During his first administration, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s global business empire created an unprecedented number of conflicts of interest for a sitting president. Ethics experts worried that opportunists could try to curry favor by booking stays at Mr. Trump’s network of hotels, golf clubs and other properties.

Their predictions bore out: Foreign governments and lobbyists spent lavishly at his Washington hotel, which has since been sold, as well as at his Mar-a-Lago resort and other properties. The federal government itself also became an awkward customer by renting millions of dollars’ worth of rooms at his hotels and clubs.

Those concerns now seem almost quaint in light of some of Mr. Trump’s more recent business ventures. They include a publicly traded company, a cryptocurrency venture, new overseas real estate deals involving state-affiliated entities and numerous branding and licensing deals.

The new additions to Mr. Trump’s portfolio could provide more direct avenues for those wishing to influence a sitting president or even to try to extort him, according to some outside ethics lawyers.

Some of the new international real estate deals are among the most potentially worrisome.

Several of Mr. Trump’s recent real estate projects have connections to foreign governments in the Middle East, raising concerns that Mr. Trump’s financial interests could influence foreign policy.

Many of the contracts that the Trump family has negotiated overseas since Mr. Trump left office are so-called branding deals. The Trump family sells its name to international developers that build residential and resort complexes and sell luxury units at a premium, they hope, based on Mr. Trump’s perceived star power.

One of the developments, a luxury hotel and golf course complex in the Middle Eastern nation of Oman, is being built on land owned by the country’s government. That project and three others are proceeding in partnership with a subsidiary of a Saudi-based real estate company, Dar Al Arkan, which has close ties with the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia has a long list of pressing matters before the United States, including requests to buy F-35 fighter jets and gain access to nuclear power technology.

Oman also plays an important role in the Middle East, often serving as a middleman between the United States and Iran.

It is extremely unusual, historians say, for any U.S. president to be involved in family business deals with a foreign government nexus at the same time as he is managing foreign policy matters that affect that same nation.

A new cryptocurrency business introduces an entirely different set of ethics concerns.

Last fall, the Trump family helped launch World Liberty Financial, a platform for investors to borrow and lend using cryptocurrencies. The Trump family members are not owners or officers in the company, but they have an agreement to be paid for helping promote it.

After getting off to a rocky start, the company got a boost in the form of a $30 million token purchase by Justin Sun, a cryptocurrency executive who has been targeted by the Securities and Exchange Commission on fraud claims unrelated to World Liberty Financial. Mr. Sun has moved to dismiss the case.

As of November, World Liberty claimed to have at least 20,000 token holders who have bought a stake in what the company calls a “platform inspired by Donald J. Trump.” These purchases were made even though the tokens — at least for now — cannot be resold, meaning they have no immediate value to the buyers.

But the purchases, made by individuals whose names are not public, should generate tens of millions of dollars in payments to the Trump family, according to company filings.

Mr. Trump has already seen the effect he can have on the cryptocurrency market. When he announced his pick for S.E.C. chairman, the crypto advocate and lawyer Paul Atkins, Bitcoin value surged above $100,000 for the first time in its history. Mr. Trump immediately moved to claim credit for the milestone. “CONGRATULATIONS BITCOINERS!!! $100,000!!! YOU’RE WELCOME!!! Together, we will Make America Great Again!,” he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Mr. Trump himself, according to his 2024 financial disclosure, owned as much as $5 million worth of Ethereum, a token second only to Bitcoin in popularity. That cryptocurrency has also surged in value since the election.

The new leadership at the S.E.C. is likely to decide on rules that could significantly increase the value of Ethereum, Bitcoin and tokens at World Liberty Financial. They could also pave the way for the company to market its coins to a wider swath of the public,, which would potentially generate hundreds of millions of dollars in additional payouts to Mr. Trump and his family.

A publicly traded company presents another avenue for persuasion.

Last spring, Trump Media & Technology Group, which is the parent company of Truth Social and the president-elect’s single greatest source of wealth, went public. Buying company shares is another new way special interests could try to sway Mr. Trump, its largest shareholder.

For instance, corporations and others could buy shares in the company or advertise on Truth Social. And while foreigners are not allowed by law to make campaign contributions to Mr. Trump, there is no limit on their ability to buy large chunks of stock in his company, perhaps in an effort to intentionally push up the stock’s value and further enrich the Trump family. Mr. Trump did recently transfer his ownership stake in Trump Media to a trust controlled by his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

As president, Mr. Trump will also be in a unique position to drive traffic — and ultimately revenue — to Truth Social, whose parent company has been struggling to make money.

