The Full Belmonte, 6/7/2023
Golf's megamerger
Team Torque celebrates after winning the team championship of LIV Golf D.C., at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., on May 28. Photo: Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports via Reuters
“A surprise merger between golf rivals is poised to change the game.
The PGA Tour and LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed breakaway tour, agreed to join forces today, in a deal the two sides said is aimed at unifying the sport across the globe, Axios' Jeff Tracy and Tim Baysinger write.
Between the lines: The agreement ends the ugly litigation that embroiled the two tours as they fought for talent since LIV's launch last year.
LIV's financial backer, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, will invest billions into the new entity over time, PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan said on CNBC today.
The cash will drive innovation in golf at a time when the sport is changing, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said on CNBC. Today, more people play golf outside of the U.S. than not, and more people play via simulators, like TopGolf, off the course than on the course, he said.
The big picture: The PGA's decision to partner with the PIF raised eyebrows.
During its bitter fight with LIV, the PGA often pointed to the Saudi government's human rights abuse record as reason enough not to defect to the rival tour, though several big-name pros made the move.
What to watch: Saudi Arabia essentially took over professional golf in less than a year. Soccer, it seems, is next, Axios' Kendall Baker notes.
Yesterday, they essentially formed LIV Soccer. They’ve got Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema, and Lionel Messi could join them.” [Axios]
‘Monumental’ catastrophe in Ukraine
Satellite view of damage to the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine today. Photo: Planet Labs via AP
“Thousands of Ukrainians — already on the war's front lines — now face a ‘monumental humanitarian, economic and environmental catastrophe’ after a key dam collapsed, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned today.
The big picture: The destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, located on the Dnipro River, unleashed floodwaters downstream, Axios' Jacob Knutson writes.
The torrent of water destroyed the homes of at least 16,000 people, threatened drinking and irrigation water supplies in the region, and raised concerns about the potential consequences for the massive Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Between the lines: It's still unclear what caused the collapse of the dam, but Kyiv and Moscow traded blame.
The explosion at the dam comes in what analysts and Western officials have said appear to be the opening days of Ukraine's long-awaited counteroffensive.” [Axios]
A demonstrator holds a rainbow pride flag during the Drag March LA protest in West Hollywood, Calif., on April 9. Photo: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“The Human Rights Campaign declared a state of emergency today for LGBTQ+ people living in the U.S. — the first time the organization has made such a warning in its 40-year history. Go deeper.” [Axios]
Then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Feb. 26, 2016, in Fort Worth, Texas. Christie gave Trump his endorsement at the event. | Tom Pennington/Getty Images
“CHANGE OF HEART — When Chris Christie launches his second presidential campaign tonight in New Hampshire, he’ll enter the GOP primary as a longshot, buried in the polls and seemingly without a path to the nomination.
Among other obstacles, recent polling suggests the former New Jersey governor is deeply unpopular with Republican voters. He has the highest unfavorable ratings of any candidate in the field. Sixty percent say they would not support him under any circumstances. No other contender has numbers even close to that bad.
To become a serious contender, Christie needs to meet the threshold necessary to appear in the August GOP debate, showcase his formidable debating skills that evening and then gain traction in the early state where the political terrain figures to be the most favorable to him — New Hampshire.
It’s a tall order, in part because Christie fell flat in New Hampshire in his unsuccessful 2016 bid, despite holding more than 100 town halls in the state and getting more local endorsements than any other candidate.
But that’s not the core of Christie’s problem. His main obstacle will be explaining what he did after his disappointing sixth place finish.
First, Christie dropped out of the race. Then, two weeks later, he delivered an endorsement that will live in infamy.
Just days before a pivotal Super Tuesday, with Donald Trump on the defensive against Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, Christie unexpectedly appeared by Trump’s side at a Texas rally and delivered his blessing. Even by the standards of the unpredictable 2016 GOP primary, Christie’s endorsement was a stunner.
After spending the campaign referring to Trump as a ‘carnival barker,’ belittling his readiness for the White House and talking about the importance of governance, the New Jersey governor suddenly provided Trump with critical validation from a respected member of the Republican establishment.
