fortune--2020-07-02--A 7-point plan to slow COVID-19 and restart the economy

The rapid surge in COVID-19 cases, concentrated in states that reopened too fast without following CDC guidelines, has dented America’s plans to restart its economy. On Wednesday a record 50,203 new coronavirus cases were reported, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. With cases rising rapidly, governors of at least 16 states and many businesses are pulling back from reopening. As New York Federal Reserve president John Williams said bluntly on Tuesday: “The economy’s fate is inextricably linked to the virus. A strong economic recovery depends on effective and sustained containment of COVID-19.”
With cases rising in 38 states, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Southern California are experiencing unprecedented surges in new cases. The virus has broadened its reach from impacting older Americans primarily to younger people ages 18-49. The spread of the virus can be attributed to failures like not wearing masks or practicing social distancing and large indoor gatherings in churches, bars, and other establishments.
In Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey ordered all bars, gyms, movie theaters, and water parks to close. Miami and Los Angeles have closed all beaches for July Fourth weekend. Hospital intensive care units are reaching their limits, most notably in Houston, with its vast hospital facilities, whose ICUs are at 97% of capacity. The COVID-19 surge led Apple to close 48 of its stores, and Disney has delayed its long-awaited reopening of its theme parks in California.
The country’s inability to slow the spread of COVID-19 will delay the recovery of the U.S. economy from its spring shutdown, as hopes for a “V”-shaped economic rebound have been shattered. While Americans are eager to get their lives back to normal, fears of contracting COVID-19 are causing many consumers to hesitate about going to public places.
Meanwhile, subsidies are running out for small businesses, which will force thousands of retail stores and restaurants to close permanently. Large companies are reassessing their staffing strategies and planning sizable layoffs. Macy’s reduced its headquarters staff alone by 3,900 employees. Other companies burdened by enormous debts, such as Chesapeake Energy and Cirque de Soleil, have declared bankruptcy, causing thousands more to lose their jobs.
While it is easy to blame governors for the surges their states are experiencing, the root cause of the problem is a lack of federal leadership. The American government is unique among developed nations in delegating full responsibility for managing the virus to its states. Throughout Europe and Asia, national leaders brought the virus under control through strict enforcement of national guidelines. As a result, America now has 10 times as many new cases per day as the European Union; America’s cases have increased 80% in the past two weeks to 40,000 per day compared with fewer than 4,000 per day in the European Union. As a consequence, 20 European countries have banned Americans from entry until COVID-19 cases are below the European average.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on viruses, told a Senate committee on Tuesday, “It is going to be very disturbing. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around.”
Delegating management of the coronavirus to the states has failed. The only way for America to regain control over COVID-19 spread and get its economy restarted is for the Trump administration to take charge. Here are seven actions the administration should take now to accomplish this:
1. Strictly enforce revised guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including mandatory wearing of masks and six-foot social distancing in public spaces, and limiting the size of public gatherings to 50 people or fewer.
2. Expand free testing to determine asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19.
3. Establish contact tracing for all positive cases.
4. Create public health “fast action” teams to fly into hotspots to help stop COVID-19 spread.
5. Hold regular national briefings by public health experts—not politicians—to rebuild public confidence.
6. Provide additional federal financial support to unemployed persons and small businesses.
7. Stimulate immediate job creation through a trillion-dollar infrastructure program, similar to the one undertaken in 2009 during the Great Recession.
To lead this effort, President Trump should appoint an established health care expert, such as former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, as COVID-19 czar, with authority to enforce these science-based orders. During the 2009 financial crisis, the Obama administration appointed Steven Rattner as automobile czar; Rattner quickly restructured the industry, leading to its resurgence.
The restart of the U.S. economy cannot be separated from control over this deadly virus. This requires immediate action by the Trump administration to stem the virus’s spread. The alternative is not only millions more Americans getting sick, but the current economic crisis spiraling into an extended decline.
Bill George is senior fellow at Harvard Business School and former chair and CEO of Medtronic. He is the author of Discover Your True North.


fortune--2020-07-02--Staying safe this Fourth of July weekend

The NFL ’ s journey from banning kneeling to playing the ‘ Black national anthem ’ before every game in @ @ @ @ @ week

Happy Thursday, readers.
As we (or at least those of us in the United States) prepare for the Independence Day holiday, I’d like to highlight what experts and government leaders say are the best ways to stay safe in the midst of the pandemic.
The idea of not being able to freely barbecue with friends and family without precautionary measures, or just head out to the beach, is unsettling. But it’s a reality many Americans will have to grapple with.
In Southern California (my own home turf before I became a New York transplant), cities have been forced to scale back—or scuttle entirely—their reopening plans over the long weekend. This isn’t a surprise given the growing case count in Los Angeles and its proximity to beach havens such as Orange County.
In New York, where cases have flattened after rapidly increasing in April, beaches are open for swimming—but with serious restrictions.
If you live somewhere with more lax considerations, or think that precautionary measures such as distancing and wearing masks are overblown, I would urge you to reconsider given the available evidence.
I enjoy America’s birthday just as much as anyone else. And that’s why it’s so important to protect yourself and anyone else you can in the midst of a crisis.
Happy Fourth of of July to all our readers, and we’ll see you again on Monday.
Sy Mukherjee
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy
DIGITAL HEALTH
Tech companies edge toward bringing back mass gatherings. COVID has been a particularly harsh public health problem for the in-person conference business. My colleague Michal Lev-Ram reports that tech companies such as Airbnb and Eventbrite are slowly but surely working out how to bring back live events—but with a whole lot of restrictions. For Airbnb? "Some of the new requirements include mandating that hosts and guests wear face coverings and limiting group sizes to allow for social distancing. There’s also an “Enhanced Cleaning Protocol” for all hosts who are hosting in a private space," Michal writes. (Fortune)
INDICATIONS
Regeneron co-founder respond to controversial 'All Lives Matter' graduation speech. Regeneron co-founder, president, and chief scientific officer George Yancopoulos is in some hot water over a controversial high school graduation speech in which he elicited "All Lives Matter" rhetoric—and faced significant backlash from the student attendees and the school district itself. Yancopoulos later said that, "I apologize for being insensitive and to the people I hurt with my remarks." Regeneron emphasized its commitment to diversifying its workforce, including among its executive ranks. (Fortune)
THE BIG PICTURE
A state by state mapping of 50,000 coronavirus cases in a single day. My colleague Nicolas Rapp captures in charts and maps one of the more disturbing milestones of America's battle with the coronavirus. On Wednesday, daily cases of the virus crossed 50,000, a striking figure which explains why many states including Texas, Florida, California, and others have had to roll back their approaches to re-opening businesses. (Fortune)
REQUIRED READING
The best stocks of 2020 so far have made pandemic investors much richer, by Jen Wieczner
The end of the 'V-shaped recovery', by Alan Murray
Millions are giving up extra unemployment benefits to go back to work, by Lance Lambert
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fortune--2020-07-02--Hugh Downs, broadcaster known for news, game, and talk shows, dies at 99

