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MELINDA GATES is resigning from the Gates Foundation.

She is getting $12.5 billion for her own work.

Huge. MELINDA GATES and her aides had long said this would never happen, and that she was committed to her joint philanthropic work with Bill.

But imagine co-running a massive business with your ex-husband. It ain't easy!

Melinda has long been troubled by the Epstein allegations.

NEWS —

Eric Levine, a prominent GOP fundraiser in New York for Nikki Haley who pledged to never vote for Trump after Jan. 6, just sent an email to his network that I have seen.

"Due to a dramatic change in circumstances ... I have decided I will vote for Trump in November."

👀


Republican donors — even anti-Trump donors — are coming home for Donald Trump.

"Unfortunately, as much as I -- like 70% of my fellow Americans -- wanted something better, the November election will present us with the binary choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The question becomes: as between the two, who will leave a better, safer, and more prosperous America for my grandchildren? Hands down, the answer is Trump."

Greetings — I just left the courtroom after three hours of testimony this morning from Caroline Ellison.

She has methodically and unemotionally showing how Sam Bankman-Fried lied to creditors.

Yes, she has receipts. One tidbit —

Caroline Ellison testified that Sam Bankman-Fried was really, really interested in raising money from Mohammad bin Salman.

🚨🚨Huge money-in-politics news.

The Southern District of New York is dropping its federal prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried on campaign-finance charges, per new letter from prosecutors.

“The Government does not intend to proceed to trial on the campaign contributions count.”… https://t.co/lnJ25NcB6Mtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
This has massive ramifications for:

— Gabe Bankman-Fried, who led SBF’s political operation and now seems unlikely to face charges

— Ryan Salame, the GOP donor prosecutors have been encircling

— Maybe Nishad Singh, but he already pled guilty to campaign-finance violations

Strange Bedfellows Alert —

@DavidSacks is doing a fundraising dinner for @RoKhanna later this month, per invite.

Tickets from $3,300 to $13,200. @DavidSacks @RoKhanna Sacks is a center-right VC who is becoming a bigger and bigger player in Republican fundraising.

Khanna is a Democratic congressman who co-chaired Bernie Sanders's campaign and might run for the nomination for U.S. Senate.

But they're both big on protecting free-speech rights.

Sequoia’s @Alfred_Lin in an interview with @Cookie on the firm’s investment in FTX:

“The SEC has a lot of smart people. They’ll get to the bottom of this.”

Believe this is Sequoia’s first public interview about their … historically bad bet in Sam Bankman-Fried. twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Sequoia’s Alfred Lin on investing in FTX:

“The thing that gets me to reassess is not that we made the investment. It’s the year-and-half relationship working afterwards — I still didn’t see it. And that’s difficult.”

A few remainders from my interview with Sam Bankman-Fried.

"You probably wish the trial was tomorrow," I told him.

"Part of me certainly does,” SBF said, because he wanted to “try and return things a little bit more to the facts of the matter.”

puck.news/the-only-livin… Sam Bankman-Fried is very isolated. He said he has not talked with Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh or Gary Wang since mid-November.

I asked if he had any best friends from school or childhood

“A lot of the people who I was closest to were my colleagues."

puck.news/the-only-livin…

🚨 JUST IN —

The entire team behind the FTX Future Fund, the Sam Bankman-Fried philanthropy, has resigned.

A holy-shit moment in the world of effective altruism. "We are now unable to perform our work or process grants, and we have fundamental questions about the legitimacy and integrity of the business operations that were funding the FTX Foundation and the Future Fund. As a result, we resigned earlier today."

NEW @PuckNews —

The inside story of Peter Thiel's $30 million political experiment in Ohio & Arizona.

What he has told friends about J.D. Vance & Blake Masters.

Why he was so cheap with Mitch McConnell.

And the $20 million he almost donated—but didn't

puck.news/the-achilles-t… @PuckNews NEWS:

Peter Thiel vetted a plan just before Labor Day to spend $20 million to back J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona, but ultimately turned it down.

Would've been a huge investment with tons of consequences across the GOP Senate map.

puck.news/the-achilles-t…

Peter Thiel, kicking things off at Stanford's Academic Freedom conference, says the "antonym of diversity" is "university." Peter Thiel says he wonders whether the "STEM propaganda" is true — whethe the world is really seeing science & technology progress.

"If one could show that the science and technology areas are pretty weak ... this strikes me a decisive, crushing blow" to American universities.

There was tons of inaccurate reporting in ROMANIA that Elon Musk was there over the weekend hosting a massive Halloween party at Dracula's Castle.

