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      Rightwing war on ‘woke capitalism’ partly driven by fossil fuel interests and allies

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      The American right wing’s widening fight against what it calls “woke capitalism” is partly driven by fossil fuel interests or industry allies, according to a new report published on Thursday.Conservatives often use the term “woke capitalism” to refer to environmental, social and corporate governance – or ESG – criteria used to screen investments based on their environmental and social implications.Just this year, Republican lawmakers in 37 states introduced a stunning 165 pieces of anti-ESG legislation, according to the new report from the strategic research and advisory firm Pleiades Strategy.“The trend has been rampant,” said Connor Gibson, who co-authored the report.The 165 proposals sought to employ a variety of tactics, ranging from imposing limits on public contracts and restricting pension managers to forcing disclosures and combatting federal investment rules.The researchers examined news articles, fiscal notes and statehouse testimony related to each bill. They found that the majority of them bear strong resemblances to model bills crafted or circulated by four influential rightwing thinktanks: the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute and the Foundation for Government Accountability.Each of the four organizations is affiliated with the far-right thinktank coalition State Policy Network, whose members have also fought to pass punitive anti-pipeline protest laws and which has received funding from groups linked to fossil fuel billionaires Charles and the late David Koch.Advocacy for many of the bills was also led by fossil fuel-tied groups, including the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which has accepted at least $8.8m from organizations linked to the Kochs since 2012, and has also received funding from ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron. The TPPF began attacking ESG as far back as 2020 and says it was behind a pioneering anti-ESG bill passed in Texas in 2021.The American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s largest oil and gas lobbying organization, has also worked to shape anti-ESG policies. And representatives from several other fossil fuel interest groups have supported the efforts as well, the researchers say.Despite their well-connected champions, just 22 of the 165 proposed anti-ESG bills progressed through statehouses, the report says.“The dark-money-funded attacks on the freedom to invest responsibly hit deep opposition from business, labor and environmental advocates in statehouses across the country this year,” said Frances Sawyer, founder of Pleiades Strategy and co-author of the report. “Our report shows that the effort to weaponize government funds, contracts and pensions to prevent companies and investors from considering real financial risks is not a winning platform.”Many of the bills that did pass were watered down before they became law, the report says. But that doesn’t mean they won’t have real negative consequences.Opponents of the successful pieces of legislation fear they could cost taxpayers millions, collectively. And the implications for climate policy could be even larger, because the legislation could have a chilling effect on future climate policy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe laws could create an environment that discourages support for shareholder resolutions that aim to lower emissions, said Sawyer. It could also make it harder for states to take advantage of the clean energy investments offered by the Inflation Reduction Act, she said, due to fears that those funds would drive competition with the industries the bills favor.“The full extent of those costs, we don’t know,” she said.Anti-ESG legislation has increasingly popped up in statehouses over the past two years. In 2021, North Dakota lawmakers passed a law calling for a study of the implications of state funds making investments “for the purpose of obtaining an effect other than a maximized return to the state”.The same year, Texas lawmakers passed a law prohibiting state funds from contracting with or investing in companies that “boycott” fossil fuel stocks, based on a policy passed four years earlier that aimed to prevent Texas from doing business with entities that support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, or BDS, movement, for Palestine.Similar legislation began to appear in statehouses across the country. Last year, Idaho, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Kentucky all passed various forms of anti-ESG legislation.The legislation is unpopular, the authors say, but they still expect to see more of it in the coming years as more policymakers take the energy transition more seriously.“We think this is the latest iteration of climate denial and obstruction and delay,” said Gibson. More

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      Republican’s non-profit paid PR firm that also represents her for-profit work

