tagThe Crackdown on Student ProtestersColumbia University is at the center of a growing showdown over the war in Gaza and the limits of free speech. sharesave
Need parenting advice? Meghan Leahy will answer your questions. (postponed to May 23| 12 p.m. ET)Meghan Leahy, a parenting coach, author, mother of three, takes your questions about the all encompassing job we call parenting.
DOJ sues Live Nation to break up alleged Ticketmaster MonopolyThe Department of Justice, California and other states sued the concert behemoth Live Nation, alleging anti-trust violations that could break up the company.
Second flag used by Jan. 6 protesters seen outside Justice Alito's home, report saysSupreme Court Justice Samuel Alito faces new calls to remove himself from cases tied to former President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. The New York Times reports Alito's home displayed a second flag used by Jan. 6 protesters.
Congress considers bill that would make sharing deepfake porn illegalArtificial intelligence can create fake images and videos of real people, including so-called deepfake porn. Congress is now considering a bill to make it illegal to share those images, exposing those who post deepfake porn to jail time and a hefty fine. There were more than 21,000 deepfake porn videos online last year.
Congress considers bill that would make sharing deepfake porn illegalArtificial intelligence can create fake images and videos of real people, including so-called deepfake porn. Congress is now considering a bill to make it illegal to share those images, exposing those who post deepfake porn to jail time and a hefty fine. There were more than 21,000 deepfake porn videos online last year.
Charlamagne tha God on the importance of replacing small talk with big conversationsRadio host Charlamagne tha God is known for his straightforward opinions on "The Breakfast Club." In his new book, "Get Honest or Die Lying," he writes about the impact of having meaningful conversations.
Stage collapses during campaign rally in MexicoAt least five people were killed and dozens of others were hurt when part of a stage collapsed during a campaign rally in Mexico attended by a long-shot presidential candidate who escaped injury, according to officials. Terrifying video shows a strong gust of wind crumpling the top of the stage while at least seven people...
Stage collapses during campaign rally in MexicoAt least five people were killed and dozens of others were hurt when part of a stage collapsed during a campaign rally in Mexico attended by a long-shot presidential candidate who escaped injury, according to officials. Terrifying video shows a strong gust of wind crumpling the top of the stage while at least seven people...
Prominent Texas judge mysteriously disappears from court after concerns of âmanicâ behavior, police interactionJudge Kelli Johnson, one of Harris County's longest-serving current judges, hasn't been seen at the 178th District Courthouse in Houston since May 1 -- with no explanation on where she has gone or when sheâs set to return.
J.B. Bickerstaff fired by Cavaliers after second-round elimination in NBA playoffsAdvancing to the second round of the NBA playoffs wasn't enough for him to keep his job.
Supreme Court OKs shift of Black voters to shore up GOP congressional districtSupreme Court's conservatives uphold a state's right to engage in partisan gerrymandering.
How Jennifer Lopezâs co-star Simu Liu defended her after bold Ben Affleck breakup questionThe "Atlas" actress clapped back at the point blank question herself, smiling after chiding the reporter for "know[ing] better than that."
Raidersâ Michael Mayer much happier after Josh McDaniels debacle: âI didnât wanna come inâRaiders players can't stop telling the world how miserable they were under Josh McDaniels.
Single Mom Left in Tears As She Bakes Her Own Birthday CakeNewsweek spoke to Elizabeth Teckenbrock, 29, about her video that has racked up 36.8 million views in just three days.
Jimmy Kimmel Shames Marjorie Taylor Greene For Claiming Biden Tried To Assassinate Trump: âStupid And DangerousââWhat a rich imagination this woman has. Youâd almost think she has the brain of a child, you know?â he said of Greene.
Rodeo star Spencer Wright, wife still praying thereâs âtime for a miracleâ for 3-year-oldThree-year-old Levi Wright was left brain dead when he drove his toy tractor into a river Tuesday night.
Amber Alert Update: Missing Texas Boys Found, Kidnapper Whereabouts UnknownTwo missing boys from Texas were found safe on Wednesday as the whereabouts of their kidnapper remains unknown.
In Shane Gillis' Netflix show 'Tires,' the humor doesn't veer far from juvenileComedian Shane Gillis co-created and stars in "Tires," a sitcom filled with crude jokes that follows a pair of cousins who run an auto repair shop.
Hurricane Update: List of 2024 Atlantic Storm Predictions ReleasedIt is the highest number of named storms that NOAA has ever issued for the May outlook.
Here's the full list of hurricane names for the 2024 seasonThe full list of hurricane names for the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season include Alberto, Joyce and Kirk.
Mom furious after daycare attached ankle weights to two-year-old son to âslow him downâ: âAbhorrentâA furious mom has shared her outrage after discovering that her two-year-old son was fitted with ankle weights at his daycare to stop him from moving quickly.Â
SCOTUS says South Carolina congressional district not result of racial gerrymanderingThe Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a newly-drawn South Carolina congressional district, saying it was not the result of racial gerrymandering.
WNBA player fires back at Charles Barkley after he accuses women of being âpettyâ over Caitlin ClarkCharles Barkley had some WNBA players frustrated after comments about women hating on Fever rookie Caitlin Clark.
