#Jeff Yass

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Jeff Yass just bought Trump. Here’s what he stands to gain.

The right-wing billionaire and TikTok investor is about to help the former president add billions of dollars to his net worth. This is what oligarchy looks like.

March 25, 2024, 4:42 PM EDT

By Ja'han Jones

Billionaire investor Jeff Yass is playing his Trump card.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Friday that the right-wing megadonor and major TikTok investor is a part owner of the company that merged with Donald Trump’s media company, which owns Truth Social, the former president’s struggling social media platform. The head-scratching deal stands to add billions of dollars to Trump’s net worth.

Yass’ name recently started popping up in news reports after Trump denounced legislation in Congress that could ban TikTok unless the social media outlet is sold from its China-based parent company. This was a major reversal of Trump’s previous opposition to TikTok and came after Yass met with Trump in Florida, with the backdrop of the former president’s mounting legal fees only adding to suspicion that Yass essentially could be purchasing a presidential candidate.

Trump claimed afterward that he hadn’t spoken with Yass about TikTok, and Yass is a major backer of efforts to promote school privatization, so I guess it’s possible that the right-wing billionaire didn’t say a thing about one of his most prominent investments. (Yass recently declined a request for comment from NBC News.)

But it certainly looks like Trump is under Yass’ thumb now.

It also looks like TikTok — or at minimum, one of its key investors — has just tried to one-up other social media companies in Big Tech’s ongoing battles over influence in Washington. Two years ago, The Washington Post revealed that Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, had waged a behind-the-scenes pressure campaign that involved trying to get media outlets and lawmakers to scrutinize TikTok more heavily. And although Meta can’t take total credit, that effort does seem to have helped get us to the present-day scenario, with a possible TikTok ban under consideration at the federal level and several other bans enacted at the state level.

With Trump, Yass appears to be employing the oligarchic approach to protecting an investment: transfer heaps of cash to a desperate presidential candidate and hope they do your bidding.

☝️😡🤬

[mysharona1987]

Eh, this was the most predictable twist ever.

[odinsblog]

🗣️Republicans are funding conservative Democrats to primary progressives

Republican megadonor Jeff Yass recently gave to a super PAC that is trying to topple a progressive incumbent in Pittsburgh.

The Moderate PAC, an outside group that aims to support centrist Democrats, has been boosting a primary challenge to Rep. Summer Lee, a member of “The Squad.” Lee and her supporters are quick to point out that Yass, a Pennsylvania businessperson, donated $1 million to the PAC in 2022, when it spent in support of Democratic Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Don Davis of North Carolina.

Yass is a major donor to the conservative Club for Growth. He has also been in headlines recently amid the congressional push for TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company — which Yass has investments in — to sell the app. Strong said that Yass “has no lean in this other than he likes a moderate Democrat, as opposed to a far-left Democrat.”

Moderate PAC released its second ad on Tuesday, accusing Lee of “opposing” President Joe Biden. The group has placed more than $500,000 on television and digital advertising since the beginning of the year, according to ad tracker AdImpact. (Patel’s campaign has spent around $150,000.) Strong said that future investments will be dependent on fundraising, but the group will “stay in the race and keep up at the same pace as long as we can.”

Outside players are also coming to Lee’s aid. Working Families Party, the Muslim advocacy group Emgage and Justice Democrats are planning to spend $500,000 combined on TV and digital advertisements boosting the incumbent, said Ari Kamen, mid-Atlantic regional director at the Working Families Party.

Lee in a statement decried “super PACs bankrolled by Republican billionaires,” saying they “have no place in our Democratic primaries or our democracy.”

“I am never going to stop defending our abortion rights, protecting our public schools, or demanding billionaires pay their fair share, so I welcome being an enemy to an extremist like Jeffrey Yass,” Lee said.

(continue reading)

[teachanarchy]

We Found The Most Powerful Billionaire You've Never Heard Of

[garudabluffs]

Trump SPAC Gets INSTANTLY INFILTRATED by Foreign Ties

Mar 26, 2024 Is Trump a Presidential candidate whose policies are FOR SALE to the highest bidder? DID HE JUST CHANGE A POLICY POSITION OUT OF DIRE FINANCIAL NEED? Michael Popok explores MAGA mega-donor Jeff Yass who owns 15 percent of Tik Tok AND who also recently GAVE TRUMP LOTS OF MONEY BY taking a large stake in Trump’s public media company, and Trump’s subsequent flip flop to SUPPORT the Chinese Government owning Tik Tok when he took the opposite position as President.

