Evelyn Reynolds

Some of Hollywood’s brightest stars headlined a glitzy fundraiser for President Joe Biden, helping raise what his re-election campaign said was a record $30m-plus and hoping to energize would-be supporters for a November election that they argued was among the most important in the nation’s history.George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Barbra Streisand were among those who took the stage at the 7,100-seat Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Saturday night. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel interviewed Biden and former president Barack Obama, who both stressed the need to defeat former president Donald Trump in a race that’s expected to be exceedingly close.During more than half an hour of discussion, Kimmel asked if the country was suffering from amnesia about the presumptive Republican nominee, to which Biden responded, “all we gotta do is remember what it was like” when Trump was in the White House.Luminaries from the entertainment world have increasingly lined up to help Biden’s campaign, and just how important the event was to his re-election bid could be seen in the Democratic president’s decision to fly through the night across nine time zones, from the G7 summit in southern Italy to Southern California, to attend.He also missed a summit in Switzerland about ways to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, instead dispatching Vice-President Kamala Harris who made a whirlwind trip of her own to represent the United States there, a stark reminder of the delicate balance between geopolitics and Biden’s bid to win a second term.Further laying bare the political implications were police in riot gear outside the theater, ready for protests from pro-Palestinian activists angry about his administration’s handling of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.The event featured singing by Jack Black and Sheryl Lee Ralph, and actors Kathryn Hahn and Jason Bateman introduced Kimmel, who introduced Biden and Obama. The comedian deadpanned, “I was told I was getting introduced by Batman, not Bateman.”But he quickly pivoted to far more serious topics, saying that “so much is at stake in this election” and listing women’s rights, healthcare and noting that “even the ballot is on the ballot” in a reference to the Biden administration’s calls to expand voting rights.Kimmel asked the president what he was most proud of accomplishing, and Biden said he thought the administration’s approach to the economy “is working”.“We have the strongest economy in the world today,” Biden said, adding, “we try to give ordinary people an even chance.”Trump spent Saturday campaigning in Detroit and criticized Biden’s handling of the economy and inflation. The president was fundraising “with out-of-touch elitist Hollywood celebrities”, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.But Biden told the crowd in California that “we passed every major piece of legislation we attempted to get done.” And Obama expressed admiration for sweeping legislation on healthcare, public works, the environment, technology manufacturing, gun safety and other major initiatives that the administration of his former vice-president has overseen.“What we’re seeing now is a byproduct of in 2016. There were a whole bunch of folks who, for whatever reason, sat out,” said Obama, who, like Biden wore a dark suit and a white shirt open at the collar.Obama, speaking about the supreme court, added that “hopefully we have learned our lesson, because these elections matter in very concrete ways”.Trump nominated three justices who helped overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark decision guaranteeing a constitutional right to an abortion. The audience expressed its displeasure at the mention of Roe, to which Obama responded, “don’t hiss, vote.”Biden said the person elected president in November could get the chance to nominate two new justices, though a second Biden term probably wouldn’t drastically overhaul a court that currently features a 6-3 conservative majority.He also suggested if Trump wins back the White House, “one of the scariest parts” was the supreme court and how the high court has “never been this far out of step”.Biden also referenced reports that an upside-down flag, a symbol associated with Trump’s false claims of election fraud, was flown outside the home of supreme court Justice Samuel Alito in January 2021. He worried that if Trump is re-elected “He’s going to appoint two more who fly their flags upside down.”Biden’s campaign said it was still counting, but Saturday night’s gathering had taken in more than $30m, more money than any event for a Democratic candidate in history.That meant outpacing the president’s fundraiser in March at Radio City Music Hall in New York, which raised $26m and featured late-night host Stephen Colbert interviewing Biden, Obama and former President Bill Clinton.Biden held an early lead in the campaign money race against Trump, but the former president has gained ground since he formally locked the Republican nomination. More