Hugh Downs, the genial, versatile broadcaster who became one of television’s most familiar and welcome faces with more than 15,000 hours on news, game and talk shows, has died at age 99.
Downs died of natural causes at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, on Wednesday, said his great-niece, Molly Shaheen.
“The Guinness Book of World Records” recognized Downs as having logged more hours in front of the camera than any television personality until Regis Philbin passed him in 2004.
He worked on NBC’s “Today” and “Tonight” shows, the game show “Concentration,” co-hosted the ABC magazine show “20/20” with Barbara Walters and the PBS series “Over Easy” and “Live From Lincoln Center.”
“I’ve worked on so many different shows and done so many shows at the same time,” Downs said in a 1986 Associated Press interview. “I once said I’d done everything on radio and television except play-by-play sports. Then I remembered I’d covered a boxing match in Lima, Ohio, in 1939.”
American television host Hugh Downs on the set of the NBC game show “Concentration,” which he hosted. The broadcaster died at 99 of natural causes, his great-niece said. Hulton Archive—Getty Images
Downs began his broadcasting career at the age of 18 as a $12-a-week announcer on a small Ohio radio station. When television came along, he at first looked on it as a gimmick, but quickly realized “it was probably a juggernaut, and I’d better be in on it.”
He was an announcer in Chicago, which was a television incubator in the 1950, for “Kukla, Fran & Ollie” and “Hawkins Falls,” which he said was television’s first soap opera. In 1954, he went to New York for “The Home Show.”
In 1961, Newsweek described him as “a gluttonous reader with a first-rate brain that he keeps curried and exercised like a prize poodle.”
His reputation was such that he even won the right to approve any commercial he was assigned to read, striving to keep dubious claims off the air.
“My loyalty was with the person tuning in,” he said. “It was expedient. If I lost my credibility, what use would I be to a client?”
He showed his principled side again in 1997, when he took a vacation day on “20/20″ rather than be part on a show that included an interview with Marv Albert after the sportscaster was caught in a lurid sexual assault scandal.
Downs had a particular interest in science, once launching into a monologue on the Paar show on the science underlying water-skiing. It prompted Paar to quip, “Well, Hugh, when you drown, you’ll know the reason why.”
His interest in problems of the aging — he even earned a postgraduate degree in gerontology — was highlighted in his Public Broadcasting Service series “Over Easy” as well as many of his “20/20” pieces.
“We all suffer in our culture from the idea … that youth was the big thing,” he said.
“There has been kind of a loss of respect for older people, and we lose gleaning wisdom from older people. We lose the ability to see that impairment and decrepitude don’t necessarily go along with age.”
His work on “20/20″ also showed his adventurous spirit, such as the time he got to ride a killer whale, and another time he put on breathing apparatus to swim near a great white shark. There was a hazardous expedition to the South Pole in which one participant nearly fell to his death.
“I’m interested in science, the environment, medicine and certain personalities,” he said. “I just do the stories I want to do. I don’t want to be just the anchor.”
Downs began his work as Paar’s second banana in 1957, after a stint as host of NBC’s “The Home Show.”
In a highly publicized incident in February 1960, Paar stormed off the air in a dispute involving network cutting a Paar “water closet” (toilet) joke the censors disliked. Downs won praise for calmly telling the audience “I’d like to think this is not final” and keeping the live show running until signoff time.
Downs said later that he expected that Paar would at any minute return to the stage “with some punch line or something. He didn’t.” But Downs said he was eventually grateful for the boost the brouhaha gave his career.
Paar finally returned to the show a few weeks later.
Paar’s departure from “Tonight” in 1962 paved the way for Johnny Carson. Downs, meanwhile, began his nine-year run as host of the “Today” show. Walters was a “Today” colleague for part of that time. She was an admirer of Downs who praised his generosity and collegiality.
He expressed his views modestly in the 1995 book “The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920-1961”: “In a way the less talent you have or deploy, the less chance you have of overexposure. That may be why I have been on network television more than anybody in the world.”


fortune--2020-07-02--Walmart is converting 160 of its parking lots into drive-in movie theaters

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With the coronavirus pandemic continuing the hamper movie theater reopenings, drive-ins are making a comeback. Now Walmart, of all businesses, is getting into the act.
Starting in August, Walmart will convert 160 of its U.S store parking lots into pop-up drive-ins with the help of Tribeca Enterprises, the media venture cofounded by Robert De Niro. Tribeca, which operates a popular film festival in New York, will handle the programming until the drive-in operation concludes in October.
“This family-friendly night will include hit movies, special appearances from filmmakers and celebrities, and concessions delivered right to customer vehicles,” Walmart said in a statement. The stores adjacent to the parking lot will allow moviegoers to pick up snacks and drinks for the screenings at the curbside.
Locations, dates, pricing, and programming have yet to be announced, but Walmart has set up a website promising updates in the near future.
Prior to the pandemic, a little over 300 drive-in theaters were still in operation in the United States, according to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association. That’s down from an estimate of more than 4,000 during the theaters’ heyday in the 1950s.
As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to surge in the U.S., the future of standard indoor cineplexes remains unclear. Earlier this week, the nation’s two largest theater chains—AMC and Regal—pushed back expected reopening dates for most theaters nationwide to July 30 and July 31, respectively, after Christopher Nolan’s upcoming blockbuster Tenet was once again delayed, this time to July 31.


