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Equinox Says It Will Donate $1 Million After Being Burned by Boycott Over Multi-Million Dollar Trump Fundraiser

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Equinox says it will donate one million dollars to several charities in the wake of a star-studded boycott ignited when the majority owner, founder, and chairman of the fitness club’s parent company, Stephen Ross, held a high-value donor fundraiser for President Donald Trump. The RNC bragged that the two Hamptons fundraisers Trump attended last Friday, one hosted by Ross, netted $12 million – two million more than projected.

Stephen Ross also owns the Miami Dolphins in addition to The Related Companies, a multi-billion dollar real estate development firm he started in 1972. Ross reportedly is worth $7.7 billion. The Related Companies purchased Equinox in 2005, but TIME notes “Equinox is a privately held company, making it difficult to fully assess its financial relationship with Ross.”

Newsweek on Thursday reported the charities that will benefit from the donation:

Cycle for Survival, which funds research into rare cancers, The Heroes Project, which benefits injured veterans, Move for Minds, an Alzheimer’s research organization, the Felix Organization, a charity focused on enriching children in foster care, and House Lives Matter, which supports the LGBT House Ballroom community.

In an email to members Equinox executive chairman Harvey Spevak last week said Ross “is one of the investors, including myself. He does not run the company. I do. I am the executive chairman of Equinox and have led the vision and strategic direction of the company since I joined in 1999. Our focus has always been about building a community centered on our values, not politics.”

Equinox has insisted Ross is merely a “passive investor” in the luxury fitness brand. Ross says he has “always have been an active participant in the democratic process.”

And while some news reports show Ross’ allies defending him – Trump last week called him a “great friend” who is “probably more inclined to be a liberal” – several reports reveal Ross is a more active participant, at least financially, in the Republican political process.

“In the current election cycle, Ross has given just under $50,000 [to] the Republican National Committee (RNC) and $33,600 to [the] National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). He gave $10,000 to the Democratic Party of Virginia,” according to a deep dive by GayCityNews,

That is just the tip of the conservative money iceberg.

GCN details donations to Republicans and conservative PACS in 2017-2018 totaling just under $400,000.

Between 2015 and 2016 Ross donated over $550,000 to Republicans or conservative PACs.

And while Ross has donated to Democrats, the vast majority of his contributions in recent years appears to be to Republicans and conservative PACs.

Ross has called himself “an outspoken champion of racial equality, inclusion, diversity, public education and environmental sustainability.”

RELATED STORIES:

Equinox and SoulCycle’s Billionaire Owner Faces Backlash and Boycotts Over $250,000 a Person Trump Fundraiser

‘Smug’ Trump Kicks Off 10 Day Golfing Vacation With $10 Million Mega-Donor Hamptons Fundraisers

As Trump Fundraiser Becomes Massive Headache for Billionaire SoulCycle Owner His Company Blocks List of Businesses

 

Image: Shutterstock

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Poll Finds Majority Oppose Impeachment Inquiry as House GOP Kicks Off Hearings Two Days Before Likely Shutdown

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A just-released NBC News poll finds a solid majority of registered voters are opposed to House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, which kicks off Thursday morning, just two days before House Republicans are likely to shut down the federal government.

“56% of registered voters say Congress should not hold hearings to start the process of removing Biden from office, while 39% say it should,” NBC News reports. “The House Oversight Committee is gathering for its first hearing in the inquiry, which Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced two weeks ago to investigate Biden’s ties to his son Hunter’s business dealings, probing what McCarthy described as ‘allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption.'”

Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s “own conference was divided over the impeachment inquiry, and so are voters — who are also, unsurprisingly, divided along party lines when it comes to proceedings aimed at removing Biden from office,” NBC News adds. “An overwhelming majority of Democrats (88%) oppose the hearings, while 73% of Republicans support them. Six in 10 independents oppose the hearings, and 29% say Congress should move forward with them.”

READ MORE: House GOP Shutdown Demands Include Gutting Billions From Dept. of Education, Costing Over 200,000 Teachers Their Jobs

The Congressional Integrity Project, a group of Democratic strategists, have published what it calls a “regularly updated rundown of Republican commentators, Members of Congress, and media personalities” who have indicated there is not sufficient evidence to initiate an impeachment inquiry against President Biden. It includes recent statements from Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH), Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD), Rep. French Hill (R-AR), Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), Senator Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV), and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY).

