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      in US Politics

      Sheldon Adelson, casino magnate and major Trump donor, dies aged 87

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      Sheldon Adelson, a casino magnate, perennial top single donor to Donald Trump and other Republican causes and an influential opponent of a two-state solution in the Middle East, has died. He was 87.Adelson’s influence on Trump has been seen as a major factor in the president’s assertive foreign policy on Israel, including his decision to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a deeply controversial move as parts of the city are also claimed by Palestinians.In a statement on Tuesday Adelson’s wife, Dr Miriam Adelson, said the Las Vegas Sands chairman and chief executive died “of complications from a long illness”. A Nevada newspaper Adelson owned reported the cause of death as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which Adelson was found to have in 2019.“It is with unbearable pain that I announce the death of my husband, Sheldon G Adelson,” Miriam Adelson said.Adelson was born in 1933 and grew up in a suburb of Boston, his father a cab driver of Ukrainian Jewish and Lithuanian Jewish ancestry.As the owner of the giant Venetian and Palazzo casino-resorts in Las Vegas, the Venetian Macau in China and the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, he was among the richest men in the world, with a net worth pegged by Forbes at more than $33bn.In the 2020 election, the Adelsons set a new record for political gifts from individuals, flooding the Trump campaign, related accounts and many lesser Republican campaigns with a total of $172.7m, according to the campaign finance site Open Secrets.The Adelsons were the top donors in every major election cycle going back a decade except for 2016, and their lifetime political giving amounted to about half a billion dollars, Open Secrets said.In a statement on Tuesday, Trump said Adelson “lived the true American dream”. The president also recognised Adelson’s role in the embassy move and US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights, another hugely controversial issue.The former president George W Bush said: “Laura and I mourn the passing of a friend.”An enemy of union organizing inside his casinos, Adelson was a veteran of bruising negotiations with, and criticism from, union political machines in Las Vegas and elsewhere, a conflict seen as fueling his support for anti-union Republican politicians.In 2015, as part of a wrongful dismissal suit brought by an employee, Adelson spent four days in court defending his gambling empire from accusations of bribery and ties to organised crime in China.Initially skeptical of Trump, whom he knew as a failed casino entrepreneur, Adelson was slow to enter the 2016 election. Since the early 2000s, he had prioritized giving to candidates who opposed Palestinian statehood, and it was not initially clear where Trump stood on Israel.But Adelson and Trump’s priorities connected in Trump family connections, through the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Adelson had long supported.Adelson was adored across much of the political spectrum in Israel for his wide-ranging support to many Jewish and also Zionist organisations.In particular, he was praised by hardline nationalists, in part due to his financial support for Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, which are considered illegal by most world powers. One medical school in a settlement in the occupied West Bank is named after the Adelsons.The billionaire’s death was mourned by several far-right Israeli politicians, including Naftali Bennett, a former defense minister, who said Adelson would be “forever be recorded in the annals in the State of Israel”.Local media reported Adelson’s funeral would be held in Israel.Israel’s current and longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu, has also been a key beneficiary of Adelson, who launched a free newspaper called Israel Hayom in 2007 that was clearly supportive of the Israeli leader. The paper has since become the country’s most widely circulated daily.Netanyahu said he felt “deep sorrow and heartbreak” on hearing of Adelson’s death. The news will be a blow to the prime minister, who is facing an election in late March, although Adelson’s wife has long been seen as a leading figure in family decisions on Israel.“Along with his wife Miri, Sheldon was one of the greatest contributors in history to the Jewish people, Zionism, settlements and the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said, using Miriam’s nickname.In 2018, Trump gave Miriam Adelson the highest US civilian honor, the presidential medal of freedom – alongside Elvis Presley and Babe Ruth.In her statement on Tuesday, she called her husband “an American patriot: a US army veteran who gave generously to wounded warriors and, wherever he could, looked to the advancement of these great United States”.“He was the proudest of Jews,” she said, adding that he “saw in the state of Israel not only the realization of an historical promise to a unique and deserving people, but also a gift from the Almighty to all of humanity.”While Adelson changed American politics with his money, equipping thousands of local Republican campaigns with the resources, messaging and structure to win, his sympathy for Trump ended with the president’s re-election defeat last November.In 2015, Adelson acquired the Las Vegas Review-Journal in a secret bid, after the newspaper published exposés about his empire. Last November, the paper rejected Trump’s effort to deny his loss to Joe Biden in Nevada, urging Trump to accept the result. More