fortune--2020-07-02--Drug giant Regeneron responds to backlash over cofounder’s ‘All Lives Matter’ graduation speech

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George Yancopoulos is a world-class scientist. The billionaire cofounder of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, a Fortune 500 drugmaker with nearly $64 billion in market value, is the cofounder, president, and chief scientific officer of a company that has developed innovative treatments for conditions including cancer, arthritis, and high cholesterol. Now he’s facing heat for a controversial high school graduation speech that clashes with the ongoing public fury about police brutality and inequities faced by Black Americans.
Yancopoulos delivered the keynote commencement address at Yorktown High School in New York. The school is located less than 20 miles from Regeneron’s headquarters in Tarrytown (and counts Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as an alumna).
The veteran pharma chief and scientist challenged students to question what he called “popular narratives.” But his framing focused on social justice movements, including Black Lives Matter, rubbed many students and parents the wrong way.
“I believe Black lives matter, though it should not be a crime to say all lives matter,” Yancopoulos said during his speech. He went on to make several more statements seemingly defending police, saying that police were being “scapegoated” and that far larger systemic issues were at the root of Black people’s suffering. Yancopoulos also trudged out the common narrative that Black men are more likely to be killed by other Black men than by cops (a statement that misses the broader point of social inequality and the disproportionate power of the state to impose violence while minimizing protections for communities of color).
In one tense moment, several attendees—all of whom were gathered in their cars in the parking lot in order to maintain social distancing during COVID-19—began honking their horns in protest. Yancopoulous called this “an act of cowardice” and challenged the individuals to come up onto the stage.
None of this sat well with students, parents, or administrators who said the speech was highly politicized and intentionally divisive. Yorktown Schools superintendent Ron Hattar said, “Unexpected comments were made in that address that do not align with the principles of the Yorktown Central School District.”
Regeneron and Yancopoulos responded to the controversy. “I have had time to reflect on my remarks at the Yorktown High School graduation last weekend and have listened attentively to the reactions to my words,” he said in a statement emailed to Fortune through a company spokesperson. “My intent was to discuss how society has systematically over centuries contributed to many inequities, including in health care where significant disparities exist for Black Americans. I recognize I did not do this effectively, and I remain committed to listening and learning and to the belief that hate and prejudice in any form is wrong.”
Regeneron added that the company as a whole is committed to expanding its diversity and inclusion efforts, including among its leadership and through expanding the pool of job applicants it seeks within the Black community.


fortune--2020-07-02--More than 4 million mortgages are in forbearance. What are your housing protections?

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The CARES Act passed by Congress set aside protections for what they assumed would be millions of jobless homeowners and renters.
And their projections were right: As of June 21, there are already 4.2 million mortgages in forbearance, or 8.5% of all mortgages, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Monday report.
The CARES Act provides two main protections to mortgage borrowers. First, lenders and loan services cannot foreclose on borrowers with federally-backed mortgages between March 18 to August, 31. Second, federally-backed mortgage borrowers, including those with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loans, have the right to obtain an additional 180 days of forbearance if they’ve experienced hardship due to the pandemic.
The August 31 resumption of foreclosures is fast approaching. And as weekly unemployment claims continue to top 1 million, more Americans are turning to forbearance.
Here’s what they need to know.
What is mortgage forbearance?
During forbearance your monthly payments are suspended or reduced as a result of your financial limitations to repayment. The maximum period of forbearance for federally-backed mortgages was 180 days prior to the additional 180 days provided by the CARES Act. So combined, you have up to a year of forbearance available.
Do suspended mortgage payments during forbearance have to be repaid?
You will have to repay your missed mortgages payments during forbearance. But you aren’t required to pay it all at once. Instead, your lender can offer you a repayment plan, a modified loan structure, or you may simply have to resume your normal payments—with an extended payment period. Your loan servicer will contact you around 30 days before your forbearance ends to help determine next steps. Obviously, if you can afford to pay some of your mortgage during forbearance, it will reduce the amount you owe when the period is over.
What qualifies as hardship due to the pandemic?
To qualify for CARES Act extended forbearance, mortgage borrowers must have faced hardship due to the pandemic. But as with other CARES Act provisions, you show that you’re facing direct or indirect pandemic-related financial hardship.
How do I apply for forbearance?
Borrowers with federally backed mortgages—which includes the vast majority of U.S. mortgages—should start the forbearance application process by contacting their loan servicer.
Those without federally-backed mortgages aren’t guaranteed to get the same window of forbearance, however, they can still inquire about whether it’s something their loan servicer is willing to offer. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has encouraged financial institutions to work with borrowers impacted by the pandemic.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, USDA, and VA mortgages are all federally-backed. But to confirm if your loan is federally-backed and eligible, just contact your loan servicer.
For homeowners with mortgages covered by the CARES Act, you only need to explain that you have a pandemic-related financial hardship, directly or indirectly related to the pandemic.
There are no fees, penalties, or additional interest associated with forbearance, and it won’t impact your credit score.
What are your foreclosure protections?
Borrowers with federally backed mortgages are protected from foreclosure through August, 31. The foreclosure protection was through just the end of June, but last month it was extended to the end of August.
“To protect borrowers and renters during the pandemic we are extending the Enterprises’ foreclosure and eviction moratorium. During this national health emergency no one should worry about losing their home,” wrote Mark Calabria, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, in a statement last month.
Are there protections for renters?
The CARES Act protects tenants in federally subsidized or federally backed housing from being evicted for nonpayment of rent between March 27 to July 24. But that has since been extended to the end of August.
Tenants in federally subsidized or federally backed housing also can’t be charged fees or penalties that are related to nonpayment during this period.
Some states have expanded eviction protection to all residential tenants. In New York that moratorium on evictions expired in June. However, renters in New York impacted by the pandemic are protection until later into August. Once states roll back those moratoriums, it’s expected we’ll see a wave of evictions in a country—given the unemployment rate is still above 13%.


