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As President Donald Trump prepares to take a high-stakes new meeting related to the floundering Iran war, some of his biggest allies are growing concerned that he might be walking into "a disaster" that will engulf his America First agenda, per Politico.

Trump is set to take a new White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as the two countries' joint war against Iran continues to spiral into a protracted quagmire. Given that it was Netanyahu who reportedly talked Trump into attacking Iran in the first place, against skepticism from many of his White House officials, some of the president's top MAGA allies now fear he is once again about to be persuaded, this time into a renewed and intensified military campaign, according to a Tuesday morning report from Politico.

“I think all of President Trump’s most ardent non-‘Israel First’ supporters are furious,” former White House chief strategist and MAGA podcaster Steve Bannon said. “Netanyahu has had twice as many visits to the White House in 18 months as Churchill had in all of World War II — with every one of them a disaster for America First.”

"Netanyahu is going to argue for the essential logic of escalation, which — if Trump is not willing to give the [memorandum of understanding] a chance and if Trump is not willing to walk away from the conflict entirely without a resolution — then I think we probably will escalate, and that’s what we’ve been seeing these last couple of weeks," Cory Mills, executive director of the American Conservative magazine, said about the meeting, describing it further as "DEFCON 1," he added.

Politico noted that many of Trump's "anti-interventionist allies" were hoping that the "memorandum of understanding" deal from a few weeks ago was the start of a path towards a permanent peace agreement. These same allies are now "grappling with the possibility that Netanyahu" is about to convince the president to undertake "a new, more durable phase of war that could leave the U.S. embroiled in conflict in the Middle East for months, if not years."

“Netanyahu is kind of a problem-maker at the moment, right? This war has consumed the last five and a half months or so. There’s not a clear solution to it,” one anonymous former official told Politico. “Trump probably, publicly or not, blames Netanyahu partially or associates him with a thing going badly. It’s not like it has to be his fault. It’s that he’s associated with it. And the president’s pissed off about it.”

“I’m interested in seeing how forward-leaning Netanyahu is about wanting a U.S. engagement in that way. I mean, is that something he wants to do privately? Is that something he’s going to say publicly?” Alex Gray, a former National Security Council chief of staff from Trump’s first term, said. “Netanyahu is going to push his agenda, which I don’t think in this instance necessarily is compatible with our interests, but I have no concern that Donald Trump is going to be manipulated by any leader into doing something that’s not compatible with America’s interest first.”

When you go to see Christopher Nolan’s new epic film The Odyssey, you’ll be bathed in the revelation that Trump and his military lickspittles are breaking the most ancient law that created what we today call western civilization.

The movie even explains Iran’s rageful response to Trump’s violations of “Zeus’ Law” and tells us of the possible consequences of his illegal and morally criminal attack on that country (which had not attacked us first) as his war of choice plays out.

First, a tiny bit of backstory:

Theoxenia isn’t a word that gets thrown around a lot these days, but it’s at the core of both ancient Greek, Hebrew, Christian, and Iranian religions (among others) and traditions and The Odyssey. It means that there are gods wandering the Earth disguised as humans, and therefore we have an obligation to treat others — particularly strangers or people we don’t know or understand — as we would want to be treated, ourselves. With compassion, honor, and generosity.

In the movie, it’s referred to as Zeus’ Law, and its violation is the thread that runs through the entire three hours. It honors Zeus in his aspect as Zeus Xenios, protector of strangers, guests, and suppliants. In the Greek religion of that day, hospitality wasn’t mere courtesy but a sacred obligation, and Zeus himself stood behind it as both guarantor and avenger. Any stranger at your door came under his protection, so to mistreat a guest was to offend the king of the gods directly.

The Odyssey is built around this idea of xenia from end to end: you can read the whole poem as a ledger of good and bad hosts. The Phaeacians who bathe and feast the shipwrecked Odysseus without even knowing his name first are the ideal, while the suitors devouring his household in his absence are the great domestic violators, and their slaughter at the end reads as xenia enforced with a sword. The Cyclops Polyphemus is the ultimate anti-host, a creature who eats his guests and openly scorns the gods, which is why his punishment feels like cosmic justice rather than mere revenge.

Theoxenia also appears in Judaism, Christianity, and Iranian pre- and post-Islamic traditions.