âThe Simpsonsâ showrunner slams fake image that âpredictedâ Diddyâs downfall: âDigital misinformationâ"The Simpsons" showrunner Matt Selman slammed the "goofball" who created the fake image of Diddy running from police.
NYC-area flights grounded as severe weather, thunderstorms pummel metro regionNew York City-area flights were grounded Thursday morning amid powerful torrential rain and thunderstorms. Flights at La Guardia Airport, Newark International Airport, Westchester County Airport and Teterboro Airport have been affected by the severe weather and thunderstorms, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Delays averaging about 30 minutes were reported at Newark and La Guardia,...
NYC-area flights grounded as severe weather, thunderstorms pummel metro regionNew York City-area flights were grounded Thursday morning amid powerful torrential rain and thunderstorms. Flights at La Guardia Airport, Newark International Airport, Westchester County Airport and Teterboro Airport have been affected by the severe weather and thunderstorms, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Delays averaging about 30 minutes were reported at Newark and La Guardia,...
Woman Who Could Be Allergic to Favorite Things Is 'Choosing Denial'The "reality of the potential cause ran me over like a freight train," Hillary Weiss Presswood told Newsweek.
Supreme Court sides with Republicans in South Carolina redistricting disputeThe Supreme Court reversed a decision from lower court that found GOP lawmakers improperly used race when designing one of South Carolina's congressional districts.
Joe Rogan Rips New York Governor Over Black People RemarkRogan criticized Kathy Hochul over comments she made about Black children living in the Bronx, New York City.
Senate Democrats Open Inquiry Into Trumpâs $1 Billion Request of Oil IndustryTwo committees are seeking information from oil executives about a dinner where, the lawmakers say, the former president proposed a quid pro quo.
Lenny Kravitz talks new album, NYC roots and more"CBS Mornings" co-anchor Gayle King sits down with music legend Lenny Kravitz to talk about his upcoming album, growing up in New York City, overcoming his insecurities and more.
Lenny Kravitz talks new album, NYC roots and more"CBS Mornings" co-anchor Gayle King sits down with music legend Lenny Kravitz to talk about his upcoming album, growing up in New York City, overcoming his insecurities and more.
Lenny Kravitz shares lesson he learned from daughterGrammy-winning artist Lenny Kravitz tells Gayle King about some of the inspiration behind his new album "Blue Electric Light" in a sitdown interview for "CBS Mornings."
Lenny Kravitz shares lesson he learned from daughterGrammy-winning artist Lenny Kravitz tells Gayle King about some of the inspiration behind his new album "Blue Electric Light" in a sitdown interview for "CBS Mornings."
How Trumpâs Problems Become EveryoneâsDonald Trump is facing some of the most serious threats to his financial empire in his long and tumultuous career. Thatâs his problem.But the methods heâs using to get out of those troubles make him beholden to wealthy people with interests of their ownâwhich, if reelected president, he would be in a position to advance. And that could be everyoneâs problem.Trumpâs money woes begin with his urgent need for huge amounts of liquid cashâboth to cover his never-ending legal fees and judgments, and to fund his campaign. A jury awarded the writer E. Jean Carroll more than $83 million in a defamation case in January. (Trump has posted a $92 million bond while he appeals the verdict.) In February, a judge in New York fined him nearly half a billion dollars in a civil fraud case involving property valuations. He owes legal fees for many other cases heâs involved in. Making matters worse, various aspects of his business suffered during his presidency because of negative publicity, and those troubles are compounded by the current weakness of the commercial real-estate market.To make up for these challenges, Trump has turned to a few sources. He obtained a highly unusual bond from a California businessman for the civil fraud case, having convinced an appellate court to reduce the amount to $175 million. He has been using political donations to pay his hefty legal bills, and his campaignâs effective merger with the Republican National Committee creates a new stream of cash for those. He has also brazenly pleaded for cash from large donors, reportedly telling a gathering of oil executives that he would pursue favorable policies if they raised $1 billion for his campaign and he won in November. Finally, the Trump Media and Technology Group went public this spring, providing Trump with a potentially enormous windfall, at least on paper. (âItâs one of the most obvious worthless stocks I have ever seen,ââ Alan Jagolinzer, an accounting professor at the University of Cambridge in England, told The New York Times.) Each of these revenue streams gives leverageâfinancial, and perhaps psychologicalâover Trump to rich people whose fortunes could be affected by actions of the federal government.[David A. Graham: Trumpâs money problems are very real and very bad]âHe made very clear throughout his presidency, and in the plan since then, that he is very open to people currying favor with him by financing him in a variety of ways,â Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told me. Previously, someone looking for favor could donate to his campaign, schedule an event at a Trump golf course, or spend big at his hotel in Washington. Now the hotel is gone, but other possibilities have arisen.âDonald Trump's finances and the ways of potentially influencing him have gotten more complicated than what we were talking about in 2016, and even 2020,â Bookbinder said. âItâs a whole new world of ways to potentially funnel money to Donald Trump.