fortune--2020-07-02--50,000 coronavirus cases in one day—mapped state by state

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The United States reached a grim milestone on Wednesday as the number of confirmed daily coronavirus cases soared past 50,000.
On Tuesday, the U.S. had about 2,635,780 active coronavirus cases, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 tracking project. That number swelled to 2,686,480 on Wednesday, an increase of 50,700 active cases.
The daily increase between Tuesday and Wednesday is the biggest single-day spike since the COVID-19 pandemic began. And it’s clear that a handful of states, especially ones with large populations, are driving the spike.
Texas, Florida, Arizona, California, Washington, and many other states are experiencing a surge, underscoring the reality that relatively lenient enforcement of social distancing and other public safety measures—as well as premature reopening of businesses in states like Florida and Texas—has put America on a backward trajectory for containing the coronavirus, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who leads the NIH’s infectious disease unit.
The governors of Texas and California, as well as local officials in Florida, have imposed renewed restrictions such as closing down bars and indoor dining, and mandating residents to wear face masks in public.
State-by-state breakdown of daily new cases
New cases based on a seven-day average


fortune--2020-07-02--Vanilla Ice’s Texas concert plans come to a halt over coronavirus concerns

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Vanilla Ice has indefinitely postponed a Texas concert that had drawn fierce criticism due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The 1990s rapper with the hit single “Ice Ice Baby” had been scheduled to play a lakeside concert just outside Austin on Friday, but he decided to postpone until a later date, the owner of the restaurant hosting the show said Thursday.
Barrett Brannam said Vanilla Ice, whose real name is Robert Van Winkle, decided not to play because of concerns for he health of his fans and himself. Brannam said he didn’t know when the show will be rescheduled.
“Hard to say. Could be later this summer or not until next summer. We don’t now how long this virus will be around,” Brannam said.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week shut down bars and clubs in an effort to halt what he called a “massive spread” of the coronavirus. But the Emerald Point Bar & Grill is still open and hosting live music because it is a restaurant and performances can take place outside.
The Vanilla Ice show drew widespread attention — and criticism — when the rapper posted about it on social media Wednesday. Only 84 tickets had been sold before the online ticket broker suspended sales, Brannam said.
“I take the coronavirus serious. But we can’t live in a bubble,” the rapper tweeted before canceling Thursday. “I think at this point we all understand the severity of it. (P)ractice social distancing and wear a mask. This is an outside venue, Fourth of July on the lake with fireworks. Plenty of room for distancing.”
The rapper’s management company didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Brannam said he hadn’t come under any pressure to cancel the show from state or local governments but he has been swamped with calls of complaints.
The performer played the same venue last year in front of 1,800 people and is booked for the holiday weekend for the next two years, Brannam said. Friday’s concert was booked in 2019, he said.
“I didn’t know about COVID when I booked this show. Nobody did,” Brannam said.
Brannam said the rapper had committed to asking fans to wear masks and follow proper social distancing guidelines. The venue will check patrons’ temperatures at the entrance and will give a mask to anyone who needs one, he said.
The restaurant has been hosting live music performances since it reopened in May. Brannam said no one complained until it was a Vanilla Ice concert. There are shows scheduled for Saturday and Sunday as well.
Brannam said he postponed upcoming concerts by Coolio and Tone Loc next weekend because he wouldn’t lose money.
“Vanilla Ice, he’s poised for people to poke fun at. Nobody was saying anything until he made his post. That’s when everything went crazy,” Brannam said. “I’m the most hated person on the planet right now over a Vanilla Ice show.”


fortune--2020-07-02--Stocks had their best quarter in decades. Here’s why that’s bad news for President Trump

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After plunging into a bear market in the first quarter, stocks finished the second quarter of 2020 with their best performance in more than two decades: The S&P rose 20% in the three months ended June, its biggest quarterly run since 1998.
While some market watchers like to wait until closer to the November presidential election to read stocks for signs of who will win, if history is a guide, the market may already have predicted whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden will prevail.
In the past six decades, there have only been four presidential election years when the S&P 500 fell in the first quarter but rose in the second, as it has so far in 2020, according to CFRA Research. In each of those years—1960, 1968, 1980 and 1992—the pattern was the same: the S&P 500 went on to rise an average of 8% in the second half of the year—”all while witnessing a presidential defeat for the incumbent party,” according to CFRA’s chief investment strategist Sam Stovall.
In other words, in each of those years, the sitting commander in chief lost the election. Last time, in ’92, it was George H.W. Bush, defeated by Bill Clinton. Before that, in ’80, Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter. This year, the incumbent is President Trump, facing Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Notably, whether the incumbent president is a Republican or Democrat is irrelevant to this particular market signal—the pattern merely shows that in the past, when stocks have behaved this way, it has been out with the old and in with the new. Stovall says that “uncertainty” has been the dominant theme for investors. And when that’s the case leading up to the election, it tends to presage a White House ouster in November, he notes. Indeed, when the S&P 500 declines in the period from August through October, just ahead of the election, the incumbent president has been replaced 88% of the time. (That statistic means there’s been only one exception to the rule—when President Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated challenger Adlai Stevenson in 1956.) So if the quarterly flip-flop in the first half of 2020 alone isn’t enough to convince you who will win the election, keep a close eye on stocks beginning in August—together the market moves could predict whether President Trump will serve another four years.