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      The legal non-profit the Center for American Liberty, helmed by Harmeet Dhillon, paid more than $132,000 to a public relations firm that simultaneously represents the California Republican national committeewoman in her capacity as head of her own for-profit law firm and Republican activist.According to a client list published by Praetorian Public Relations, whose proprietor is Matt Shupe, the Contra Costa county Republican chair, the firm also represents other partners and associates of Dhillon Law, other state Republican officeholders, and individuals at the center of the Center for American Liberty’s culture-war driven lawsuits.The revelations further blur the lines between Dhillon’s non-profit work, her legal career and the political ambitions that saw her challenge the incumbent national RNC chair, Ronna McDaniel, in an election held last January.Dhillon is also a rising media star on the Republican right.Asked about the ties between CAL and Praetorian PR, Joan Harrington, a fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at the Santa Clara University and an expert on non-profit law and ethics, said: “Every way in which [Dhillon] is benefiting from the non-profit should be considered compensation,” adding: “it should be disclosed.”The Guardian previously reported that the CAL’s IRS filings showed that CAL had paid Dhillon Law $1.32m in fees, and that according to the 2021 filing, Dhillon additionally drew a $120,000 salary for a two-hour weekly commitment.In that reporting, the executive director of CAL, Mark Trammell, wrote: “The 2021 Form 990 should show Ms Dhillon working 40 hours per week. That correction will be made shortly through an Amended Form 990.”At the time of reporting, CAL had removed the 2021 IRS filing from its website. But a copy of the filing lists Praetorian alongside Dhillon Law, Blitz Digital and Eimer Stahl LLP as one of the four biggest contractors to the organization.Praetorian’s client list includes Trammell, who is billed as “executive director and general counsel to the Center for American Liberty”. The list bills Dhillon, however, as “Managing Partner, Dhillon Law Group”, “Chairwoman, Republican National Lawyers Association”, “California’s RNC National Committeewoman”, and only lastly as “Founder and CEO of the Center for American Liberty”.The client list also includes Dhillon Law attorneys who have worked on CAL cases, including Krista Lee Baughman and Ron Coleman.It also includes CAL clients: the rightwing Internet personality Andy Ngo (billed as an “investigative reporter”); 18-year-old “detransitioner” Chloe Cole; and “Social Media and Cultural Influencer” Rogan O’Handley, who posts on various social media sites under the handle “dc_draino”.CAL is assisting Ngo in a suit against Rose City Antifa which has been running since 2020, and whose delays led an Oregon judge to award a limited judgment last February, and forced Ngo’s team to move that the judgment be vacated. The Guardian contacted Ngo’s attorney, James Buchal, to ask about the delays but received no response.CAL is sponsoring O’Hanlon’s suit against the California attorney general over O’Hanlon’s Twitter ban in 2020, and Chloe Cole’s suit against Kaiser Permanente over gender-affirming care she received in her early teens.Neither CAL’s filings nor the Praetorian PR client list specify whose efforts CAL is paying for.In response to questions about the relationship between CAL and Praetorian PR, and on whether CAL was paying for promoting Dhillon’s non-CAL work, Trammell, CAL’s executive director, wrote in an email: “The Center for American Liberty compensates Praetorian Public Relations only for services rendered to the Center for American Liberty.”Trammell continued: “Any services that Praetorian Public Relations renders to its many other clients are not paid for by the Center for American Liberty. Any assertion to the contrary is categorically false.”He added: “GuideStar awarded the Center for American Liberty with a Gold rating for its commitment to transparency.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Guardian pressed Trammell to clarify whether CAL paid for none, some, or all of Dhillon’s PR services with Praetorian, but received no response.The Guardian also emailed Praetorian and the CAL clients Ngo, Cole and O’Hanlon, asking each whether they were paying for Praetorian’s themselves, or being subsidized by CAL.Although Ngo frequently screenshots and pastes reporters’ questions to his 1.3 million-follower Twitter account, neither he nor the other CAL clients responded.Social media posts suggest Shupe, the Praetorian boss, and Harmeet Dhillon have a warm personal friendship.In a January 2022 Instagram post, Shupe described Dhillon as “my favorite client”. The same month, Dhillon described Shupe on Twitter as the “best PR pro in CA”. In another Shupe Instagram post the previous October, the pair posed, smiling with the far-right congressman and former Ohio State assistant wrestling coach, Jim Jordan.Apart from managing PR for CAL, Dhillon, attorneys from her law firm and CAL and Dhillon Law clients, Praetorian lists various west coast Republican officeholders as clients, including Dhillon’s California RNC colleague Shawn Steel.According to his LinkedIn page, Shupe has been a Republican party office holder since 2011, serving variously as vice-chair of the California College Republicans, executive director of the San Francisco Republican party, and as chair of the Contra Costa county Republican party since 2018. He was communications director for the failed California gubernatorial campaign of John Cox in 2018, and a consultant in the former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer’s failed attempt to displace Gavin Newsom in a 2021 recall election.Shupe did not respond to an emailed request for comment.Harrington, the non-profit ethics expert, explained that financial transparency was not just important for donors, and that “the public has an interest” in knowing how the finances of tax-exempt organizations are run.“Non-profits have the luxury of being tax exempt,” Harrington said, adding that “the rest of us pay more tax to support non-profits” as a result.“Transparency is important so that the world knows that this money is being spent properly.” More