âTrumpâs ongoing trial in Manhattan, on charges that he falsified business records to cover up a hush-money payment, showcases a small-scale example of how this works. David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, testified that after he agreed to pay $150,000 to purchase and sit on the story of a woman who said she had sex with Trump, he was invited to a Trump Tower meeting with officials including FBI Director James Comey and future Cabinet-level officials, and later feted with a White House dinner. This is deeply embarrassingâfor Trump, given the reason he was indebted to Pecker; for the officials, who were made to mingle with a tabloid publisher (âHere is David Pecker, heâs the publisher of the National Enquirer, and he probably knows more than anybody else in this room,â Trump joked, per Peckerâs testimony; the men didnât laugh, he recalled); and for the country. As a matter of substance, itâs probably relatively harmless.But if $150,000 gets you a meeting with the director of the FBI, what does $175 million get you?Thatâs the question raised by Trumpâs bond in his civil fraud case. A defendant who is appealing a judgment is obliged to either post the amount he owes or to get a bonding company to offer an IOUâassuring that if the appeal is unsuccessful, the penalty will be paid. Trumpâs attorneys testified in court that they had tried and failed to obtain a bond for the full amount of more than $450 million, and persuaded an appellate court to reduce the amount to $175 million. Trump was then able to secure a bondâbut rather than use a New York State bonding company, he got it from Knight Specialty Insurance, a California-based company. Knight is owned by Don Hankey, a relatively unknown billionaire who has made millions in subprime loans.The bond was odd. Initial filings for it contained errors that had to be corrected. Knight wasnât licensed in New York, and the attorney generalâs office raised questions about whether the company had enough money to actually cover the bond. Justice Arthur Engoron, the judge in the case, only approved it after a hearing in which Trump agreed to place collateral assets under Knightâs control.The strangeness doesnât end there. Hankey told Reuters that he charged Trump below market rate for the bond. He also said he supported Trump politically previously and in the current election and called the case against him âunfair,â though he said they had never met. Hankey has a financial incentive to get in Trumpâs good graces: Federal regulators have taken actions against companies he controls at least four times in the past decade, NBC News reported, including repeated fines levied by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As president, Trump could shield Hankeyâs business from enforcement. He has made political interference in the Justice Department a centerpiece of his campaign for president, and during his first term, the CFPB was moribund and shackled.âIf you look at the laws of what an in-kind contribution is, it is exactly this, when you give a goods or services for not the full price because you want to curry favor with a candidate,â Adam Pollock, an attorney in New York and former assistant attorney general, told me. âIn this day and age, nobody ever prosecutes those kind of in-kind contributions anymore, ever. But thereâs a reason those laws exist. Itâs because you donât want to provide that kind of untoward access of how money corrupts politics. And I think weâre all just so jaded.âWorth noting is that if Trump loses the appeal, he will still have to pay the penalty, or else he faces the prospect of the state attorney general seizing assets. (If appeals courts affirm Engoronâs ruling, Trump and his sons will also be barred from serving as officers of a company in the state for several years, which could paralyze the Trump Organizationâs operations as they exist.) Trump has already acknowledged that he doesnât have sufficient cash. Thatâs not a huge surpriseâmany of his holdings are in real estate, which is not liquidâbut it is a problem for him, especially because the market for some of the assets he holds, specifically his large portfolio of urban office buildings, is depressed right now.So when Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent of Trumpâs Truth Social site, became a public company earlier this spring, it seemed like a timely windfall for the former president. Trump has a knack for wriggling out of a jam, and this looks like yet another example. His stake in the company is estimated at about $6 billion. But experts told me that paper wealth like this doesnât always translate to liquid assets. The companyâs equity is trading more like a meme stock than anything related to its underlying fundamental value: The price has dropped, and analysts expect it to fall further eventually. Regardless, Trump is barred from selling shares for months and may be unable to use stock as collateral. Once he is allowed to sell, he will be unable to cash out quickly, as doing so would tank the share price. (The company faces other question marks related to its auditor, who has agreed to cease operations and been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with âmassive fraud.â)This means that TMTG may not provide a miraculous cash infusion benefiting Trump, but itâs still a big gain for him. TMTG also illustrates other ways in which Trump is susceptible to financial leverage. The investor Jeff Yass was one of the biggest shareholders in the company that merged with Trumpâs to go public. Assuming Yass still owns the shares, that gives him substantial sway in keeping the inflated stock price high, which would in turn help Trumpâs net worth swell. Perhaps Yass would not have invested simply to aid Trumpâor to cozy up to him. But he and his wife are already the biggest political donors so far this election cycle, with all of their funds going to conservative causes. A Trump campaign source told The New York Times that Yass was expected to donate to pro-Trump efforts; Yass said he never had and would not. Because many donations can be hidden, the truth is almost impossible to know.[David A. Graham: Trump flaunts his corruption]Yass is also a major investor in ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. Trump was once a noisy critic of the Chinese-owned social-media platform. âAs far as TikTok is concerned, weâre banning them from the United States,â he said in 2020. He issued an executive order to do so if ByteDance didnât sell TikTok, but the order was soon blocked by judges. When Congress, backed by the Biden administration, took up a law to do the same this year, however, Trump suddenly turned against it. âJust so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok,â he posted on Truth Social in April. The reversal came shortly after a meeting with Yass.The public has no way to know why Trump flip-flopped, and both Trump and Yass say they didnât discuss TikTok at their meeting, but some skepticism is reasonable under the circumstances. âWe don't know for sure whether [the meeting] resulted in Donald Trump changing his position,â Bookbinder told me. âBut it's certainly something where the American people have to question that.