| Hi. I’m Tom Gara, I run the Opinion section at BuzzFeed News. As Elamin mentioned on Friday, he’s on leave for a few months, finishing his book, and I’m going to be writing this newsletter while he’s out. I’m tom.gara@buzzfeed.com if you ever want to get in touch. THE BIG STORY
Inside the hugeness of Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign There are many paths to the White House, but Michael Bloomberg, America’s 8th richest man, is trying something unprecedented: a brute force approach using money on a scale never before seen in a presidential campaign.
Rosie Gray spent the last couple of weeks at Bloomberg campaign events, and came away convinced that the campaign’s sheer hugeness — more than $400 million has already been spent on advertising — is its defining feature.
It’s also a major reason why Bloomberg is attracting serious support from voters. At rallies, people kept repeating variations of one basic point: Their top priority is beating Donald Trump, and Bloomberg seems to have the resources to get the job done.
That’s where the astronomical spending comes in. It’s a signal that while other presidential campaigns may rise and fall, “Bloomberg’s operation is too big to fail,” Gray reports.
STAYING ON TOP OF THIS Amazon founder Jeff Bezos says he’ll spend $10 billion fighting climate change
While the country’s 8th-richest man is focusing on the small stuff like running for president, the richest dude in the world is aiming higher. Jeff Bezos says he’ll drop $10 billion to battle the “biggest threat to our planet” — the climate crisis.
Bezos made the announcement on Instagram, obviously — classic clout chasing. The money will go into a fund that will support scientists, activists and organizations researching and fighting climate change, and while he didn’t say who will get the money just yet, the first grants will be issued this summer.
The money will come from Jeff Bezos’ personal fortune, not Amazon. He’s currently worth about $129 billion, meaning he’s putting a little under 8% of his net worth into this. This is his second big billionaire energy story of the month: Last week he made headlines by buying the most expensive house ever sold in LA, for the relatively pocket-change sum of $165 million.
Jeff Bezos / Instagram SNAPSHOTS TikTok is full of content that encourages eating disorders. The company says it’s cracking down on the videos, but users say its algorithms often recommend them.
Kate Middleton discussed the “terrifying” experience of posing for photos with her newborn babies. “There were all sorts of mixed emotions,” she said on a podcast.
Nikita Pearl Waligwa, star of the Disney film Queen of Katwe, has died aged 15. The Ugandan actor was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2016.
A black college athlete is suing a group of Illinois police officers. Jaylan Butler, a 20-year-old sophomore at Eastern Illinois University, alleges the officers held him at gunpoint while he was traveling on a bus with his college swim team. CHINA’S UIGHUR REPRESSION Tursunay Ziyawudun is one of the few Uighur Muslims who have escaped China after being detained in one of its internment camps.
She made it to Kazakhstan, where she was initially given permission to stay. But last year she was told she must return to China to apply for a new kind of visa. She knows that going back means a likely return to the camps.
“I am terrified,” she told Megha Rajagopalan, who met her in Kazakhstan. “If I am going to be sent back to China, I have already made up my mind. I will kill myself.”
More than a million Chinese Muslims have been locked up in a network of hundreds of internment camps in the western region of Xinjiang. Ziyawudun is one of the few who have both made it out of the camps and spoken of their ordeal to international reporters.
FOR THOSE WHO AREN’T TERMINALLY ONLINE Did you miss this weekend’s strangest Twitter drama? It involved a Nigerian man who is just really into Pete Buttigieg.
He tweeted as @easychinedu — at least, he did, until all hell broke loose. Now, he’s deleted his account.
It all began when someone shared a screenshot of a tweet by @easychinedu where he’d pasted in a quote from an email by senior Buttigieg advisor Lis Smith. The tweet, according to various internet detectives, revealed @easychinedu was a sock puppet account being run by the Buttigieg campaign — maybe even by Smith herself.
A wild couple of hours of Twitter drama followed, as people dug into his tweets and became more convinced he was secretly a veteran American political operative masquerading as a Nigerian Buttigieg stan account.
But Jane Lytvynenko got in touch with the man behind the account and confirmed his identity. He is absolutely a guy in Nigeria, and absolutely not Buttigieg’s senior communications adviser. “Clearly, I am not Lis Smith,” he told her. “I just support Pete passionately.”
Spend your billions wisely today, Tom P.S. If you like this newsletter, help keep our reporting free for all. Support BuzzFeed News by becoming a member here. (Monthly memberships are available worldwide). 📝 This letter was edited and brought to you by Tom Gara and BuzzFeed News. You can always reach us here.
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