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The White House was preparing to act against banks for allegedly dropping customers for political reasons, as President Donald Trump said he believes that banks, including JPMorgan and Bank of America, had discriminated against him and his supporters. A draft of the executive order, which was reviewed by Reuters, instructs regulators to review banks for “politicized or unlawful debanking” practices. The order could authorize monetary penalties or other disciplinary measures against violators. It is likely to be announced as early as this week, two industry sources said. The White House had no immediate comment on the reported order. Trump’s criticism adds pressure on America’s largest lenders, but it also shows how the president’s personal slights and business interests are getting reflected in the administration’s policies — something that critics say raises issues of conflicts of interest. The sprawling Trump business empire has been placed into a trust, but it is still ultimately owned by the president. An executive order against the banks would come after Trump said in a CNBC interview on Tuesday that the country’s top two lenders had previously rejected his deposits. Trump said, without providing evidence, that the banks’ refusal to take his deposits indicated that the administration of former President Joe Biden had encouraged regulators to “destroy Trump.” “They did discriminate,” Trump said of actions taken by JPMorgan after his first term in office. “I had hundreds of millions, I had many, many accounts loaded up with cash and they told me, ‘I’m sorry sir, we can’t have you. You have 20 days to get out.” “They totally discriminate against, I think, me maybe even more, but they discriminate against many conservatives,” he said. Trump said he subsequently tried to deposit funds with Bank of America and was also refused, and eventually split the cash. “I ended up going to small banks all over the place,” he said. “I was putting $10 million here, $10 million there, did $5 million, $10 million, $12 million,” he said, without naming the lenders. In a statement, JPMorgan did not address the president’s specific claims about his account. “We dont close accounts for political reasons, and we agree with President Trump that regulatory change is desperately needed,” JPMorgan said. “We commend the White House for addressing this issue and look forward to working with them to get this right. BofA also did not address Trump’s specific claims. ‘Reputational risk’ issue During Biden’s administration, regulators were able to scrutinize banks’ decisions on the basis of reputational risks, a source familiar with the matter said. Lenders were under intense scrutiny and pressure to weigh reputational risks when dealing with Trump because of his legal woes, another source familiar with the situation said. JPMorgan continues to have a banking relationship with members of the Trump family that dates back years, and it also banks a number of campaign accounts linked to Trump, the source said. After Trump took power, the Federal Reserve announced in June it was directing its supervisors to no longer consider reputational risk when examining banks, a metric that had been a focus of industry complaints. “What the White House is doing is telling the banks not to hide behind regulations to deny loans or banking relationships,” said Wells Fargo bank analyst Mike Mayo. “Banks can use their normal underwriting standards and deny services, but not blame regulators or use reputational risk as a justification.” BofA said it welcomed the administration’s efforts to clarify the policies. “Weve provided detailed proposals and will continue to work with the administration and Congress to improve the regulatory framework,” the bank said. Trump in January admonished the CEOs of JPMorgan and BofA for denying services to conservatives. At the time, the two banks denied making banking decisions based on politics. ‘Regulatory overreach’ Banks have consistently argued that any complaints about “debanking” should be aimed at regulators, as they argue onerous rules and overzealous bank supervisors can discourage them from engaging in certain activities. “The heart of the problem is regulatory overreach and supervisory discretion,” the Bank Policy Institute, an industry group, said in a statement. Lenders have held discussions around debanking and weighed scenarios around a potential order, the first source said. Banks are also hopeful the administration may change anti-money laundering laws that they say are outdated and burdensome, the source added. Andrea Shalal and Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Pete Schroder, Nupur Anand, Tatiana Bautzer, and Saeed Azhar, Reuters