â Any other person of means might also conclude that a good way to get Trump to take up a view that benefits themâincluding reversing a long-held positionâis to make a large investment in him.Meanwhile, many of the old methods of influencing Trump remain. A Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund invested $2 billion in a private-equity firm founded by Jared Kushner, Trumpâs son-in-law. Kushner has recently been raising money for the former presidentâs campaign. Serious questions also surround a development in Serbia led by Kushner and Ric Grenell, a former Trump-administration official who is rumored to be a candidate for secretary of state or national-security adviser in a second term. Serbian and American observers have charged that the deal, which did not move through typical channels, is an attempt to win favor with Trump. All involved parties deny it, naturally.That Trump would seek these bailouts should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his business career. When he has struck serious financial difficulties in the past, he has sought and usually found some new source of funds. In 1990, for example, with Trumpâs casino in Atlantic City foundering, his father walked onto the floor and bought $3.5 million in chips. (This turned out to violate state rules.) Later, when others had cut him off because of his habit of not paying his debts, he found in Deutsche Bank a willing lender. But DB was no more successful in dealing with Trump. An old joke goes that if you owe the bank $1 million, the bank owns you, but if you owe the bank $100 million, you own the bank. Trump defaulted on more than $600 million in DB loans.When he was fined in the civil fraud case earlier this year, Trump found that none of his old lenders, including DB, were willing to help. His new sources of cash knew Trumpâs history of stiffing those he owes, but they may have calculated that they stand to gain something far more valuable than repayment with interest: the power of the federal government at their beck and call.
How Trumpâs Problems Become EveryoneâsDonald Trump is facing some of the most serious threats to his financial empire in his long and tumultuous career. Thatâs his problem.But the methods heâs using to get out of those troubles make him beholden to wealthy people with interests of their ownâwhich, if reelected president, he would be in a position to advance. And that could be everyoneâs problem.Trumpâs money woes begin with his urgent need for huge amounts of liquid cashâboth to cover his never-ending legal fees and judgments, and to fund his campaign. A jury awarded the writer E. Jean Carroll more than $83 million in a defamation case in January. (Trump has posted a $92 million bond while he appeals the verdict.) In February, a judge in New York fined him nearly half a billion dollars in a civil fraud case involving property valuations. He owes legal fees for many other cases heâs involved in. Making matters worse, various aspects of his business suffered during his presidency because of negative publicity, and those troubles are compounded by the current weakness of the commercial real-estate market.To make up for these challenges, Trump has turned to a few sources. He obtained a highly unusual bond from a California businessman for the civil fraud case, having convinced an appellate court to reduce the amount to $175 million. He has been using political donations to pay his hefty legal bills, and his campaignâs effective merger with the Republican National Committee creates a new stream of cash for those. He has also brazenly pleaded for cash from large donors, reportedly telling a gathering of oil executives that he would pursue favorable policies if they raised $1 billion for his campaign and he won in November. Finally, the Trump Media and Technology Group went public this spring, providing Trump with a potentially enormous windfall, at least on paper. (âItâs one of the most obvious worthless stocks I have ever seen,ââ Alan Jagolinzer, an accounting professor at the University of Cambridge in England, told The New York Times.) Each of these revenue streams gives leverageâfinancial, and perhaps psychologicalâover Trump to rich people whose fortunes could be affected by actions of the federal government.[David A. Graham: Trumpâs money problems are very real and very bad]âHe made very clear throughout his presidency, and in the plan since then, that he is very open to people currying favor with him by financing him in a variety of ways,â Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told me. Previously, someone looking for favor could donate to his campaign, schedule an event at a Trump golf course, or spend big at his hotel in Washington. Now the hotel is gone, but other possibilities have arisen.âDonald Trump's finances and the ways of potentially influencing him have gotten more complicated than what we were talking about in 2016, and even 2020,â Bookbinder said. âItâs a whole new world of ways to potentially funnel money to Donald Trump.âTrumpâs ongoing trial in Manhattan, on charges that he falsified business records to cover up a hush-money payment, showcases a small-scale example of how this works. David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, testified that after he agreed to pay $150,000 to purchase and sit on the story of a woman who said she had sex with Trump, he was invited to a Trump Tower meeting with officials including FBI Director James Comey and future Cabinet-level officials, and later feted with a White House dinner. This is deeply embarrassingâfor Trump, given the reason he was indebted to Pecker; for the officials, who were made to mingle with a tabloid publisher (âHere is David Pecker, heâs the publisher of the National Enquirer, and he probably knows more than anybody else in this room,â Trump joked, per Peckerâs testimony; the men didnât laugh, he recalled); and for the country. As a matter of substance, itâs probably relatively harmless.But if $150,000 gets you a meeting with the director of the FBI, what does $175 million get you?Thatâs the question raised by Trumpâs bond in his civil fraud case. A defendant who is appealing a judgment is obliged to either post the amount he owes or to get a bonding company to offer an IOUâassuring that if the appeal is unsuccessful, the penalty will be paid. Trumpâs attorneys testified in court that they had tried and failed to obtain a bond for the full amount of more than $450 million, and persuaded an appellate court to reduce the amount to $175 million. Trump was then able to secure a bondâbut rather than use a New York State bonding company, he got it from Knight Specialty Insurance, a California-based company. Knight is owned by Don Hankey, a relatively unknown billionaire who has made millions in subprime loans.The bond was odd. Initial filings for it contained errors that had to be corrected. Knight wasnât licensed in New York, and the attorney generalâs office raised questions about whether the company had enough money to actually cover the bond. Justice Arthur Engoron, the judge in the case, only approved it after a hearing in which Trump agreed to place collateral assets under Knightâs control.The strangeness doesnât end there. Hankey told Reuters that he charged Trump below market rate for the bond. He also said he supported Trump politically previously and in the current election and called the case against him âunfair,â though he said they had never met. Hankey has a financial incentive to get in Trumpâs good graces: Federal regulators have taken actions against companies he controls at least four times in the past decade, NBC News reported, including repeated fines levied by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As president, Trump could shield Hankeyâs business from enforcement. He has made political interference in the Justice Department a centerpiece of his campaign for president, and during his first term, the CFPB was moribund and shackled.