LOS ANGELES: Some of Hollywood’s brightest stars headlined a fundraiser for President Joe Biden that took in a record $30 million-plus for a Democratic candidate, according to his campaign, in hopes of energizing would-be supporters for a White House contest they said may rank among the most consequential in US history.
George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Barbra Streisand were among those who took the stage at the 7,100-seat Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Saturday night. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel interviewed Biden and former President Barack Obama, who both stressed the need to defeat former President Donald Trump in a race that’s expected to be exceedingly close.
During more than half an hour of discussion, Kimmel asked if the country was suffering from amnesia about the presumptive Republican nominee, to which Biden responded, “all we gotta do is remember what it was like” when Trump was in the White House.
Luminaries from the entertainment world have increasingly lined up to help Biden’s campaign, and just how important the event was to his reelection bid could be seen in Biden’s decision to fly through the night across nine time zones, from the G7 summit in southern Italy to Southern California, to attend.
He also missed a summit in Switzerland about ways to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, instead dispatching Vice President Kamala Harris who made a whirlwind trip of her own to represent the United States there, a stark reminder of the delicate balance between geopolitics and Biden’s bid to win a second term.
Further laying bare the political implications were police in riot gear outside the theater. A group of protesters angry about the Biden’s administration’s handling of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza demonstrated nearby.
The fundraiser included singing by Jack Black and Sheryl Lee Ralph, and actors Kathryn Hahn and Jason Bateman introduced Kimmel, who himself introduced Biden and Obama. The comedian deadpanned, “I was told I was getting introduced by Batman, not Bateman.”
But he quickly pivoted to far more serious topics, saying that “so much is at stake in this election” and listing women’s rights, health care and noting that “even the ballot is on the ballot” in a reference to the Biden administration’s calls to expand voting rights.
Kimmel asked the president what he was most proud of accomplishing, and Biden said he thought the administration’s approach to the economy “is working.”
“We have the strongest economy in the world today,” Biden said, adding “we try to give ordinary people an even chance.”
Trump spent Saturday campaigning in Detroit and criticized Biden’s handling of the economy and inflation. The president was fundraising “with out-of-touch elitist Hollywood celebrities,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.
But Biden told the crowd in California that “we passed every major piece of legislation we attempted to get done.” And Obama expressed admiration for sweeping legislation on health care, public works, the environment, technology manufacturing, gun safety and other major initiatives that the administration of his former vice president has overseen.
“What we’re seeing now is a byproduct of in 2016. There were a whole bunch of folks who, for whatever reason, sat out,” said Obama, who, like Biden wore a dark suit and a white shirt open at the collar.
Obama, speaking about the Supreme Court, added that “hopefully we have learned our lesson, because these elections matter in very concrete ways.”
Trump nominated three justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision guaranteeing a constitutional right to an abortion. The audience expressed its displeasure at the mention of Roe, to which Obama responded, “don’t hiss, vote.” That was a play on his common refrain prioritizing voting over booing.
Biden said the person elected president in November could get the chance to nominate two new justices, though a second Biden term probably wouldn’t drastically overhaul a court given its current 6-3 conservative majority.
He also suggested if Trump wins back the White House, “one of the scariest parts” was the Supreme Court and how the high court has “never been this far out of step.”
Biden also referenced reports that an upside-down flag, a symbol associated with Trump’s false claims of election fraud, was flown outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in January 2021. He worried Saturday that, if Trump is reelected, “He’s going to appoint two more who fly their flags upside down.”
Kimmel offered his special brand of humor throughout the night. At one point he asked how can a president get back at a talk-show host who makes fun of him on TV every night.
“Ever hear of Delta Force?” Biden responded, referring to the Army special operations unit.
Earlier in the program, Kimmel noted Biden’s campaign promise to restore the soul of America and said “lately it seems we might need an exorcism.” Then he asked Biden, “Is that why you visited the pope?” Biden and Pope Francis met in Italy on Friday.
The amount raised outpaced the then-record $26 million from Biden’s fundraiser in March at Radio City Music Hall in New York that featured late-night host Stephen Colbert interviewing Biden, Obama and former President Bill Clinton.
Biden held an early lead in the campaign money race against Trump, but the former president has gained ground since he formally locked up the Republican nomination.
Trump outpaced Biden’s New York event by raking in $50.5 million at an April gathering of major donors at the Florida home of billionaire investor John Paulson. The former president’s campaign and the Republican National Committee announced they raised a whopping $141 million in May, padded by tens of millions of dollars in contributions that flowed in after Trump’s guilty verdict in his criminal hush money trial.
That post-conviction bump came after Trump and the Republican Party announced collecting $76 million in April, far exceeding Biden and the Democrats’ $51 million for the month.
Clooney and Roberts help Biden raise $30 million-plus at a star-studded Hollywood gala
https://arab.news/vfxpe
Clooney and Roberts help Biden raise $30 million-plus at a star-studded Hollywood gala