Multiple events hosted at a historic former hotel in Berkeley, California, have brought together people from intellectual movements popular at the highest levels in Silicon Valley while platforming prominent people linked to scientific racism, the Guardian reveals.But because of alleged financial ties between the non-profit that owns the building – Lightcone Infrastructure (Lightcone) – and jailed crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, the administrators of FTX, Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto exchange, are demanding the return of almost $5m that new court filings allege were used to bankroll the purchase of the property.During the last year, Lightcone and its director, Oliver Habryka, have made the $20m Lighthaven Campus available for conferences and workshops associated with the “longtermism”, “rationalism” and “effective altruism” (EA) communities, all of which often see empowering the tech sector, its elites and its beliefs as crucial to human survival in the far future.At these events, movement influencers rub shoulders with startup founders and tech-funded San Francisco politicians – as well as people linked to eugenics and scientific racism.Since acquiring the Lighthaven property – formerly the Rose Garden Inn – in late 2022, Lightcone has transformed it into a walled, surveilled compound without attracting much notice outside the subculture it exists to promote.But recently filed federal court documents allege that in the months before the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto empire, he and other company insiders funnelled almost $5m to Lightcone, including $1m for a deposit to lock in the Rose Garden deal.FTX bankruptcy administrators say that money was commingled with funds looted from FTX customers. Now, they are asking a judge to give it back.The revelations cast new light on so-called “Tescreal” intellectual movements – an umbrella term for a cluster of movements including EA and rationalism that exercise broad influence in Silicon Valley, and have the ear of the likes of Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk.It also raises questions about the extent to which people within that movement continue to benefit from Bankman-Fried’s fraud, the largest in US history.The Guardian contacted Habryka for comment on this reporting but received no response.Controversial conferencesLast weekend, Lighthaven was the venue for the Manifest 2024 conference, which, according to the website, is “hosted by Manifold and Manifund”.Manifold is a startup that runs Manifund, a prediction market – a forecasting method that was the ostensible topic of the conference.Prediction markets are a long-held enthusiasm in the EA and rationalism subcultures, and billed guests included personalities like Scott Siskind, AKA Scott Alexander, founder of Slate Star Codex; misogynistic George Mason University economist Robin Hanson; and Eliezer Yudkowsky, founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (Miri).Billed speakers from the broader tech world included the Substack co-founder Chris Best and Ben Mann, co-founder of AI startup Anthropic.Alongside these guests, however, were advertised a range of more extreme figures.One, Jonathan Anomaly, published a paper in 2018 entitled Defending Eugenics, which called for a “non-coercive” or “liberal eugenics” to “increase the prevalence of traits that promote individual and social welfare”. The publication triggered an open letter of protest by Australian academics to the journal that published the paper, and protests at the University of Pennsylvania when he commenced working there in 2019. (Anomaly now works at a private institution in Quito, Ecuador, and claims on his website that US universities have been “ideologically captured”.)Another, Razib Khan, saw his contract as a New York Times opinion writer abruptly withdrawn just one day after his appointment had been announced, following a Gawker report that highlighted his contributions to outlets including the paleoconservative Taki’s Magazine and anti-immigrant website VDare.The Michigan State University professor Stephen Hsu, another billed guest, resigned as vice-president of research there in 2020 after protests by the MSU Graduate Employees Union and the MSU student association accusing Hsu of promoting scientific racism.Brian Chau, executive director of the “effective accelerationist” non-profit Alliance for the Future (AFF), was another billed guest. A report last month catalogued Chau’s long history of racist and sexist online commentary, including false claims about George Floyd, and the claim that the US is a “Black supremacist” country. “Effective accelerationists” argue that human problems are best solved by unrestricted technological development.Another advertised guest, Michael Lai, is emblematic of tech’s new willingness to intervene in Bay Area politics. Lai, an entrepreneur, was one of a slate of “Democrats for Change” candidates who seized control of the powerful Democratic County Central Committee from progressives, who had previously dominated the body that confers endorsements on candidates for local office.In a phone interview, Lai said he did not attend the Manifest conference in early June. “I wasn’t there, and I did not know about what these guys believed in,” Lai said. He also claimed to not know why he was advertised on the manifest.is website as a conference-goer, adding that he had been invited by Austin Chen of Manifold Markets. In an email, Chen, who organized the conference and is a co-founder of Manifund, wrote: “We’d scheduled Michael for a talk, but he had to back out last minute given his campaigning schedule.