Most people who’ve been through Bible School as kids remember how, in Genesis 18, Abraham sees three strangers approaching his tent in the heat of the day and rushes out to meet them, washing their feet, slaughtering a calf, and setting out a feast before he has any idea who they are. Only later in the encounter does it become clear they’re divine messengers, and one delivers the promise that Sarah will bear a son.

The very next chapter gives us the dark mirror image of that generation’s Trump-like behavior: the men of Sodom, who greet the same visitors with violence rather than welcome. In the Jewish tradition this pairing became foundational to hachnasat orchim, the welcoming of guests, and it’s why later rabbinic thought treats Sodom’s real sin as cruelty to strangers. The lesson drawn by these twin stories is that when you open your door to the stranger, you may be receiving God unawares.

When Jesus tells his followers in Matthew 25 that whatever they did for the least of these — the hungry, the stranger, the naked/homeless, the imprisoned — they did for him, he’s standing squarely inside that Abrahamic story, where the guest carries a hidden divine presence. His parable of the Good Samaritan works the same theme, making the despised outsider the only one who actually fulfills Zeus’ Law. And Paul’s letter to the Hebrews makes the connection explicit when he urges believers not to neglect hospitality to strangers, “for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it,” a direct reference to Abraham’s three visitors.

And it’s also intrinsic to both ancient and modern-day Iranian hospitality traditions. The ancient Persian counterpart to Zeus Xenios is Mithra, the Zoroastrian yazata or divine being whose entire jurisdiction is the law that strangers must be treated well because they could be divine beings in disguise. In living Iranian culture it’s known as mehman-navazi, which literally means “guest-cherishing” the deep-rooted tradition of treating guests with extraordinary honor, expressed in the elaborate ritual courtesy of ta’arof:

مهمان حبیب خداست. Mehman habib-e khodast. The guest is the beloved of God.

When Iranians first met with Kushner and Witkoff and then went to a February 28th meeting in Tehran to discuss the details of the deal offered, the compound where the meeting was taking place was bombed by the US and Israel, killing Ayatollah Khamenei, most of his family, and around 40 senior officials.

This was viewed by many in the region as a basic violation of Zeus’ Law. While the meeting with the strangers took place in Geneva, Switzerland, their offer was brought — like the Trojan Horse — into the home of the Supreme Leader himself and arguably led straight to his slaughter.

On the Muslim street there was real popular fury at this violation, most sharply in Pakistan, where protesters tried to storm the US consulate in Karachi and at least nine people were killed, and in Iraq, as well as with rallies and vigils elsewhere.

Iranian MP Amirhossein Sabeti was explicit about the now-clear danger of continuing to have good-faith negotiations with Witkoff and Kushner:

“Didn’t war happen in the middle of negotiations before? So you want to negotiate again so war happens and our new leader gets assassinated too?”

Last week, veteran reporters Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill shared a shocking allegation they say was presented directly to them by Iranian officials: that the Iranians had informed VP Vance that Kushner and Witkoff, instead of negotiating in good faith, were simply moving the negotiations along in fits and starts that would send the price of oil up and down, all while betting on oil futures.

The reporters laid it out on their Drop Site News Substack newsletter:

“In June, Iran calculated profits from such alleged manipulation had reached $9 billion and formally requested, in writing, that Iran should share in the proceeds.

“‘We have conveyed through intermediaries that $4.5 billion of this sum should also be allocated to the Iranian side,’ the Iranian official said. ‘The exchanged texts will ultimately become part of the historical record.’”

Odysseus paid for his reluctant role in the pillage and rape of Troy — and his coming up with the betrayal idea of the Trojan Horse — by being punished by the gods for twenty years, ten of them a god-cursed wandering through storms, monsters, and the loss of his men.

And that event is often cited as the pivot point when the ancient world turned from centuries of civilization to centuries of barbarism and democracy was lost for millennia.

The sack of Troy was not merely a victory but a desecration, a night when the Greeks butchered old King Priam at his own household altar, hurled the infant Astyanax from the city walls, and dragged Cassandra screaming from the temple of Athena, violating in a single evening every sacred bond the gods guarded: the suppliant’s safety, the altar’s sanctuary, the guest-friendship that had bound even enemies.

The Trojan Horse itself was the perfect emblem of that turn, because it weaponized trust, taking the oldest rule of the ancient world — that a gift offered and accepted creates a sacred obligation — and rigging it as a trap.