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      Amazon and Google fund anti-abortion lawmakers through complex shell game

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      As North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban is due to come into effect on 1 July, an analysis from the non-profit Center for Political Accountability (CPA) shows several major corporations donated large sums to a Republican political organization which in turn funded groups working to elect anti-abortion state legislators.The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) received donations of tens of thousands of dollars each from corporations including Comcast, Intuit, Wells Fargo, Amazon, Bank of America and Google last year, the CPA’s analysis of IRS filings shows. The contributions were made in the months after Politico published a leaked supreme court decision indicating that the court would end the right to nationwide abortion access.Google contributed $45,000 to the RSLC after the leak of the draft decision, according to the CPA’s review of the tax filings. Others contributed even more in the months after the leak, including Amazon ($50,000), Intuit ($100,000) and Comcast ($147,000).Google, Amazon, Comcast, Wells Fargo and Bank of America did not respond to requests for comment. An Intuit spokesperson pointed out that the company also donates to Democratic political organizations, and that “our financial support does not indicate a full endorsement of every position taken by an individual policymaker or organization.“Intuit is non-partisan and works with policymakers and leaders from both sides of the aisle to advocate for our customers,” an Intuit spokesperson said in a statement. “We believe engagement with policymakers is essential to a robust democracy and political giving is just one of the many ways Intuit engages on behalf of its customers, employees, and the communities it serves.”A Bank of America spokesperson pointed to the company’s policy that donations to so-called 527 organizations such as the RSLC come with the caveat that they only be used for operational and administrative purposes, not to support any candidates or ballot initiatives. The CPA, meanwhile, argues that since the RSLC’s operations are explicitly designed to support candidates and ballot initiatives, such a policy is a distinction without a difference.Although these companies did not directly give these vast sums to North Carolina’s anti-abortion lawmakers, the CPA’s analysis is a case study in how corporate contributions to organizations such as the RSLC can end up being funneled into anti-abortion causes. When Republican state legislators successfully overturned a veto from the Democratic governor last month to pass the upcoming abortion ban, nine of lawmakers voting to overturn the veto had received campaign contributions from a group with links to the RSLC.The RSLC, which works to elect Republican lawmakers and promote rightwing policies at the state level, is at the top of a chain of spending and donations which eventually connected to rightwing candidates in North Carolina. This type of spending, which relies on channeling money through various third-party groups from larger organizations, is a common part of modern political campaign financing.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn this case, the RSLC gave $5m to the Good Government Coalition political organization between June and November last year, which in turn gave $6.45m to the rightwing political group Citizens for a Better North Carolina. Finally, that organization gave $1m in independent expenditures to support nine anti-abortion state lawmakers who later voted to overturn the governor’s veto of the abortion bill.These donations are evidence that corporations are proving to be complicit in the broader movement to limit abortion rights, the CPA non-profit argues, even as many of these companies publicly tout women’s empowerment and employee access to healthcare.“Companies need to know where their money is ending up,” said Bruce Freed, the president of the CPA. “This should be a lesson – a lesson that they should have taken a while ago but that frankly is driven home right now with what has been happening in North Carolina.”Several of the companies, including Intuit and Bank of America, made statements last year offering to cover healthcare costs for employees who needed to travel out of state for medical procedures, in some cases explicitly mentioning abortion as an example. Google sent an email to employees acknowledging that Roe v Wade had been overturned and informed them about options for relocating to Google offices in different states.“Equity is extraordinarily important to us as a company, and we share concerns about the impact this ruling will have on people’s health, lives and careers,” the email stated.The companies which donated to the RSLC are also large donors to Democratic political groups, and tech giants such as Google and Amazon tend to spend millions each year more broadly on lobbying efforts.The RSLC, whose board members include former lawmakers, governors and White House advisers such as Karl Rove, boasts on its website that it spent more than $45m on supporting Republican candidates during the 2021 and 2022 election cycle.In addition to North Carolina’s abortion ban, South Carolina also passed a bill last week that would criminalize most abortions at six weeks into a pregnancy – generally a period before people know they are pregnant. A state judge issued a temporary halt on the ban within hours of Governor Henry McMaster signing it into law, and it will now be reviewed by the state supreme court.North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban is scheduled to go into effect on 1 July, drastically curtailing abortion access as many other southern states have passed near total bans. More