fortune--2020-07-02--30-year mortgage rates just hit record lows

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Long-term U.S. mortgage rates fell this week with the benchmark 30-year home loan hitting its lowest level ever.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the average rate on the key 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell to 3.07%, down from last week’s 3.13%. For the second week in a row, it is the lowest level since Freddie began tracking average rates in 1971. A year ago, the rate stood at 3.75%.
The average rate on the 15-year fixed-rate mortgage also fell slightly to 2.56% from 2.59% last week, but it is down from 3.18% a year ago.
The historically low interest rates come as the U.S. housing market appears to be rebounding somewhat from a coronavirus-caused spring freeze. Sales of new homes rose a surprisingly strong 16.6% in May as major parts of the country reopened, though sales of existing homes struggled through the month with a 9.7% decline.
A report on pending home sales last week offered some optimism, with the number of Americans signing contracts to purchase homes jumping 44.3% in May after a record-breaking April decline. Those contract signings are a barometer of finalized purchases over the next two months.
The impact of the coronavirus pandemic sidelined both buyers and sellers in March and April, so there remains a tight supply of homes available for sale, running up against high demand.


fortune--2020-07-02--Why Google’s Fitbit acquisition will be tough to stop

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Growing concerns about the power of big tech companies probably won’t be enough to derail Google’s planned $2 billion acquisition of Fitbit, antitrust experts say. That’s despite increasing scrutiny from European regulators and a recent complaint about the deal from 20 consumer and online groups.
Google announced last November its intention to grab the struggling maker of eponymous activity-tracking bands and smartwatches. Fitbit once dominated the market for so-called smart wearables, but an onslaught from Apple at the high end and Chinese rivals like Xiaomi at the low end decimated its business. The $2 billion acquisition price was a fraction of Fitbit’s stock market value when it went public in 2015. At the same time, Google’s own wearable platform has failed to gain much traction in the market, and the merger could give a boost to both companies’ efforts.
But regulators in the European Union have many questions about the deal, focusing particularly on whether Google gaining access to the health and fitness data of tens of millions of Fitbit users could somehow strengthen the company’s dominance of digital advertising and search—not to mention sideline other health apps on Google’s Android platform. The EU has sent a 60-page questionnaire to Google and Fitbit rivals seeking their views, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, 20 groups including Public Citizen and the Open Markets Institute asked regulators to block the deal, warning that the merger could lead to the misuse of customer data.
Fitbit declined to comment.
Google said there was no reason for the deal to be blocked. “This deal is about devices, not data,” the company said in a statement. “The wearables space is highly crowded, and we believe the combination of Google’s and Fitbit’s hardware efforts will increase competition in the sector, benefiting consumers and making the next generation of devices better and more affordable.”
Google is already under scrutiny by U.S. regulators in a broader antitrust probe of the search and advertising markets.
The problem for those hoping to see the deal blocked is that neither company has a large enough share of the wearables market to cause problems for other competitors, and U.S. law offers little rationale to stop a merger of companies not in the same business, says David Balto, an antitrust attorney and the former policy director of the Federal Trade Commission during the Microsoft antitrust case.
“It would be extraordinarily difficult to bring a case,” Balto says.
Fitbit had less than 5% of the wearables market in 2019, according to data from IDC. Apple led the market with 32% of device shipments, Xiaomi was second with 12%, Samsung was third at 9%, and Huawei ranked fourth with 8%. None of those companies use Google’s wearable-software platform, currently called Wear OS.
The European Union is also unlikely to try to block the merger of two U.S-based companies, although it could look to impose limits on the combined company around the use of customer data.
Some academics have suggested that big tech companies have used small add-on acquisitions to expand their market power inappropriately, but there’s no legal precedent for using the argument to block a merger.
“Fitbit isn’t a Google competitor, exactly. If it were, blocking the merger would be easy,” says Mark Lemley, a law professor at Stanford and the author of a paper on the harm of such mergers. “But neither is it unrelated. Google is building a portfolio of related businesses that collect data on their users, and as that portfolio gets bigger it gets harder to compete with them on a level playing field in any one of those businesses.”
But it’s almost impossible under current law to stop the combination of two companies not in the same line of business, known as vertical mergers, on customer data grounds or any others. Balto points to the recent case in which a court overrode government objections to AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner.
“There are no successful oppositions to vertical mergers like this,” he says. “Fitbit is a Lilliputian compared to the size of assets Time Warner possessed in their relevant markets in that case.”
The point of the letter from the 20 opposition groups was that the merger should be scrutinized and even blocked under current law as a danger to potential or future competition, says Charlotte Slaiman, competition policy director at Public Knowledge and a former FTC attorney herself. “Potential competition is an angle that hasn’t been taken seriously enough, but it is a part of our law,” she says.
Still, U.S. law should be strengthened to take into account the power of digital platforms and the ways big tech companies have used mergers to reduce competitive threats, she adds. “We really need new rules and laws that are focused on digital platforms, because even if we have very effective antitrust enforcement it’s not going to be enough to address the full problem here,” Slaiman says.
(Update: This story was updated on July 2, 2020, with a comment from Google.)


fortune--2020-07-02--Banks and investors aren’t helping small businesses enough. Funds like these could fill the gap