At midnight on Saturday the federal government will shut down, unless the House passes legislation to fund the government, the Senate passes the House’s legislation, and President Joe Biden signed it into law.

READ MORE: ‘I Feel a Little Bit Dumber for What You Say’: The Nine Worst Moments of the GOP Presidential Debate

The shutdown, which has yet to begin, may already have cost the American taxpayers possibly a billion dollars, well-known economist Justin Wolfers casually suggested:

“This week you and I are paying over a million federal employees over a billion dollars to put aside their regular work to plan for a pointless shutdown, and that shutdown will grind the government to a halt which will also cause untold disruption through the private sector.”

Earlier this week, House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi said, “A MAGA shutdown drains billions of dollars from our economy. It says to our men and women in uniform — you’re not getting paid. To women and children depending on food assistance — you’re not eating. All 3 recent shutdowns were under REPUBLICAN House Speakers. Irresponsible.”

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‘I Feel a Little Bit Dumber for What You Say’: The Nine Worst Moments of the GOP Presidential Debate

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The second Republican presidential debate was mired in in-fighting and personal attacks by the candidates,  a vow to wage physical war against Mexico, hate against LGBTQ people, an insistence the U.S. Constitution doesn’t actually mean what the words on the page say, and a fight over curtains.

Here are nine of the worst moments from Wednesday night’s debate.

The debate itself got off to a rough start right from the beginning.

Multiple times candidate cross-talk made it impossible for anyone to make a point, like this moment when nearly half the candidates talked over each other during a nearly two minute segment as the moderators struggled to take control.

READ MORE: ‘I Don’t Think So’: As GOP Debate Kicks Off Trump Teases Out the Chances of Any Candidate Becoming His Running Mate

Vivek Ramasway got into a heated argument with Nikki Haley, leading the former Trump UN Ambassador to tell him, “Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say.”


Ramaswamy launched an attack on transgender children.

Moments after Ramaswamy attacked transgender children, so did Mike Pence, calling supporting transgender children’s rights “crazy.”

He promised “a federal ban on transgender chemical or surgical surgery anywhere in the country,” and said: “We’ve got to protect our kids from this radical gender ideology agenda.”

Former New Jersey Governor Cris Christie described the First Lady of the United States, Dr. Jill Biden, who has dedicated her life to teaching, as the person President Biden is “sleeping with.”

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, as CNN’s Manu Raju noted were “one-time allies,” after “Haley appointed Scott to his Senate seat,” until they started “going at it at [the] debate.”

“Talk about someone who has never seen a federal dollar she doesn’t like,” Scott charged. “Bring it, Tim,” Haley replied before they got into a fight about curtains.

Senator Scott declared, “Black families survived slavery, we survived poll taxes and literacy tests, we survived discrimination being woven into the laws of our country. What was hard to survive was [President] Johnson’s Great Society, where they decided to take the Black father out of the household to get a check in the mail.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, currently leading over everyone on stage, said practically nothing for the first 15 minutes. He may have said the least of all the candidates on stage Wednesday night. But he denounced Donald Trump for being “missing in action.”

Watch all the videos above or at this link.

 

 

 

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‘I Don’t Think So’: As GOP Debate Kicks Off Trump Teases Out the Chances of Any Candidate Becoming His Running Mate

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Donald Trump, again refusing to participate in a GOP debate, teased out the fate of every candidate on stage Wednesday night: he will choose none of them as his vice presidential running mate.

The ex-president who is facing 91 felony charges in four criminal cases across three jurisdictions and is now also facing the dissolution of his business empire, brought up the running mate question around the same time the debate on Fox News was kicking off.

“It’s all over television, this speech,” Trump falsely claimed, referring to his live remarks at a non-union shop one day after President Joe Biden stood on the picket line with UAW workers.

READ MORE: ‘Apparently You’ll Never Believe Us’: House Republican Melts Down After Reporter Questions His ‘Evidence’ Against Biden

“You know, we’re competing with the job candidates,” Trump said, mocking his fellow Republican presidential candidates after he scheduled an event opposite the debate he refused to attend.

“They’re all running for a job,” he continued, as the audience began to boo.

“They want to be in the, they’ll do anything,” he continued. “Secretary of something.”

“They even say VP, I don’t know,” Trump said. “Does anybody see any VP in the group? I don’t think so.”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Careening’ Toward ‘Risk of Political Violence’: Experts Sound Alarm After Trump Floats Executing His Former General

 

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