He has an agreement with Truth Social to post certain types of content on Truth Social first, before posting to other platforms, like Elon Musk’s X.

Most news releases about cabinet picks and other appointments during the Trump-Vance transition have provided links to a corresponding Truth Social post.

Mr. Trump’s name is on an array of new items, some quite expensive.

Then there are the numerous new merchandise licensing deals, which may not give purchasers a direct line to attempt to influence geopolitics but certainly line Mr. Trump’s own pockets. Since leaving the White House, Mr. Trump has lent his name and image to dozens of products.

The list of such products seems to be growing. It includes three recent books, the first of which relied largely on photos taken by White House photographers, which Mr. Trump repackaged and is now selling for as much as $500 a copy. Mr. Trump more recently has moved to selling Trump Digital Trading Cards, which brought in more than $7 million, according to his latest financial disclosure. He also has helped sell Bibles, earning a cut of the profits. It remains unclear if these merchandise sales benefiting Mr. Trump will continue while he is president.

Almost all of the real estate holdings and deals from Mr. Trump’s first term remain active.

Mr. Trump has an extensive network of assets that he held during his previous term and is carrying into his second, excluding several properties that have been sold since 2017.

Before the start of his first term, Mr. Trump made some attempts to distance himself from his businesses.

He said he would place his business holdings in a trust, but the trust was controlled by his two oldest sons instead of an independent entity, which is more the norm. He pledged that there would be “no new deals” by his company involving international real estate projects while he was in the White House.

This month, the Trump family issued an updated ethics pledge that revived many of the earlier promises with one key distinction: The Trump family intends to continue to do new international real estate deals, as long as the counterparties are not foreign governments themselves.

Eric Trump, the family member most responsible for overseeing the Trump Organization and its new deals, said the family is committed to avoiding any transactions that exploit connections to the White House. The company has appointed a well-known outside ethics lawyer, a former federal prosecutor and corporate lawyer named William A. Burck, to review any new contracts worth more than $10 million. “The Trump Organization is dedicated to not just meeting but vastly exceeding its legal and ethical obligations during my father’s presidency,” Eric Trump said in a statement.

Legal questions loom.

Certain ethics lawyers have argued that some of Mr. Trump’s conflicts of interest are not only a problem, but that they also represent a violation of the so-called emoluments clause in the Constitution, which prohibits a president from certain payments from any foreign government. The president and vice president are not exempt from this provision, as they are from conflict of interest laws that require other senior federal officials to divest from companies that might benefit from their official actions.

Several lawsuits filed against Mr. Trump during his first term argued that he had violated the emoluments clause by accepting payments at the Trump hotel he then owned in Washington, among other business operations.

His first term ended before the federal court system could definitively rule on questions related to emoluments, although the courts did ultimately allow the cases to proceed, suggesting that it remained possible that the outcome could have been against Mr. Trump.

But the clock ran out and the Supreme Court ruled that the cases were moot as soon as he left office. The legal fight would have to start all over again, but there is likely to be an allegation that the Trump Organization’s continued business deals through some of its subsidiaries with foreign governments is unconstitutional or illegal, these ethics lawyers said.

In the past 50 years, incoming U.S. presidents have voluntarily taken steps to disentangle themselves from any activities that could be perceived as a conflict of interest or moneymaking venture during their time in office.

Jimmy Carter turned over his peanut farm to a trust, which he learned after he left the White House was deeply in debt. Ronald Reagan announced within two weeks of his inauguration that he had sold off all of his investments, other than his ranch and another home, converting these holdings to cash that was then managed by an independent trustee. Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife put her Texas radio and television holdings in a trust.

But these issues have created questions before — a point Mr. Trump’s family and lawyer raised this month when they laid out Mr. Trump’s own ethics plan. When George Washington was president, the Trump lawyers noted, he continued to own a business that exported flour and cornmeal to Europe and the Caribbean. In the 1970s, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller maintained a stake in Standard Oil, which his grandfather founded.

In Mr. Trump’s case, questions about real or potential conflicts extend beyond the president-elect.

His oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., announced recently that he is joining the venture capital firm 1789 Capital, which focuses on investing in conservative companies and could see its business boosted as a result of its ties to the first family. Mr. Trump’s son Barron is playing a role in World Liberty Financial, as are Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, according to disclosure documents.

And Jared Kushner, the president-elect’s son-in-law, runs a private equity firm called Affinity Partners that has raised $4.5 billion, mostly from sovereign wealth funds of the oil-rich nations of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, based on relationships he built while in the White House during Mr. Trump’s first term. Mr. Kushner does not plan to return to the White House. But his ties to Mr. Trump will create new ethics concerns as he continues to make investments over the next four years, including luxury hotel deals in Albania and Serbia, where the governments there are his partners.