And the gods answered in kind, scattering the victors across the wine-dark sea so that the men who’d trampled the laws of heaven learned, one drowned crew and one ruined homecoming at a time, that a civilization that wins by betraying its own sacred order will not survive the winning.

And, of course, with Trump it’s not just Iran. His betrayals of trust and tradition include Greenland, Cuba, Ukraine, NATO, Venezuela, Canada, and our own citizens. He even betrayed every one of his three wives, and now he is betraying our Constitution.

One wonders how long America — and worldwide democracy itself, along with the civilized rules and respect for law it requires — will similarly pay for Trump’s and Netanyahu’s analogous violations of Zeus’ Law.

President Donald Trump's attempts to wage a trade war with Canada are "irrational," but, as a former deputy prime minister detailed in a New York Times piece, there is a deeper reason behind his attacks than just economics.

Despite Canada being among the country's closest allies for centuries, Trump has nonetheless been extremely antagonistic toward it since returning to the White House, frequently threatening it with tariffs and often suggesting that it should be annexed as a new state. Most recently, he leveled a new 50 percent tariff against Canada in response to its supposed "discrimination" against American imports, while also threatening additional sanctions over its recent rash of wildfires.

Chrystia Freeland previously served as Canada's deputy prime minister from 2019 to 2024 under Justin Trudeau. On Tuesday, she published an op-ed for the Times, in which she noted that blaming Canada for a laundry list of things, as Trump has done, "used to be such a fantastical idea that it was a joke," likening it to a famous bit from the long-running TV show, South Park. She also called the effort to start a trade war with Canada "truly absurd" for the U.S., given that the "trade relationship with its northern neighbor is very strong, and mutually beneficial."

"The Trump White House knows that, because commerce between the two countries is governed by a trade agreement negotiated during the first Trump administration and lauded by the president himself as 'the best trade deal ever,'" Freeland argued. "Even politicians who were lifelong critics of free trade and opponents of Mr. Trump’s backed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement."

Beneath the bluster, Freeland argued that Trump's attacks on Canada actually have "a clear purpose: to demonstrate who is dominant and who must submit."

"As a U.S. counterpart told me during the U.S.M.C.A. negotiations in 2018, we are 10 times bigger than you, so we should get our way 10 times more than you do," she continued. "The laughably flimsy, constantly changing justifications for the president’s tariffs are in fact part of the point. True power is being able to do whatever you like for whatever reason you like, or for no reason at all ... You don’t need to have attended meetings in the Oval Office or have a degree in international relations to see that this is what is going on. The president has been his usual, utterly transparent self."

She added later: "In other words, this isn’t about wine sales or how Canada manages its forests or reviving U.S. manufacturing. It’s about whether Canada is prepared to accept a profound change in its relationship with the United States. It’s about whether Canada is willing to go from being an ally and a partner, in a relationship governed by treaties and rules, to being a vassal, subject to Washington fiat — like the Venezuela of Delcy Rodríguez, only with snowdrifts and hockey."

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has a “50-50 chance” of switching to the Republican Party “before the end of the year,” according to elections expert Chaz Nuttycombe.

Nuttycombe’s prediction comes on the heels of an NBC News report suggesting the senior senator “is growing increasingly frustrated with the Democratic Party.”

According to the report, while Fetterman insists he’s “not there” in terms of switching party affiliation, his previously-expressed concern about the Democratic Party's allegiance to Israel stands as his "red line." As NBC News reports, “two weeks ago, Fetterman opened the door to leaving the Democratic Party if it ‘officially’ becomes anti-Israel."

Fetterman also complained to NBC News that he wasn’t “even” invited to two sessions convened by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that mapped out Democratic opposition to President Donald Trump’s “election doomsday scenarios,” as MS NOW reported.

“These so-called tabletop exercises teach us is when you’re prepared in advance, you can stop a lot of bad, bad things from happening,” Schumer told MS NOW last week. “A lot of the stealing that Trump will do, but if you just wait for them to do it and then try to react that day? Not good.”

“My caucus didn’t even invite me,” Fetterman said of the meetings. “I didn’t even know they were doing some doomsday kinds of voting situation. Well, hey, I lived through that in Pennsylvania in 2020. They didn’t even tell me that’s even happening. So if the Democratic caucus doesn’t want me, they could just let me know.”

“If they don’t even include me in kinds of basic things and I have to read about it, I mean, that’s kind of strange as a committed Democrat,” he added.

