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Papa Johns, Propaganda and Putin: How a MAGA Influencer With Ties to Russia Became Trump’s Arctic Adviser

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Thomas Dans in Nuuk, Greenland, last February. The Texas venture capitalist and MAGA influencer was appointed chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters For more than 40 years, the U.S. Arctic Research Commission has advised Congress and the president on what to study in the frigid and dynamic far north, from the environment to military security. It’s typically done so without making waves, led by people well-versed in science and public policy. That was until December, when President Donald Trump appointed a Texas venture capitalist and MAGA influencer with no formal background in science as the commission’s chair. Since then, Thomas Dans has traveled the globe generating headlines. Serving as the administration’s main voice on the Arctic, he’s advanced some of the president’s wildest ambitions, like a takeover of Greenland, and rankled NATO allies in the process. Yet as Dans holds forth in the U.S. and abroad, it’s not always clear where ...
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Underage Players, Predatory Moneylenders: 7 Findings From Our Dominican Baseball Investigation

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Young players train at a baseball academy in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. Baseball is everywhere in the Dominican Republic, which sends a disproportionate number of players to the American major and minor leagues, including Hall of Famers like Pedro Martínez and Adrian Beltré. Playing fields and training academies dot the country in villages where players who’ve made the leap to the pros are immortalized in murals. For nearly half a century, the Dominican Republic has sent more players to the majors than any country outside the United States. The nation, which has a population roughly that of Ohio’s, had 144 players reach the major leagues last year. That’s about 10% of the league. The Dominican baseball factory is a volume business, with teams paying signing bonuses to about 450 prospects each year. Fewer than 10% of those young players will ever see a single pitch in the majors, but in a country as impoverished as the Dominican Republic those ...
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Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin

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Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson with their wedding party in the Bahamas Laura Gordon Photography via Instagram On May 24, Donald Trump Jr. was celebrating in the Bahamas, as scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps performed for him and his guests. It was the last night of his wedding, a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier funfetti cake had been airlifted in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes descended on the islands before guests settled into their oceanfront villas. That night on the beach, Trump Jr. lifted his bride into the air while fireworks launched from a barge over the sea. “It was everything we dreamed of and more,” his wife later wrote on Instagram. That dream was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin. Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records review...
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