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      Ron DeSantis expected to formally enter 2024 presidential race next week

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      The rightwing Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, will officially begin his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination next week, it was widely reported on Thursday.According to Reuters, DeSantis, 44, is expected to file Federal Election Commission paperwork declaring his candidacy next Thursday, 25 May, to coincide with a donor meeting in Miami, with a more formal launch the following week.The invitation for the 25 May event stated that donors would be put to “work”, a source told Reuters. The Wall Street Journal said DeSantis donors were beginning “a fundraising blitz”. CNN said 100 hotel rooms had been reserved for the Miami event. The New York Times said DeSantis was likely to release a video accompanying his entry to the race.CNN and ABC cited Republican sources as saying a formal announcement would follow in Dunedin, Florida, the governor’s home town. CNN also said a source “cautioned that the planning remains a moving target and DeSantis is known to surprise even his closest allies with last-minute changes”. ABC said the governor’s plans were “in flux”.DeSantis did not comment.A run has been long expected, particularly since DeSantis won a landslide victory over his Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, in his re-election campaign last year.DeSantis is a clear second in Republican primary polling, though he has fallen far behind the frontrunner, the former president Donald Trump. On Thursday, the RealClearPolitics polling average put Trump more than 36 points ahead.Trump faces unprecedented legal jeopardy but has eagerly capitalised on it.In separate cases in New York, the former president pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal counts related to a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels and was found liable, and fined $5m, for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll.Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, including inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, are the subject of state and federal investigations. The US Department of Justice is investigating his retention of classified material. The attorney general of New York launched a civil lawsuit over his business practices.Trump has stepped up attacks on DeSantis but the rest of the Republican field continues to lag far behind.Declared candidates include the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and Asa Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas. Tim Scott, a South Carolina senator, is expected to announce next week. Mike Pence, a former Indiana governor and Trump’s vice-president, is reported to be close to announcing.In a detailed report about DeSantis’s preparations, the New York Times recently said: “In six short months from November to May, Mr DeSantis’s 2024 run has faltered before it has even begun.“Allies have abandoned him. Tales of his icy interpersonal touch have spread. Donors have groused. And a legislative session in Tallahassee designed to burnish his conservative credentials has instead coincided with a drop in the polls.”On Thursday, Reuters said DeSantis’s insistence on staying out of the race until the Florida legislature completed its spring session rattled some donors who wanted him to start firing back at Trump.Nonetheless, DeSantis and his advisers hoped to use the Florida session as a springboard to an announcement. In turn, Florida Republicans gave the governor a string of political victories.They expanded a state school voucher program, prohibited the use of public money in sustainable investing, scrapped diversity programs at public universities, allowed for the permitless carry of concealed weapons and banned almost all abortions.On Wednesday, DeSantis signed a slate of bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights.“We need to let our kids just be kids,” DeSantis said at the signing, at a Christian school in Tampa. “What we’ve said in Florida is we are going to remain a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy.”In response, Joe Saunders, senior political director of Equality Florida, an advocacy group, told reporters DeSantis sees freedom “as a campaign slogan … the nation should be on high alert, because, today, we are all Floridians”.Democrats think such actions – also including a high-profile fight with Disney over its opposition to his policies on the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues – could place DeSantis too far right of the mainstream to beat Joe Biden in the general election.Even Trump has suggested so, telling the Messenger this week “many people within the pro-life movement feel [the Florida abortion ban] was too harsh”.DeSantis has also made high-profile missteps, including on foreign policy, for example telling Fox News the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a “territorial dispute” – a position from which he swiftly retreated.But in general election polling, DeSantis and Biden are in a near dead heat. The RCP average gives DeSantis the lead, by half a point.The governor also has powerful help. According to the New York Times, he is “likely to start with more money in an outside group than any Republican primary candidate in history”.DeSantis, the paper said, “has more than $80m expected to be transferred from his state account to his Super Pac, Never Back Down, which has also raised more than $30m, in addition to having tens of millions more in donor commitments”.Never Back Down, which can raise unlimited funds, has been hiring staff in early voting states and running TV ads.The Journal reported that on Thursday the Super Pac was due to host a call for potential supporters and donors. An invitation read: “All solicitations of funds in connection with this event are by Never Back Down … and not by Governor Ron DeSantis.”Nonetheless, DeSantis was due to join the call. More