Reality is that only Peter Thiel was spotted in the country.

P.S. I am now an expert on Romanian tabloids.

spynews.ro/paparazzi/imag… We ended up with tabloids running fact-checks like this that questioned their own reporting.

NEW —

The Silicon Valley mega-donor pushing Democrats to go for broke on voting rights.

My profile of Karla Jurvetson — and her first big Washington push.

She's dropping money, talking up Chuck Schumer, and thinking of ways to pressure Kirsten Synema.

puck.news/karla-jurvetso… On a conference call last month, Chuck Schumer explained the bind that Democrats were in when it came to voting rights.

One of the first tough questions he fielded came from none other than one of the party's single biggest donors: Karla Jurvetson.

puck.news/karla-jurvetso…

Jeff Bezos's $10 billion philanthropy — the Bezos Earth Fund — is now a lot more public-facing.

Now on social @BezosEarthFund and on the World Wide Web. Here's its manifesto.

bezosearthfund.org Jeff Bezos is the chair of the Earth Fund.

Lauren Sanchez, his girlfriend, is the vice-chair.

And here are its five policy priorities.

What exactly is Big Tech critic Tom Cotton doing in Silicon Valley next month?

Is Tom Steyer's wife, Kat Taylor, running for office?

And why has AOC and the left turned Jeff Bezos into a villain?

Landing in @PuckNews subscribers' inboxes right ... now.

ckarchive.com/b/0vuwh9h686rm @PuckNews One possible 2024 presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis, is appearing at a fundraiser for a possible GOP primary rival, Tom Cotton, next month.

What a world.

ckarchive.com/b/0vuwh9h686rm

This is an amazing leak ... but also not terribly surprising?

1. Billionaires don’t make their money off of income.

2. Billionaires have access to the world’s savviest accountants and lawyers.

I primarily want to know how ProPublica got the data!

propublica.org/article/the-se… This is largely the system working as designed.

Tax avoidance, not tax evasion.

Deductions, philanthropy and other perfectly legal ways to slash someone’s tax bill.

Still amazing to see the numbers in print.

🚀 🚀 Friends, time for Some Personal News:

After four wonderful years at Recode, I am pumped to help launch a new media company later this year.

Money in politics. Philanthropy. Billionaires.

More to come, but for now — smash that subscribe button:

thestratosphere.news/teddy-schleife… For the last six years, I’ve been writing about how the Bill Gateses & Charles Kochs of the world are deploying their billions into soft power that we should unpack, debate and report the hell out of.

If you care about inequality, you need to care about the outrageously wealthy.

🚨🚨Bill and Melinda Gates are getting divorced.

Potentially huge implications for the Gates Foundation.

https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1389316412259270657

Bill and Melinda Gates say they will “continue our work together at the foundation.”

But this obviously will be very complicated!

>@brianmrosenthal and @katieglueck take a look at how Venture for America, Andrew Yang’s nonprofit in the startup world, kinda was a failure. nytimes.com/2021/05/01/nyr… My piece on this theme from during Andrew Yang’s presidential run.

vox.com/recode/2019/6/…

New — a big $25 million gift from Slack founder @stewart and Away CEO @jennifer to UNICEF for Covid work.

The billionaire couple recently created a new charitable foundation to fund their philanthropic work.

https://twitter.com/stewart/status/1387397939178491908

Butterfield here specifically challenges the tech industry to raise another $100 million for the cause.

Look at the stock market, he says. Tech folks can afford it.

https://twitter.com/stewart/status/1387397946803638277?s=21

https://t.co/HVsFgiLLYb

New this weekend —

San Francisco is once again fighting over billionaires’ philanthropic power.

Here’s the story of how a $25 million donation to help students got ensnared in local politics. It’s a doozy.

vox.com/recode/2021/3/… In December, San Francisco condemned the naming of a hospital after Mark Zuckerberg, who gave it $75 million.

Now, one San Francisco lawmaker has temporarily derailed a proposal that includes a $25 million donation to bring summer school to 20,000 kids.

vox.com/recode/2021/3/…

New —

75 Silicon Valley leaders have signed a letter pushing back on the Gavin Newsom recall effort.

The effort is spearheaded by @RonConway.

Signers include @LaurenePowell Jobs, @ReidHoffman, @markpinc, @EricSchmidt, @jgebbia, @ev, @mikeyk, @jeremys and @jeffiel. "All California leaders should be 100% focused on COVID19 recovery efforts. I oppose the effort to recall the California Governor in 2021."

Left unsaid here is that these 75 people can put enormous amounts of money behind Newsom, who can raise unlimited amounts for the recall.