Over the course of five days in August of 1965, five days of protests in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts gave way to violence. The upheaval gave vent to feelings of injustice, but also devastated many of that community’s small businesses. Unemployment soared, and families had to move or even break up to find jobs.
Governments—whether local or federal—were unable or unwilling to rebuild the warehouses, barbershops and restaurants that had been damaged. Neither was private capital rushing into Watts. So a group interested in helping rebuild Watts approached the Internal Revenue Service, with a request that they be granted Section 501(c)3 tax exemption status in order to attract patient and appropriate capital to invest in the businesses that made Watts a community.
The IRS granted the investment group this status, as long as the group maintained redeveloping Watts as their primary goal. An entity was established which used a grant from the U.S. government, leveraged 3-to-1 by private capital, with the objective of relieving poverty and unemployment in Watts. And the entity went on to make over $30 million of investments in the area and created thousands of jobs.
The federal government recognized then that rebuilding small businesses in Watts—and in underserved markets more generally—was not something the government was well suited to do. Yet it also recognized that those underserved communities weren’t likely to attract capital from more conventional asset managers interested only in making the highest profits and as quickly as possible.
Almost 25 years later, in 1989, our organization, SEAF (the Small Enterprise Assistance Funds), was established based on the same ruling—but with a mission to invest into, and grow, small businesses in underserved emerging markets. SEAF knew that the most effective way to rebuild the countries of Poland and Romania after socialism, and Afghanistan and Colombia after conflict, was to invest in entrepreneurs who provided the business services, local grocery stores, pet food, neighborhood pharmacies and restaurants that would employ people and provide stability. To date we have done this across 31 countries and deployed more than $650 million directly to more than 400 entrepreneurs, creating or maintaining more than 60,000 jobs.
But we did not do this by providing straight debt, in the form of bank loans, or by taking equity stakes the way private equity or venture capital firms would. We offer entrepreneurs patient investments which do not saddle them with debt, and do not pressure them to expand at Silicon Valley-style rates. We now need to adopt this model far more widely in the U.S.
Small and medium-sized businesses, left behind
The economic consequences of the COVID-19 lockdown have been clearly disproportionately hard on America’s small businesses. Even more recently, many small businesses across this country have regrettably been damaged by looting and vandalism that coincided with demonstrations against the tragic killing of George Floyd. Unemployment has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression and a great uncertainty exists as to whether past business models will be able to continue as before.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with 500 or fewer employees, especially those outside the concentrated, capital-rich markets of Silicon Valley, New York and Boston will find it hard to find financing to rebuild and reposition themselves. Banks are unlikely to be helpful—the PPP program exposed the limitations of banks and their inability to reach many small businesses. Those businesses will also not be helped by the mainstream VC and private equity firms, which do not focus on Missouri or Alabama or Maine, or on the everyday SMEs which generate nearly two-thirds of all new US employment.
In a sense, the economic damage caused by recent events can be said to have brought out the underlying reality that our great financial system has a significant flaw—it is not reaching solidly managed businesses in the vast majority of regions in our country. The ordinary SMEs—which can double or even triple in size, but will never qualify as a “unicorn”—have been left behind. Money and jobs have been developed for the elite and in the elite areas; however, for the rest of America, businesses had to rely largely on debt from banks and possibly Small Business Administration lending programs. These businesses now have high debt levels and either have few prospects for growth or none at all.
It is clear that if we want to see a broad-based recovery we need to restore strong local businesses. We need resilient and energy-efficient local construction companies, local food processing companies, local lumber yards, specialized hospital cleaning companies, and last mile internet service providers. Instead of debt, these “Heartland Businesses” will need more flexible “growth” financing to (re)start and flourish. With the appropriate capital and management support, these businesses will achieve the growth that will generate sustainable jobs and create wealth in the regions in which they are located.
A win-win
If the picture for broad-based growth in the U.S. is bleak for SMEs, neither is the picture rosy for investors. With Treasury bills offering negligible fixed interest rates, cap rates on real estate likely to fall, defaults to increase, and public equity markets closed to IPOs of all but the rare few companies, the vast majority of investors have a menu of very low interest rates and improbable equity opportunities to choose from.
Yet there is a solution to these problems, one that flows from lessons SEAF has learned from its investment around the world over the past 30 years.
The time is right to offer investors “impact investment” instruments that would provide them with reasonably safe, high-single-digit returns, while providing Heartland Businesses the ability to grow their operations and their employment in ways not possible with pure debt-based or venture capital. SEAF has been using such instruments around the world in underserved markets, where IPOs and active markets for private equity are mostly a theoretical possibility, like Macedonia, Estonia, Colombia and Bangladesh. We should now use them in the many U.S. states that have largely been left behind by private equity.
Specifically, we believe that revenue-based or profit-sharing instruments are especially suited for growing small businesses. These instruments usually tie repayment to the growth of the business, by paying investors a percentage of revenue or profits of that business. For Heartland Businesses, these instruments permit growth without immediately having to amortize financing costs. These alternative investments furthermore better align the interests of the investor or fund with the entrepreneur, as both seek to grow the business successfully, in order to benefit from sales- or profit-based royalties as well as the equity kicker. And while the standard terms may occasionally miss out on some of the upside of a particularly high-performing individual investment, the speed at which these agreements can be negotiated (without lengthy valuation discussions) and the protection on the downside of at least a portion of the company’s assets tends to compensate for such misses. Instead, this instrument delivers medium level returns at moderate risk for what will remain in all likelihood a small local business—exactly what the United States economy requires to rebuild.
The kinds of investment instruments we recommend offer growth capital instruments with a blend of the following characteristics:
A relatively low interest rate with some (probably partial) collateral coverage, but no amortization of principal;
A royalty-based participation in the increased revenues generated after the investment;
A notional minority equity investment, with automatic dividend rights and a buyback clause enabling the entrepreneur to buy our shares back at some affordable multiple after completing the repayment of the loan.
In our model, all payments to the investors are capped after the company receiving funding has paid back roughly 2.5 times the amount of the original capital invested.
This kind of capital is much more appropriate to help businesses recover and grow than traditional financing. Bank debt, in the form of straight-line loans, is extractive because the business has to pay back no matter how it is doing at a given time, and venture capital pushes for exponential growth, next valuation and a quick exit—not a path most Heartland entreprenenurs would choose to take.
A call to action
Investors concerned about economic growth and recovery in their regions should strive to invest in small businesses, and should do so via funds which offer these investments as instruments which both deliver reasonable returns AND allow Heartland Businesses to grow. These instruments emphasize growth over collateral, partnership over collection procedures, and a reasonable sharing of the benefits of growth. We have been using these instruments for 30 years and have been able to not only successfully return capital to investors, but to have developed lasting small businesses who have been and are a key part of the economic growth in their countries.
What is also important is that these instruments be deployed via investment vehicles fit for this purpose. As with the rebuilding of Watts, investment managers should be able to establish 501(c)3 entities or other-impact led investment vehicles, blend commercial and philanthropic dollars, and be judged not only based on their financial returns, but also on the impact they create in the communities where they place their capital.
We believe that the above approach is mostly missing in the U.S. today, and that it is vital that it be added to the mix of investment instruments to support small businesses. It is time for investors to join in the rebuilding of ALL of the nation, and to realize that the more equitable distribution of economic opportunity and job growth will restore not only business and the economy, but also a more equal,more just and more prosperous United States.
Bert van der Vaart is a co-founder and CEO of SEAF, a global investment fund manager focusing on small and medium enterprises. Agnes Dasewicz leads the Capital Access Lab at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and sits on the board of directors of SEAF.