As NBC News reports, while Fetterman is busy airing his grievances with the Democratic Party, Republican leaders are publicly courting the Pennsylvania senator. Last week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) called Fetterman and other moderate Democrats “people without a home,” adding Republicans “would certainly welcome” his switch to their side.

Fetterman later told reporters he and Thune “‘haven’t had a conversation’ about a party switch.”

Still, political observers see stark signs that Fetterman is no longer strategically aligned with the Democratic Party.

Reporter Sahil Kapur, who co-authored the NBC News report, wrote on X Monday that “a lot of IFs” remain about Fetterman’s plans, but noted a switch could hand Senate control back to Republicans if Democrats are successful in the midterms. “Fetterman’s term expires in January 2029,” Kapur wrote. “Non-zero chance Dems pull off an upset this fall and flip four seats to win a 51-49 majority. A Fetterman defection could hand control of the Senate right back to Republicans.”

“The ugly truth is that Dems really need to win 52 Senate seats in November to have a real majority,” one data analyst wrote on X. “Fetterman cannot be trusted. This probably requires flipping Texas, Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio. Very high bar.”

Political analyst David Rothkopf thinks that President Donald Trump is hearing the death rattle of the "Grim Reaper" creeping up behind him.

Speaking to the Daily Beast's daily podcast, Rothkopf pointed to some of Trump's recent posts on Truth Social, including one of Trump standing next to the late President John F. Kennedy, who died in 1963 when Trump was only 17. Another AI image showed a movie poster of Trump grabbing George Washington's hand to save him from falling off of a cliff of Mt. Rushmore. Trump also appeared to be wearing a red cape that was flapping in the breeze. The clip was titled "Trump Washington: A time travel epic."

“Trump probably, on some level, despite the fact that he’s a narcissist and a psychopath and all these other things ... has the worst case of imposter syndrome in history,” Rothkopf said.

“And he knows he doesn’t belong there. And so he’s like, ‘Well, look, I have the same job George Washington had. I have the same job John F. Kennedy had. I could be surrounded by all of these people,'" he continued.

Rothkopf called it ironic to see Trump use an AI image of himself with Kennedy as Trump tried to put his name above the assassinated president at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Trump has "upended" the monument, which normally has a robust season of symphonies, operas, musicals and plays.

“It is an empty disaster. There’s still tarps over the front of it because Trump can’t bear to see the front of it without his name on it now,” said Rothkopf.

“You know, he’s hearing the footsteps of the Grim Reaper in the background ... and he wants to memorialize himself everywhere he looks,” he said.

Speaking to a conservative podcaster for his Monday show, authors Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan revealed that it's clear the president is considering his own mortality as an elderly president in his final term. Trump faces a number of health issues that have become public in recent months. His hands are bruised and his ankles and feet are swollen.

"I mean, look, it's not like Donald Trump sits around doing sort of therapy sessions with people, but he makes — he makes comments to advisors that — and to various people and associates and confidants that they all interpret as him thinking about his own mortality," said Haberman.

In October 2025, Trump rambled to reporters, "I don't think there's anything going to get me in heaven. I think I'm not maybe heaven-bound. I've made life a lot better for a lot of people."

The White House told the Daily Beast: “David Rothkopf is a far-left loser who clearly suffers from a severe and debilitating disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome that has completely rotted his peanut-sized brain.”

President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement's takeover efforts are "beatable," according to a new breakdown from the New York Times, and the major recent "setback" against one of his top media allies shows how to do it.

Earlier this week, Paramount agreed to delay its acquisition of Warner Bros. to allow a lawsuit against the merger from 12 state Attorneys General to play out. The process will now resume in either June 2027 or five days after a trial decision allowing the merger to go through, pending any further delays.

Paramount itself was also recently taken over by Skydance in 2025, putting it under the control of the wealthy Trump backer, David Ellison. This change has been the most visible at Paramount's news outlet, CBS, where Ellison has pushed it to be much more Trump- and MAGA-friendly, sending its ratings and credibility into freefall. Critics now worry that a similar fate awaits CNN, the news network in the Warner Bros. portfolio, as well as a general shift towards the iconic studio producing fewer films each year, and Ellison potentially nixing anything that is not Republican-friendly enough.

