Wall Street Journal: “Two years after the Covid-19 pandemic tore into the global economy, business leaders have had to confront another crisis that left them racing to protect staff, untangle supply-chain snarls and revamp operations around the world. It has also required each company to rethink its future in Russia, a country of 150 million people and vast natural resources, whose army is now waging a bloody war.”

“This time, companies were more prepared. The pandemic had given leaders a crisis playbook. Years of corporate activism on issues such as climate change and racial discrimination had trained them to respond to a range of issues. The invasion took many by surprise, but they reacted quickly to what was a potentially fatal threat to their employees and also a reputational threat to their businesses.”

“Jared Kushner has toured Persian Gulf monarchies with a pitch for his new $3 billion fund: Get a piece of deals made possible by Trump administration diplomatic initiatives such as the Abraham Accords, which forged Israeli relations with several Arab states,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Rudy Giuliani is selling signed 9/11 t-shirts for $911.00.

Evan Osnos: “Spend several months immersed in American talk radio and you’ll come away with the sense that the violence of January 6th was not the end of something but the beginning. A year after Trump supporters laid siege to the U.S. Capitol, some of his most influential champions are preparing the ground for his return, and they dominate a media terrain that attracts little attention from their opponents.”

“As liberals argue over the algorithm at Facebook and ponder the disruptive influence of TikTok, radio remains a colossus; for every hour that Americans listened to podcasts in 2021, they listened to six and a half hours of AM/FM radio… Talk radio has often provided more reliable hints of the political future than think tanks and elected officials have.”

Michael Cohen plans to list his former prison badge as a nonfungible token during the upcoming Miami Art Week, Page Six reports.

Axios: “Treasury secretaries seen as being friendly to Wall Street — think Robert Rubin, Larry Summers or Tim Geithner — invariably exit to multimillion-dollar salaries in the financial sector. Steven Mnuchin has managed to do even better for himself.”

“Mnuchin has raised $2.5 billion so far for a private equity fund, including from Saudi Arabia, a country toward whom he was notably friendly while in office. If the fund is structured with a standard 2% management fee, that’s $50 million per year right there for Mnuchin and his colleagues, before they make a single penny from investment returns.”

Washington Post: “The eight generals who commanded American forces in Afghanistan between 2008 and 2018 have gone on to serve on more than 20 corporate boards… Stanley McChrystal is the runaway corporate leader.”

Stacey Abrams announced she’s going on a paid speaking tour around the country this fall.

Former Senator Al Franken (D-MN) announced on Twitter his “The Only Former U.S. Senator Currently on Tour Tour” with 15 events scheduled for later this year.

Said Franken: “My promise is that you’ll laugh, you’ll think, and you’ll leave hopeful about our future. Unless I’m in a bad mood that night.”

The 2020 Trump campaign accounted for up to 3% of all credit card fraud claims in the entire country, the New York Times reports.

Wall Street Journal: “Values-based investing options for conservatives have lagged behind those available to investors concerned about climate change, diversity and animal rights. Now conservatives are taking a page from liberal investors when it comes to their escalating criticism of technology companies that have banned former President Donald Trump and others from their platforms.”

“The fund boycotts Facebook Inc., Apple Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc. and roughly 20 other companies that it views as overly progressive in their corporate politics.”

The Daily Beast identified five companies that appear to have gone back on their suspension of donations to Republican lawmakers who objected to the 2020 election results: AT&T, Cigna Health, Ford Motors, Pfizer, and Wells Fargo.

HuffPost: “Amazon announced plans to stop selling all books that frame transgender and other sexual identities as mental illness, a decision it reached after four Republican senators complained to CEO Jeff Bezos last month when the company pulled a single book on the subject from its virtual shelves.”

The Washington Post has an eye-opening look at the big cuts fundraising firms take to help new candidates running for office go viral — many of who are running in deep-blue districts with little chance of winning.

An example: “By the end of Kim Klacik’s campaign, she would raise a staggering $8.3 million and pay nearly $3.7 million of it to Olympic Media… Klacik, now a frequent Fox News and Newsmax commentator, lost to Mfume in Maryland’s 7th Congressional District by more than 40 percentage points.”

Associated Press: “Since its creation, the Lincoln Project has raised $90 million. But only about a third of the money, roughly $27 million, directly paid for advertisements that aired on broadcast and cable, or appeared online, during the 2020 campaign.”

“That leaves tens of millions of dollars that went toward expenses like production costs, overhead — and exorbitant consulting fees collected by members of the group.”

Also interesting: “Of the $90 million Lincoln Project has raised, more than $50 million has gone to firms controlled by the group’s leaders.”