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      Senator calls on Republican mega-donor to explain Clarence Thomas gifts

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      The Democratic chairperson of the US Senate finance committee, Ron Wyden, has written to the Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow demanding an end to “unacceptable” secrecy around his gifts to the conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.“The secrecy surrounding your dealings with Justice Thomas is simply unacceptable,” Wyden, from Oregon, wrote in the open letter.“The American public deserves a full accounting of the full extent of your largesse towards Justice Thomas, including whether these gifts complied with all relevant federal tax and ethics laws.”Crow’s friendship with and gifts to Thomas have long been known, but bombshell reporting this month by ProPublica placed the issue firmly back in the spotlight.A first report detailed extensive gift-giving including travel on yachts and planes and stays at luxury resorts. A second report described how Crow bought from Thomas a house in which the justice’s mother lives. Almost no such gifts were declared.Thomas denied wrongdoing, saying he had been advised he did not have to declare such largesse. Crow claimed never to have discussed politics with Thomas – or his wife, the rightwing activist Ginni Thomas, a beneficiary of Crow’s donations – or to have discussed business before the court.Observers said Thomas broke the law. Outlets including the Guardian reported ways in which groups linked to Crow did have business before the court, or lobbied it through amicus briefs, while Thomas was on it.Confirmed in 1991, Thomas is the senior conservative on a court now tilted 6-3 to the right after three appointments by the Donald Trump White House. Progressives have demanded action against Thomas over the Crow affair, including impeachment and removal. But as Republicans hold the US House, and as the supreme court essentially governs itself, the chance of serious consequences remains remote.The Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee, Dick Durbin, has invited the chief justice, John Roberts, to testify on 2 May.“History is going to judge the Roberts court by his decision as to reform, and I think this is an invitation for him to present it to the American people,” Durbin told NBC on Sunday.But other Democrats have said invitations, and perhaps subpoenas, should have gone to Thomas and Crow instead.In his letter to Crow, Wyden said he was seeking “information related to reports of undisclosed gifts and payments for the personal benefit” of Thomas, “including private real estate transactions and the complimentary use of your private jet and super-yacht.“This unprecedented arrangement between a wealthy benefactor and a supreme court justice raises serious concerns related to federal tax and ethics laws.”Wyden also cited federal tax law, writing: “While ethics experts disagree with Justice Thomas’s assertion that these benefits provided by you qualify under the ‘personal hospitality’ exception in ethics rules, the Internal Revenue Code provides no such exceptions for transfers of a gratuitous or personal nature.“… While there are exemptions from the gift tax … none of these exemptions appear to apply to any gifts you made to Justice Thomas.”Requesting extensive details of Thomas’s travel with Crow and the Georgia property deal, Wyden also asked for “detailed accounting of federal gift tax returns filed with the IRS for any gifts made to Justice Thomas”, including details of any gifts or payments over $1,000 not covered by the questions about travel and property. More