- US President Joe Biden: ‘The Supreme Court has never been as out of kilter as it is today’
- ‘The fact of the matter is that there has never been a court that is this far out of step’
Prime Minister Mark Carney says Trump’s trade war will lead to lower trade barriers within Canada

- Carney has set a goal of free trade within the country’s 10 provinces and three territories. Canada has long had interprovincial trade barriers
- Trump’s trade war and threats to make Canada the 51st state have infuriated Canadians and led to a surge in Canadian nationalism
TORONTO: Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday eliminating trade barriers within Canada would benefit Canadians far more than US President Donald Trump can ever take away with his trade war as he made his case to retain power at the last debate ahead of the April 28 vote.
Carney has set a goal of free trade within the country’s 10 provinces and three territories by July 1. Canada has long had interprovincial trade barriers.
“We can give ourselves far more than Donald Trump can ever take away,” Carney said “We can have one economy. This is within our grasp.”
Carney said the relationship Canada has had with the US for the past 40 years has fundamentally changed because of Trump’s tariffs. If reelected Carney plans to immediately enter into trade walks with the Trump administration.
Trump’s trade war and threats to make Canada the 51st state have infuriated Canadians and led to a surge in Canadian nationalism that has bolstered Liberal Party poll numbers.
Opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is imploring Canadians not to give the Liberals a fourth term. He hoped to make the election a referendum on Justin Trudeau, whose popularity declined toward the end of his decade in power as food and housing prices rose and immigration surged.
But Trump attacked, Trudeau resigned and Carney, a two-time central banker, became Liberal party leader and prime minister last month after a party leadership race.
“It maybe difficult, Mr. Poilievre, you spent years running against Justin Trudeau and the carbon tax and they are both gone,” Carney said. “I am a very different person than Justin Trudeau.”
Public opinion has changed. In a mid-January poll by Nanos, Liberals trailed the Conservative Party by 47 percent to 20 percent. In the latest Nanos poll released Thursday, the Liberals led by 5 percentage points. The January poll had a margin of error 3.1 points while the latest poll had a 2.7-point margin.
“We can’t afford a fourth Liberal term of rising housing costs,” Poilievre said.
Poilievre accused Carney’s Liberals of being hostile toward Canada’s energy sector and pipelines. He accused the Liberals of weakening the economy and vowed that a Conservative government would repeal “anti-energy laws, red tape and high taxes.”
US Senator Van Hollen says he met wrongly deported man in El Salvador

WASHINGTON: Democratic US Senator Chris Van Hollen said on Thursday he met Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man wrongly deported to El Salvador by the administration of Republican President Donald Trump.
The senator posted an image with Abrego Garcia on social media platform X.
“I said my main goal of this trip (to El Salvador) was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return,” the senator wrote in his post.
University protests blast Trump’s attacks on funding, speech and international students

