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Elon Musk waves to the crowd before former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on Oct. 5, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Musk becomes GOP mega-donor, Biden announces new military aid for Ukraine, Mysterious white blobs turn up on Canadian beaches, Archdiocese of LA to pay millions in childhood sexual abuse settlement
75 million: Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, gave $75 million to America PAC — a pro-Trump super PAC that he established back in May — across July and September, a campaign finance filing showed on Tuesday. This makes Musk, who endorsed former President Donald Trump in July and has since appeared on the campaign trail with him, a Republican mega-donor.
425 million: President Joe Biden announced a new $425 million military aid package for Ukraine on Wednesday and spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The package includes “additional air defense capability, air-to-ground munitions, armored vehicles, and critical munitions to meet Ukraine’s urgent needs,” the White House said, adding that Zelensky spoke with the president about his victory plan and “tasked their teams to engage in further consultations on next steps.”
40,000: In news that is both gross and captivating, mysterious white blobs are washing up on beaches in Newfoundland. So far, marine scientists seem stumped, and authorities are investigating the blobs’ origins and whether they’re safe to touch. A Facebook group of roughly 40,000 people, Beachcombers of Newfoundland and Labrador, helped bring attention to these blobs of unknown origin.
880 million: The Archdiocese of Los Angeles — the largest Catholic dioceses in the US — is paying $880 million in a childhood sexual abuse settlement involving over 1,300 claims, including some that go back to the 1940s. “I am sorry for every one of these incidents, from the bottom of my heart,” Archbishop José H. Gomez wrote in a letter. “My hope is that this settlement will provide some measure of healing.”
Ukraine: Biggest foreign policy test for the Biden administration
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, shares his perspective on Biden's strategy on the Ukraine crisis.
How has Biden's response to the Ukraine crisis been so far?
Well, Ukraine is emerging as a major foreign policy test for the Biden administration who came into office seeming to want to set the Russia issue aside so they could focus on US policy in Asia. The Biden administration wants a diplomatic response because diplomacy is probably all they have. In public opinion polling, Americans say they do not want to get involved militarily in Ukraine, even if Russian invades, but near majority of Americans say they're not following the issue closely either, which means many of them could probably be convinced one way or the other. The White House efforts to deterrence have included a clever play to foil Russia's invasion plans by releasing intelligence about misinformation President Putin was planning on releasing as a pretext for invasion.
But one thing they have not yet done are sanctions, which members of Congress are pushing for to do in advance of a Russian invasion. If Putin invades, sanctions are likely to come very fast for Russian state-owned banks, individuals involved in the invasion, and against anyone globally for trading in new Russian debt. This will cut off a number of critical financial lifelines for the Russians. It'll have significant cost for the West, however, as it could dramatically increase energy prices and potentially cut off supplies for Western European countries that rely on Russian gas.
Politically, if the Biden administration's unable to stop an invasion, it will contribute to a narrative that undermines the foreign policy credibility that Biden ran on in 2020, and will be another major drag on Biden's approval ratings, which have already suffered due to high inflation and the ongoing pandemic.
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