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Amid wanton budget cuts by the Trump Administration that put thousands of government employees out of work, canceled school lunch programs for needy kids, and zeroed out funding for crucial research into cancer, U.S. taxpayers shelled out for rental cars and hotel rooms as the president’s two eldest sons pursued private business deals in the Middle East.

Federal procurement data reviewed by The Independent shows more than $40,000 in disbursements by the Secret Service, whose agents accompanied Don Jr. and Eric Trump to Qatar and Saudi Arabia this spring, underwritten by the American public.

One transaction, a $13,984 payment arranged by the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh and funded by the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, describes the outlay as: “ERIC TRUMP Protective USSS Visit – 4 rental vehicles.”

It was prepared on April 20, and approved on May 13, 2025, the same day President Trump arrived in the kingdom. However, Eric, 41, was not part of the official delegation, according to reports.

A second transaction, for $26,813.24, was arranged by the State Department and funded by the U.S. Embassy in Doha. covered a room for Donald Trump Jr., 47, at The Ned, a 5-star hotel and members-only club located in a building formerly occupied by the Qatari Interior Ministry.

“Trump Jr Visit – May 25 – Team X,” reads the expenditure, which was prepared on May 11 and approved on May 18, 2025, nearly a week after the president was in town.

“Expect tactile furnishings, classical details, and all the essentials for a comfortable home away from home,” the property’s website tells prospective travelers. “Guests enjoy access to Ned’s Club Spa and Gym throughout their stay. Airport transfers in our BMW 7 Series can be arranged upon request.”

Together, lodging and local transportation for Trump’s two adult sons cost taxpayers at least $40,797.24, a figure that does not include air travel, agents’ salaries, meals, and other significant outlays.

A Secret Service spokesman on Monday told The Independent, “We support any of our protectees, that go anywhere in the world, including foreign trips. For these foreign trips, we have personnel on the ground before a protectee gets there, so we may be on the ground several days in advance, working with the local government and local authorities.”

The contracts themselves, such as the hotel rooms and rental cars required for Don Jr. and Eric, are executed on behalf of the Secret Service by U.S. embassies in the destination countries, according to the agency spokesman.

He said the members of the Trump family “are our protectees, we protect them, regardless of where they go. When you’re a protectee, you have round-the-clock protection anywhere in the world. It doesn’t matter what type of trip it is, they’re getting protection.”

The Trump Organization, which is being nominally run by Don Jr. and Eric while their father serves a second term in the White House, recently partnered with a Qatari real estate firm – backed by the country’s sovereign wealth fund – to build a Trump-branded luxury golf resort in the emirate.

The deal was announced two weeks before Trump made the jaunt to Qatar, which subsequently “gifted” the president a $400 million Boeing 747 for his own use.

The Trump family is also developing two new real estate projects in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, as well as a Trump Tower to be erected in Jeddah.

“Combining coastal elegance with urban sophistication, Trump Tower Jeddah delivers an unmatched lifestyle,” read an April 30 press release issued by the Trump Organization. “From refined residences to world-class amenities and personalized service, every detail reflects the signature Trump standard of excellence.”

Two weeks later, the White House formally announced that Saudi Arabia had committed to buying at least $100 billion worth of military equipment from the U.S., and said Qatar had agreed to purchase $200 billion worth of U.S.-built jets from Boeing, as well as some $3 billion in American-made drones from General Atomics and Raytheon.

The trips by Don Jr. and Eric raised numerous questions about the Trump family’s aggressive monetization of the presidency, which administration officials attempted to minimize as a non-issue. During the president’s first term, the Trump Organization vowed not to pursue any foreign deals while the company’s namesake was in office – a promise promptly broken, according to an investigation by anti-corruption watchdog Global Witness.

When Trump returned to the White House in January 2021, he released an ethics agreement that said the Trump Organization would not directly strike any deals with foreign governments. However, it included no prohibition on doing business with private companies abroad, and the president’s family business is now involved in no fewer than 21 Trump-branded projects throughout the world, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or, CREW.

Still, prior to Trump’s Middle East sojourn, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted that the notion Trump would personally benefit from his family’s private business pursuits was, in a word, “ridiculous.”

“The president is abiding by all conflict of interest laws,” Leavitt said. “The president is a successful businessman, and I think, frankly, that it’s one of the many reasons that people reelected him back to this office.”

In October 2018, U.S. taxpayers were hit with a $90,000-plus hotel bill for First Lady Melania Trump and her Secret Service detail, who were in Cairo for six hours but did not spend the night.

A vacation to Berlin the previous year by Tiffany Trump, the president’s youngest daughter, cost taxpayers at least $22,000 in hotel stays for the Secret Service agents accompanying her and her boyfriend.

But when the Secret Service traveled with members of the Trump family to Trump-owned hotels, the agency was reportedly charged “exorbitant” markups far above the usual room rate, contradicting Eric Trump’s previous claim that agents were provided lodging “at cost.”

