Dem Megadonors Wanted To Hold Intervention, Convince Biden To Step Down After Debate Implosion

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

Democratic megadonors discussed holding an intervention to convince President Joe Biden to step down as the party’s nominee after Thursday night’s poor debate performance, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Many have criticized Biden’s performance at the first presidential debate against former President Donald Trump as poor, with the president appearing to freeze at several points, was often hard to understand and made multiple verbal gaffes. Following the dismal performance, some major Democratic donors spoke of setting up an intervention for the president to convince him to step down from the race, while others hoped Biden would decide to exit on his own after seeing the widespread negative reaction, according to the NYT.

“He deserves the opportunity to reflect and say: ‘I still think I can do this. I still think I am the best choice,’” Democratic donor and friend of the president, Stephen Cozen, told the NYT about what he said to other donors calling for an intervention. “That’s his decision. And I will stick with him until he makes it.”

Ron Conway and Laurene Powell Jobs, members of a group of Silicon Valley megadonors, were racing to talk to other donors about what they described as a “possible catastrophe” after the debate, according to the NYT. A possible solution the donors came up with was finding a way to contact First Lady Jill Biden to convince the president to step down from the ticket.

Dems' Favorite Fundraising Platform Enabling Donations To Nonprofit Linked To Palestinian Terror Org https://t.co/JR2I7E8zi9

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 29, 2024

One of those Silicon Valley donors canceled plans to host a fundraiser featuring Biden later this summer, according to the NYT. Despite the concern of losing momentum in receiving donations, the Biden campaign claimed that they had raised $14 million from online sources following the debate into Friday morning.

Biden’s campaign has been struggling to fundraise at the same rate as the Trump campaign over the past few months, despite starting with a $100 million advantage, according to the NYT. The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee had $212 million at the start of June, while the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee had $235 million.

Among the donors critical of the president following the debate, there was talk about which figure could possibly convince the president to step aside, such as former President Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer, according to the NYT. The donors also speculated who could possibly replace the president as the nominee, with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and California Gov. Gavin Newsom among the options.

Despite being a front-runner as a possible replacement for Biden, Newsom has made repeated statements expressing his support for the president and pledging not to run in the 2024 presidential election.

Biden’s mental acuity has long been questioned by opponents, due in part to being the oldest president in American history, with a second term taking him well into his 80s. Several prominent Democrats who previously defended Biden’s mental acuity were notably quiet following the debate after seeing the president’s performance.

An investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents by special counsel Robert Hur concluded that the president shouldn’t be charged because he appeared as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request to comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Related Topics:#BidenDebate #BidenDemocratMegaDonors #BidenNominee #DailyCaller #WillKessler

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Welcome to Britain, Where Critical WhatsApp Messages Are a Police Matter

Published on March 30, 2025

Todayville

By Cam Wakefield

“It was just unfathomable to me that things had escalated to this degree,”

“We’d never used abusive or threatening language, even in private.”

You’d think that in Britain, the worst thing that could happen to you after sending a few critical WhatsApp messages would be a passive-aggressive reply or, at most, a snooty whisper campaign. What you probably wouldn’t expect is to have six police officers show up on your doorstep like they’re hunting down a cartel. But that’s precisely what happened to Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine — two parents whose great offense was asking some mildly inconvenient questions about how their daughter’s school planned to replace its retiring principal.

This is not an episode of Black Mirror. This is Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, 2025. And the parents in question—Maxie Allen, a Times Radio producer, and Rosalind Levine, 46, a mother of two—had the gall to inquire, via WhatsApp no less, whether Cowley Hill Primary School was being entirely above board in appointing a new principal.

What happened next should make everyone in Britain pause and consider just how overreaching their government has become. Because in the time it takes to send a meme about the school’s bake sale, you too could be staring down the barrel of a “malicious communications” charge.

The trouble started in May, shortly after the school’s principal retired. Instead of the usual round of polite emails, clumsy PowerPoints, and dreary Q&A sessions, there was… silence. Maxie Allen, who had once served as a school governor—so presumably knows his way around a budget meeting—asked the unthinkable: when was the recruitment process going to be opened up?

A fair question, right? Not in Borehamwood, apparently. The school responded not with answers, but with a sort of preemptive nuclear strike.

Jackie Spriggs, the chair of governors, issued a public warning about “inflammatory and defamatory” social media posts and hinted at disciplinary action for those who dared to cause “disharmony.” One imagines this word being uttered in the tone of a Bond villain stroking a white cat.

Parents Allen and Levine were questioned by police over their WhatsApp messages.

For the crime of “casting aspersions,” Allen and Levine were promptly banned from the school premises. That meant no parents’ evening, no Christmas concert, no chance to speak face-to-face about the specific needs of their daughter Sascha, who—just to add to the bleakness of it all—has epilepsy and is registered disabled.

So what do you do when the school shuts its doors in your face? You send emails. Lots of them. You try to get answers. And if that fails, you might—just might—vent a little on WhatsApp.