- Berkeley rally part of planned nationwide protest supporting university independence
- “You cannot appease a tyrant,” emeritus professor and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich tells Berkeley rally
BERKELEY, California/CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts: Hundreds of students, faculty and community members on a California campus booed on Thursday as speakers accused the administration of President Donald Trump of undermining American universities, as he questioned whether Harvard and others deserve tax-exempt status.
The protest on the University of California’s Berkeley campus was among events dubbed “Rally for the Right to Learn!” planned across the country.
The administration has rebuked American universities over their handling of pro-Palestinian student protests that roiled campuses from Columbia in New York to Berkeley last year, following the 2023 Hamas-led attack inside Israel and the subsequent Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Trump has called the protests anti-American and antisemitic and accused universities of peddling Marxism and “radical left” ideology. On Thursday, he called Harvard, an institution he criticized repeatedly this week, “a disgrace,” and also criticized others.
Asked about reports the Internal Revenue Service was planning to remove Harvard’s tax-exempt status, Trump told reporters at the White House he did not think a final ruling had been made, and indicated other schools were under scrutiny.
Trump had said in a social media post on Tuesday he was mulling whether to seek to end Harvard’s tax-exempt status if it continued pushing what he called “political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’“
“I’m not involved in it,” he said, saying the matter was being handled by lawyers. “I read about it just like you did, but tax-exempt status, I mean, it’s a privilege. It’s really a privilege, and it’s been abused by a lot more than Harvard.”
“When you take a look whether it’s Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, I don’t know what’s going on, but when you see how badly they’ve acted and in other ways also. So we’ll, we’ll be looking at it very strongly.”

At Berkeley on Thursday, protesters raised signs proclaiming “Education is a public good!” and “Hands off our free speech!” Robert Reich, a public policy professor, compared the responses of Harvard and Columbia to demands from the administration that they take such steps as ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and putting academic departments under outside control.
Harvard President Alan Garber, in a letter on Monday, rejected such demands as unprecedented “assertions of power, unmoored from the law” that violated constitutional free speech and the Civil Rights Act.
Columbia had earlier agreed to negotiations after the Trump administration said last month it had terminated grants and contracts worth $400 million, mostly for medical and other scientific research. After reading the Harvard president’s letter, Columbia’s interim President Claire Shipman, said her university would continue “good faith discussions” with the administration, but “would reject any agreement in which the government dictates what we teach, research, or who we hire.”
You cannot appease a tyrant,” said Reich, who served in President Bill Clinton’s cabinet. “Columbia University tried to appease a tyrant. It didn’t work.”
“After Harvard stood up to the tyrant, Columbia, who had been surrendering, stood up and said no.”
Columbia University in New York initially agreed to several demands from the Trump administration. But its acting president took a more defiant tone in a campus message Monday, saying some of the demands “are not subject to negotiation.”
About 150 protesters rallied at Columbia, which had been the scene of huge pro-Palestinian protests last year. They gathered on a plaza outside a building that houses federal offices, holding signs emblazoned with slogans including “stop the war on universities” and “censorship is the weapon of fascists.”
After Harvard’s Garber released his letter on Monday, the Trump administration said it was freezing $2.3 billion in funding to the university. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced on Wednesday the termination of two DHS grants totaling more than $2.7 million to Harvard and said the university would lose its ability to enroll foreign students if it does not meet demands to share information on some visa holders.
In response, a Harvard spokesperson said the university stood by its earlier statement to “not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” while saying it will comply with the law.
CNN was first to report on Wednesday the IRS was making plans to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status and that a final decision was expected soon.
Harvard said there was no legal basis to rescind it, saying such an action will be unprecedented, will diminish its financial aid for students and will lead to abandonment of some critical medical research programs.
Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson, said “any forthcoming actions by the IRS are conducted independently of the President, and investigations into any institution’s violations of their tax status were initiated prior to the President’s TRUTH.”
Under federal law the president cannot request that the IRS, which determines whether an organization can have or maintain tax-exempt status, investigate organizations.
Ronald Cox, a professor of political science and international relations at Florida International University in Miami, said during a small event Thursday that the international students are fearful.
“They don’t know if they could be deported, they don’t know if they can be directed to the El Salvadoran prison,” Cox said. “There’s been no due process. It’s kind of open season on the most vulnerable students.”
The protests were organized by the Coalition for Action in Higher Education, which includes groups such as Higher Education Labor United and the American Federation of Teachers.
Kelly Benjamin, a spokesperson for American Association of University Professors, said in a phone call that the Trump administration’s goal of eviscerating academia is fundamentally anti-American.
“College campuses have historically been the places where these kind of conversations, these kind of robust debates and dissent take place in the United States,” Benjamin said. “It’s healthy for democracy. And they’re trying to destroy all of that in order to enact their vision and agenda.”
Ukraine, US sign ‘memorandum of intent’ on resources deal: Kyiv

