In today’s newsletter, as goes the crypto bro, and then:
A person familiar with Fairshake, a super pac, said that the group had “a simple message”: “If you are pro-crypto, we will help you, and if you are anti we will tear you apart.”Illustration by Javier Jaén
The Rise of the Crypto Lobby
From crypto to A.I., the tech sector is pouring millions into super PACS that intimidate politicians into supporting its agenda.
Silicon Valley once considered politics to be a waste of time—a backward, crudely analog endeavor that had little to do with a digital vision of the future. But now, as Charles Duhigg writes in this week’s issue, “the tech industry has quietly become one of the most powerful lobbying forces in American politics,” and “it is wielding that power as previous corporate special interests have: to bully, cajole, and remake the nation as it sees fit.” Perhaps the most concentrated lobbying effort is being made on behalf of the cryptocurrency industry, which is spending many millions and making significant demands of the Presidential candidates. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are both clearly listening—maybe because they need the campaign money, but also because they need the votes. Duhigg introduces us to a former Clinton White House lawyer—now a California political guru—who has done as much as anyone to cultivate a new single-issue constituency this cycle: the crypto voter. Read the story »
Further Reading: Charles Bethea recently went looking for crypto voters in Atlanta, where many said they would cast their ballot for whichever candidate gives alternative currency a boost.
The Lede
Trump’s Dangerous Immigration Obsession
Photograph by Olivier Touron / AFP / Getty
The daily stream of racism and mendacity from the former President has had a numbing effect. But the question of what Trump might actually do in a second term is a prospect that voters cannot afford to ignore. Jonathan Blitzer reports.
More Top Stories
Daily Cartoon
Cartoon by Will McPhail
More Fun & Games
P.S. The longtime New Yorker contributor Lore Segal died today, at the age of ninety-six. Her most recent piece for the magazine, “Stories About Us,” was published in this past week’s issue. Speaking about that story and about her writing career, Segal told the deputy fiction editor Cressida Leyshon, “I am serious and funny. I don’t know how to be serious without being funny.”