Mar 26, 2024Is Trump a Presidential candidate whose policies are FOR SALE to the highest bidder? DID HE JUST CHANGE A POLICY POSITION OUT OF DIRE FINANCIAL NEED? Michael Popok explores MAGA mega-donor Jeff Yass who owns 15 percent of Tik Tok AND who also recently GAVE TRUMP LOTS OF MONEY BY taking a large stake in Trump’s public media company, and Trump’s subsequent flip flop to SUPPORT the Chinese Government owning Tik Tok when he took the opposite position as President.

[ketallpot]

Fuck billionaires, truly

[liturgiya]

ive had this in my files for too long. enjoy

[pk-starst0rm]

mental illness won today so earthbound splatoon

[moderat50]

Trump Turn To Other Billionaires For Money

Trump has spent little of his billions on his elections. Why do people give money to the rich but give little to the poor? Doesn't the bible say give to the poor?

"former president once supported banning the popular social-media app TikTok but reversed his view after meeting with the Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, who has a 15% stake in ByteDance, TikTok's Beijing parent company." Seems swampy to me!

[readingsquotes]

"Summer Lee was one of just 37 House Democrats who cast courageous votes last Saturday against providing $14.3 billion in unconditional military aid to Israel. The Pennsylvania representative’s reason for breaking with President Biden and House Democratic leaders on the issue was sound; since last fall, she has been an ardent champion of a cease-fire to end Israeli’s assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians—most of them women and children—and led to a crisis so severe that the enclave is now on the brink of mass starvation.

...

But Lee’s “no” vote came in the context of an immediate electoral reality that distinguished her from her colleagues. After having been nominated two years ago by the narrowest of margins, she faced what was supposed to be another serious Democratic primary challenge. Her opponent, local elected official Bhavini Patel, made Lee’s advocacy for a cease-fire and a new US approach to Israel and Palestine a key focus of her campaign. Aided by more than $600,000 in super PAC spending by hedge-fund billionaire Jeff Yass, Patel claimed that she would be a “strong partner to our president,” which was read by many as a reference to Biden’s support for Israel. That made Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary election, coming just days after the aid vote, a critical test for Lee in particular and cease-fire supporters in general.

More cautious and compromising politicians might have avoided a supposedly controversial vote on the eve of a high-profile primary. But Lee went with her conscience.

And then she won her primary by a landslide.

Lee’s 61-39 victory margin was a powerful rebuke to those who imagine that progressive advocates for a cease-fire and justice for Palestinians are necessarily vulnerable in this year’s Democratic primaries.

...

“Opposing genocide is good politics and good policy. #CeasefireNow.

[odinsblog]

A super PAC funded by conservative megadonor Jeff Yass has spent more than half a million dollars in recent weeks urging Pennsylvania Democrats to support a primary challenger running against progressive House Democrat Summer Lee.

The Moderate PAC, which was formed in 2021, is airing ads in Pennsylvania’s 12th District that attack Lee for what it calls her “extreme socialist agenda,” and calling on Democratic primary voters to choose Lee’s challenger Bhavini Patel. The ads go after Lee for criticizing President Biden and the Democratic Party, and for voting against the debt ceiling bill negotiated between Biden and former House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Lee is a member of the so-called “Squad” of progressive House Democrats that has stood apart from Democratic Party leaders on numerous policy issues, including most recently on U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

The super PAC has spent at least $586,000 on running the ads since the middle of March, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The only donation that The Moderate PAC has ever reported receiving is $1 million from Yass that was given to the group in July 2022.

Yass is a billionaire investor who former President Trump recently said was “fantastic” after the pair connected at a donor retreat in Florida.

Yass has donated more than $62 million to conservative super PAC Club for Growth Action, and $18 million to School Freedom Fund, a Club for Growth PAC that supports candidates who believe parents should receive taxpayer dollars to spend with private education companies of their choosing. Yass lives in Pennsylvania and has a net worth of about $27 billion, according to Forbes.