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Mickey Mouse and Love Island will soon live under the same roof. The Walt Disney Company announced Wednesday plans to sunset standalone Hulu streaming app to integrate its content to the entertainment company’s flagship app Disney+. News of the integration came during Disney’s third quarterly earnings report and is part of the company’s ongoing focus on streaming entertainment, including an upcoming Aug. 21 release of an ESPN streaming service. “The company is taking major steps forward in streaming with the upcoming launch of ESPNs direct-to-consumer service, our just-announced plans with the NFL, and our forthcoming integration of Hulu into Disney+, creating a truly differentiated streaming proposition that harnesses the highest-caliber brands and franchises, general entertainment, family programming, news, and industry-leading sports content,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said in the report. While Hulu isn’t disappearing as a brand, its set to fold into the existing platform. This quarter, Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions grew to 183 million, up by 2.4 million from the previous quarter. Despite growth in subscriptions, and beating earning projections, the entertainment giant’s stock was down 2% at the time of publishing. Closing out a decades-long effort Hulu was initially founded in 2007 as a joint venture between 21st Century Fox (then News Corporation) and NBC Universal, with The Walt Disney Company and others later joining as stakeholders. Disney acquired 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets in 2019, giving the company controlling interest of the streaming platform ahead of of Disney+’s debut. Since, Disney has tried to acquire the remaining 33% of stakes in Hulu owned by Comcast (which bought NBC Universal). In June this year, both companies reached an agreement, with Disney set to pay $439 million to take full control of the platform. A Hulu integration unto the existing app had already been teased back in 2023, when Disney rolled out a beta version featuring Hulu’s content inside the Disney+ app. Goodbye”Star+,” hello new homepage Users outside of the US might already be familiar with Hulu’s programming available on the Disney+ app, under the tile dubbed “Star+.” Until last year, Star+ served Latin America with its standalone app and platform featuring shows from FX, ABC, Hulu originals, and more. The standalone app folded into Disney+ last july, integrating as a tile within the app. Starting in the fall, the Star tile will now be replaced in Disney’s international markets by Hulu’s logo. Additionally, imporvements to the existing app are underway, the company revealed during their earnings call. Over the coming months, we will be implementing improvements within the Disney+ app, including exciting new features and a more personalized homepage,” Iger said. “All of which will culminate with the unified Disney+ and Hulu streaming app experience that will be available to consumers next year.
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In recent months, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has used its social media platforms to promote its vision of an ideal country. In between posts celebrating mass deportations and defending ICE, the department has taken on the role of curator, posting a series of artworks that appear to communicate an idealized, Eurocentric concept of the American dream. The department’s artistic choices haven’t been subtle, but none can compare to the overt messaging of its most recent art choice. On July 23, DHS posted a painting titled American Progress, alongside the caption, A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending. The 1873 painting by John Gast shows a group of white pioneers traveling west, forcing a group of Indigenous people out of frame. The irony of the DHS post and caption, according to Martha Sandweiss, Princeton professor and historian of the U.S., is that American Progress does not show Americans defending a homeland: “What we actually see here are American settlers invading a homeland, Sandweiss says. Of course, that’s the homeland of the Native people that we see fleeing into the darkness, and, metaphorically, into extinction. [Screenshot: Department of Homeland Security/X.com] Gast’s painting has long been used as an embodiment of the concept of Manifest Destiny, a belief held by many during the nineteenth century (and beyond) that the United States was destined by divine right to control the entire territory from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. For decades, this dogma was used to explain and legitimize the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. The DHS’s choice to highlight American Progress shows that its art choices have become an intentionally provocative flashpoint in an ideologically divided United States. And, Sandweiss says, it represents a whitewashing of the past that might signal a desire to exclude non-white Americans in the present. The fraught history of John Gasts American Progress Gasts work on American Progress began in 1872, when he was commissioned to make a work for George Crofutt, an American publisher of several different guides promoting westward expansion. The image shows settlers traveling by stagecoach, conestoga wagon, and railroads, guided by a giant allegorical female figure of America, who holds a schoolbook in one hand and places a telegraph wire in the other. While these figures are glowing in a bright light, the fleeing Indigenous people are shrouded