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Okay, let's start the show. This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross.

Since President Trump has returned to office, his conflicts of interest have surpassed those of his

first term. He's no longer hesitant about pursuing profits without restraint, according to my guest

Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter for the New York Times.

Lipton has written a series of articles about the president's conflicts of interest

relating to his family's real estate and development companies and cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial.

Lipton writes that World Liberty Financial has eviscerated the boundary between private enterprise and government policy in ways without precedent in modern history.

Trump has urged Congress to pass a bill known as the Genius Act, which would make it easier for U.S. companies to deal in a type of cryptocurrency known as stablecoin. After advocating

for passage of the bill, the Trump family crypto company started issuing its own stable coin and

became one of the biggest issuers in the world. Partly as a result of Lipton and his co-authors

reporting, Democrats are now trying to amend the Genius Act.

I spoke with Eric Lipton yesterday morning about his reporting on Trump's conflicts of interest.

While we were recording, a Senate subcommittee opened an inquiry into, quote, Trump

crypto corruption. Hours later, Senate Democrats introduced the End CryptoCorruption Act,

which would ban the President, Vice President, Senior Executive Branch officials,

...