With this significant new delay, there is renewed hope that the merger might fall apart in court. Writing for the New York Times on Tuesday, columnist Michelle Goldberg spoke with lawyer Norm Eisen about the situation, and he explained how it shows "that Trump is beatable if you take a page from his playbook and flood the zone with opposition." She heard a similar sentiment when she spoke with Mark Ruffalo, one of the most outspoken anti-merger actors in Hollywood.

"The mere possibility that the deal could be defeated, said Ruffalo, has strengthened resistance in Hollywood," Goldberg wrote. "After Paramount announced its pause, SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents actors, broadcasters and recording artists, finally voted to oppose the merger. There’s a growing understanding, said Ruffalo, that if you let yourself be cowed by MAGA, 'you’re doomed. If you fight, at least you have a fighting chance. And they’re losing their grip on power. They’re losing their grip on their narrative.' As Trump looks ever less indomitable, so does his dream of remaking American culture in his image."

While Paramount's merger could still ultimately prevail, Goldberg noted that this pause could still cause it significant pain. If the delay lasts until next summer, it could cost the studio around $2 billion in fees. It could also force it to accept a settlement, whereby it agrees to spin off and relinquish control of CNN, or to make promises about protecting jobs within the company.

“I think it’s seismic,” media reporter Oliver Darcy told Golberg. “And it certainly puts into question whether this deal will cross the finish line.”

In a private ceremony on Sept. 17, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood at a podium inside the National Archives building in Washington, D.C., and praised a Florida nonprofit for what he called a singular achievement in American education. The attendees were celebrating the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, which announced that it had reached 2 million children with civics education since its founding in 2016.

“I hope you understand how important this is,” Hegseth told the room. “What we pour into the next generation will determine whether we keep our republic or not.”

FLAG’s founder, Nick Adams, had spent nearly a decade building toward this moment. An Australian-born conservative commentator and MAGA influencer, Adams had created the nonprofit, raised $7.7 million for it over 10 years, and garnered repeated praise from President Donald Trump. In March, Trump appointed Adams as the special presidential envoy for American tourism, exceptionalism and values — a position created for him after his nomination as ambassador to Malaysia stalled the previous year.

But a review of FLAG’s finances, donor operations and online donation network reveals a less celebratory picture. There is little evidence that the nonprofit has provided the civics education it claims. And Adams and his nonprofit have engaged in a pattern of questionable financial arrangements, including paying Adams and his mother more than half its recent annual revenue, while raising much of its money through a sweepstakes operation that has promised donors a chance to win $1,000,000 — a prize FLAG’s records show no evidence of ever paying.

Adams moved to the United States from Australia in 2012 and has since become an outspoken champion of the American political and economic system. Now 41, he has built a following as a conservative commentator and self-described “alpha male” influencer, making frequent media appearances and amassing roughly 2.1 million followers on Facebook and 640,000 followers on X on his personal pages. Adams authored books including “Retaking America: Crushing Political Correctness” and “Trump and Churchill: Defenders of Western Civilization.”

In 2016, Adams founded FLAG, registering it as a nonprofit with the mission to bring high-quality civics education to K-12 students across America. FLAG has produced civics materials like the Student’s Constitution, the Student’s Declaration of Independence and the Student’s Federalist Papers — kid-friendly editions of the country’s founding documents. By 2023, FLAG was reporting annual revenue of nearly $1.5 million, consisting of donations and merchandise sales. “Thanks to the support of 40,000+ grassroots patriots,” the organization’s website states, “over 1 million FLAG resources have been distributed in classrooms all across America.”

To give FLAG credibility in conservative circles, Adams assembled an advisory council of movement leaders including Hegseth, then a Fox News host; the late Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA; the late Edwin J. Feulner, founder of the Heritage Foundation; and Dennis Prager, the conservative radio host and co-founder of PragerU, a nonprofit that produces conservative educational materials. (The council has since been replaced with a board of directors.)

Adams did not respond to a detailed list of questions about FLAG’s financial practices, sweepstakes operation and educational programming. A Pentagon spokesperson declined to respond to questions but reiterated Hegseth’s support for FLAG.

Civics education has become a rallying cause across the Make America Great Again movement, whose slogan invokes a return to a specific vision of the country’s founding principles. PragerU is an approved curriculum provider in at least eight states. Turning Point USA pursued a similar goal through Turning Point Academy, a network of private schools. Along with those organizations, FLAG is now part of the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, a partnership of the U.S. Department of Education formed with over 40 conservative groups.