in darkness. [Image: United States Library of Congress] On the one hand, [Crofutt] needs a set of ideas that his readers will readily respond to and are, in a sense, already familiar with,” Sandweiss says. “In addition, he’s using the picture as a kind of propaganda. He’s picturing an imaginary scene that he hopes will resonate with people who might want to buy his travel guides and travel west themselves. American Progress ultimately appeared in the monthly publication Crofutt’s Western World. The image’s description, as written by Crofutt, is full of racist tropes that align with the Manifest Destiny ideal of bringing “civilization” to an “uncivilized” place and people. An advertisement for prints of American Progress, offered as subscription bonuses for Crofutt’s Western World magazine. Ca. 1873. [Image: United States Library of Congress] “This rich and wonderful countrythe progress of which at the present time, is the wonder of the old worldwas, until recently, inhabited exclusively by the [lurking] savage and wild beasts of prey,” Crofutt writes. Crofutt goes on to describe how the painting associates American settlers with the transformative power of technology, like transcontinental rail lines, trans-Atlantic trade (pictured in the top right of the image), and new telegraph wires. On her head, the symbolic female figure of America wears what Crofutt calls the “Star of Empire. In contrast, he writes, the lefthand side of the image “declares darkness, waste and confusion.” The Indigenous people in the image are visually grouped with fleeing wild animals like a herd of bison and a black bear, all shown, per Crofutt, “as they flee from the presence of the wondrous vision.” “It doesn’t reflect reality in any way” According to Sandweiss, it’s no coincidence that American Progress shows trains in conjunction with the displacement of Native peoples. By 1872, it had been three years since the completion of the first transcontinental rail line, and several other lines were already underway. In the coming decades, Indigenous people would be forcibly located away from these routes. Absolutely, when the large reservations were created in the late 1860s, it was in part to move Native peoples away from the prospective railway lines so that they would not pose a threat to either the railroad companies or the settlers that the railroads would bring west,” Sandweiss explains. American Progress, Sandweiss says, is an idealized version of the American settler story. Encoded in the image is the idea that white Europeans were the sole people living in the American West, while, in actuality, the region was primarily settled by people of Spanish origin who arrived from Mexico. It doesn’t reflect reality in any way,” she says. “It doesn’t reflect the multiple sources from which non-Native people came into the West. It doesn’t depict the more complex racial identity of people who came into the West, which, by 1872 is including more free people, is including people coming north from Mexico, and it doesn’t convey the role of women and families in the settlement of the Western landscape. The press office of California Governor Gavin Newsom also reposted the painting with the response, This painting is housed at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. The museum heavily features Native American history and intentionally embraces a more honest, inclusive understanding of Western historya concept the Trump administration fails to understand. This painting is housed at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. The museum heavily features Native American history and intentionally embraces a more honest, inclusive understanding of Western history a concept the Trump administration fails to understand. https://t.co/fctWTKRlb7— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) July 23, 2025 Whitewashing of the past leads t whitewashing of the present Many American schoolchildren will be familiar with American Progress because, for decades, textbooks have used it as a visual explanation of the Manifest Destiny concept. The images themes of divine conquering, the spread of technology, the superiority of European settlers, and patriarchal structure capture the complex dynamics at play within this belief system. For the DHS to post this painting through an uncritical lens, Sandweiss says, signals a broader ignorance of American history on the part of the current administration; an ignorance that she sees reflected in the administrations efforts to alter the historical information shared by agencies like the Smithsonian and the National Park Service. If you overly simplify the pastif you pretend that the only important people in the story were white menyou not only distort the past and dishonor the many other kinds of people who were part of American society at that moment, you also suggest that there’s not a space for different kinds of people in the present, Sandweiss says. Whitewashing the past makes it easier to whitewash the present, and pretend that people who are not like the people we see in this painting have never had a part in the American nation.
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