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How cryptocurrency executives helped decide the California Senate primary

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How cryptocurrency executives helped decide the California Senate primary

In the days before the California Senate primary, political ads calling Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) a fake, an actor and a hypocrite inundated social media platforms and television programs.

The $10-million bill for the advertisements, which were designed to bump Porter out of the race for a rare open Senate seat, was footed by a super PAC called Fairshake that is funded by cryptocurrency companies and their executives.

As primary results rolled in that showed Porter a distant third behind Rep. Adam B. Schiff of Burbank and Republican Steve Garvey, Fairshake boasted that the Orange County lawmaker’s alliance with mentor Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a vocal skeptic of cryptocurrency, had “ended her career in Congress.”

Porter later blamed her loss on “an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this election,” a not-too-subtle allusion to the crypto group’s major donors.

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After two years of bad headlines, including the conviction of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on fraud charges, the cryptocurrency industry is back in the political arena, flexing its significant cash reserves in the 2024 election cycle. The California Senate race is one of many in which the industry has signaled that it will boost candidates who support more favorable crypto laws in Washington, and oust those who don’t.

“That amount of money buys you a seat at the political table in Washington, D.C., and that’s their goal,” said Dennis Kelleher, chief executive and co-founder of Better Markets, a financial watchdog group that has been a frequent opponent of the crypto industry in Washington.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has asserted in court that cryptocurrency should be regulated like stocks and bonds, which would require trading firms to follow a wide range of disclosure and investor protection laws. The industry has lobbied for more favorable regulations, including allowing the markets to be regulated by the smaller Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Fairshake was the largest outside spender in the Senate primary, but to what extent it moved the needle is a matter of debate. Schiff and his allies spent prodigiously to boost Garvey among Republican voters, blanketing the state with ads that described the retired baseball star as a two-time Trump voter who was “too conservative for California.”

Under California’s unusual primary system, the two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary advance to the November election, regardless of their political affiliation. Schiff’s team gambled that in a deep-blue state, his path to victory would be easier if he faced a Republican.

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“When you look at everything else going on in that race, I’m extremely skeptical that they had any impact,” Kelleher said of the cryptocurrency ads. He cited Schiff’s campaign strategy of boosting Garvey and the major support from leaders in the Democratic Party, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), as well as Schiff’s long resume and Porter’s status as a relative newcomer in Democratic politics.

Polling from the week before the election found Garvey and Schiff in a fight for first, although Porter received a lower share of votes than polls predicted. Who will fill the remainder of the late Dianne Feinstein’s term in the Senate, as well as a six-year term that starts in 2025, will be decided on the November ballot.

Sawyer Hackett, a spokesman for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which backed Porter, said the $10-million ad buy “probably contributed a significant amount” to Porter’s loss. In California’s costly media markets, he said, $10 million doesn’t win or lose a race, but “it’s certainly a major factor, especially when you’re talking about the final weeks of the election when Democratic voters are considering the options in front of them.”

He said he wasn’t surprised to see the crypto industry spending against Porter, who has a “somewhat minor” track record on crypto issues but has proved herself willing to take on major industries to defend consumers. The crypto industry, he said, is “targeting candidates with an overall brand that seems to be focused on antitrust and pro-consumer policy.”

Fairshake’s major donors include venture capital giants Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who have invested in dozens of crypto companies; crypto investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss; and Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of Coinbase, which is listed on the Nasdaq market.

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Coinbase, which has the highest trading volume of any crypto exchange in the U.S., is working this year to make sure that “candidates and incumbents continue to think about crypto as an opportunity to really make a difference to change, to protect jobs, to protect national security,” said Kara Calvert, the company’s head of U.S. policy.

Coinbase will be working to “educate” members of Congress through November, she said, so that “when they get asked about crypto at a town hall, or when they get asked about crypto by Fairshake, or by any of the rest of these organizations, that they know what they’re talking about.”