“This kind of thing happens often with speakers, who are busy people; we haven’t gotten around to removing Michael yet but will do so soon,” Chen added.On the other speakers, Chen wrote in an earlier email: “We were aware that some of these folks have expressed views considered controversial.”He went on: “Some of these folks we’re bringing in because of their past experience with prediction markets (eg [Richard] Hanania has used them extensively and partnered with many prediction market platforms). Others we’re bringing in for their particular expertise (eg Brian Chau is participating in a debate on AI safety, related to his work at Alliance for the Future).”Chen added: “We did not invite them to give talks about race and IQ” and concluded: “Manifest has no specific views on eugenics or race & IQ.”Democrats for Change received significant support from Bay Area tech industry heavyweights, and Lai is now running for the San Francisco board of supervisors, the city’s governing body. He is endorsed by a “grey money” influence network funded by rightwing tech figures like David Sacks and Garry Tan. The same network poured tens of thousands of dollars into his successful March campaign for the DCCC and ran online ads in support of him, according to campaign contribution data from the San Francisco Ethics Commission.Several controversial guests were also present at Manifest 2023, also held at Lighthaven, including rightwing writer Hanania, whose pseudonymous white-nationalist commentary from the early 2010s was catalogued last August in HuffPost, and Malcolm and Simone Collins, whose EA-inspired pro-natalism – the belief that having as many babies as possible will save the world – was detailed in the Guardian last month.The Collinses were, along with Razib Khan and Jonathan Anomaly, featured speakers at the eugenicist Natal Conference in Austin last December, as previously reported in the Guardian.Daniel HoSang, a professor of American studies at Yale University and a part of the Anti-Eugenics Collective at Yale, said: “The ties between a sector of Silicon Valley investors, effective altruism and a kind of neo-eugenics are subtle but unmistakable. They converge around a belief that nearly everything in society can be reduced to markets and all people can be regarded as bundles of human capital.”HoSang added: “From there, they anoint themselves the elite managers of these forces, investing in the ‘winners’ as they see fit.”“The presence of Stephen Hsu here is particularly alarming,” HoSang concluded. “He’s often been a bridge between fairly explicit racist and antisemitic people like Ron Unz, Steven Sailer and Stefan Molyneux and more mainstream figures in tech, investment and scientific research, especially around human genetics.”FTX proceedingsAs Lighthaven develops as a hub for EA and rationalism, the new court filing alleges that the purchase of the property was partly secured with money funnelled by Sam Bankman-Fried and other FTX insiders in the months leading up to the crypto empire’s collapse.Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March for masterminding the $8bn fraud that led to FTX’s downfall in November 2022, in which customer money was illegally transferred from FTX to sister exchange Alameda Research to address a liquidity crisis.Since the collapse, FTX and Alameda have been in the hands of trustees, who in their efforts to pay back creditors are also pursuing money owed to FTX, including money they say was illegitimately transferred to others by Bankman-Fried and company insiders.On 13 May, those trustees filed a complaint with a bankruptcy court in Delaware – where FTX and Lightcone both were incorporated – alleging that Lightcone received more than $4.9m in fraudulent transfers from Alameda, via the non-profit FTX Foundation, over the course of 2022.State and federal filings indicate that Lightcone was incorporated on 13 October 2022 with Habryka acting in all executive roles. In an application to the IRS for 501(c)3 charitable status, Habryka aligned the organization with an influential intellectual current in Silicon Valley: “Combining the concepts of the Longtermism movement … and rationality … Lightcone Infrastructure Inc works to steer humanity towards a safer and better future.”California filings also state that from 2017 until the application, Lightcone and its predecessor project had been operating under the fiscal sponsorship of the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR), a rationalism non-profit established in 2012.The main building on the property now occupied by the Lighthaven campus was originally constructed in 1903 as a mansion, and between 1979 and Lightcone’s 2022 purchase of the property, the building was run as a hotel, the Rose Garden Inn.Alameda county property records indicate that the four properties encompassed by the campus remain under the ownership of an LLC, Lightcone Rose Garden (Lightcone RG), of which Lightcone is the sole member, according to the filings. California business filings identify Habryka as the registered agent of Lightcone Infrastructure and Lightcone RG.Lightcone and CFAR both give the campus as their principal place of business in their most recent tax filings.On 2 March 2022, according to the complaint, CFAR applied to the FTX Foundation asking that “$2,000,000 be given to the Center for Applied Rationality as an exclusive grant for its project, the Lightcone Infrastructure Team”. FTX Foundation wired the money the same day.Between then and October 2022, according to trustees, the FTX Foundation wired at least 14 more transfers worth $2,904,999.61. In total, FTX’s administrators say, almost $5m was transferred to CFAR from the FTX Foundation.On 13 July and 18 August 2022, according to the complaint, the FTX Foundation also wired two payments of $500,000 each to a title company as a deposit for Lightcone RG’s purchase of the Rose Garden Inn. The complaint says these were intended as a loan but there is no evidence that the $1m was repaid.Then, on 3 October, the FTX Foundation approved a $1.5m grant to Lightcone Infrastructure, according to FTX trusteesThe complaint alleges that Lightcone got another $20m loan to fund the Rose Garden Inn purchase from Slimrock Investments Pte Ltd, a Singapore-incorporated company owned by Estonian software billionaire, Skype inventor and EA/rationalism adherent Jaan Tallinn. This included the $16.5m purchase price and $3.5m for renovations and repairs.Slimrock investments has no apparent public-facing website or means of contact. The Guardian emailed Tallinn for comment via the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit whose self-assigned mission is: “Steering transformative technology towards benefiting life and away from extreme large-scale risks.” Tallinn sits on that organization’s board. Neither Tallinn nor the Future of Life Institute responded to the request.The complaint also says that FTX trustees emailed CFAR four times between June and August 2023, and that on 31 August they hand-delivered a letter to CFAR’s Rose Garden Inn offices. All of these attempts at contact were ignored. Only after the debtors filed a discovery motion on 31 October 2023 did CFAR engage with them.The most recent filing on 17 May is a summons for CFAR and Lightcone to appear in court to answer the complaint.The suit is ongoing.The Guardian emailed CFAR president and co-founder Anna Salamon for comment on the allegations but received no response. More