âIf you look at the laws of what an in-kind contribution is, it is exactly this, when you give a goods or services for not the full price because you want to curry favor with a candidate,â Adam Pollock, an attorney in New York and former assistant attorney general, told me. âIn this day and age, nobody ever prosecutes those kind of in-kind contributions anymore, ever. But thereâs a reason those laws exist. Itâs because you donât want to provide that kind of untoward access of how money corrupts politics. And I think weâre all just so jaded.âWorth noting is that if Trump loses the appeal, he will still have to pay the penalty, or else he faces the prospect of the state attorney general seizing assets. (If appeals courts affirm Engoronâs ruling, Trump and his sons will also be barred from serving as officers of a company in the state for several years, which could paralyze the Trump Organizationâs operations as they exist.) Trump has already acknowledged that he doesnât have sufficient cash. Thatâs not a huge surpriseâmany of his holdings are in real estate, which is not liquidâbut it is a problem for him, especially because the market for some of the assets he holds, specifically his large portfolio of urban office buildings, is depressed right now.So when Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent of Trumpâs Truth Social site, became a public company earlier this spring, it seemed like a timely windfall for the former president. Trump has a knack for wriggling out of a jam, and this looks like yet another example. His stake in the company is estimated at about $6 billion. But experts told me that paper wealth like this doesnât always translate to liquid assets. The companyâs equity is trading more like a meme stock than anything related to its underlying fundamental value: The price has dropped, and analysts expect it to fall further eventually. Regardless, Trump is barred from selling shares for months and may be unable to use stock as collateral. Once he is allowed to sell, he will be unable to cash out quickly, as doing so would tank the share price. (The company faces other question marks related to its auditor, who has agreed to cease operations and been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with âmassive fraud.â)This means that TMTG may not provide a miraculous cash infusion benefiting Trump, but itâs still a big gain for him. TMTG also illustrates other ways in which Trump is susceptible to financial leverage. The investor Jeff Yass was one of the biggest shareholders in the company that merged with Trumpâs to go public. Assuming Yass still owns the shares, that gives him substantial sway in keeping the inflated stock price high, which would in turn help Trumpâs net worth swell. Perhaps Yass would not have invested simply to aid Trumpâor to cozy up to him. But he and his wife are already the biggest political donors so far this election cycle, with all of their funds going to conservative causes. A Trump campaign source told The New York Times that Yass was expected to donate to pro-Trump efforts; Yass said he never had and would not. Because many donations can be hidden, the truth is almost impossible to know.[David A. Graham: Trump flaunts his corruption]Yass is also a major investor in ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. Trump was once a noisy critic of the Chinese-owned social-media platform. âAs far as TikTok is concerned, weâre banning them from the United States,â he said in 2020. He issued an executive order to do so if ByteDance didnât sell TikTok, but the order was soon blocked by judges. When Congress, backed by the Biden administration, took up a law to do the same this year, however, Trump suddenly turned against it. âJust so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok,â he posted on Truth Social in April. The reversal came shortly after a meeting with Yass.The public has no way to know why Trump flip-flopped, and both Trump and Yass say they didnât discuss TikTok at their meeting, but some skepticism is reasonable under the circumstances. âWe don't know for sure whether [the meeting] resulted in Donald Trump changing his position,â Bookbinder told me. âBut it's certainly something where the American people have to question that.â Any other person of means might also conclude that a good way to get Trump to take up a view that benefits themâincluding reversing a long-held positionâis to make a large investment in him.Meanwhile, many of the old methods of influencing Trump remain. A Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund invested $2 billion in a private-equity firm founded by Jared Kushner, Trumpâs son-in-law. Kushner has recently been raising money for the former presidentâs campaign. Serious questions also surround a development in Serbia led by Kushner and Ric Grenell, a former Trump-administration official who is rumored to be a candidate for secretary of state or national-security adviser in a second term. Serbian and American observers have charged that the deal, which did not move through typical channels, is an attempt to win favor with Trump. All involved parties deny it, naturally.That Trump would seek these bailouts should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his business career. When he has struck serious financial difficulties in the past, he has sought and usually found some new source of funds. In 1990, for example, with Trumpâs casino in Atlantic City foundering, his father walked onto the floor and bought $3.5 million in chips. (This turned out to violate state rules.) Later, when others had cut him off because of his habit of not paying his debts, he found in Deutsche Bank a willing lender. But DB was no more successful in dealing with Trump. An old joke goes that if you owe the bank $1 million, the bank owns you, but if you owe the bank $100 million, you own the bank. Trump defaulted on more than $600 million in DB loans.When he was fined in the civil fraud case earlier this year, Trump found that none of his old lenders, including DB, were willing to help. His new sources of cash knew Trumpâs history of stiffing those he owes, but they may have calculated that they stand to gain something far more valuable than repayment with interest: the power of the federal government at their beck and call.