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      Supreme court justices think selves exempt from rules, top Democrat says

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      Dick Durbin, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee leading a push for supreme court ethics reform, accused the top court of being a panel of “nine justices [who] believe they are exempt from the basic standards of disclosure”.His claim came amid growing criticism of the conservative justice Clarence Thomas, whose judicial record is under scrutiny after he became embroiled in scandal over taking undeclared gifts from a Republican mega-donor.The last US Congress considered a bill demanding the inclusion of the supreme court in existing judicial conference regulations but it did not clear the Senate and the chief justice, John Roberts, has been mostly silent on the issue.Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Durbin said he hoped Roberts would take advantage of an invitation to testify before the judiciary committee on 2 May, to explain how he intended to handle ethics reform.“This is John Roberts’s court,” the Illinois Democrat said. “We are dealing with a situation where history will remember it as such. He is an articulate, well-schooled man when it comes to presenting his point of view. I’m sure he’ll do well before the committee.“But history is going to judge the Roberts court by his decision as to reform, and I think this is an invitation for him to present it to the American people.”Asked why he didn’t ask Thomas to appear, Durbin said: “I know what would happen to that invitation. It would be ignored. It is far better from my point of view to have the chief justice here.”Durbin’s statement that he thought all nine justices considered themselves above ethics standards came when he was asked what a code of conduct might look like.“[It] would look an awful lot like the code that applies to the rest of federal government and other judges, and basically would have timely disclosures of transactions like this purchase of the justice’s mother’s home,” he said, referring to Thomas’s failure to declare the sale to the mega-donor Harlan Crow.“It would also give standards for recusal so that if there’s going to be conflict before the court and recusal, it’d be explained publicly, and investigations of questions that are raised. It’s the same across the board code of conduct, ethics laws, applied to the court.“Why this supreme court, these nine justices, believe they are exempt from the basic standards of disclosure, I cannot explain.”Durbin’s invitation to Roberts did not mention Thomas, referring instead to “a steady stream of revelations regarding justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally”.The court’s “decade-long failure” to address those problems has “contributed to a crisis of public confidence”, Durbin wrote.He said the 2 May hearing would focus on “the ethical rules that govern the justices of the supreme court and potential reforms to those rules”, noting that the “scope of your testimony can be limited to these subjects, and that you would not be expected to answer questions from senators regarding any other matters”. More

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      Republican donor pauses Ron DeSantis funding over abortion and book banning

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      A top Republican donor said he had paused plans to fund Ron DeSantis’s expected presidential run because of the Florida governor’s “stance on abortion and book banning”.Thomas Peterffy, founder of Interactive Brokers, a digital trading platform, told the Financial Times: “I have put myself on hold. Because of his stance on abortion and book banning … myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry.”Peterffy also noted that DeSantis “seems to have lost some momentum”.DeSantis has not declared a run but is widely expected to do so. He is the closest challenger to Donald Trump in polling of the Republican primary field but despite winning re-election in a landslide and signing into law a succession of hard-right policies, he has not closed on the former president.Last week, DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban. Nationally, Democrats seized on the move, threats to abortion rights having worked to Republicans’ disadvantage in numerous recent elections.DeSantis has also tried to remove books dealing with LGBTQ+ issues from Florida public schools, while other laws have loosened gun rights and targeted Black voters.After Peterffy’s intervention, the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, a leading voice on Trump and Republican electoral politics, noted: “A major donor finally goes on record with what has been a whisper: donors are getting worried.”But as Haberman also noted, Peterffy still gave himself “a lot of wiggle room to resume with DeSantis without fully breaking from him”.Peterffy said he still supported DeSantis in his fight with Disney, one of the largest employers in Florida, over LGBTQ+ rights.The company has pushed back against DeSantis over a “don’t say gay” law pertaining to the teaching of sexuality and gender in public schools.DeSantis retaliated by attacking Disney’s self-governing powers in the state. The entertainment giant responded, seeking to block the move.Petterfy said: “I think it’s insane that a company would take a stand on gender issues.”Nor did he say he would not support DeSantis at all.“I am more reluctant to back him,” he said. “We are waiting to see who among the primary candidates is most likely to be able to win the general, and then put all of our firepower behind them.” More