- US officials say boosting American business interests in Ukraine will help deter Russia from future aggression in the event of a ceasefire
KYIV: Ukraine and the United States on Thursday signed a “memorandum of intent” to move forward with a fraught deal for US access to Kyiv’s natural resources and critical minerals, Kyiv said.
“We are happy to announce the signing, with our American partners, of a Memorandum of Intent, which paves the way for an Economic Partnership Agreement and the establishment of the Investment Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine,” Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on X.
Kyiv and Washington had planned to sign a deal on extracting Ukraine’s strategic minerals weeks ago, but a clash between presidents Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky in February temporarily derailed work on the agreement.
Trump wants the deal — designed to give the US royalty payments on profits from Ukrainian mining of resources and rare minerals — as compensation for aid given to Ukraine by his predecessor, Joe Biden.
Svyrydenko did not publish details of the memorandum, but said work continued toward securing a final agreement.
“We hope that the Fund will become an effective tool for attracting investments in the reconstruction of our country, modernization of infrastructure, support for business, and the creation of new economic opportunities,” she said.
“There is a lot to do, but the current pace and significant progress give reason to expect that the document will be very beneficial for both countries.”
US officials say boosting American business interests in Ukraine will help deter Russia from future aggression in the event of a ceasefire.
Kyiv is pushing for concrete military and security guarantees as part of any deal to halt the three-year war.
Man who hijacked a small plane in Belize and was fatally shot was a US veteran

- The man was shot by a passenger who was licensed to carry a firearm, which he later turned over to police
BELIZE CITY: A US citizen hijacked a small Tropic Air plane in Belize on Thursday at knifepoint, injuring three others before being shot and killed, police said.
The assailant pulled a knife while the plane was in air, demanding the domestic flight take him out of the country, Police Commissioner Chester Williams told journalists.
The hijacker was identified as US citizen Akinyela Sawa Taylor, Williams said, adding that it appeared Taylor was a military veteran.
The plane circled the airspace between northern Belize and capital Belize City as the hijacking was underway, and began to run dangerously low on fuel, the police commissioner said.
Taylor stabbed three people on board, according to Williams, including the pilot and a passenger who shot Taylor with a licensed firearm as the plane landed outside Belize City.
That passenger was rushed to the hospital, as was Taylor, who died from the gunshot wound.
Williams said that it was unclear how Taylor boarded the plane with a knife, though he acknowledged that the country’s smaller airstrips lacked security to fully search passengers.
The attacker had been denied entry to the country over the weekend, according to police. The plane had been due to fly the short route from Corozal near the Mexican border to San Pedro, off the coast. Police said it was unclear how Taylor reached Corozal.
Belizean authorities have reached out to the US embassy in the country for aid in investigating the incident. Luke Martin, public affairs officer for the embassy, told journalists that it had no details on Taylor’s background or motivation so far.
According to information released by the airport, Taylor was a teacher in the United States. He was listed online as previously being a football coach at the McCluer North High School in Florissant, Missouri.
An employee at the school told Reuters that Taylor did not currently work there.