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Biden Campaign Quietly Meets With Haley Supporters After Trump EndorsementPhoto Illustration by The Daily Beast/ReutersA group of Nikki Haley supporters from Vermont to Arizona met with President Joe Bidenâs campaign on Wednesday night almost immediately after she announced her plan to vote for Donald Trump, The Daily Beast has learned.In the previously unreported meeting, a Biden campaign representative listened to the concerns of top Haley supporters from various states as part of Bidenworldâs ongoing outreach to win over Haley voters.âThe fact they actually sent someone last night to speak to a small group ⊠I think thatâs a good signal that theyâre aware there are huge numbers of Haley voters out there,â Robert Schwartz, founder of the Haley Voters For Biden PAC, told The Daily Beast. Schwartz said the meeting was highly encouraging, and likened it to other listening sessions the Biden campaign has done with the pro-Palestinian uncommitted vote.Read more at The Daily Beast.
Biden Campaign Quietly Meets With Haley Supporters After Trump EndorsementPhoto Illustration by The Daily Beast/ReutersA group of Nikki Haley supporters from Vermont to Arizona met with President Joe Bidenâs campaign on Wednesday night almost immediately after she announced her plan to vote for Donald Trump, The Daily Beast has learned.In the previously unreported meeting, a Biden campaign representative listened to the concerns of top Haley supporters from various states as part of Bidenworldâs ongoing outreach to win over Haley voters.âThe fact they actually sent someone last night to speak to a small group ⊠I think thatâs a good signal that theyâre aware there are huge numbers of Haley voters out there,â Robert Schwartz, founder of the Haley Voters For Biden PAC, told The Daily Beast. Schwartz said the meeting was highly encouraging, and likened it to other listening sessions the Biden campaign has done with the pro-Palestinian uncommitted vote.Read more at The Daily Beast.
Cows Have Almost Certainly Infected More Than Two People With Bird FluIt was bound to happen again. For the second time in two months, the United States has confirmed a case of bird flu in a dairy worker employed by a farm with H5N1-infected cows. âThe only thing Iâm surprised about is that itâs taken this long to get another confirmed case,â Steve Valeika, a veterinarian and an epidemiologist based in North Carolina, told me.The true case count is almost certainly higher. For weeks, anecdotal reports of sick farmworkers have been trickling in from around the nation, where H5N1 has been detected in dozens of herds in nine states, according to federal counts. Testing among humans and animals remains limited, and buy-in from farms is still spotty. The gap between reality and what the government can measure is hindering the world from realizing the full scope of the outbreak. And it may hamper expertsâ ability to detect human-to-human spread, should that someday occur. âI wouldnât be surprised if there have been dozens of cases at this point,â Valeika said.The risk to most of the public is still low, as federal guidelines continue to emphasize. But that assurance feels tenuous when âthe threat to farmworkers remains high,â Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of the pandemic center at the Brown University School of Public Health, told me. Too often, infectious disease most affects a societyâs most vulnerable people; now the future of this virus depends on Americaâs ability to protect a community whose health and safety are routinely discounted.[Read: Americaâs infectious-disease barometer is off]Like the first case of a dairy worker contracting avian flu, this second one has at least one reassuring element: Exposure in both cases seems to have involved heavy, repeated contact with infected, lactating animals and resulted in a mild illness that involved only eye symptoms. (In another U.S. case, from 2022, in which a man contracted the virus from poultry, fatigue was the only reported symptom.) Cow udders and human eyes both contain receptors for H5N1 that resemble the ones primarily found in birds, and experts suspect that those receptors are an easy entry point for the virus, which still seems to be very much an avian pathogen. To spread in earnest among people, the virus would still probably need to make a few more evolutionary leaps. For most of the public, âIâm not worried about H5 right now,â Seema Lakdawala, a virologist at Emory University, told me.People who work on dairy farms, though, have reason to worry, Lakdawala added. In the so-called parlors where dairy cows are milked, animals are strapped into machines that latch on to their udders, pump until the rate of flow slows, then release, swinging âoff the animal at eye height,â Lakdawala told me, and blasting bystanders with frothy liquid. The machines arenât necessarily sanitized between