Most of these potential conflicts did not exist the first time Mr. Trump was in office. It all means these kinds of questions are only going to be more intense this White House term.

Debates over President-elect Trump’s inaugural crowd size notably generated controversy back in 2017, with the White House insisting the media underreported Trump’s numbers.  

With his swearing-in now being moved indoors because of harsh winter weather, Trump is likely to avoid any questions about attendance this time around.

Fox News on Friday learned that Trump’s inauguration would be moved indoors because of icy temperatures forecast for Washington, D.C. on Monday. Trump announced that he had ordered his inaugural address and other ceremonial prayers and speeches be held in the United States Capitol Rotunda to protect people from harm. 

“The weather forecast for Washington, D.C., with the windchill factor, could take temperatures into severe record lows,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

TRUMP TO BE INAUGURATED INSIDE: LAST CEREMONY HELD INDOORS WAS REAGAN’S IN 1985

“There is an Arctic blast sweeping the Country. I don’t want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way. It is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of Law Enforcement, First Responders, Police K9s and even horses, and hundreds of thousands of supporters that will be outside for many hours on the 20th (In any event, if you decide to come, dress warmly!),” he continued. 

Trump also said the Capital One Arena will be open Monday for live viewing of his inauguration “and to host the Presidential Parade.” 

“I will join the crowd at Capital One, after my Swearing in,” Trump wrote. 

RNC CHAIR WHATLEY VOWS TO BE ‘TIP OF THE SPEAR’ TO PROTECT TRUMP AFTER COASTING TO RE-ELECTION VICTORY

The Inaugural Committee confirmed Trump’s statements, saying the ceremony would be moved inside the U.S. Capitol to the Rotunda, a committee spokesperson said. 

With attendees no longer being able to gather outside in the cold, any photo op for Trump and a record crowd is likely out of the picture, and so is any chance for people to dispute Trump’s claimed crowd size like in 2017. 

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer lambasted the press shortly after President-elect Trump’s first inauguration following inaccurate reporting about the crowd size.  (The Associated Press)

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer lambasted the press shortly after Trump’s first inauguration, accusing media outlets of inaccurate reporting on the crowd size. 

The day after the inauguration, Spicer said “photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall.”

ELON MUSK SLATED TO SPEAK AT TRUMP PRE-INAUGURATION RALLY: REPORT

He also said at the time that “Inaccurate numbers involving crowd size were also tweeted. No one had numbers, because the National Park Service, which controls the National Mall, does not put any out.”

“These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong,” Spicer said. 

The Washington Post reported at the time that Trump had called the acting director of the National Park Service on his first day in office to dispute the photos circulating online of his inaugural crowd size. 

President Biden also faced crowd-size barriers during his inauguration in 2021 due to coronavirus restrictions in place. (Getty Images)

President Biden also faced crowd-size barriers during his inauguration in 2021 due to coronavirus restrictions in place. His ceremony was sparsely attended and included former presidents and first ladies. Attendees wore face masks and many failed to abide by social distancing guidelines, with several seen high-fiving and hugging. 

The last inauguration ceremony to be moved indoors was President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration in January 1985. Reagan took the oath of office at the White House the day before the ceremony, while public events the following day were held inside due to temperatures hitting 7 degrees with a windchill of -40. 

Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo, Peter Doocy, Chad Pergram and Aishah Hasnie contributed to this report.

The Supreme Court has paved the way for TikTok to be banned in the U.S. on Sunday.

The high court on Friday upheld a new law that requires the social media app’s Chinese owner to sell off TikTok’s U.S. business or face a nationwide ban.

“Given just a handful of days after oral argument to issue an opinion, I cannot profess the kind of certainty I would like to have about the arguments and record before us,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote. “All I can say is that, at this time and under these constraints, the problem appears real and the response to it not unconstitutional.”

The future of the popular short-form video app has been precarious since 2020, when then-President Trump moved to shut it down because of national security concerns. Trump and others raised the prospect that TikTok owner ByteDance could assist the Chinese government by sharing the data it collects from its roughly 170 million American users, embedding malicious software in the app or helping to spread disinformation.

After President Biden signed the law in April, which set a Jan. 19 deadline for the ban to take effect, TikTok responded by suing the U.S. government. The company said a ban would violate 1st Amendment rights and argued that there was “no support for the idea” that its Chinese ownership posed national security risks.

