Capital One tells a court it dropped the president’s company over money-laundering concerns
A large American bank has told a federal judge that it closed roughly 385 accounts tied to the president’s company because its own compliance staff flagged them in an anti-money-laundering review, not as political payback.[1] The filing, surfaced this past weekend in federal court in Florida, puts Capital One on record against the claim that banks have punished conservatives, even as the Trump Organization’s lawsuit seeks about $5 billion in damages.[2]
01 What the bank told the court
Capital One argued that the closures followed months of analysis and a careful review by staff with law-enforcement backgrounds, and that its customer agreements let it end a banking relationship at any time, for any reason or none, without notice.[3] It closed the accounts in 2021, a group that included a winery, a bottled-water business, and golf-course entities, and it asked the court to throw out the amended complaint for good.[1]
02 The case so far
The Trump Organization and Eric Trump sued in 2025, alleging that the bank dropped them for political reasons after the January 6 riot and calling the move unlawful debanking.[2] Judge Roy Altman dismissed an earlier version of the suit in March 2026, holding that banks keep broad contractual power to close accounts.[4] A parallel suit against JPMorgan Chase, filed in January 2026 over accounts closed in the same period, rests on similar ground.[2]
Whether the closures were compliance or politics is exactly what the court has not yet decided.[1] What is settled is that a major bank has chosen to defend itself, in a public filing, by describing the president’s businesses as a money-laundering risk, while a $5 billion claim from those same businesses waits on the answer.[3]
- Capital One says it closed Trump Organization accounts over money-laundering concerns — NPR
- Capital One closed Trump Org accounts over money-laundering concerns — UPI
- Capital One says it closed Trump Organization’s accounts after anti-money-laundering probe — CNBC
- Capital One says it closed Trump Organization accounts over money-laundering concerns — OPB (NPR/AP)
Five states vote, and Michigan’s open Senate seat is the test
Voters in five states go to the polls on Tuesday, and the loudest contest is in Michigan, where Democrats choose among three candidates for an open Senate seat that both parties treat as central to control of the chamber.[1] It is the party’s first genuinely competitive Senate primary in Michigan in about three decades, and a live test of its direction after 2024.[1]
01 The Michigan choice
The seat is open because Senator Gary Peters is retiring.[2] Three Democrats are running: Abdul El-Sayed, a former public-health official backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; Representative Haley Stevens, endorsed by Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Governor Gretchen Whitmer; and state senator Mallory McMorrow, who has run on generational change with support from Elizabeth Warren.[2] A late Emerson College poll taken July 26 and 27 put El-Sayed ahead of Stevens, 54 percent to 39, with a sharp split by age, as younger voters favored him by wide margins while voters over 60 leaned to Stevens.[3] Other surveys during the race disagreed, and it entered the day unsettled.[1]
02 What is at stake beyond Michigan
The winner is expected to face Mike Rogers, the Republican who lost Michigan’s other Senate seat in 2024 by less than a point, in a general election forecasters rate a toss-up.[1] The other four states carry their own tests. In Missouri, a Democratic House rematch and a newly redrawn Republican district show mid-decade redistricting reaching the ballot; Kansas holds open primaries for governor; and Washington and Virginia run House contests.[4]
Read together, the primaries are a measure of where the party’s energy sits after 2024, among an insurgent left, an establishment center, and a generational-change pitch, with the cost of living the thread each candidate claims.[2]
- Michigan Democrats pick between moderate and progressive in high-profile Senate primary — The Washington Post
- United States Senate election in Michigan, 2026 (August 4 Democratic primary) — Ballotpedia
- Michigan 2026 Poll: El-Sayed leads Stevens for the Democratic US Senate nomination — Emerson College Polling
- Live Results: Primaries in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia, and Washington — 270toWin
The city opens a public process to place 600 curbside car chargers
New York plans to add 600 curbside electric-vehicle chargers across the five boroughs over three years, and this week it opened a process for residents to weigh in on where they should go.[1] The build-out would grow the on-street network from 88 charging points to nearly 700, and the transportation department says its existing curbside chargers are already busy most of the day.[1]
01 What the city announced
The Department of Transportation, under commissioner Michael Flynn, said the new Level 2 chargers, the slower kind that refill a car over hours rather than minutes, would go in at the curb where drivers park overnight.[1] It opened a feedback portal and named early candidate neighborhoods in every borough, from Red Hook and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn to Soundview in the Bronx and Stapleton on Staten Island.[1] Some sites will be wired so that electric-bike charging can be added later.[2]
02 The money and the demand
Much of the work is paid for by a $15 million federal grant the city won in 2024, with Con Edison as the utility partner and the New York Power Authority handling procurement.[3] The department says its current curbside chargers are occupied more than 70 percent of the time, and that electric vehicles now make up about 8 percent of new car registrations in the city.[1] It has billed the effort as the largest municipal curbside charging project in the country.[3]
The bet is that on-street charging is what a city of renters without driveways needs to make an electric car practical, and the contest over scarce curb space is where that bet will be tested.[2]
Mamdani seats 13 on the board that governs the city’s schools
The mayor has named 13 members to the board that oversees the country’s largest school system, filling the seats that give City Hall working control over school closures, mergers, and major contracts.[1] The appointments seat a governing body just as the system faces fights over falling enrollment and the prospect of shutting schools.[1]
01 How the panel works
The Panel for Educational Policy has 24 seats.[1] The mayor appoints 13, the five borough presidents name one each, and parent leaders choose the remaining five, an arithmetic that hands the mayor a majority on contested votes.[1] Schools chancellor Kamar Samuels called the panel a partner in making sure families’ voices are heard.[2]
02 A reversal, then control
As a candidate, the mayor said he wanted to give up mayoral control of the schools, then reversed that position before taking office and won a two-year extension of it from Albany.[3] The newly seated board is expected to take up hard questions soon, including enrollment that has been sliding for years, whether to close or merge schools, and how classrooms should handle artificial intelligence.[1]
Mayoral control has been the settled structure of the city’s schools for more than two decades, and these appointments quietly determine who will approve or block the decisions that structure allows.[3]