Before Anthony Fauci retired from his lengthy run as the US government’s top infectious disease doctor, major pharmaceutical companies tried to lure him away from his post by offering him seven-figure jobs – but he turned them down because he “cared about … the health of the country” too much, he says in a new interview.Fauci’s comments on his loyalty to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niad) – which he directed for 38 years before retiring in December 2022 – come only a couple of weeks after he testified to Congress about receiving “credible death threats” from far-right extremists over his efforts to slow the spread of Covid-19 at the beginning of the pandemic.Speaking to medical correspondent Dr Jonathan Pook for the upcoming CBS News Sunday Morning episode, Fauci confirmed that pharmaceutical corporations offered him big money or chunks of private equity if he would leave Niad and work for them instead.“At the time that I was getting offered [that], I was making $125,000 to $200,000 – then I would get offered a job that would get me $5m, $6m, $7m a year,” Fauci said in an interview excerpt published on Friday by CBS.Pook asked Fauci: “So why didn’t you take it?”“Because I really felt what I was doing was having an impact on what I cared about, which was the health of the country and, indirectly, the health of the world,” Fauci replied. “Because the United States is such a leader in science, medicine and public health that what we do indirectly spills over on to the rest of the world. And to me, that is priceless.”That exchange in Pook’s interview with Fauci – which CBS plans to air in full at about 9am ET on Sunday – perhaps adds context to the bewilderment that the veteran doctor expressed during his 3 June appearance before a subcommittee of the US House’s oversight and accountability committee while discussing his efforts leading the country’s fight against Covid.Fauci recounted how two people had been arrested in connection with “credible death threats” against him and his family, requiring them to get round-the-clock security protection. He also said his retirement from the public sector had not stemmed the harassment.“It is very troublesome to me,” Fauci testified. “It is much more trouble because they’ve involved my wife and my three daughters at these moments.”Far-right representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has embodied the contempt that US Republicans generally held against the doctor at the height of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. She once sparked outrage by comparing him to the Nazi physician Josef Mengele, who experimented on Jewish people imprisoned in concentration camps during the Holocaust.She also assailed Fauci during his testimony, arguing that it was abusive for Fauci to recommend that Americans wear masks and maintain social distancing at the start of Covid, when there were no protective vaccines available.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Do the American people deserve to be abused like that, Mr Fauci? Because you’re not Dr, you’re Mr, Fauci,” Taylor Greene said at the hearing.She later told reporters that Fauci should be imprisoned as well as “tried for mass murder and crimes against humanity” over his attempts to limit the number of Covid deaths in the US, which exceeded 350,000 in 2020.Fauci later described Taylor Greene’s behavior as an “unusual performance”.In a news release promoting the interview on Sunday, CBS said Fauci would elaborate on his reaction to the recent congressional hearing. The network also said Fauci would discuss his memoir, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, which is scheduled to be released on Tuesday. More

Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin has disclosed that Donald Trump repeatedly mused out loud about executing people at several meetings while she worked for him during his presidency.Griffin’s claim, which she made in a podcast recording with Mediaite released on Friday, is likely to add to concerns that a return for Trump to the Oval Office could be characterized primarily by political retribution.The former communications director for the Trump administration told the outlet she had been at a meeting at which he “straight up said a staffer who leaked … should be executed”, referring to an anonymously sourced report that the former president had gone into a secure bunker at the White House at the height of the racial justice protests prompted by a Minneapolis police officer’s murder of George Floyd.