Trump’s return to office has been a boon for Adams. The president has called Adams one of his favorite authors, and a foreword in Adams’ 2024 book, “Alpha Kings,” credited to Trump calls Adams someone whose “work ethic equals his moral responsibility and faith in God.” Although Trump wasn’t able to attend FLAG’s 2023 annual gala, he sent a video praising the nonprofit and Adams, telling attendees that “tens of thousands of teachers are being trained and hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents are now standing up for our kids.”

“It takes Nick from Australia to come and teach us about American greatness and to help us fight for our country,” Trump added. “He’s an American now, and we’re very lucky to have him.”

The White House press office declined to comment.

FLAG’s website invites teachers to request free classroom presentations, delivered by “certified FLAG Ambassadors,” including Adams himself, alongside guest speakers described as entrepreneurs, business leaders and immigrants. In 2016 and early 2017, FLAG regularly posted photos documenting visits to schools. After that period, however, ProPublica could not find similar documentation of FLAG representatives visiting schools.

Since 2016, as FLAG’s annual revenues grew from $68,000 to $1.1 million in 2024, there is almost no indication in the organization’s annual federal tax filings that it was spending money on its stated mission. No line item in FLAG’s federal tax filing identifies a payment to a school, a teacher or an educational distributor. Only two lines, in a 2017 federal filing, indicate $26,925 for “Student’s Constitutions, Printing” and $5,670 for “Book Donations, Shipping & Supplies.” In the last six years, while FLAG operated under Adams, the only documented instance of FLAG activity that appears to fit the definition of “educational” is a 2020 video showing Adams speaking at what is described as a teachers’ conference.

But the nonprofit has been lucrative for the Adams family. In 2024, Adams, who was born Nicholas Adamopoulos, and his mother, Angelika Adamopoulos, collected a combined $587,279 in compensation and benefits from FLAG — 53% of the organization’s revenue that year, according to the nonprofit’s federal filing.

Adamopoulos was paid $201,861, including benefits, as FLAG’s secretary. In the same filing, FLAG answered no when asked by the IRS whether any officer or director shared a family relationship with another director or officer. Adamopoulos did not respond to requests for comment.

Experts were troubled that the organization spent so much on Adams and his mother. “The amount being paid, both in absolute dollar terms and as a percentage of the organization’s revenues and expenses, is very high,” said Lloyd Mayer, a nonprofit law professor at Notre Dame Law School and a leading authority on tax-exempt organizations.

Mayer said Adams’ salary increases since FLAG’s founding are more of “a yellow flag,” than a clear violation. For FLAG’s first three years, Adams received no salary. He first took compensation in 2019 of just $20,400. Then his annual pay rose steadily to reach $411,209, or about 30% of the group’s total revenue, in 2023. Adamopoulos was the first employee outside of Adams to be paid a significant salary, in 2024. No other employee was paid more than $5,000 from 2016 to 2024, according to FLAG’s federal filings, obtained through ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer.

The legal test, Mayer said, is whether the board was clear that it was making up for early years of low or no pay: “Were they explicit in saying, ‘We’re not just paying you for this year; we’re paying you for your past service, which you were not fairly compensated for’?”

The IRS asks nonprofits whether their executive compensation was reviewed by independent people and if they used comparisons to other similar organizations — a standard safeguard against self-dealing. In all filings from 2017 to 2024, FLAG answered no to both questions.

Philip Hackney, a nonprofit law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and former IRS official, said the absence of an independent review creates its own legal exposure. “Technically, that can be an excess benefit transaction on its own,” Hackney said, referring to the IRS category that triggers taxes on compensation paid to nonprofit insiders above fair market value.

FLAG claims that 66% of revenue goes toward program service expenses, according to a separate financial report filed with the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in Florida, where the organization is now based. But the salaries of Adams and his mother, social media spending and travel expenses account for $755,541, or 86%, of the $878,208 allocated to program services.

Mayer said the classification is not automatically improper under federal law. “Education as a charitable purpose is a very broad category,” he said. “Spending money on staff, online communications and even fundraising appeals that have informational content can all be considered programmatic.”

“What [the IRS is] looking for is not inflated spending,” Mayer said. “They’re looking for disguised personal spending.”