each animalâand what cleaning does occur often involves a high-pressure hose-down that also mists up milk. The entire process involves a lot of direct maneuvering of udders, as workers load machinery onto each cow and prime their initial milk flow manually. If workers arenât directly getting milk on their handsâwhich will, at some point, touch their faceâtheyâre âconstantly being bombarded with aerosols, droplets, and spray,â Lakdawala said.When infected cows are present, that can mean a lot of virus exposure. Lakdawalaâs lab has been studying how long H5N1 can persist on milky surfaces, and the initial results, not yet published in a scientific journal, suggest that the virus may linger for at least one to three hours on the same sorts of plastic and metal commonly used in milking equipment. That creates a clear conduit for the virus to move among animals, Lakdawala saidâand a very easy path for a human to pick it up, too. Improper disposal of milk could also pose some transmission risk, especially milk from infected farm cows, which still have to be milked if theyâre lactating. (Several farm cats appear to have caught the virus from drinking raw milk.) The USDA recommends heat-treating all milk before itâs discarded, but some farms, especially smaller ones, may not have consistent access to the necessary equipment or human power, Lakdawala told me.The CDC has urged farmworkers to don goggles, gloves, high-quality respirators, and other protective equipment in these environments. But those recommendations canât really be enforced, and itâs unclear how many farms have been following them, or how many workers on those farms are complying. In the rising spring and summer heat, wearing that gear may get even less palatable, Lakdawala pointed out, especially in the steamy, cramped environments in which the people with the most exposure do the brunt of their work. Goggles and other tight-fitting eye protection, in particular, are tricky: âThey get dirty very quickly,â Lakdawala said. Workers canât see what theyâre doing through milk-spattered lenses.Enthusiasm for testing cows and people has also been low on farms, as business owners and employees alike weigh the economic and personal risks they face if one of their herd is reported as sick. And although asymptomatic cows are likely responsible for a good degree of spread, the USDA requires testing of only a subset of the cows being moved between states. That basically ensures that âwe wonât find a virus before a farmworker is exposed,â Nuzzo told me. Similarly, the CDC maintains that âtesting of asymptomatic personsâ for H5N1 âis not routinely recommended,â and close contacts of infected people arenât guaranteed a screen for the virus. Those sorts of delays could allow infections to simmerâpotentially past the window in which intervention with treatments such as Tamiflu or forestalling transmission to close contacts is possible. The fact that this second case was caught doesnât mean that testing is anywhere near sufficient: The diagnosis was made for a farmworker in Michigan, which has more aggressively tested its dairy herds, Nuzzo said. Nuzzo and Lakdawala both argue that stockpiled vaccines should be offered en masse to farmworkers while their risk remains so highâbut federal officials havenât yet made the injections available. (The USDA and the CDC did not respond to requests for comment.)[Read: The bird-flu host we should worry about]These shortfalls would be concerning for any population contending with under-the-radar infections. But among farmworkers especiallyâa group that includes many migrants and uninsured individuals living in rural regionsâH5N1 could play on existing health disparities, Anne Sosin, a public-health researcher at Dartmouth, told me. If protecting farmworkers is a priority, Valeika said, âI think weâre kind of failing.âResearchers are also unsure just how much risk infected farmworkers may pose to their close contacts. Other forms of pink eye are pretty transmissibleâand someone who has recently rubbed their eye, Lakdawala said, could presumably pass H5N1 by touching someone elseâs hand, which could then touch their face. Experts also remain worried that an infection in the eye might find a way to travel to other parts of the body, including the respiratory tract, especially if the virus were to pick up the sorts of mutations that could adapt it to the receptors in our lungs. (The Michigan dairy workerâs nose swab, thankfully, turned up negative for an H5 virus.)The virus doesnât yet seem poised for such a jump. But these flu infections are still a problem for everyone. âIf we fail to stop it in the highest-risk groups,â Sosin told me, the threat to the rest of the public will only grow. H5N1 may never spread human-to-human. If it does, though, it will almost certainly have been helped along by transmission in a community of people that American society has failed to properly protect.
