WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday extended a waiver for 90 days for foreign ships to transport goods, including oil, fertilizers and other fossil fuel products, among U.S. ports.
The president first waived the Jones Act on March 17 so that it would be easier to transport oil and refined fuels among ports, reducing price pressures after the start of the war with Iran.
The latest extension will take effect on August 17 and suggests that the U.S. might be preparing for continued price pressures as the Strait of Hormuz, a primary waterway for shipping oil and natural gas, remains effectively closed because of the war.
Unlike previous extensions, the Pentagon will consult with the Maritime Administration to decide which voyages are exempt from the 1920 law containing the Jones Act. The new waiver will only apply to cargo that are sources of energy and commodities related to agriculture such as fertilizers and soybean oil.
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration extended the waiver “to ensure our military and key industries maintain uninterrupted access to critical resources.” Rogers added that the waiver has increased domestic deliveries of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
President Donald Trump departs after speaking at a roundtable on American mining, Friday, Aug. 7, 2026, at the State Department in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
NEW YORK (AP) — The president's media company has tried its hand at a half-dozen new lines of business to lift its stock, but nothing has worked.
Now it's getting back to its roots.
In a conference call with investors Monday, the company behind Truth Social said it will be unwinding much of its expansion and doubling down on its original media business by selling a form of White House access, a move that has raised big ethical questions among Democrats and government watchdogs.
Trump started Truth Social after he was kicked off Twitter and Facebook, but the two reinstated him more than three years ago, so the company has had to transform itself. Instead of a “free speech” forum, it now acts more like a “hear it here first” site, a second White House press office where people get scoops from the president on everything from the Iran war to tariffs to the future of the U.S. central bank.
But shares of the parent company, Trump Media & Technology, kept falling so it decided to become more than a media company, and branched into unrelated industries like online betting, finance, investment funds, buying and storing bitcoin and nuclear energy.
Now it's returning to its original mission, with a twist: It's offering a special new service that grants fast access to President Trump's posts for a fee.
In a conference call with investors, the company's new chief executive, Kevin McGurn, said it had already signed up several high speed trading firms, each paying between $60,000 and $100,000 a month.
“We’re in the early innings,” said McGurn, noting that the potential market included data center companies, news organizations and developers of large language models, not just traders, and he was talking to them all.
McGurn has rejected the idea that the new business is an ethics quagmire as good-government groups have said, noting that other social media companies provide a similar service. As for the White House, it denies conflicts even exist between Trump the president and Trump the businessman where his private interests may influence his public policy.
Traders on Wall Street can make big money if they get White House news faster and so are signing up — 10 in the week since the service began, which may seem like a tiny number but translates into a major boost for the company. The monthly customers collectively are paying as much as $7 million and $12 million annually — two to three times the revenue the company took in for all its businesses last year.
Trump Media needs the money — and a lot more.
It's lost more than $1 billion since the start of last year, and its earnings report released Monday for the three months ended June 30 showed relief is not on the horizon. It lost another $238 million, though much of that was due to paper losses from the plunging value of its bitcoin holdings.
The clock is ticking to fix the company.
Trump Media depends partly on outside funding, specifically $1 billion raised from lenders with a special agreement that allows them to get paid back early. They can demand the company buy back their convertible notes on Nov. 30, 18 months before the loans mature.
That cashout date is just after the November midterms, which could impact the company should Democrats get control of Congress. Several current members, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, say they will hold formal investigations of Trump's businesses, including Trump Media, should they take over.
A third deadline is farther out, but the most consequential — the end of Trump's presidency.
Trump is a big draw for the platform's users, but it's not clear how many will read his posts after he leaves office, much less why traders will pay as much $1.2 million a year for sneak peeks at his posts if he's no longer able to declare on the site that the Strait of Hormuz is open or that he's hiking tariffs on dozens of countries.
The special, high-speed service, called Truth API, includes posts from other top posters on the site, but no one comes near the president in popularity. He has 13 million followers. The second biggest poster, his son, Donald Jr., has 7.5 million.
Other heavily followed posters include Trump administration members who also may fall in popularity once out of office, including FBI director Kash Patel and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A wild card is JD Vance, who will be out of his vice presidential job in 2028 but, if he runs for president and wins, may continue to post on the site where he has five million followers.
The other business line that McGurn is choosing to hold onto is nuclear fusion, a technology still not commercially available but that is getting a big boost by the current administration.
In June, the U.S. Department of Energy released a “road map” committing to government funding to speed the development of nuclear fusion as a national priority and calling for public-private partnerships.
Despite the help, investors still aren't convinced Trump Media has a rosy future.
After closing at about $62 shortly after it went public in 2024, the stock has plunged into the single digits, wiping out billions in stock market value.
On Monday, Trump Media dove again, down 8% to $9.39 a share.
FILE - President Donald Trump holds up an image taken from his Truth Social account at an event about coal, Thursday, June 4, 2026, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson,File)
