This story appears in the June 2026 print edition. While some stories from this issue are not yet available to read online, you can explore more from the magazine . Get our editors' guide to what matters in the world, delivered to your inbox every weekday. The courtship between Silicon Valley and MAGA was consummated on June 6, 2024, in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood, on a street known as "Billionaires' Row," at the 22,000-square-foot, $45 million French-limestone mansion of a venture capitalist named David Sacks. Along with Chamath Palihapitiya, a fellow venture capitalist and a colleague on the podcast, Sacks hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump. He knew that other technology titans were coming around to the ex-president but remained in the closet. "And I think that this event is going to break the ice on that," Sacks said on the podcast the week before the fundraiser. "And maybe it'll create a preference cascade, where all of a sudden it becomes acceptable to acknowledge the truth." Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. A few years earlier, Sacks had described the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol as an "insurrection" and pronounced Trump "disqualified" from ever again holding national office. "What Trump did was absolutely outrageous, and I think it brought him to an ignominious end in American politics," he said on the podcast a few days after the event. "He will pay for it in the history books, if not in a court of law." Palihapitiya was more colloquial, calling Trump "a complete piece-of-shit fucking scumbag." These might seem like tricky positions to climb down from--but the path that leads from scathing denunciation through gradual accommodation to sycophantic embrace of Trump is a well-worn pilgrimage trail. The journey is less wearisome for self-mortifiers who never considered democracy (a word seldom spoken on the podcast) all that important in the first place.

The fundraiser for the ICE agent in the Renee Good killing has stayed online in seeming breach of GoFundMe's own terms of service, prompting questions about selective enforcement. The crowdfunding platform GoFundMe is allowing a fundraising campaign tied to the potential legal defense of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who fatally shot a civilian to remain online, despite company rules barring fundraisers connected to violent crimes and past enforcement actions against similar campaigns. The fundraiser, titled "ICE OFFICER Jonathan Ross," seeks at least $550,000 to support potential legal expenses for the ICE agent identified as having shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three and widow of a military veteran, during an encounter with immigration agents in Minneapolis. The officer was first identified as Jonathan Ross, 43, by the Minnesota Star Tribune. The GoFundMe campaign's stated purpose--raising money for legal services following a killing--directly conflicts with GoFundMe's terms of service, which specifically bars fundraisers that are intended to support the legal defense of people accused of financial or violent crimes.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre doubled down on her "cheap fake" criticism of multiple videos of President Biden on Tuesday. The Biden White House and its allies in the legacy media were essentially telling voters not to believe their lying eyes in 2024 when pushing the now-infamous "cheap fakes" narrative. A new book detailing Biden's cognitive decline has dominated headlines and has reignited scrutiny of how the media shielded the then-presumptive Democratic nominee, particularly when it came to his age. In the weeks leading up to the disastrous debate performance exposing his cognitive decline on the world stage, Biden went viral on multiple occasions in videos his critics said showed him losing his faculties. The first was of him appearing completely frozen while others danced around him at Juneteenth celebration at the White House.

DNC National Finance Committee member Lindy Li joins'Fox & Friends Weekend' to weigh in on tech giants contributing to President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration fund. DNC National Finance Committee member Lindy Li said the Democratic Party has been weakened by President-elect Donald Trump's victory to the point it has the stench of "loser" on it. "I think, unfortunately, the Democratic Party has the stench of loser written all over the party," Li, a prominent fundraiser for the party, said on "Fox & Friends Weekend." Big Tech leaders like Google CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have all either met with Trump or directly, in the case of Altman, made donations to Trump's inaugural committee after his election victory. DNC National Finance Committee member Lindy Li said that the Democratic Party has been weakened by President-elect Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.

For much of 2024, one of President-elect Donald Trump's staunchest allies in Silicon Valley was David Sacks, an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and co-host of the popular podcast All-In. On his podcast and social media, Sacks argued that Trump's pro-industry stances would unleash innovation and spur growth in the tech industry. In June, Sacks hosted a fundraiser for Trump in San Francisco that included 300,000-a-person tickets. Now, Sacks has been rewarded with a position inside the White House: the brand-new role of "AI & crypto czar." It's unclear how much power this role actually has.

A billionaire relative of California Gov. Gavin Newsom's wife is hosting a major fundraiser for former President Trump in California on Friday, according to reports. Tom and Stacey Siebel are hosting a fundraiser in the Bay Area community of Woodside for Trump on Friday afternoon. Tom Siebel, a billionaire software developer and CEO of his own enterprise AI software company, C3.ai, is a second cousin once removed of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Los Angeles Times reported. Tom Siebel has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump's 2024 campaign and PACs supporting the Republican nominee, according to the Times and the San Francisco Gate. Newsom has been a vocal critic of Trump and was a surrogate for President Biden's now-defunct re-election campaign.

There has been an avalanche of coverage recently from liberal news outlets on so-called "cheap fakes," the term being used by both the media and the White House to describe viral clips of President Biden that critics say show signs of his cognitive decline. Biden's age has been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent days, with the president facing accusations of freezing and wandering off at various events showcased online by Republicans. One prominent example was footage showing Biden stepping away from other world leaders at the G-7 Summit to give a thumbs up to parachutists off-camera, prompting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to corral him back to the group for a photo-op. "Selective editing of video and putting spin on interpretations of events has been going on in American politics for a long time," DePauw University journalism professor Jeffrey McCall said. "What has been surprising, however, is how eager the establishment media have been to parrot the White House spin, trying to dismiss concerns about Biden's capabilities as just cheap fake editing and razzle-dazzle."

Craft Ventures co-founder David Sacks joins'The Ingraham Angle' to break down the'tremendous' support for former President Trump in the Bay Area. Craft Ventures co-founder David Sacks joined "The Ingraham Angle" on Friday, telling host Laura Ingraham there was "tremendous enthusiasm" for former President Trump during a fundraiser Thursday in true blue, liberal San Francisco. When asked by Ingraham about what Silicon Valley supporters hope to gain by backing the former president, Sacks emphasized that the support is not transactional. You know, it's not like there's some sort of overt quid pro quo. Most of these people just really love America, and they want to see America doing better," Sacks explained. Sacks added that the industry seeks more pro-innovation policies, contrasting the Biden administration's "hostile" stance toward crypto and artificial intelligence. "Now, in terms of what the industry cares about, the industry wants to be able to innovate, and the Biden administration has been very hostile toward innovation.

If California is the political fundraising powerhouse of the nation, Silicon Valley has grown into one of the increasingly dominant forces of campaign cash. And while Northern California tech entrepreneurs overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates, a small but powerful group of defectors has moved rightward in recent years. A gathering of tech's conservative cohort enjoyed a visit from former President Trump on Thursday evening at a tony fundraiser held at venture capitalist David Sacks' San Francisco home. The estate, nestled on Billionaires' Row in Pacific Heights, welcomed about 80 elites to the sold-out event. Cost of admission: up to 300,000 per person and 500,000 per couple, according to an invitation obtained by The Times.

The grant announced July 29 was part of $220 million that the NSF invested in 11 artificial intelligence research institutes across the country after a …