‘I just don’t think that he’s suited to be president of the United States,’ Christie had said of the billionaire mogul a few months earlier. ‘I don’t think his temperament is suited for that and I don’t think his experience is.’
Until that moment, Trump didn’t have a single endorsement from a Republican governor or senator. He had just two endorsements from House members — both of whom would later be indicted and resign from Congress. (Trump would also later pardon the two congressmen.)
And Christie was no ordinary endorser. His star might have been tarnished by the infamous Bridgegate scandal and his own presidential bid might have gone nowhere, but his imprimatur still mattered a great deal. Just a few years earlier, in 2011, a planeload of Iowa activists and donors made a pilgrimage to New Jersey to urge Christie to run for president in 2012. In the earliest stages of the 2016 presidential race, Christie topped the polls as the frontrunner.
The shock of Christie’s endorsement — and the nakedly opportunistic vibe it conveyed — proved costly. Christie faced withering criticism within his own party. The Union Leader, which has a storied history in Republican presidential primary politics, immediately rescinded its earlier endorsement of Christie.
‘Boy, were we wrong,’ publisher Joseph W. McQuaid wrote. ‘Watching Christie kiss the Donald’s ring this weekend — and make excuses for the man Christie himself had said was unfit for the presidency — demonstrated how wrong we were. Rather than standing up to the bully, Christie bent his knee. In doing so, he rejected the very principles of his campaign that attracted our support.’
By the time Christie left office in 2018, he ranked in the polls as the most unpopular governor in state history. Democrats captured the governorship upon his departure.
At the time of the endorsement, Christie explained that Trump offered the best chance of defeating Hillary Clinton. He later said he wanted to make Trump ‘a better candidate.’
Now, Christie appears set to embark on something akin to a mea culpa tour, running almost explicitly to stop Trump, or at least to deliver the kind of bracing attacks the top contenders are afraid to unleash. To get anywhere, however, criticism of the former president isn’t going to be enough. Christie will likely need a more fulsome explanation of why he bent the knee, what he thinks of his decision seven years later and why voters should believe him.” [POLITICO]
Pointing Fingers
Local residents look at a partially flooded area of Kherson, Ukraine, on June 6, following damage sustained at Nova Kakhovka dam.AFP via Getty Images
“The largest ecological catastrophe of Russia’s war in Ukraine erupted early Tuesday morning, and no one quite knows whose fault it is. Around 4.8 billion gallons of water flooded into southern Ukraine after an explosion caused a breach in a Russian-controlled dam, located near the city of Nova Kakhovka. The facility, which was built in 1956 along the Dnipro river as part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, is essential to the region’s potable water supplies. It’s also vital for cooling Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest such plant in Europe and which is currently controlled by Russian forces.
Both Russian and Ukrainian officials have accused the other side of being behind the attack. The Kremlin blamed ‘Ukrainian sabotage’ for the destruction, whereas Kyiv said Russia destroyed the dam to hinder Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive. ‘The destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that [Russians] must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land,’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram. U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies are still working to figure out who was responsible, but NBC News reported that the U.S. government ‘has intelligence that is leaning toward Russia as the culprit’ and that the Biden administration was ‘working to declassify some of the intelligence.’
Whoever was behind the attack, both Russia and Ukraine stand to suffer from the fallout. ‘Nearly 40,000 people reside in at-risk flooding zones in both Russian-held and Ukrainian-held territories by the dam, leaving officials scrambling to dispatch trains and buses to evacuate thousands of civilians,’ FP’s Robbie Gramer, Christina Lu, and Brawley Benson reported. ‘The dam contained an amount of water comparable to Utah’s Great Salt Lake—around 18 million cubic meters of water—and its rupture threatens to wreak havoc on agriculture in southern Ukraine and water supplies to Crimea, of which it had been a major delivery channel.’