fortune--2020-07-02--Millions are giving up the extra $600 per week in unemployment benefits to go back to work, data sho

Millions are giving up the extra $600 per week in unemployment benefits to go back to work, data shows

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The total number of Americans currently receiving unemployment benefits—called ‘continued claims’—came in at 19.3 million in the week ending June 20, according to data published Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor.
The number of Americans on the unemployment rolls is down 5.6 million from its 24.9 million peak on May 9. This speaks to how much the economy and employment have recovered since states eased lockdowns in May and June.
Americans on state unemployment rolls are currently receiving an extra $600 per week in unemployment benefits from the federal government on top of their state benefits. However, that extra $600 per week—or $2,400 per month—from the CARES Act expires at the end of July unless extended by the federal government.
The main reason Senate Republicans are opposed to extending the extra $600 per week past July is they’re worried that the generosity of the benefit is a disincentive to returning to work. Around 7 in 10 jobless Americans saw a pay increase by going on unemployment insurance.
Yet the fact that 5.6 million Americans have returned to work and fallen off the unemployment rolls before the benefit expires, does challenge that argument.
A few economists have told Fortune this week they think the expiration of the extra $600 benefit could derail the economic recovery. Taking away $600 per week from unemployed Americans could cause them to spend less, and decrease overall consumer spending—which accounts for 2/3 of GDP.
And on Thursday we learned another 1.4 million initial unemployment claims were filed in the week ending June 27. That marks 14 straight weeks with claims topping one million. However, these recent jobless Americans will only have a few weeks of the extra $600 federal benefit before it expires.


fortune--2020-07-02--Facebook ad boycott organizers keep the pressure on ahead of Mark Zuckerberg meeting

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A breakthrough in the Facebook advertising boycott came on Wednesday as the company announced CEO Mark Zuckerberg would meet with several groups who organized the effort. A suitable agreement for both sides is far from guaranteed, however, as the organizers push for concrete change.
Last Friday, Zuckerberg announced some well-timed changes to the way Facebook monitors content. They came in the face of the boycott that has seen more than 400 companies—including the likes of Microsoft, Verizon, Starbucks, and several other big names—commit to pausing ad spending for the month of July after Facebook left a post up from President Trump saying “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
In an employee town hall opened to the public, Zuckerberg said the company would ramp up efforts to prevent voter suppression on its platform, particularly tactics targeting race and ethnicity. For example, he said, the company would start banning posts falsely claiming immigration officials were checking documentation at voting locations. He added that Facebook would put more effort into flagging false claims about voting in the preceding 72 hours before the U.S. presidential election in November.
The changes had been in development for months and were recommended by a civil rights audit that began in 2018, Zuckerberg said.
Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change—one of the civil rights groups spearheading the boycott along with the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)—was not impressed. “Zuckerberg’s address was 11 minutes of wasted opportunity to commit to change,” he tweeted that Friday. “I hope companies advertising on Facebook were watching. If they want to put their money where their mouth is on racial justice, then it’s time to #StopHateForProfit,” he added, referencing the boycott’s hashtag.
Zuckerberg’s latest attempt at diplomacy may do little to convince organizers like Robinson otherwise. In the view of his colleague Arisha Hatch, Color of Change’s vice president and chief of campaigns, “The initial response made a very small tweak, but for the most part just reiterated their existing policies that we know have been insufficient for a while,” she told Fortune. “Mark Zuckerberg and [chief operating officer] Sheryl Sandberg understand that what we really want is a permanent civil rights infrastructure.”
A permanent civil rights infrastructure would see Facebook appoint a C-suite executive with a background in civil rights to review policies and products for discrimination, bias, and hate. The guidance for this role is outlined on the Stop Hate for Profit website, along with nine other demands. Among them: Regularly submit to independent, third-party audits with results published on a publicly accessible website, create an internal feature to flag hateful content in private groups for human review, and enable Facebook users facing harassment to connect with a live Facebook employee for help.
Facebook has faced criticism for years over the way it moderates misinformation and extremist content. The police killing of George Floyd and the demonstrations that followed prompted the latest outcry, which has snowballed into this growing boycott, said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL. “We literally had extremists out in the open organizing on Facebook to disrupt these peaceful protests,” he said. “We had people advocating for violent unrest—I’m talking white nationalists and anti-government groups—publicly coordinating on the platform on how they would undermine these efforts.
“We reached out to Facebook and said, ‘Hey, we really need a meeting now to deal with these issues,'” Greenblatt added. “And we didn’t get that with Mark and with Sheryl at the highest levels. We decided it was time to act.”
An advertising boycott was a natural choice. Facebook made 99% of its $70 billion revenue in 2019 from ads. Greenblatt stressed that the boycott is just a one-month pause: “We don’t think this will somehow change the financial trajectory of the company. Our intent wasn’t to bankrupt the business; the intent was to make a point about the platform.”
Zuckerberg and Sandberg will take the meeting Greenblatt mentioned this time around. They will meet with him, NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson, and Robinson of Color of Change, early next week, an ADL spokesperson confirmed.
On the same day Facebook confirmed Zuckerberg’s attendance, the company also went on the defensive, publishing a rebuttal in AdAge by communications and global affairs chief Nick Clegg. “Facebook Does Not Benefit From Hate,” the piece’s headline reads.
“When content falls short of being classified as hate speech—or of our other policies aimed at preventing harm or voter suppression—we err on the side of free expression because, ultimately, the best way to counter hurtful, divisive, offensive speech is more speech,” Clegg wrote. “Exposing it to sunlight is better than hiding it in the shadows.”
Hatch of Color of Change said that Facebook could make its stance clear by announcing the aforementioned civil rights infrastructure and making its previously conducted internal civil rights audit available to the public. “Meeting those demands would help a lot of us feel like they’re acting in good faith, that they’re actually trying to solve the problem.”
But she stressed caution, weary of previous pleas with the company that fell short in some critics’ eyes.
“This is not a new demand for Facebook, and it’s unclear why in a moment where so many corporations are trying to stand on the right side of history, why Facebook won’t do that as well.”