“There were others where we talked about executing people,” Griffin said.In response to Griffin’s comments, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek: “As President Trump has said, the best revenge is the success and prosperity of all Americans.”Under the constitution, a president has no direct power to enforce capital punishment. But the president does have the power to appoint attorneys general who oversee key decisions concerning federal capital punishment.Rumors around Trump’s interest in summary executions have been making the rounds for years. As he geared up to run for a second presidency in November, Trump reportedly asked three people: “What do you think of firing squads?” And he has repeatedly backed expanding the use of the federal death penalty.According to Rolling Stone, Trump has also mused about bringing back hanging and the guillotine – all while televising their use – because it “would help put the fear of God into violent criminals”.A Trump spokesperson said at the time to Rolling Stone that “either these people are fabricating lies out of thin air” or the outlet is “allowing themselves to be duped by these morons”.But the Trump 2024 campaign has also said that if the former president returned to office, he was “going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their pain”.During the final three months of Trump’s first term, the US executed 13 federal prisoners by lethal injection – a significant acceleration in the use of the death penalty by the federal government.Prior to that, only three people had been executed since 1963. But under the Trump administration, the federal government allowed any method of execution that was legal in the state where the death penalty was being carried out.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTerre Haute federal prison in Indiana, where Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed in 2001, has used hanging, electrocution and lethal injection.Trump attorney general Bill Barr has said that if Trump had won a second term in 2020, there had been an “expectation” that use of the federal death penalty would continue at an accelerated pace.Griffin’s claim that Trump called for the execution of a White House staffer is loosely corroborated by Barr during an interview he gave to CNN in April in which he recalled that Trump had been “very mad” about the White House bunker leaker.Barr said he couldn’t remember whether Trump specifically called for someone to be executed and doubted it would ever have actually been carried out. But he also said he “wouldn’t dispute” that Trump had called for someone to be executed over the bunker leak.Griffin left the White House in December 2020, weeks after Trump lost the election to Joe Biden but refused to accept the legitimacy of the result. She is now a commentator for CNN and co-host of the NBC talkshow The View. More

New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, is considering reimposing a ban on face masks in the Big Apple’s transit system over allegations that masked protesters are taking advantage of identity-concealing face wear to stage antisemitic attacks.The governor has not spelled out details of the policy or people who may be exempted. But she has said that she is motivated to act by “a group donning masks that took over a subway car, scaring riders and chanting things about [Nazi dictator Adolf] Hitler and wiping out Jews”.Hochul may have been referring to a recent episode involving a pro-Palestinian rally in which a man led a small group on a New York City subway car in chanting: “Raise your hands if you’re a Zionist – this is your chance to get out.”Another man is reported to have shouted allusions to the Holocaust, saying: “I wish Hitler was still here. He would’ve wiped all you out.”However, neither men was reported to have been masked.“We will not tolerate individuals using masks to evade responsibility for criminal or threatening behavior,” Hochul said on Thursday, adding that “on a subway, people should not be able to hide behind a mask to commit crimes”.The potential move comes close to four years after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic during which New Yorkers initially struggled to obtain enough masks to slow the spread of the virus. Masks then became a defining feature of the era, but recommendations to wear them have been dropped as protective vaccines have become available and the rate of spread has slowed.New York has historically had a push-and-pull relationship with face coverings dating to 1845, when they were banned in response to attacks by tenant farmers on landlords. That ban was repealed in 2020 in response to Covid, and masks became mandatory for two years until September 2022.Hochul, who last week put on hold a plan to charge drivers for entering lower Manhattan over concerns it could interfere with the city’s ongoing economic recovery, said the mask issue was “complex”.“We’re just listening to people and addressing their needs and taking them very seriously,” she added.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPro-Palestinian demonstrators have said that wearing masks is necessary because of police surveillance and threats by some employers in the finance industry that participating in demonstrations could render protesters unemployable.On this issue, Hochul appears to have the backing of the New York City mayor, Eric Adams. He told the political talk-radio show Cats & Cosby this week that “people have hid under the guise of wearing a mask for Covid to commit criminal acts and vile acts. Now is the time to go back to the way it was pre-Covid, where you should not be able to wear a mask at protests and our subway systems and other places.”Adams went on to invoke the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. “Those civil rights leaders did not hide their faces,” Adams said. “They stood up. In contrast to that, the [Ku Klux] Klan hid their faces. Cowards hide their faces when they want to do something disgraceful.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