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      in US Politics

      Capitol riot prompts top US firms to pull funding for leading Republicans

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      [embedded content]
      Republicans who voted to block Joe Biden’s confirmation as president have been deserted by some of the biggest corporations in the US, as some leading rightwing politicians begin to face potential consequences for the Capitol riot on Wednesday.
      A slew of companies, including Citigroup, one of the biggest banks in the US, and the Marriott hotel chain, said they would halt donations to Republicans who voted against certifying the results of the presidential election.
      The desertion comes after riots at the Capitol on Wednesday. Despite mobs storming the building, egged on by Donald Trump’s spurious claims of voter fraud, 147 Republicans voted to reject Joe Biden’s electoral victory later that same day. Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley were among those to dissent, along with scores of House representatives.
      “At the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, we continuously evaluate our political contributions to ensure that those we support share our values and goals,” said Kim Keck, president and CEO of BlueCross BlueShield, a sprawling healthcare company.
      “In light of this week’s violent, shocking assault on the United States Capitol, and the votes of some members of Congress to subvert the results of November’s election by challenging Electoral College results, BCBSA will suspend contributions to those lawmakers who voted to undermine our democracy.”
      The companies’ donations amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and could have a lasting impact on future elections. The political committee arm of Blue Cross Blue Shield, Bluepac, alone donated $246,750 to Republican officials during the 2020 elections, according to Opensecrets.org.
      In a memo to staff, Citigroup said it had donated $1,000 to Hawley’s campaign – citing a “significant employee presence” in the senator’s state of Missouri, the Wall Street Journal reported. Hawley, with Cruz, has become one of the highest-profile objectors to the certification of Biden’s win, and has perpetuated hoaxes about voter fraud. There are growing calls for both men to resign.
      ‘We want you to be assured that we will not support candidates who do not respect the rule of law,’ wrote Candi Wolff, head of Citi’s global government affairs.
      ‘We intend to pause our contributions during the quarter as the country goes through the presidential transition and hopefully emerges from these events stronger and more united.’
      The Marriott hotel chain said it would also suspend donations from its political action campaign to lawmakers who opposed the presidential election results. Marriott gave $1,000 to Hawley’s election campaign and $1,000 to his leadership committee, Mother Jones reported.
      “We have taken the destructive events at the Capitol to undermine a legitimate and fair election into consideration and will be pausing political giving from our Political Action Committee to those who voted against certification of the election,” the company said in a statement.
      Boston Scientific, a medical device company, and the parent company of Commerce Bank also said they would not donate to the Republicans who attempted to overturn the election result. “At this time, we have suspended all support for officials who have impeded the peaceful transfer of power,” a spokesperson for Commerce Bancshares told the Popular Information newsletter.
      CVS, Exxon Mobil, FedEx and Target all said they were reviewing future political donations, according to multiple reports, as were Bank of America, Ford and AT&T.
      In a further blow to Donald Trump and the Republican party, the digital payment company Stripe said it would stop processing payments for Trump’s campaign website, company sources told the Wall Street Journal.
      Trump has raised more than $200m since the election, as his team has appealed for donations based on Trump’s false claims of election fraud. More

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      Trump supporter who gave $2.5m to fight election fraud wants money back