But apparently, that was enough to earn the label of harassers. Not in the figurative, overly sensitive, “Karen’s upset again” sense. No, this was the actual, legal, possibly-prison kind of harassment.

Then came January 29. Rosalind was at home sorting toys for charity—presumably a heinous act in today’s climate—when she opened the door to what can only be described as a low-budget reboot of Line of Duty. Six officers. Two cars. A van. All to arrest two middle-aged parents whose biggest vice appears to be stubborn curiosity.

“I saw six police officers standing there,” she said. “My first thought was that Sascha was dead.”

Instead, it was the prelude to an 11-hour ordeal in a police cell. Eleven hours. That’s enough time to commit actual crimes, be tried, be sentenced, and still get home in time for MasterChef.

Allen called the experience “dystopian,” and, for once, the word isn’t hyperbole. “It was just unfathomable to me that things had escalated to this degree,” he said. “We’d never used abusive or threatening language, even in private.”

Worse still, they were never even told which communications were being investigated. It’s like being detained by police for “vibes.”

One of the many delightful ironies here is that the school accused them of causing a “nuisance on school property,” despite the fact that neither of them had set foot on said property in six months.

Now, in the school’s defense—such as it is—they claim they went to the police because the sheer volume of correspondence and social media posts had become “upsetting.” Which raises an important question: when did being “upsetting” become a police matter?

What we’re witnessing is not a breakdown in communication, but a full-blown bureaucratic tantrum. Instead of engaging with concerned parents, Cowley Hill’s leadership took the nuclear option: drag them out in cuffs and let the police deal with it.

Hertfordshire Constabulary, apparently mistaking Borehamwood for Basra, decided this was a perfectly normal use of resources. “The number of officers was necessary,” said a spokesman, “to secure electronic devices and care for children at the address.”

Right. Nothing says “childcare” like watching your mom get led away in handcuffs while your toddler hides in the corner, traumatized.

After five weeks—five weeks of real police time, in a country where burglaries are basically a form of inheritance transfer—the whole thing was quietly dropped. Insufficient evidence. No charges. Not even a slap on the wrist.

So here we are. A story about a couple who dared to question how a public school was run, and ended up locked in a cell, banned from the school play, and smeared with criminal accusations for trying to advocate for their disabled child.

This is Britain in 2025. A place where public institutions behave like paranoid cults and the police are deployed like private security firms for anyone with a bruised ego. All while the rest of the population is left wondering how many other WhatsApp groups are one message away from a dawn raid.

Because if this is what happens when you ask a few inconvenient questions, what’s next? Fingerprinting people for liking the wrong Facebook post? Tactical units sent in for sarcastic TripAdvisor reviews?

It’s a warning. Ask the wrong question, speak out of turn, and you too may get a visit from half the local police force.

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Business

Cuba has lost 24% of it’s population to emigration in the last 4 years

Published on March 30, 2025

Todayville

MxM News

Quick Hit:

A new study finds Cuba has lost nearly a quarter of its population since 2020, driven by economic collapse and a mass emigration wave unseen outside of war zones. The country’s population now stands at just over 8 million, down from nearly 10 million.

Key Details:

Independent study estimates Cuba’s population at 8.02 million—down 24% in four years.
Over 545,000 Cubans left the island in 2024 alone—double the official government figure.
Demographer warns the crisis mirrors depopulation seen only in wartime, calling it a “systemic collapse.”

Diving Deeper:

Cuba is undergoing a staggering demographic collapse, losing nearly one in four residents over the past four years, according to a new study by economist and demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos. The report estimates that by the end of 2024, Cuba’s population will stand at just over 8 million people—down from nearly 10 million—a 24% drop that Albizu-Campos says is comparable only to what is seen in war-torn nations.

The study, accessed by the Spanish news agency EFE, points to mass emigration as the primary driver. In 2024 alone, 545,011 Cubans are believed to have left the island. That number is more than double what the regime officially acknowledges, as Cuba’s government only counts those heading to the United States, ignoring large flows to destinations like Mexico, Spain, Serbia, and Uruguay.

Albizu-Campos describes the trend as “demographic emptying,” driven by what he calls a “quasi-permanent polycrisis” in Cuba—an interwoven web of political repression, economic freefall, and social decay. For years, Cubans have faced food and medicine shortages, blackout-plagued days, fuel scarcity, soaring inflation, and a broken currency system. The result has been not just migration, but a desperate stampede for the exits.

Yet, the regime continues to minimize the damage. Official figures from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) put Cuba’s population at just over 10 million in 2023. However, even those numbers acknowledge a shrinking population and the lowest birth rate in decades—confirming the crisis, if not its full scale.

Cuba hasn’t held a census since 2012. The last scheduled one in 2022 has been repeatedly delayed, allegedly due to lack of resources. Experts doubt that any new attempt will be transparent or complete.

Albizu-Campos warns that the government’s refusal to confront the reality of the collapse is obstructing any chance at solutions. More than just a demographic issue, the study describes Cuba’s situation as a “systemic crisis.”