Yass has also donated heavily to congressional Republicans. Last year he gave $10 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC affiliated with House GOP leadership, and in 2018 he gave $200,000 to its upper chamber equivalent the Senate Leadership Fund.

(continue reading)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Eli Clifton at The Guardian:

Top Republican donor and TikTok investor Jeff Yass is connected to over $16m in funding to anti-Muslim and pro-Israel groups that have advocated for a US war with Iran and other militaristic policies in the Middle East, according to an investigation by the Guardian and Responsible Statecraft.

Media reports on Yass, the billionaire co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, a trading and technology firm, have focused on his outsized role in the Republican party, to which he is now the largest political donor in the 2024 election cycle, contributing more than $46m thus far. Yass has also emerged as the biggest funder of a group targeting progressive representative Summer Lee in her primary race, suggesting an interest in influencing Democratic primary outcomes, not just in boosting Republicans. But little has been reported about his involvement in funding groups advocating a pro-Israel US foreign policy, hawkish US policies in the Middle East and support for theorists whom experts described as extreme anti-Muslim conspiracists.

Leading Yass’s philanthropy in the foreign policy space is $7.9m contributed to Jerusalem Online University between 2014 and 2019 by a grant-making group at which he once served as one of three directors. A Jewish Daily Forward investigation into the group in 2011 found that the website promotes itself as a source of educational materials about the Middle East and Israel, but the website’s actual message is far more biased, the Forward found. “On its website and its promotional materials, Jerusalem Online U hardly portrays itself as a center for neutral academic inquiry,” the Forward wrote. “In fact, it boasts an explicitly pro-Israel mission that seems distinctly at odds with academic principles. In one advertisement for its services, the Jerusalem Online U site’s blog features a video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling Congress last May that ‘Israel is what is right’ about the Middle East. The words ‘Be a Part of What’s Right’ appear on screen as he speaks.”

The contributions came from the Claws Foundation, an entity at which Yass served as a director alongside Arthur Dantchik, a co-founder of Susquehanna, and attorney Alan P Dye. Dye did not return calls for comment. The Kids Connect Charitable Fund – which does not list Yass or Dantchik as directors but listed the Claws Foundation as a “related tax-exempt organization” in an IRS filing and was identified as an arm of both men’s philanthropy by Haaretz – contributed another $3.48m to Jerusalem Online University’s parent organization, Imagination Productions. The Claws Foundation also issued a $10,000 grant to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces in 2011 and $35,000 in grants, between 2010 and 2011, to the Center for Security Policy, an anti-Muslim and conspiracy theory-promoting group founded by Frank Gaffney, whom the Southern Policy Law Center describes as “one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes” and the Anti-Defamation League describes as a chief promulgator of the conspiracy theory “that the US government has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood and that a number of political figures have actual ties to the group”. The Center for Security Policy vice-president, Clare Lopez, has said: “When Muslims follow their doctrine they become jihadists.”

In 2013 to 2014, the Claws Foundation sent $250,000 to the David Horowitz Freedom Center, another central promoter of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. Horowitz, whom the group is named after and who serves as its president, once complained that Muslims were a “protected species in this country” and said he was “wait[ing] for the day when the good Muslims step forward” at a Brooklyn College event in 2011. “The fact Yass is donating to Gaffney and Horowitz’s organizations shows how extreme his politics are,” said Tommy Vietor, former national security council spokesperson under President Obama. “They are beyond Trump. They are OG conspiracy theorists. Gaffney in particular.”

[...] Trump has a track record of shifting positions on Israel and Iran to align with political mega-donors. Only after securing the nomination in 2016 did Trump pivot to more militaristic positions in the Middle East – committing to withdrawing the US from the JCPOA, moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and supporting an unconditionally pro-Israel US approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – positions in lockstep with his biggest political patrons in the general election, the late Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam.

Top GOP funder and billionaire Jeffrey Yass has donated over $16M into pro-Israel Apartheid and anti-Islam causes.

[kp777]

NYTimes: Progressive Allies Rally With Pittsburgh Congresswoman as Primary Looms

[conniejoworld]

he doesn't care- "feed me, feed me!"