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      A Donald Trump supporter who donated $2.5m to help expose and prosecute claims of fraud in the presidential election wants his money back after what he says are “disappointing results”.Fredric Eshelman, a businessman from North Carolina, said he gave the money to True the Vote, a pro-Trump “election ethics” group in Texas that promised to file lawsuits in seven swing states as part of its push to “investigate, litigate, and expose suspected illegal balloting and fraud in the 2020 general election”.But according to a lawsuit Eshelman filed this week in Houston, first reported by Bloomberg, True the Vote dropped its legal actions and discontinued its Validate the Vote 2020 campaign, then refused to return his calls when he demanded an explanation.The founder of Eshelman Ventures llc, a venture capital company, said he asked “regularly and repeatedly” for updates, the lawsuit asserts, but that his “requests were consistently met with vague responses, platitudes, and empty promises”.The lack of success of True the Vote’s efforts to challenge the outcome appears to mirror that of the president himself, whose team has lost 38 court actions since the 3 November election, most recently in Pennsylvania where a federal appeals court panel blasted Trump’s legal team for filing a case with no merit.True the Vote did not immediately return an email from the Guardian seeking comment. True the Vote did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment, but posted a statement on its website, attributed to the group’s founder and president, Catherine Engelbrecht, seeking to blame outside forces for the failure of its efforts.“While we stand by the voters’ testimony that was brought forth, barriers to advancing our arguments, coupled with constraints on time, made it necessary for us to pursue a different path,” the group said, announcing that it had withdrawn legal filings in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. All four states were won by Joe Biden, the Democratic president-elect.“Our mission is much bigger than just one election. It is about repairing the system for all future elections,” it continued.Like the Trump campaign’s own legal filings, which have been based on scant evidence, however, the True the Vote statement did not detail any of the proof it claimed it had to support the allegations of election fraud.Eshelman, the former chief executive of a pharmaceutical company, claims in his lawsuit that the non-profit offered to refund him $1m if he would drop his plan to sue the group. He is seeking the return of the full $2.5m that he says he wired on Engelbrecht’s instructions in chunks of $2m and $500,000 on 5 and 13 November. More

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      in US Politics

      Has Trump spent his election war chest before the war really starts?

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      More than $180,000 per second. That is what Donald Trump’s two TV ads during the Super Bowl worked out at in February, offering vivid proof of the outsized role of money in American politics – and of his re-election campaign’s premature and profligate spending.The 2020 presidential election has been described by both sides as the most important in living memory and is certainly proving the most expensive. Hundreds of millions of dollars have flooded both campaigns and, in the pandemic-enforced absence of shaking hands and kissing babies, may prove even more influential than usual.But while Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) raised a record $365m in August, it was revealed this week that the Trump campaign has surrendered what was once a $200m cash advantage. It has already spent more than $800m, the front page of the New York Times reported, leaving its coffers dangerously depleted for the critical final phase.“There’s so much about the Trump campaign that is unorthodox, ineffective and counterproductive: the fact they’ve spent their war chest before the war is an obvious example,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. Elections have long been a point of collision for two American ideals: democracy and capitalism. Whatever a candidate’s policies or eloquence, huge efforts go into elaborate, splashy fundraisers so they can spend on advertising and other expenses. In September 2018 the FiveThirtyEight website noted that, in the House of Representatives, more than nine in 10 candidates who spend the most win.In the 2016 election Trump and his allies raised about $600m, including $65m from his own pocket, a figure dwarfed by the $1bn taken in by rival Hillary Clinton and groups working on her behalf. But his unprecedented carnival-barker persona drew TV cameras like moths to a flame and gained the equivalent of $5bn in free advertising, according to the media tracking firm mediaQuant. Trump also outplayed Clinton on Facebook and staged rollicking campaign rallies in swing states that she could not match. More

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      in Elections

      Joe Biden forced to make his fundraisers fully virtual – bar the price tag

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      US political financing The pandemic has led the presumptive Democratic nominee, like other politicians to take his high-dollar events online Joe Biden: as seen on TV. Photograph: Brian Cahn/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock The coronavirus pandemic may have driven Joe Biden into his basement and forced his campaign online, but one crucial factor is still the same: his […] More

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      Why the DeVos family's backing of the Michigan protests is no surprise

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      The Trump-supporting education secretary and her billionaire family have for years promoted rightwing causes and candidates While Betsy DeVos has stopped donating to political causes while she serves as education secretary, her family has kept up the flow of cash. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP While the anti-coronavirus lockdowns springing up around the US came as a […] More