Taking a line out of Donald Trump’s playbook, Joe Biden offered his rival a tongue-in-cheek birthday greeting on X on Friday, saying: “Happy 78th birthday, Donald. Take it from one old guy to another: Age is just a number.”The president then coupled his thoughts with a caustic video sarcastically touting “78 of Trump’s historic … ‘accomplishments’” before a Biden re-election campaign spokesperson added: “On behalf of America, our early gift for your 79th: making sure you are never president again.”Biden’s message comes as his campaign attempts to inject some wit and zippy one-liners into its output, critiquing his presidential predecessor beyond baseline warnings about democracy over other topics such as Trump’s hairstyle, his hawking of Bibles and his energy levels at his New York trial, where he frequently closed his eyes before being convicted of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments delivered to adult film actor Stormy Daniels.Trump’s conviction came less than two weeks before Biden’s son, Hunter, was convicted on charges related to him buying a handgun while being a user of crack cocaine.Taking the age issue to the campaign wrestling mat is a strategy that comes with risks for both candidates. For Democrats, a willingness to embrace it marks a change of direction.For months, the Biden campaign has played down questions about Biden’s mental acuity. But it’s now confronting the issue head-on after polls showed that 86% of Americans say the 81-year-old president is too old for a second term compared with 59% for Trump, fewer than four years his junior.But after Biden appeared to wander off several times during his visits to Europe last week, and was steered back into position by the first lady, Jill Biden, or other world leaders, the age issue is again bubbling to the surface.There was also a hard-hitting, 3,000-word Wall Street Journal article recently that quoted numerous lawmakers who said they had witnessed Biden “slipping” and experiencing good and bad moments. The Journal said the White House had “kept tabs” on Democrats who participated in the story and encouraged them to call back to emphasize Biden’s strengths.At a campaign event in Wisconsin hosted by older supporters of Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, the first lady advanced the argument that her husband’s age is an asset.“This election is most certainly not about age,” Jill Biden said. “Joe and that other guy are essentially the same age. Let’s not be fooled, Joe isn’t one of the most effective presidents of our lives in spite of his age, but because of it.”Meanwhile, for the former president, turning 78 on Friday meant a CNBC report quoting CEOs of various businesses who had met with Trump and found him to be “remarkably meandering”. The CEOs found that Trump “could not keep a straight thought [and] was all over the map”, including one who added that the former president “doesn’t know what he’s talking about” when it comes to explaining how he would accomplish any of his policy proposals, the report asserted.Trump otherwise spent Friday addressing Club 47 fan club members at a convention center in West Palm Beach and going after his rival. “Our country is being destroyed by incompetent people,” Trump said while calling for all presidents to pass aptitude tests.That came a day after Republicans in Congress sang their own rendition of Happy Birthday and presented Trump with a cake and gifts during his first visit to Capitol Hill since his supporters attacked the Capitol building on 6 January 2021, weeks after Biden defeated him in the 2020 presidential election.Trump himself didn’t seem too thrilled by the prospect of a close-to-milestone birthday. He told supporters at a rally in Las Vegas last week: “There’s a certain point at which you don’t want to hear ‘happy birthday’. You just want to pretend the day doesn’t exist.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn spite of the bickering over age, the two candidates have agreed to the rules of their first TV debate scheduled for 27 June.Host network CNN released details it hopes will keep the candidates within the realm of a debating format after both candidates refused to share a stage with party rivals during the primary season.According to CNN, Biden and Trump have agreed to a 90-minute debate with commercial breaks, during which they will not be allowed to consult campaign staff.They will appear on a uniform podium stage with left and right positions determined by the flip of a coin. Microphones will be muted except for when it is each person’s time to speak, and each will be provided with a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water.There also will not be a studio audience, meaning that the first of two crucial confrontations will be moderated by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash who will, CNN said, “use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion”.Biden’s campaign on Saturday touted raising $28m heading into an evening fundraiser in Los Angeles featuring former president Barack Obama, talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel, and actors George Clooney as well as Julia Roberts.Meanwhile, Trump on Saturday was campaigning in Michigan, seeking to rally support from people ranging from churchgoing Black voters to a conservative group popular with white supremacists: Turning Point Action. More