Cows Have Almost Certainly Infected More Than Two People With Bird FluIt was bound to happen again. For the second time in two months, the United States has confirmed a case of bird flu in a dairy worker employed by a farm with H5N1-infected cows. âThe only thing Iâm surprised about is that itâs taken this long to get another confirmed case,â Steve Valeika, a veterinarian and an epidemiologist based in North Carolina, told me.The true case count is almost certainly higher. For weeks, anecdotal reports of sick farmworkers have been trickling in from around the nation, where H5N1 has been detected in dozens of herds in nine states, according to federal counts. Testing among humans and animals remains limited, and buy-in from farms is still spotty. The gap between reality and what the government can measure is hindering the world from realizing the full scope of the outbreak. And it may hamper expertsâ ability to detect human-to-human spread, should that someday occur. âI wouldnât be surprised if there have been dozens of cases at this point,â Valeika said.The risk to most of the public is still low, as federal guidelines continue to emphasize. But that assurance feels tenuous when âthe threat to farmworkers remains high,â Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of the pandemic center at the Brown University School of Public Health, told me. Too often, infectious disease most affects a societyâs most vulnerable people; now the future of this virus depends on Americaâs ability to protect a community whose health and safety are routinely discounted.[Read: Americaâs infectious-disease barometer is off]Like the first case of a dairy worker contracting avian flu, this second one has at least one reassuring element: Exposure in both cases seems to have involved heavy, repeated contact with infected, lactating animals and resulted in a mild illness that involved only eye symptoms. (In another U.S. case, from 2022, in which a man contracted the virus from poultry, fatigue was the only reported symptom.) Cow udders and human eyes both contain receptors for H5N1 that resemble the ones primarily found in birds, and experts suspect that those receptors are an easy entry point for the virus, which still seems to be very much an avian pathogen. To spread in earnest among people, the virus would still probably need to make a few more evolutionary leaps. For most of the public, âIâm not worried about H5 right now,â Seema Lakdawala, a virologist at Emory University, told me.People who work on dairy farms, though, have reason to worry, Lakdawala added. In the so-called parlors where dairy cows are milked, animals are strapped into machines that latch on to their udders, pump until the rate of flow slows, then release, swinging âoff the animal at eye height,â Lakdawala told me, and blasting bystanders with frothy liquid. The machines arenât necessarily sanitized between each animalâand what cleaning does occur often involves a high-pressure hose-down that also mists up milk. The entire process involves a lot of direct maneuvering of udders, as workers load machinery onto each cow and prime their initial milk flow manually. If workers arenât directly getting milk on their handsâwhich will, at some point, touch their faceâtheyâre âconstantly being bombarded with aerosols, droplets, and spray,â Lakdawala said.When infected cows are present, that can mean a lot of virus exposure. Lakdawalaâs lab has been studying how long H5N1 can persist on milky surfaces, and the initial results, not yet published in a scientific journal, suggest that the virus may linger for at least one to three hours on the same sorts of plastic and metal commonly used in milking equipment. That creates a clear conduit for the virus to move among animals, Lakdawala saidâand a very easy path for a human to pick it up, too. Improper disposal of milk could also pose some transmission risk, especially milk from infected farm cows, which still have to be milked if theyâre lactating. (Several farm cats appear to have caught the virus from drinking raw milk.) The USDA recommends heat-treating all milk before itâs discarded, but some farms, especially smaller ones, may not have consistent access to the necessary equipment or human power, Lakdawala told me.The CDC has urged farmworkers to don goggles, gloves, high-quality respirators, and other protective equipment in these environments. But those recommendations canât really be enforced, and itâs unclear how many farms have been following them, or how many workers on those farms are complying. In the rising spring and summer heat, wearing that gear may get even less palatable, Lakdawala pointed out, especially in the steamy, cramped environments in which the people with the most exposure do the brunt of their work. Goggles and other tight-fitting eye protection, in particular, are tricky: âThey get dirty very quickly,â Lakdawala said. Workers canât see what theyâre doing through milk-spattered lenses.Enthusiasm for testing cows and people has also been low on farms, as business owners and employees alike weigh the economic and personal risks they face if one of their herd is reported as sick. And although asymptomatic cows are likely responsible for a good degree of spread, the USDA requires testing of only a subset of the cows being moved between states. That basically ensures that âwe wonât find a virus before a farmworker is exposed,â Nuzzo told me. Similarly, the CDC maintains that âtesting of asymptomatic personsâ for H5N1 âis not routinely recommended,â and close contacts of infected people arenât guaranteed a screen for the virus. Those sorts of delays could allow infections to simmerâpotentially past the window in which intervention with treatments such as Tamiflu or forestalling transmission to close contacts is possible. The fact that this second case was caught doesnât mean that testing is anywhere near sufficient: The diagnosis was made for a farmworker in Michigan, which has more aggressively tested its dairy herds, Nuzzo said. Nuzzo and Lakdawala both argue that stockpiled vaccines should be offered en masse to farmworkers while their risk remains so highâbut federal officials havenât yet made the injections available. (The USDA and the CDC did not respond to requests for comment.)[Read: The bird-flu host we should worry about]These shortfalls would be concerning for any population contending with under-the-radar infections. But among farmworkers especiallyâa group that includes many migrants and uninsured individuals living in rural regionsâH5N1 could play on existing health disparities, Anne Sosin, a public-health researcher at Dartmouth, told me. If protecting farmworkers is a priority, Valeika said, âI think weâre kind of failing.âResearchers are also unsure just how much risk infected farmworkers may pose to their close contacts. Other forms of pink eye are pretty transmissibleâand someone who has recently rubbed their eye, Lakdawala said, could presumably pass H5N1 by touching someone elseâs hand, which could then touch their face. Experts also remain worried that an infection in the eye might find a way to travel to other parts of the body, including the respiratory tract, especially if the virus were to pick up the sorts of mutations that could adapt it to the receptors in our lungs. (The Michigan dairy workerâs nose swab, thankfully, turned up negative for an H5 virus.)The virus doesnât yet seem poised for such a jump. But these flu infections are still a problem for everyone. âIf we fail to stop it in the highest-risk groups,â Sosin told me, the threat to the rest of the public will only grow. H5N1 may never spread human-to-human. If it does, though, it will almost certainly have been helped along by transmission in a community of people that American society has failed to properly protect.
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