At the same time, a vindictive Trump has sought revenge on officials he believes wronged him during his first term by revoking Secret Service details assigned to protect President Joe Biden’s adult children, along with those looking after former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, and a host of others.

Craig Holman, a governmental ethics expert at nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen, told The Independent it is “sheer hypocrisy” for security expenses to be provided for Don Jr. and Eric, “but taken away from far more important officials out of favor with Trump.”

During Barack Obama’s time in office, before Trump’s foray into national politics, he raged on Twitter about the cost of providing security for the president and his family, taking aim at supposed “taxpayer funded vacations” costing the American people “millions of dollars.” Yet, according to government spending data compiled by CREW, the Trump family ended up taking 12 times the number of trips the Obamas did, depleting the Secret Service’s protection budget and forcing the agency to request more funding.

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CLIMATEWIRE | In the past decade, as extreme weather killed nearly 700 people in Texas, the state relinquished $225 million in federal grant money that it was supposed to spend on protecting residents from disasters, federal records show.

The money had come from a special federal disaster program that’s given states billions of dollars for projects such as flood protection, tornado safety, and the type of warning systems that could have saved some of the 129 people killed in Texas’ recent flash flooding. Texas had rejected two requests from the flooded county for a small portion of the federal money to set up a flood-warning system.

But Texas, like most states, has chosen not to spend a significant chunk of its mitigation grant money. States routinely let the government reclaim unspent money — or let available money go unused for as long as 20 years, according to an analysis of federal records by POLITICO’s E&E News.

In addition to ceding the $225 million, Texas has not spent $505 million of the $820 million — 62 percent — that it got for mitigation projects nearly eight years ago after Hurricane Harvey killed 89 people and caused $160 billion in damage, records show. The funds remain available.

The unspent money highlights a central flaw in the nation’s approach to protecting against climate change: The federal government gives states and communities both money and responsibility for disaster protection. Yet states and communities often lack the personnel and expertise to spend it fully.

Since July 2015, the federal Hazard Mitigation Grant Program has showered states with more than $23 billion to protect their counties, neighborhoods and homes against future disaster damage. The grants have been given automatically after each federally declared disaster and are separate from the federal money that pays for disaster cleanup and rebuilding.

But nearly $21 billion of the grant money remains unspent, E&E News found, leaving people vulnerable to the deadly flooding, winds and wildfires that climate change is intensifying. Some of the grant money was awarded in recent years, but most was awarded more than three years ago.

In the same period since 2015, states also relinquished a total of $1.4 billion in mitigation grant funding that had been approved but states never spent.

The figure includes the $225 million that Texas gave up over the past 10 years as the government closed a series of partially spent hazard mitigation grants it had awarded the state since 2001. The grants were worth a total of $850 million, which means Texas did not spend more than a quarter of the money. Most recently, on April 29, Texas ceded $5.7 million of a $13 million mitigation grant it got in 2016.

“It’s a lost opportunity to build resilience,” said Peter Gaynor, who ran the Federal Emergency Management Agency from 2019 to 2021. FEMA operates the mitigation grant program.

“What happens time and time again is mitigation money becomes an afterthought,” Gaynor said.

The Texas Division of Emergency Management, which handles the FEMA mitigation grants, did not respond directly to questions about unspent money.

Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for Gov. Greg Abbott (R), said in a statement, “The State continues to disburse HMGP funding as grants are awarded and encourages local officials to apply.”

The large amount of unspent hazard mitigation money prompted President Donald Trump in April to stop approving new allocations, a move that angered some state officials.

A FEMA spokesperson said the agency is now helping states “identify projects and draw down balances in a way that makes the nation more resilient, while also responsibly safeguarding American taxpayer dollars.”

Trump has assailed FEMA since taking office but on Friday offered unusual praise when he visited the damaged area in Texas. “FEMA has been really headed by some very good people,” Trump said.

Although states had automatically received FEMA grant money after each disaster, spending the money has been excruciating at times. FEMA typically must approve each grant-funded project.

“It’s such a cumbersome process,” said David Fogerson, who ran Nevada’s emergency management and homeland security agency from 2020 to 2024.

States and communities — or their contractors — must submit detailed plans showing that a project is feasible, complies with environmental and preservation laws, and makes sense financially. States, counties, and municipalities also must have a written plan — typically a couple of hundred pages and updated every five years — showing its broad strategy to reduce disaster damage.

A Government Accountability Office report in 2021 found that state officials were “overwhelmingly dissatisfied” with the application process.

“It almost becomes overload when you’re trying to manage the disaster and then you’re trying to measure how to protect against the next disaster,” Fogerson said.

Nevada has spent only a quarter of the $3.4 million hazard grant it got from FEMA after a wildfire in 2016, records show.

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” Fogerson said of the grant money.

Federal funds rarely used for warning systems

Kerr County, Texas, the site of the flash flooding that began July 4, encountered the administrative gantlet in 2016 when it asked the state in 2016 and in 2018 for a small piece of its FEMA mitigation money to establish a flood warning system.