What will happen over the next few days is unclear. On Thursday the Associated Press, citing an unnamed government official, reported that Biden won’t enforce the ban and would leave the app’s fate to Trump, who takes office Monday.

Was the decision expected?

Pretty much. The Supreme Court justices sounded highly skeptical of TikTok’s free-speech defense during oral arguments on Jan. 10, signaling they were not likely to strike down the law.

The justices, both conservative and liberal, said Congress was concerned about the threat to national security because TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, is headquartered in China. They said the law in question was not an effort to restrict freedom of speech.

“Congress doesn’t care about what’s on TikTok,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said. “Congress is not fine with a foreign adversary gathering all this data on 170 million Americans.”

Can I still download the app?

No, as of Sunday, it will be illegal for app stores such as Apple and Google Play to distribute TikTok or issue updates to the social media app. Companies that don’t abide face civil penalties of $5,000 per user.

You won’t be able to access TikTok from your browser, either.

What if I already have TikTok?

You’ll still have the app on your mobile device, but ByteDance might immediately shut it down in the U.S. on Sunday. Even if it doesn’t go dark right away, TikTok is expected to lose utility over time as users leave and updates aren’t rolled out.

What is Trump’s position now?

Trump has reversed course on TikTok since his first term, joining the social media app in June during his presidential election and posting, “Those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump.”

In recent weeks, the president-elect has been trying to prevent the app from being banned in the U.S., submitting an amicus brief to the Supreme Court and asking it to delay the Jan. 19 deadline. He also met with TikTok Chief Executive Shou Chew at Mar-a-Lago last month.

Shortly after the Supreme Court decision was released, Trump posted on his Truth Social account: “The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it. My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!”

In a TikTok video posted Friday morning, Chew said: “I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States. This is a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship.”

Could Trump stop the ban from going into effect?

The timing of the ban — the day before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 — makes things tricky. Only the sitting president can issue a 90-day stay on the ban and can do so only if a buyer has taken concrete steps toward a purchase.

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Chew is planning to attend Trump’s inauguration and will be seated on the dais.

Is a last-minute sale of TikTok possible?

It could happen, but ByteDance’s priority had been to get the law struck down and maintain ownership of the app. The company has signaled that it does not want to sell.

Are there any serious bidders out there for TikTok’s U.S. business?

On Jan. 8, an investor group spearheaded by former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt submitted an offer to ByteDance, the group said. The group is calling itself the People’s Bid for TikTok and includes Kevin O’Leary, one of the investors from the reality television show “Shark Tank.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

What is the People’s Bid for TikTok pledging to do with the app?

If its offer is successful, the group would rebuild the platform in a way that prioritizes the privacy of TikTok users, said Tomicah Tillemann, president of Project Liberty, a New York-based organization that assembled the bid.

“What we are focused on is providing a clear path forward that will allow for the preservation of the dynamic, vibrant community that is TikTok under American ownership,” he said.

“Our vision for TikTok is grounded in the idea that people should have a choice in how their data is used, a voice in the way platforms operate and a stake in the economic value that they create online.”

Anyone else?

On Monday, social media personality MrBeast wrote on X: “Okay fine, I’ll buy Tik Tok so it doesn’t get banned.” He later followed up and said he’d had “so many billionaires reach out to me since I tweeted this, let’s see if we can pull this off.”

The same day, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese government was considering selling the U.S. arm of TikTok to Elon Musk. But in a statement to The Times, a spokesperson for TikTok called the report “pure fiction.”

How are TikTok influencers feeling?

Los Angeles is a major hub for content creators, who say they’ve been preparing for this moment for years.

Nathan Kehn, 35, joined TikTok about four years ago, posting cat videos and other funny content. He said he was disappointed that the government could “just come through and wipe out people’s livelihoods like that.”

“It’s super unfair,” he said of the ban. “A lot of my friends are all TikTok and this is about to ruin a lot of people’s lives.”

Kehn, who lives in Sherman Oaks and has about 800,000 TikTok followers, started planning ahead by growing his Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat accounts just in case TikTok was forced to shut down.

“Part of being a social media content creator is I’ve never put my eggs in one basket because I don’t know how long any of it’s ever going to last,” he said. “I learned a long time ago, you can’t trust one platform.”

What would happen to TikTok’s employees locally?

TikTok has a significant presence in Culver City, employing roughly 440 people there, according to city estimates. The company has been an important tool for video creators, small businesses, music artists and Hollywood studios.

In an internal memo obtained by The Verge this week, employees were told that TikTok’s offices would stay open regardless.

“The bill is not written in a way that impacts the entities through which you are employed, only the US user experience [of TikTok],” the memo said.