In Australia, Adams was accused of spending taxpayer dollars on personal expenses. In 2006, when Adams was 22 years old, he served as a councillor in Ashfield, Australia. He was formally condemned by fellow councillors for running up thousands of dollars in phone calls and taxi charges for personal use while claiming them as council expenses. He repaid the charges after a formal investigation, according to a 2006 article in the Inner-West Weekly, an Australian newspaper.

FLAG’s online store sells Adams’ personal books — including “Alpha Kings” and “From Mar-a-Lago to Mars,” several marketed as signed copies for as much as $40 — alongside its own educational materials. One of Adams’ personal books, “Trump and Churchill,” is on the front page of FLAG’s online store, accompanied with language that says, “Proceeds from all sales go directly to promoting our mission and providing students and teachers with high-quality educational resources.” It is the only book with language that distinguishes which purchases fund FLAG’s mission or pay Adams directly.

In September, FLAG posted a photo from a conservative women’s convention showing Adams standing behind a table stacked with copies of his personal books displayed alongside FLAG-branded resources with the organization’s banner behind him. Adams’ books have also been advertised for sale on FLAG’s Facebook page, with links going directly to Adams’ personal website for the books rather than FLAG’s shopify page.

“He’s free to market his books,” Mayer said, “but if he has a charity do it, that means it’s not really a charity anymore, in that respect. It’s not about public benefit — the private benefit to him overrides the public benefit.”

In addition to the disclosure discrepancies, FLAG appears to have violated rules for conducting sweepstakes. Nearly all of FLAG’s revenue originates from individual donors, and most of that money is raised through a direct-mail sweepstakes operation that offers the chance to win prizes, in one case $1,000,000.

For years, FLAG has run a direct-mail sweepstakes campaign under names like “Payout Decision” and “Winner Search Swps.” Sweepstakes are regulated primarily at the state level, and organizations that run them are often required to register and report to state officials. Not every state requires this, but Florida, where FLAG is registered as a charity, does. FLAG does not disclose a sweepstakes program in its federal filings, and ProPublica could not locate any official sweepstakes registration for the organization in any state.

Nine years of FLAG’s federal filings contain no transaction consistent with a $1,000,000 payment. Hackney said any such payout would be expected to appear on the organization’s tax filings. “It should be an amount paid out at some point, and that would show up in a 990,” he said, referencing the name of the tax return filed by nonprofits, which is public. At its financial peak in 2023, FLAG held roughly $512,000 in total assets — about half the value of the prize it has offered to donors.

Mayer said the absence of a documented prize payment raises further legal questions. “If the promise is that someone will win $1,000,000 and no one ever does, that’s fraud,” he said. “That’s lying to induce people to support you.”

Internal records from a mailing list exchange database, which details how often and for what purpose organizations use mailing lists of potential donors, shows a shift in FLAG’s emphasis. Notes in FLAG’s record state that as of July 2020, FLAG was “not mailing much” through conventional fundraising channels and was “focusing on the sweeps side.”

In April 2024, someone filed a Better Business Bureau complaint against FLAG, alleging that its sweepstakes drawing deadlines had been repeatedly postponed — along with those of more than a dozen other charities the complainant said used the same practice. In a follow-up filing, the complainant cited FLAG’s timeline: a drawing originally set to run from January 2022 through December 2024 that had, by then, been pushed to run from December 2023 through January 2025.

“I just want them to pay me back my hard earned money,” the complainant wrote, “since I am a retired senior citizen who happened to love this country.”

FLAG told the BBB on May 6, 2024, that it had responded to the complainant.

FLAG marks its 10th anniversary on Wednesday, and is throwing itself a gala with tickets for the occasion priced at $1,000; $5,000; and $10,000. Adams is still listed on the website as FLAG’s founder but ceded the role of CEO in March to Cooper Rodenburg, a recent graduate of Stetson University, around the time he accepted his State Department role to promote tourism to the United States.

Reached by phone, Rodenburg requested that questions be sent by email but did not respond to them.

Rodenburg has since increased FLAG’s public activity, launching a TikTok account and a Substack newsletter, meeting with educational representatives and speaking to groups like the Shelby County Republican Women’s Club in Tennessee. A Substack post in April described FLAG, represented by Rodenburg and Adamopoulos, delivering founding documents to schools in Mississippi. This was one of the only specific program activities the organization has documented in recent years.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is again taking aim at Cuba. This time, however, the Trump administration is framing Havana as a decades-long sponsor of terrorism and espionage that has helped cultivate the “radical left” in the United States.