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Video: Biden Backs Striking Auto Workers Fight for Stronger Contract

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Video: Biden Backs Striking Auto Workers Fight for Stronger Contract

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Biden Backs Striking Auto Workers Fight for Stronger Contract

President Biden voiced support for striking United Auto Workers and called on the country’s three largest car companies to “go further” in negotiations to share their record corporate profits with workers.

No one wants a strike. Say it again. No one wants a strike. But I respect workers’ right to use their options under the collective bargaining system. And I understand the workers’ frustration. Over generations, autoworkers sacrificed so much to keep the industry alive and strong, especially in the economic crisis and the pandemic. Workers deserve a fair share of the benefits they help create for an enterprise. The companies have made some significant offers, but I believe they should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the U.A.W. Let me say that again. Record corporate profits, which they have, should be shared by record contracts for the U.A.W.

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Harris says ‘now is the time’ for Gaza ceasefire deal

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Harris says ‘now is the time’ for Gaza ceasefire deal
NewsFeed

Vice President Kamala Harris said that “now is the time” for a Gaza ceasefire deal and backed Palestinians’ right to self-determination, as she accepted the Democrats’ nomination for the presidency on the final night of the party’s national convention.

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Who Are Kamala Harris’s 1.5 Million New Donors?

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Who Are Kamala Harris’s 1.5 Million New Donors?

An unprecedented wave of small-dollar donations for Harris

After Biden dropped out of the race, donations poured into the Harris campaign faster than they had for any presidential candidate this cycle.

Source: Federal Election Commission

The New York Times

When President Biden ended his presidential campaign on July 21, making Vice President Kamala Harris the presumptive Democratic nominee, he unleashed the biggest wave of small-dollar enthusiasm the race has seen.

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More than 1.5 million new donors gave to the Harris campaign in the last 11 days of July, according to estimates from a New York Times analysis of donor data filed with the Federal Election Commission. That figure comprises 40 percent of all donors to the Biden and now Harris campaign, which has been raising money since April 2023.

Donors both old and new gave to the newly renamed Harris campaign

Both donors who had given to the Biden re-election campaign and new people who had not previously contributed rushed to donate to the Harris campaign.

Source: Federal Election Commission

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The New York Times

Mr. Biden’s existing donor base was enthusiastic, as well: About 680,000 people who had previously donated to Mr. Biden — just over one-third of his previous donors — came back to give more to Ms. Harris in those 11 days.

More than half a million people total on July 21, and more than 600,000 on July 22, gave to the Democratic presidential campaign through ActBlue, its official fund-raising platform. Their contributions totaled more than $80 million in the first two days. From July 21 through the end of the month, the newly renamed Harris campaign raised $183 million through ActBlue.

The Times’s analysis also combined the donor records with voter registration records to show that new Harris donors were much younger than Biden donors had been. Just 10 percent of Mr. Biden’s donors in July were under 45 years old, compared with 28 percent of Ms. Harris’s donors.

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Age of donors to Biden compared with Harris

Sources: Federal Election Commission; L2

Among donors who gave to the Democratic presidential campaigns in July via ActBlue.

The New York Times

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The share of Ms. Harris’s newly acquired donors who were women under 45 was 17 percent — more than double the share of Mr. Biden’s donors who were younger women. Younger men also made up a greater share of Ms. Harris’s donors.

Across all ages, slightly more than 60 percent of both Mr. Biden’s and Ms. Harris’s donors were women.

In a geographic comparison of Mr. Biden’s donors and Ms. Harris’s, the makeup of both pools was very similar. Harris donors were slightly more likely to come from more educated areas: ZIP codes where more than half of those 25 and over had a bachelor’s degree. Ms. Harris also claimed a slightly higher share of first-time small-dollar donors from ZIP codes where more than 5 percent of the population was Black, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau. And differences between the candidates were minor when it came to their ZIP codes’ median household income.

Breakdown of Biden and Harris donors by ZIP code area:

Percent of adults with bachelor’s degree

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Percent of Black residents

Sources: Federal Election Commission; Social Explorer 2022 5-year ACS data

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Charts compare donors who gave to the Democratic presidential campaigns between April 25, 2023 and July 31, 2024 based on their ZIP code tabulation area. Percent of adults with bachelor’s degree is among those 25 and older.

The New York Times

The Times’s analysis did not look at contributions by large donors who give directly to the campaign, fund-raising committees or super PACs without going through ActBlue.

