“As Donald Trump prepares to begin his second four-year term, one cruise company is giving Americans the choice to opt out and escape,” The Guardian reports.

“The residential cruise line Villa Vie Residences announced earlier in November that it was launching a program that will allow travelers to join its ship, the Odyssey, at any port as it traverses around the world for the next several years. The trip is expected to travel to 425 ports across 140 countries, and the program will cost less than $40,000 a year.”

“The program is being offered in one-, two-, three-, and four-year packages. The one-year package is called Escape From Reality and the two-year package is called Mid-term Selection.”

The FBI raided the New York City apartment of Shayne Coplan, the founder and CEO of Polymarket, Axios reports.

“Polymarket is one of the most active prediction betting markets, gaining mainstream attention during the recent presidential election.”

Wired: “Polymarket has had a lot of success this year. The pro-Trump billionaire Peter Thiel and ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin announced they had raised around $70 million in funding for the company this past May. The site’s monthly traffic has grown to around 20 times more than what it was at the time of the investment.”

“Betting markets also secured a big win earlier this month when a US appeals court gave Kalshi, a predictions startup, the green light to offer markets on which party would take over Congress next year. While the case hasn’t been completely resolved, it likely won’t be decided before election day. This means election markets are here to stay, much to the joy of political influencers and elites like Musk online.”

“Donald Trump launched Truth Social in 2022 as a social media platform where the MAGA faithful could hang out without any liberals to spoil the fun. The biggest selling point? It was the only place where Trump was personally posting his unhinged screeds after getting banned from Twitter over that whole coup attempt,” Gizmodo reports.

“But new documents obtained by Gizmodo reveal the site has also been flooded with scammers who are swindling users out of enormous sums of money. We’re talking about people who’ve lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a relatively short period of time.”

“A federal appeals court on Wednesday refused to block a lower-court ruling allowing Americans to bet on the outcome of the 2024 congressional elections,” CNBC reports.

Controversial billionaire political donor Peter Thiel raised about $70 million in funding for Polymarket, a start up which offers “event contracts” for users to bet on things like political elections — despite the threat of impending federal regulation for election gambling, Forbes reports.

“The anti-Biden gear that used to fill entire tables at Trump’s rallies is conspicuously absent at his event today in St. Cloud, Minn. No Harris merchandise had taken its place, yet,” the Washington Post reports.

“Vendors said they weren’t sure when any anti-Harris swag was coming. One wondered what she would do with all her Biden gear now: ‘Kind of irrelevant,’ she said, declining to speak more because she was busy.”

A website owned by Donald Trump, is the go-to retailer to secure a pair of high-top sneakers printed with an image from the recent assassination attempt against the former president, Rolling Stone reports.

The limited-edition 5,000-quantity run are going for $299 and have already sold out in a number of sizes.

Amazon indicated Sunday that the top searches in the run-up to Prime Day this week were for Trump flags, hats, and shirts, while “trump hat” and “trump flag” spiked on Google Trends, Semafor reports.

New York Times: “As he seeks to reclaim the presidency, Mr. Trump has reprised the pitchman role from his reality TV days, with a crucial difference: He has intertwined the marketing of his private business affairs with the messaging of his campaign, leveraging his political stature for profit.”

“All of it could be described as Martyr Inc., a machinery that makes Mr. Trump money and promotes his re-election by characterizing him as unjustly persecuted and selflessly saving his supporters from a similar fate.”