The Nation wrote:
Yass ticks lots of the packing containers anticipated of the publish–Residents United billionaire class. He’s enthusiastic about “faculty alternative” and much less passionate about paying taxes. He’s closely invested within the constitution faculty motion, denouncing academics as corrupt, overpaid layabouts. He’s known as the Democratic Get together an “evil political actor.” He’s on the board of the libertarian Cato Institute and idolizes Milton Friedman, whose 1962 laissez-faire tract Capitalism and Freedom was a core textual content in Yass’s conversion to conservative economics.
In a 2022 report, ProPublica described how Yass has been gaming the tax system by devising choices buying and selling methods that diminished his tax burden however pushed authorized boundaries. The report stated he managed to safe not less than $1 billion in tax financial savings over six current years.
“Throughout that point, Yass paid a mean federal revenue tax charge of simply 19%, far under that of comparable Wall Road merchants,” Professional Publica wrote.
It’s not shocking that Yass has poured thousands and thousands of {dollars} into teams just like the Membership for Progress which help tax cuts for firms and the rich. He’s backed Republican candidates who share his views on reducing taxes and selling faculty alternative, together with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who obtained a $6 million donation from Yass.
The 65-year-old Yass, the richest man in Pennsylvania, has additionally funneled greater than $50 million since 2018 by means of PACs to help right-wing candidates within the state, in accordance with The Keystone web site.
He did donate to a brilliant PAC backing centrist Democrat Bhavini Patel, who’s mounting a major problem to progressive Democratic U.S. Rep. Summer season Lee, who represents a Pittsburgh space district, Politico reported.
Yass, who’s Jewish, is a robust supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Lee was among the many 9 Democratic Home members who voted in opposition to a decision to help Israel, condemn Hamas, and reaffirm the U.S.’s dedication to Israel’s safety following the Oct. 7 assault on Israel.
“I’m by no means going to cease defending our abortion rights, defending our public colleges, or demanding billionaires pay their justifiable share, so I welcome being an enemy to an extremist like Jeffrey Yass,” Lee stated in a press release.
In the course of the Republican major marketing campaign, Yass donated cash to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
A spokesperson for Yass’ buying and selling agency advised The Day by day Beast that Yass has by no means given cash to Donald Trump’s marketing campaign and has no plans to take action.
However Yass did assist throw a lifeline to the financially distressed former president, who’s hemorrhaging cash thanks to the a number of civil and felony court docket circumstances in opposition to him. The New York Instances wrote that Yass, a serious investor in the Chinese language firm that owns TikTok, was “the most important institutional shareholder” of the shell firm that not too long ago merged with Trump’s Reality Social platform.
The Instances stated that Yass’ buying and selling agency, Susquehanna Worldwide Group, owned about 2% of Digital World Acquisition Company, which merged with Trump Media & Know-how Group on the finish of March. Susquehanna holds about 605,000 shares, value about $22 million. Trump holds about 60 p.c of the 137 million shares, value a number of billion {dollars} on paper.
However Yass may come out a winner even when Trump Media is a colossal failure. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Susquehanna stated it “has zero financial curiosity” within the merged firm as a result of it had offset the worth of its shares by taking an equal variety of quick positions. It intends to behave as a market-maker and oversee choices buying and selling within the merged firm.
The New York Instances stated there’s plenty of demand by short-sellers who count on the Trump inventory to plummet, however solely about 5 million shares can be found for choices buying and selling. That signifies that market-makers can cost excessive premiums for choices.
Yass and Trump each had been born within the New York Metropolis borough of Queens, however any similarities finish there. Trump is a nepo child who took over his millionaire father’s actual property firm and one way or the other managed to drive his on line casino firm to chapter.
Right here’s a promotional video that Yass’ agency put out:
Yass, whose mother and father had been each CPAs, was a math main on the State College of New York at Binghamton and tried to make it as knowledgeable poker participant in Las Vegas. He and a few school pals made a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} utilizing a classy betting system at race tracks that concerned putting 1000’s of bets.
That helped them get a seat on the world’s largest on line casino: Wall Road. In 1987, Yass co-founded the Philadelphia-based Susquehanna Worldwide Group, a privately owned buying and selling agency concerned in choices buying and selling and enterprise capital investments. SIG additionally has pursuits in cryptocurrencies and sports activities betting. Forbes described SIG as “one among Wall Road’s largest and most profitable buying and selling companies.”
A lot of Yass’ fortune is derived from a $5 million funding that SIG made in 2012 in Chinese language startup agency ByteDance Ltd., which developed the TikTok video sharing app. SIG’s stake in ByteDance is now measured at about 15% and is value an estimated $40 billion. About half of that stake—value about $18 billion—belongs to Yass personally,
However now Yass is probably going through an enormous monetary hit after the Home voted 352-65 final month to cross a invoice that will ban TikTok from app shops if Chinese language-owned ByteDance doesn’t promote its stake. In a uncommon show of bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans agreed that TikTok posed a nationwide safety menace. The invoice now requires Senate approval, and President Joe Biden has stated he’ll signal it if it’s handed by Congress.
GOP Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers, who chairs the Home Vitality and Commerce Committee, stated:
“The rationale that there is a lot bipartisan help for the invoice is due to the nationwide safety concern with TikTok accessing 170 million American customers’ knowledge. That may be a priceless instrument for China to take advantage of and use in nefarious methods. …
“Finally, the Chinese language Communist Get together accessing 170 million People consumer knowledge is a really actual and rapid menace. This laws is focused towards that present menace.”
“I’ve supported libertarian and free market rules my whole grownup life. TikTok is about free speech and innovation, the epitome of libertarian and free market beliefs,” Yass advised The Wall Road Journal in 2023. “The concept of banning TikTok is an anathema to every part I consider.”
As president, Trump tried to ban TikTok, however a federal decide blocked the trouble. In an govt order, Trump declared that TikTok threatened “the nationwide safety, overseas coverage, and economic system of the USA.”
However Trump reversed course final month on banning TikTok. He put up a publish on his Reality Social platform stating, “Should you do away with TikTok, Fb and Zuckerschmuck will double their enterprise. I do not need Fb, who cheated within the final Election, doing higher. They’re a real Enemy of the Individuals!”
Trump’s feedback got here simply days after he met briefly with Yass at a Membership for Progress retreat in Palm Seaside, Florida. Trump advised CNBC that the 2 didn’t focus on TikTok, however talked about faculty alternative.
But it surely does elevate issues about whether or not there’s any quid professional quo between Trump and Yass. Trump’s reversal on TikTok is a humiliation for Home Republicans who emphasised the potential nationwide safety menace posed by the video-sharing app’s Chinese language connection. Simply how a lot affect will right-wing billionaires or overseas entities have over a determined Trump?
Lawyer Michael Popok raised these questions in a video for MeidasTouch.
“What a hazard to our society. The truth that the … richest man in Pennsylvania, is hooking up with Donald Trump,” stated Bishop Dwayne Royster, govt director of POWER Interfaith, a progressive non secular group in Pennsylvania, in an interview with The Keystone.
Trump marketing campaign insiders have floated Yass as a possible Treasury secretary ought to he win in November, in accordance with The Philadelphia Inquirer.
“Yass is positioning himself to have the ability to have excessive political affect and to have the ability to have a say within the regime that Donald Trump might probably have if he will get actually elected as president of the USA,” Royster warned. “It could make him extremely influential.”