On the afternoon before election day, a group called Stand With Crypto hosted a get-out-the-vote rally for crypto owners in Los Angeles. A line stretched around the block on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame outside the Bourbon Room bar for an event headlined by the rapper Nas, who was an early investor in Coinbase.

Inside, as guests ate sliders and drank Sofia Coppola wine, Armstrong told the crowd that they needed to vote to send a “very clear message” for the November election that “you’ve got to understand innovation, you’ve got to be pro-tech, pro-innovation, pro-crypto, to get elected and be representing our values in California.”

Armstrong didn’t name any California Senate candidates, instead directing voters to a guide prepared by Stand With Crypto, which, as a political 501(c)4 nonprofit organization, is not required to disclose its donors. The guide described Schiff as “strongly supportive” of crypto and Porter as “strongly against.” Garvey and Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, the other candidates in the race, are listed as “pending,” with a question mark icon.

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Porter’s “F” rating cited three references, including a post on X, formerly Twitter, in which she called Fairshake’s backers “shadowy crypto billionaires” because of their ad campaign against her, as well as her signature on a 2022 letter that Warren sent to the Texas power grid authority, questioning its practice of paying crypto mining businesses to shut off power during peak periods. Some companies reported earning more from the payments than from their mining operations, Warren wrote.

Stand With Crypto also said Porter voted “nay” last summer in the House finance committee markup of a cryptocurrency bill favored by the industry. But Porter isn’t a member of that committee and her name does not appear on the vote sheet. Porter did not vote on the legislation, her spokeswoman said.

Schiff’s “A” rating on crypto issues was attributed to a single statement on his campaign website that said the U.S. needs to “develop comprehensive regulatory frameworks” to ensure that cryptocurrency and blockchain companies “stay here and grow here, and that the United States remains the global leader in these important new technologies.”

Schiff told reporters during a campaign stop in San Francisco last week that he supports “clear rules of the road” and “sound regulation” for cryptocurrency companies that protect consumers but keep the firms in the U.S.

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Devin Nunes Departs Trump Media After 4 Years as C.E.O.

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Devin Nunes Departs Trump Media After 4 Years as C.E.O.

President Trump’s social media company, which has consistently lost money and struggled with a flagging share price, announced Tuesday that it was replacing Devin Nunes as its chief executive officer.

The announcement offered no reason for the sudden departure of Mr. Nunes, a former Republican congressman from California. Mr. Trump had tapped him to run the company, Trump Media & Technology, in late 2021.

The announcement was made in a news release by the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is a company board member and oversees a trust that controls his father’s 115-million-share stake in Trump Media. President Trump is not an officer or director of the company.

Mr. Nunes said in a statement on Truth Social, which is Trump Media’s flagship product, that it was an “appropriate time” for a new leader with experience in media and mergers to “steer Trump Media through its current transition phase.”

Trump Media has incurred hundreds of millions in losses, and its shares have performed poorly since the company went public by completing a merger with a cash-rich special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in March 2024. The stock, which ended its first day of trading around $58 a share, closed Tuesday at $9.82.

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Shares of Trump Media trade under the symbol DJT, which are President Trump’s initials. Truth Social has emerged as the main social media platform for Mr. Trump to communicate his policy decisions and opinions to the world.

Last year, Trump Media took in $3.7 million in revenue and recorded a $712 million net loss.

In December, Trump Media announced a plan to merge with TAE Technologies, a fusion power company. The all-stock deal, which was valued at $6 billion at the time, would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies.

Trump Media said in February that it was considering spinning off its Truth Social platform in a merger with another cash-rich SPAC, Texas Ventures Acquisition III Corp.

Mr. Nunes is being replaced on an interim basis by Kevin McGurn, who has been an adviser to Trump Media since the end of 2024. Mr. McGurn, a former executive at Hulu, the streaming service, was listed in a recent regulatory filing as the chief executive of Texas Ventures.

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The Trump Media release announcing the management change provided no update on the merger with TAE Technologies or the proposed SPAC deal for Truth Social.