Wisconsin Republicans are withholding $125m designated for cleanup of widespread PFAS contamination in drinking water and have said they will only release the funds in exchange for immunity for polluters.The move is part of a broader effort by Republicans in the state to steal power from the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, the funding’s supporters say, alleging such “political games” are putting residents’ health at risk.“People really feel like they’re being held hostage,” said Lee Donahue, mayor of Campbell, which is part of the La Crosse metropolitan area and has drinking water contaminated with astronomical levels of PFAS. “It’s ridiculous, and some would argue that it’s criminal, that they are withholding money from communities in dire need of clean drinking water.”PFAS are a class of chemicals used across dozens of industries to make products water-, stain- and heat-resistant. They are called “forever chemicals” because they don’t naturally break down, and they persist in the environment and accumulate in humans’ and animals’ bodies. The compounds are linked to cancer, decreased immunity, thyroid problems, birth defects, kidney disease, liver problems and a range of other serious illnesses.The Environmental Protection Agency this year established limits for several of the most common PFAS, including levels at four parts per trillion (ppt) for the most dangerous. PFAS are contaminating water for more than 350,000 Wisconsin public water system users, often at levels far exceeding the limits. Many more private wells have contaminated water. In Madison, the state capital, levels in water sources were found as high as 180,000ppt.In Campbell, where more than 500 wells have tested positive for PFAS at levels up to thousands of times above federal limits, many suspect high rates of cancer and other serious ailments that have plagued the town’s residents stem from the dangerous chemicals.In the face of the crisis, bipartisan budget legislation that created the $125m pot of money for cleanup was approved by the GOP-controlled legislature and signed by the governor in mid-2023. The funds are supposed to go to the Wisconsin department of natural resources.Previously, money approved during budgeting processes was released to the state agency. Since Evers ousted the Republican Scott Walker in 2018, the GOP-controlled legislature has claimed the joint finance committee (JFC) it controls can add stipulations to how the money is spent, or refuse to release money approved in the budget.That gives Republican leadership more control over how Evers’s administration spends and governs, and the GOP is using that legal theory to withhold the PFAS-cleanup funding.“It is definitely a power grab,” said Erik Kanter, president of Clean Wisconsin, which is lobbying on PFAS issues.Meanwhile, Republicans separately floated a piece of legislation that provided a framework for how the $125m would be spent on PFAS cleanup, but it included what Kanter called a “poison pill”: it exempted PFAS polluters from the state’s spill laws that are designed to hold industry accountable for the contamination it causes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEvers vetoed the legislation because of the spill law exemption. The department of natural resources then proposed to GOP legislators that it would spend the $125m as outlined in the Republican legislation, but industry would not be exempt from the spill laws. The legislature has so far rejected that proposal, and it is now on break for the rest of 2024.“At this point in time it looks like the JFC is not going to release those dollars,” Kanter said. “That money has been sitting there for almost a year and nobody has gotten any help because of political games in the legislature.”The Evers administration announced in late May that it would sue the committee for withholding the funds and make a constitutional separation of powers claim. It charges the JFC’s withholding is “an unconstitutional legislative veto”. Republican leadership did not immediately return a request for comment.In the meantime, communities such as La Crosse continue to struggle, Donahue said. The city and county have so far spent nearly $1m trying to determine the feasibility of tapping into a neighboring aquifer and continue to monitor it to ensure the PFAS plume contaminating their drinking water source does not migrate.“What do we do?” Donahue asked. “We can’t afford to wait another year for help.” More

“Look at me, look at me,” said Martha-Ann Alito. “I’m German, from Germany. My heritage is German. You come after me, I’m gonna give it back to you.”It was a bizarre outburst from the wife of a justice on America’s highest court. Secretly recorded by a liberal activist, Martha-Ann Alito complained about a neighbour’s gay pride flag and expressed a desire to fly a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag in protest.This, along with audio clips of Justice Samuel Alito himself and a stream of ethics violations, have deepened public concerns that the supreme court is playing by its own rules. The Democratic representative Jamie Raskin has described a “national clamour over this crisis of legitimacy” at the court.A poll last month for the progressive advocacy organisation Stand Up America suggests that the supreme court will now play a crucial role in voters’ choices in the 2024 election. Nearly three in four voters said the selection and confirmation of justices will be an important consideration for them in voting for both president and senator in November.Reed Galen, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a pro-democracy group, said: “The idea that these guys act as if they are kings ruling from above, to me, should absolutely be an issue. It was always Republicans who said we hate unelected judges legislating from the bench and we hate judicial activism. That’s all this stuff is.”View image in fullscreenPublic trust in the court is at an all-time low amid concerns over bias and corruption. Alito has rejected demands that he recuse himself from a case considering presidential immunity after flags similar to those carried by 6 January 2021 rioters flew over his homes in Virginia and New Jersey. Justice Clarence Thomas has ignored calls to step aside because of the role his wife, Ginni, played in supporting efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020.Ethical standards have been under scrutiny following revelations that some justices failed to report luxury trips, including on private jets, and property deals. Last week Thomas, who has come under criticism for failing to disclose gifts from the businessman and Republican donor Harlan Crow, revised his 2019 form to acknowledge he accepted “food and lodging” at a Bali hotel and at a California club.These controversies have been compounded by historic and hugely divisive decisions. The fall of Roe v Wade, ending the nationwide right to abortion after half a century, was seen by many Democrats as a gamechanger in terms of people making a connection between the court and their everyday lives.There are further signs of the debate moving beyond the Washington bubble. Last week, the editorial board of the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper argued that, since the court’s own ethics code proved toothless, Congress should enact legislation that holds supreme court justices to higher ethical standards. The paper called for the local senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who is chair of the Senate judiciary committee, to hold a hearing on the issue.Maggie Jo Buchanan, managing director of the pressure group Demand Justice, said: “It’s important to keep in mind that, even though debate among members of Congress would lead you to believe that court reform is a polarising issue, it really isn’t. For years we have seen broad bipartisan support for basic supreme court reforms such as ethics.“A broad bipartisan consensus exists that they’ve grown too powerful, that they have too much power over laws and regulations. That’s shared among nearly three-fourths of Americans, including 80% of independents, so the demand is there and this isn’t something where it’s Democrats versus Republicans in the sense of real people. The American people want change and want to check the judiciary.”Congressional Democrats have introduced various bills including one to create an independent ethics office and internal investigations counsel within the supreme court. Broader progressive ideas include expanding the number of seats on the court or limiting the justices to 18-year terms rather than lifetime appointments.But such efforts have been repeatedly thwarted by Republicans, who over decades impressed on their base the importance of the court, ultimately leading to a 6-3 conservative majority including three Trump appointees.This week Senate Republicans blocked the ​​Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, legislation that would require the court to adopt a binding code of conduct for all justices, establish procedures to investigate complaints of judicial misconduct and adopt rules to disclose gifts, travel and income received by them that are at least as rigorous as congressional disclosure rules.In response, Christina Harvey, executive director of Stand Up America, said its “nearly 2 million members are fired up and ready to continue advocating for supreme court reform – in Congress and at the ballot box”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Galen of the Lincoln Project worries that Democrats lack the necessary aggression to capitalise on the issue. “[Senate majority leader Chuck] Schumer and Durbin are not change agents. They consider themselves institutionalists and they continue to call themselves that. They’re in a place where they can’t possibly conceive of something like that. Democrats are just afraid of their own shadow.”That principle might apply to the US president himself. The 81-year-old, who served in the Senate for 36 years, is reluctant to call out justices by name or call for sweeping reforms of the court, although he is making its decision to end the constitutional right to abortion a centrepiece of his campaign.Ed Fallone, an associate law professor at Marquette University Law School said: “I don’t know that Joe Biden is the politician to try and benefit from this issue. Biden has always presented himself as an institutionalist and more of a centrist than many segments of the Democratic party.“There’s a real risk here for Biden because, if he does try to get political advantage from the public’s growing concern about the supreme court, it seems to conflict with his message that we should all respect the court system and the judicial system and the Trump prosecutions and the various legal problems of former Trump advisers. It seems difficult to reconcile telling the public to respect the judicial system with also embracing the idea that the very top of the system is flawed and needs reform.”Fallone added: “You will see other Democrats seize on this issue and start to push it, in particular those who are are going to try to energise the left side of the base, maybe not necessarily for this election, but maybe anticipating Biden might lose and starting already to look ahead to the following election.”Other argue that, competing for voter attention with the cost of living, immigration and other issues, the supreme court will ultimately fade into background noise.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington DC, said: “The middle of the country, the independents and the swing voters do not care about the supreme court, and I don’t think any effort by Democrats or the media bringing up these things about Alito or Thomas is going to register or motivate those people. It motivates partisans. It doesn’t motivate swing voters on either side.”Read more: The supreme court’s decisions this week
US supreme court strikes down federal ban on ‘bump stock’ devices for guns
US supreme court unanimously upholds access to abortion pill mifepristone
US supreme court sides with Starbucks in union case over fired employees More