There is also concern about the breach’s impact on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said it was monitoring the situation closely, but at this time, there was ‘no immediate nuclear safety risk.’” [Foreign Policy]
“Introducing Fattah. Iran unveiled its first domestically made hypersonic missile on Tuesday to the condemnation of Western leaders. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the new weapon—named Fattah, or ‘Conqueror’ in Farsi—has a range of around 870 miles and can fly at least five times faster than the speed of sound. ‘It can bypass the most advanced anti-ballistic missile systems of the United States and the Zionist regime, including Israel’s Iron Dome,’ Iranian state media reported. Western analysts say Iran’s claims are often exaggerated, and no footage was released of a successful test of the missile.
Tehran said it will continue to develop its missile capabilities despite U.S. and European opposition. Concerns about Iran’s ballistic missile program contributed in part to the Trump administration’s 2018 decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, in the hope that it could negotiate a ‘better’ agreement that would also include stricter restrictions on Iran’s missiles. So far, no such pact has been reached.” [Foreign Policy]
“A hole-in-one for Saudi golf. After a year of intense litigation, the U.S. PGA Tour and Saudi LIV Golf organizations signed a merger agreement on Tuesday. The deal would combine the commercial businesses and rights of both enterprises under one larger for-profit golf company. Ownership of the European PGA Tour would also fall under this new, yet to-be-named organization. The merger is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks.
LIV Golf is financed by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, which is controlled by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Not only has the fund faced antitrust lawsuits from the PGA Tour over the last 12 months, but the entity has also been accused of “sportswashing”—using its financing of sports to improve the reputation of the Saudi government, which faces numerous accusations of human rights violations.” [Foreign Policy]
“Earthquake and floods in Haiti. A preliminary 4.9-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on Tuesday, killing at least four people and injuring nearly 40 others. It came on the heels of heavy rainfall that killed at least 42 people and destroyed more than 13,000 homes over the weekend. Casualty numbers of both events are expected to rise—especially in western Haiti, where aid workers are rushing to provide victims with food, drinking water, and shelter.
These are just the latest in a long line of natural disasters to hit the impoverished island nation, including deadly earthquakes in January 2010 and August 2021. And they will likely only worsen the country’s already unprecedented humanitarian crisis, characterized by acute hunger, a cholera epidemic, gang violence, and the ‘political and economic corruption that enable them,’ argued Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Igarapé Institute, in Foreign Policy.” [Foreign Policy]
“A multimillionaire in Finland was fined one of the world’s costliest speeding tickets in history on Tuesday after driving 18.6 miles per hour over the limit. In Finland, a ticket or “day fine” is determined based on a percentage of the driver’s income, specifically half of their daily net income. For 76-year-old businessman Anders Wiklof, that meant a fine of almost $130,000. ‘It’s how it goes,’ he said, adding that he hoped the government would spend the money on improving health care in Finland.” [Foreign Policy]
Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. settles civil sex abuse case, averting trial
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
FILE - Actor Cuba Gooding Jr. appears in court, Jan. 22, 2020, in New York. Three women who claim Cuba Gooding Jr. sexually abused them — including one upset she never got her day in court when Gooding resolved criminal charges without trial or jail — can testify at a federal civil trial next week to support a woman’s claim that the actor raped her in 2013, a judge ruled Friday, June 2, 2023. (Alec Tabak/The Daily News via AP, File, Pool)
“NEW YORK (AP) — Just as a trial was to begin, it was revealed Tuesday that Cuba Gooding Jr. has settled accusations that he raped a woman in a New York City hotel a decade ago, according to court records. The actor had insisted through lawyers that his encounter with the woman was consensual after the two met at a nearby restaurant.
The trial was to start with jury selection in New York federal court as the Oscar-winning “Jerry Maguire” star faced allegations that he met the woman in Manhattan, persuaded her to join him at a hotel, and convinced her to stop at his room so he could change clothing.
Minutes after jurors were to begin assembling in a courtroom, a calendar entry in the official court record said: ‘TRIAL OFF.’ It added: ‘Reason for cancellation (on consent): the parties have resolved the matter.’
The woman had proceeded anonymously until last week, when Judge Paul A. Crotty ruled that she would have to reveal her name at trial. She said in her lawsuit that Gooding raped her in his room. His lawyers, though, insisted that it was consensual sex and that she bragged afterward to others that she had sex with a celebrity….” Read more at AP News