Large donors had been threatening to flee the party after Mr. Biden’s disappointing debate performance, and while some small donors had rushed to the president’s support, they were far outnumbered by the wave of money that flooded in for former President Donald J. Trump after his felony conviction and the attempt on his life.

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Full details on donations by large donors will not become clear until October, when the campaign’s associated fund-raising committees are required to file reports with the Federal Election Commission. But on just the strength of small donors alone, the end of July was the most significant fund-raising moment for the Biden or Harris campaign of the entire cycle thus far, and the biggest week for Democratic fund-raising on ActBlue since the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The Harris campaign in July announced that it had raised over $310 million, more than double what Mr. Trump’s had, on the strength of fund-raising in the last 10 days of the month.

Methodology

The Times’s analysis is based on Federal Election Commission filings from the Democratic fund-raising platform ActBlue, with the names, addresses and ZIP codes of people who gave to the Harris for President campaign, the Harris Action Fund and the Harris Victory Fund (known as Biden for President, the Biden Action Fund and the Biden Victory Fund before July 21) online.

A donor was determined to be a prior Biden donor if a donation from their unique combination of first name, last name and ZIP code had been made from April 25, 2023, when the Biden campaign was announced, to July 20, 2024.

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In the analyses of age and gender, this data was combined with voter registration records obtained from each state and provided by L2, a nonpartisan voter data vendor. These databases combine data on all registered voters. Records were matched by each donor’s first name, last name and ZIP code, plus address in many cases. Around 70 percent of donors from the F.E.C. filing could be matched to the voter file.

In the analyses of income, education level and race, records were matched with demographics for ZIP code tabulation areas from the census bureau’s 2022 five-year American Community Survey, using data files from Social Explorer.

The numbers cited here are estimates that could be affected by out-of-date voter registration records, duplicate names in the same ZIP code or other factors.

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Vista and co-investors lose $4bn in Pluralsight restructuring

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Vista and co-investors lose bn in Pluralsight restructuring

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A group of private credit lenders led by Blue Owl Capital and Ares Management have agreed to take over troubled software company Pluralsight, wiping out $4bn that Vista Equity Partners and other investors had put into the business since they bought it less than four years ago.

The closely watched restructuring is one of the biggest in which the creditors that ultimately took control were also so-called direct lenders — asset managers and funds that provide loans directly to companies.

The deal values Pluralsight at about $900mn, far below the more than $5bn that Vista, its partners and private lenders had invested or lent the business. Vista and its co-investors had sunk roughly $4bn into Pluralsight, while lenders provided it with about $1.7bn of debt financing.

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As part of the restructuring the lenders agreed to knock roughly $1.2bn off the $1.7bn of debt and inject fresh cash into the company, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The deal will lead to Vista and the lenders incurring losses after Pluralsight’s business rapidly deteriorated. The negotiations between the two sides broke out into the open earlier this year, sending shockwaves through the broader private credit market.

Vista bought the software education company in 2021 at a time when tech valuations had been buoyed by rock-bottom interest rates. Shortly after the deal closed, Vista bought another business to bolster Pluralsight’s offerings for engineers and programmers focused on cloud computing.

The private equity firm funded both purchases with roughly $1.7bn debt in total provided by private lenders, which also included BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Oaktree, Franklin Templeton’s Benefit Street Partners and Golub Capital.

Vista shuffled some of Pluralsight’s assets around earlier this year in a bid to buy time in the negotiations. But in doing so it riled up the creditors, who believed control of the company should have been handed over earlier.

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The $800bn direct lending industry had long been marketed as having stronger lender protections than traditional high-yield bond and leveraged loan markets. Pluralsight tested that thesis, although lenders ultimately were able to take control without some of the fighting usually seen in public markets.

The troubles at the company have also raised questions about the quality of the loans being extended by private credit investors, as well as whether they had been reckless in some of their novel financings — such as a loan based on Pluralsight’s revenue growth instead of profits. Regulated banks are restricted from providing these kinds of loans, which are seen to be excessively risky.

When the US Federal Reserve began raising interest rates a year after the buyout, software valuations began to tumble and debt that had been taken out during the period of near-zero rates became onerous to pay back.

Many of Pluralsight’s biggest clients were also hit, with scores of technology companies laying off staff, or slowing hiring. Customer churn rose and Pluralsight’s revenues began to slide last year.

Oaktree, Ares, Benefit Street, BlackRock, Blue Owl, Goldman, Golub, Pluralsight and Vista declined to comment.

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Bloomberg earlier on Thursday reported a deal had been reached.

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