seven purchases of Lilly stock made on the president’s behalf through the end of March, the first of which occurred on Jan. 6.
During that period, and just afterward, several Trump administration initiatives ultimately benefited Lilly. Perhaps the biggest was an initiative from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which was proposing a pilot program—a temporary “bridge,” potentially followed by permanent reimbursement—through which Medicare patients would pay $50 a month for GLP-1 drugs.
The deadline for drug manufacturers to submit applications indicating their interest in participating was Jan. 8. Lilly has since been named as a participating manufacturer in the program, calling it a “significant milestone.”
If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears
Forbes Breaking News
Charles: Every single day there are too many Donald Trump scandals for anyone to focus on all of them.
J.D. Vance and Eric Trump want you to know that even though 3,700 transactions were made for Donald Trump’s account during the first three months of this year, a huge number of which looked like they were timed to presidential actions, there is nothing to see here.
Yesterday a White House reporter told Vance that the president’s financial disclosure showed “a lot of stock trades in companies that he had talked up at official events and on his Truth Social account–sometimes even putting the stock ticker symbols in his posts and encouraging people to buy their stocks… How can you and your administration argue to Americans that you’re cleaning up corruption… when the president seems to be talking up stocks that he owns, selling them and enriching himself?”
Vance said the question was a “doozie.” Then he swore that Trump “doesn’t sit at the oval office on his Robinhood account buying and selling stocks” because he has “independent wealth advisors” who do that for him. The Vice President added he was eager to “lead by example”—by banning senators from trading in the stock market.
Senator Elizabeth Warren had a different point of view on X: “The President’s corruption is a national security disaster.”
Eric Trump insisted all of his father’s assets were in “a blind trust,” but The New York Times usefully pointed out that there is no evidence that there is any such thing:
There is no indication that a blind trust actually exists; that would require the president to have no knowledge of his portfolio contents. The Trump Organization later confirmed in its statement that the investments are in fact “maintained exclusively in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party” brokerages.
On the very same day, after announcing a $1.8 billion slush fund to use your tax dollars to pay off the president’s most dubious friends, Trump’s acting Attorney General refused to promise that none of that money would end up in the pockets of people convicted for beating up Capitol Hill policemen.
The final kicker: Another signature from acting AG Todd Blanche on an addendum to the slush fund deal which states the government is “forever barred” and “precluded” from examining the tax returns of Trump, his family, company and “related companies”. The agreement applies to anything filed before the agreement was reached. It was posted on the justice department website on Tuesday morning, a day after the department announced creation of the fund.
The ultimate goal of every career criminal: The power to ban your own prosecution.
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