Warning systems are a crucial but low-profile part of worldwide strategies to protect against natural hazards, particularly in places prone to flash flooding, which occurs when sudden, intense precipitation causes rivers to overflow.

Texas officials are scrutinizing the limited warnings that were transmitted as the Guadalupe River surged in the middle of the night and devoured areas, including a girls’ sleepaway camp where at least 27 campers and counselors were killed.

In Kerrville, Texas, which was at the center of the flash flooding, City Manager Dalton Rice on Saturday pledged “a full review of the disaster response.”

Trump’s staff reductions and proposed budget cuts to the National Weather Service offices have set off their own alarms that inadequate weather alerts will increase the number of disaster-related deaths.

Kerr County’s request for grant money was denied in 2016 by the Texas Division of Emergency Management because the county did not have the required mitigation plan.

When the county of 50,000 people in central Texas Hill Country applied again after Hurricane Harvey, the state denied the application after deciding to spend all the grant money in Harvey-damaged counties.

“If localities do not meet federal requirements, they will not be able to access the funding. The State works with applicants to support efforts to bring them into compliance,” said Mahaleris, the spokesperson for Gov. Abbott.

The Texas Legislature will convene a special session July 21 to consider new laws that would improve warning systems in flood-prone areas.

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Video footage of the office, shared by New York-based news outlets, showed red paint splattered on the building and a sign hanging up that read, “AOC funds genocide in Gaza.” Authorities have not yet made any arrests in connection to the vandalism, Politico reported.

Ocasio-Cortez has been a vocal critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza, but she sparked outcry from some progressives after voting on Friday against the amendment, introduced by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, to the defense spending bill.

The New York Congresswoman defended her vote in a post on X over the weekend.

“Marjorie Taylor Greene’s amendment does nothing to cut off offensive aid to Israel nor end the flow of US munitions being used in Gaza. Of course I voted against it,” she said. “What it does do is cut off defensive Iron Dome capacities while allowing the actual bombs killing Palestinians to continue.”

“I have long stated that I do not believe that adding to the death count of innocent victims to this war is constructive to its end,” she continued. “I remain focused on cutting the flow of US munitions that are being used to perpetuate the genocide in Gaza.”

The amendment didn’t end up making it into the final version of the defense spending bill passed by the House on Friday, which Ocasio-Cortez voted against. She responded to the criticism in another post on X on Monday, including screenshots showing that she voted against the spending bill and adding, “If you’re saying I voted for military funding, you are lying. Receipts attached.”

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) listens during a mark up meeting with the House Committee on Energy and Commerce committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on May 13, 2025.Anna Moneymaker—Getty Images

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Facebook has deleted more than 10 million accounts as part of an ongoing purge of the world’s most popular social network.

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said the move was aimed at “cracking down on spammy content” and promoting authentic accounts, however some users have complained about being wrongly caught up in the action.

Facebook confirmed the figure in a blog post, revealing that more than a million accounts were deleted each month in the first half of 2025.

“Too often the same meme or video pops up repeatedly – sometimes from accounts pretending to be the creator and other times from different spammy accounts,” the company wrote in the blog post.

“It dulls the experience for all and makes it harder for fresh voices to break through. We’re introducing stronger measures to reduce unoriginal content on Facebook and ultimately protect and elevate creators sharing original content.”

Dozens of users shared similar experiences on social media of their accounts being removed, despite being legitimate accounts, with some blaming AI systems for wrongly identifying their accounts as inauthentic.

“It seems that the ability to connect is being stripped away by an algorithm that lacks understanding,” one user wrote in a post to the Reddit forum MetaLawsuits.

“Our business is currently suffering now as we struggle to reach clients, business contacts and maintain relationships, while my son’s autism support network has been severed, leaving us feeling abandoned… The disconnection feels inhumane, unfair, and utterly heartbreaking.”

Referred to as the “Meta ban wave”, the mass deletions also appear to have impacted people on Instagram, which is also owned by Meta.

The Independent has reached out to the company for further comment about legitimate accounts being deleted.

Any user whose account has been deleted will receive an email informing them of the action.

Facebook users can appeal any account suspension within 180 days, according to the company’s support pages, after which time the profile will be permanently deleted.

The large-scale removal comes as other tech companies take steps to clean up their own platforms.

n 2023, Google announced that it would delete all inactive Gmail, Photos and Drive accounts in a move that continues to impact millions of users.

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has previously proposed even more extreme purges of Facebook in an effort to boost engagement.

In 2022, he reportedly sent an internal email that laid out a plan to delete the friends of all Facebook users.

“One potentially crazy idea is to consider wiping everyone’s graphs [connections] and having them start again,” he wrote to company executives, who pushed back on the idea.

The Independent has always had a global perspective. Built on a firm foundation of superb international reporting and analysis, The Independent now enjoys a reach that was inconceivable when it was launched as an upstart player in the British news industry. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, and across the world, pluralism, reason, a progressive and humanitarian agenda, and internationalism – Independent values – are under threat. Yet we, The Independent, continue to grow.

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