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Netflix plans to buy historic Radford Studio Center

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Netflix plans to buy historic Radford Studio Center

Streaming entertainment giant Netflix is in negotiations to buy the historic Radford Studio Center lot in Studio City.

Netflix plans to purchase the Los Angeles studio that has been home to generations of landmark television shows, including “Gunsmoke” and “Seinfeld,” according to two people with knowledge of the pending deal who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

The studio’s previous operator, Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on a $1.1-billion mortgage in January. Investment bank Goldman Sachs took over the property and is in talks with Netflix to sell it for between $330 million and $400 million.

Representatives for Hackman and Netflix declined to comment on the planned sale.

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Culver City-based Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management teamed up to buy the Radford Avenue property from ViacomCBS in 2021 with a winning bid of $1.85 billion, after a competitive battle for the 55-acre studio beloved by the television industry.

At the time, the staggering price tag underscored the value — and scarcity — of TV soundstages in Los Angeles as content producers scrambled for space to shoot TV shows and movies to stock their streaming services. It was one of the largest-ever real estate transactions for a TV studio complex in Los Angeles.

Since then, production has substantially declined in Southern California. L.A. continues to battle the loss of production to other states and countries, as well as the lingering effects on the industry of the pandemic and the 2023 dual writers’ and actors’ strikes. Cutbacks in spending at the major studios after a surge in streaming-fueled TV production have further damped film activity in the region.

Founded by silent film comedy legend Mack Sennett in 1928, the lot became known as “Hit City” in the decades after World War II as popular TV shows such as “Leave It to Beaver,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Will & Grace” were made there. The storied lot gave the Studio City neighborhood its name,

Netflix, which has a market cap of about $455 billion — more than double that of Walt Disney Co. — has maintained its dominance in the global streaming business with more than 325 million subscribers.

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The Los Gatos-based company has production offices worldwide, including facilities in Albuquerque, Brooklyn, London, Madrid and Toronto.

Netflix had secured an $82.7-billion deal to buy Warner Bros. studios and streaming services in December, but withdrew from the bidding war in late February after Paramount Skydance offered $31 a share. As part of the switch, Netflix was paid a $2.8-billion termination fee.

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Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Pick to Lead Fed, Faces Senate at Tricky Moment

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Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Pick to Lead Fed, Faces Senate at Tricky Moment

Kevin M. Warsh, President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, has spent years refining his pitch for why he should get one of the most powerful economic jobs in the world.

At his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, he will have to convince Senate lawmakers that he is ready to step into the role, which has become politically explosive amid Mr. Trump’s relentless attacks on the institution and its current chair, Jerome H. Powell.

Mr. Warsh, who is scheduled to testify before the Banking Committee at 10 a.m., plans to commit to being “strictly independent” on decisions related to interest rates, according to his prepared remarks. He also plans to tell lawmakers that he is unbothered by Mr. Trump’s incessant calls for substantially lower borrowing costs. And he will use his opening statement to underscore his focus on disrupting the “status quo” at an institution he said just last year was in need of “regime change.”

“In a time that will rank among the most consequential in our nation’s history, I believe a reform-oriented Federal Reserve can make a real difference to the American people,” he plans to tell lawmakers, adding: “The stakes could scarcely be higher.”

Mr. Warsh, 56, faces significant hurdles to winning confirmation. He has broad support among Republicans, who control the Senate and can confirm him along party lines. Yet his candidacy has stalled because of an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department into Mr. Powell and his handling of the Fed’s headquarters renovations.

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Mr. Powell’s term as chair ends May 15, but Mr. Warsh looks increasingly unlikely to be in place by then. That’s because Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina — a Republican on the Banking Committee who has expressed support for Mr. Warsh — has vowed to block any attempt to confirm a new Fed chair until the legal threats into Mr. Powell are resolved. For Mr. Tillis, the investigation is a blatant attempt to coerce Mr. Powell into lowering rates, undermining the Fed’s independence and confirming the politicization of the Justice Department.

“I’m not going to condone bad decision-making and bad behavior,” Mr. Tillis told reporters on Monday in reference to the Justice Department’s lack of evidence of any wrongdoing.