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      Harvard to rename school after top Republican donor following $300m gift

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      Harvard University will rename its graduate school of arts and sciences after billionaire hedge fund executive and Republican megadonor Kenneth Griffin, the institution announced on Tuesday, after a new $300m contribution brought Griffin’s total support of his alma mater to more than half a billion dollars.Griffin, 54, is the founder and chief executive of Citadel, a $59bn hedge fund, and Citadel Securities, which trades securities. He is the 35th richest person in the world, with a net worth of $34.9bn, according to the Bloomberg billionaires index.Griffin will be just the fourth individual to have a school at Harvard named after him in exchange for a donation, according to the Harvard Crimson student newspaper. His name will carry controversy thanks to Griffin’s stature as a major political donor to rightwing politicians and his company’s investments in firearm and ammunition manufacturers.Griffin’s companies held investments in gun and ammunition manufacturers worth more than $139m as of March 2022, according to Chicago NPR affiliate WBEZ. These included shares in US gun manufacturers Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger, as well as US ammunition makers Olin Corp, Vista Outdoor, and Ammo Inc.The investments became a matter of public debate in 2022 when Griffin poured millions into a Republican candidate for the governorship of Illinois. Griffin accused sitting Democrat governor JB Pritzker of failing to combat crime in Chicago, where Griffin’s companies were based. He subsequently moved his companies’ headquarters to Miami.A WBEZ analysis of firearms recovered by Chicago police from violent crime incidents over five years found that nearly one in four were produced by companies in which Citadel invests.At the time, Citadel disputed the importance of the investments, telling WBEZ that they made up “less than .01% of our portfolio” and arguing that a connection to gun violence was “quite a stretch”.Griffin rejected a call by the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper for his companies to divest from gun and ammunition makers, writing in a letter to the editor that “40% of American households own a gun” and that “the violence destroying our city is not the result of … legal gun purchases, but rather a failure to prosecute criminals, a lack of support for police, and progressive left legislation that prioritizes criminals ahead of law-abiding citizens”.He added: “I will not embrace today’s cancel culture nor engage in amateurish virtue-signaling based on blind ideology.”Griffin is also a major political donor and one of the most prominent backers of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, whom he has urged to run for president in 2024. A one-time fundraiser for Barack Obama, Griffin gave nearly $60m to Republican candidates for federal positions in 2022, according to Politico.Griffin’s close association with DeSantis is another potential reputational issue for Harvard. The Florida governor has staked out extreme positions on education and LGBTQ rights, including by signing the so-called “don’t say gay” bill that restricts Florida teachers from discussing topics related to sexuality and gender identity and banning the state’s public high schools from teaching a new advanced placement course in African American studies.This year, DeSantis unveiled a legislative proposal to remake Florida’s public colleges and universities that included banning critical race theory – an academic theory developed by Black scholars at Harvard Law School – and diversity and inclusion programs and drastically reducing the protections afforded by academic tenure.Asked to comment about Griffin’s association with DeSantis and his policies, a spokesperson for Citadel said: “Ken respects and employs people of all backgrounds.”Griffin’s gift to Harvard was unrestricted, the school said, and will go to the faculty of arts and sciences, which includes the undergraduate college and PhD programs. In 2014, Griffin made a $150m donation to the elite private university, primarily to fund financial aid. At the time, it was the largest single donation in the institution’s history.“Ken’s exceptional generosity and steadfast devotion enable excellence and opportunity at Harvard,” said Harvard president Larry Bacow in a statement. “I am deeply and personally appreciative of the confidence he has placed in us – and in our mission – to do good in the world.”Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Got a tip on this story? Email Stephanie.Kirchgaessner@theguardian.com More