The department has vowed to continue its investigation, despite numerous legal setbacks.

“I think ultimately, he will be confirmed,” Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, another Republican on the committee, told reporters on Monday. “I just don’t know what decade.”

Mr. Warsh’s ascent would mark a homecoming for the Wall Street financier, who served as a Fed governor from 2006-11.

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Since leaving the Fed, he has amassed assets worth well in excess of $100 million, according to financial disclosures submitted before his hearing. Those have drawn scrutiny because Mr. Warsh repeatedly invoked “pre-existing confidentiality agreements” to avoid disclosing the details behind several of his investments. He has said he would divest a substantial amount of his assets before taking the job.

The global financial crisis dominated Mr. Warsh’s first tenure at the Fed, thrusting him into the middle of discussions about how the central bank should respond to the threat of bank failures, turmoil in financial markets and a painful recession that followed. Mr. Warsh, then the youngest-ever member of the Board of Governors, was initially supportive of the Fed’s efforts to shore up financial markets by buying enormous quantities of government bonds and expanding its balance sheet to ease strains in financial markets and support growth by keeping market-based rates low.

But he soon soured on subsequent efforts to buy more bonds and resigned in protest. That experience has stuck with Mr. Warsh, who has made a smaller balance sheet a pillar of his plans if he takes over as chair.

Mr. Warsh would also be likely to usher in changes to how the Fed communicates its policy views, having expressed misgivings about its strategy of providing so-called forward guidance, or hints about how interest rates may change in the future to guide expectations. He has also suggested that policymakers across the Fed system should speak far less. Mr. Powell held a news conference after each rate decision, or eight a year, and delivered speeches with regularity. Mr. Trump’s pick to join the Fed last year, Stephen I. Miran, often speaks multiple times a week.

“Once policymakers reveal their economic forecast, they can become prisoners of their own words,” Mr. Warsh said in a speech last year. “Fed leaders would be well served to skip opportunities to share their latest musings. The swivel-chair problem, rhetorically waxing and waning with the latest data release, is common and counterproductive.”

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What is far less clear is how much Mr. Warsh would heed the president’s demands for lower interest rates. Mr. Trump said he would not pick someone for chair who did not support lower borrowing costs.

Mr. Warsh sought in his opening statement to downplay the costs of a president’s voicing his opinions about rates, saying central bankers must be “strong enough to listen to a diversity of views from all corners, humble enough to be open-minded to new ideas and new economic developments, wise enough to translate imperfect data into meaningful insight and dedicated enough to make judgments faithfully and wisely.”

Earlier this year, many officials at the Fed saw a path to gradually lower rates as the impact of Mr. Trump’s tariffs faded and inflation restarted its slide back toward 2 percent after almost of year of stalling out. The war in Iran — and the energy shock it has unleashed — has upended those forecasts, however, prompting officials to turn wary about lowering rates.

Mr. Warsh will face questions on Tuesday about the economic impact of the war and how it has changed his thinking around the Fed’s ability to lower rates. While at the Fed, he was known as an inflation hawk who often argued against providing policy relief for fear that it could stoke price pressures. He also said the Fed should aspire to engage in rule-based policymaking that stems from formulas that prescribe how officials should set rates based on levels of inflation and employment.

While campaigning to be chair, Mr. Warsh embraced the need for rate cuts, arguing that there was a path for lower borrowing costs because of his plans to shrink the balance sheet, which would lift longer-term rates that then could be offset by lowering short-term ones. He also argued that higher productivity from the boom in artificial intelligence could unleash higher growth without stoking inflation, which could give the Fed more space to lower rates than otherwise would be the case.

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In his opening statement, Mr. Warsh made clear, however, that a failure to bring down inflation, which has been stuck above the Fed’s 2 percent target for roughly five years, would strictly be the Fed’s fault, suggesting that he would shoulder the blame if he did not bring it back down during his tenure.

“Inflation is a choice, and the Fed must take responsibility for it,” he will tell lawmakers.

Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.

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