fortune--2020-07-02--Tesla second-quarter deliveries trounce Wall Street expectations—and its bigger rivals

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Tesla continued its long, barely interrupted streak of outperforming Wall Street’s predictions, announcing Thursday morning that it had delivered 90,650 total vehicles in the second quarter of the year. The consensus estimate among stock analysts was 72,149 total deliveries according to FactSet, and 83,071 as calculated by Bloomberg.
The electric-car maker’s stock careened up 9% in pre-market trading on the announcement—another event that is becoming routine. This morning’s report included only raw delivery numbers, and Tesla’s financial results for the second quarter, including key measures of profitability, will be reported in late July.
The beat, of course, is particularly notable because it comes in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. That has constrained Tesla’s ability to produce cars, even as a global economic slowdown tamped down consumers’ eagerness for big new purchases. On the production side, Tesla managed to produce 82,272 total units in the second quarter, compared to 102,672 in the first quarter.
Tesla says it delivered 80,050 of its mid-market Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, and 10,600 of its S and X luxury models. That continues a long trend of decline for the luxury models, which are more profitable on a per-unit basis: Tesla delivered 12,200 S and Xs in the first quarter of this year, and 17,400 in the third quarter of 2019.
Tesla hasn’t completely escaped the gravity of the coronavirus; the overall delivery numbers were down nearly 5% from the same period last year. But Tesla appears to have solidly outperformed established carmakers: Ford reported a 33% year-over-year decline in U.S. sales on Thursday, while GM reported a 34% drop and Fiat Chrysler’s slumped 38.6%.
That’s not an entirely apples-to-apples comparison, because Tesla’s numbers also include sales in China, where its new Model 3 factory reached full production earlier this year. Tesla registration numbers in the country dropped by as much as 46% during the initial coronavirus wave there, with just 3,563 vehicles registered in January. But by May, China started to bounce back from the coronavirus, and so did Tesla’s numbers: 11,095 locally made Model 3s were reported sold there for the month.
While China has been a crucial cushion, Tesla’s success also came partly from its defiance of mandated coronavirus control measures in the United States. Most dramatically, it reportedly continued producing cars at its Fremont, Calif., factory against local orders mandating the shutdown of nonessential businesses during the pandemic’s initial surge. On a fiery earnings call in early May, CEO Elon Musk referred to the lockdown orders as “fascist.” A few days later, Tesla filed suit against Alameda County, where the factory is located, and where local authorities had repeatedly insisted it should not be making cars. Alameda County appears to have since backed down on enforcing its order.
Workers at the plant have staged protests against lax safety measures, and several tested positive for the virus. In late June, two workers told the Washington Post they had been fired for staying home during the height of the pandemic, despite assurances from Musk that they weren’t obligated to work.
After financial results are reported later this month, Tesla’s next big milestone is expected to be a major event previewing its highly anticipated battery development efforts. The event is anticipated to detail innovations that allow batteries to last longer, possibly at a lower production cost. Musk recently announced that the event was tentatively scheduled for Sept. 15.


fortune--2020-07-02--The U.K. has an ambitious plan to prevent mass layoffs. What’s with the latest firing spree then?

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Across the U.K., the job cuts have begun.
Over the course of just three days, British companies, from the budget airline EasyJet to the iconic department store Harrods, announced more than 12,000 job cuts—despite the government spending billions so far to keep workers on payrolls.
The latest cuts show the deep unease in the British economy, which has seen the worst COVID-19 outbreak in Europe. Boris Johnson’s government stepped up early with an aggressive plan to partly nationalize wages. It wasn’t enough to keep unemployment levels from eventually taking off.
Lawmakers around the world are grappling with what to do about expiring coronavirus stimulus programs that protect workers. The U.S. Senate struck a last-minute deal to extend America’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which economists credit for minimizing job losses during the height of the pandemic.
Britain’s equivalent of the PPP is far more ambitious. It’s called the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, a furlough plan now standard across much of Europe. In March, as the country faced a looming nationwide lockdown, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the government would pay 80%, or up to GBP 2,500 ($3,122), of the salaries of furloughed workers, as long as they were kept on payroll. It amounted to an extraordinary measure of taxpayers footing workers’ wages.
It was part of a vast economic backstop Sunak characterized as an act of national solidarity. Prime Minister Johnson pledged that the program—which has cost GBP 120 billion ($150 billion) so far—was proof that 2020 would not be a repeat of the global financial crisis of 2008 and that this time around, the conservative government would “put people first.”
Across Europe, politicians have made similar pledges, with comparable plans across the continent. The most generous is Germany’s Kurzarbeit. Collectively, the programs were a bet that the lockdowns’ economic damage would be sharp but short, and that keeping employees on payroll would enable a quick rebound as economies reopened: in effect, a bet on the so-called “V”-shaped recovery.
And the schemes have largely worked: Unemployment from February to April, the last month that statistics are available, was a stable 3.8%, according to the U.K.’s Office of National Statistics, even as more than 9.3 million jobs were on the scheme by the end of May—out of a population of 66.65 million.
In the EU, unemployment overall is 7.4%. Meanwhile, U.S. unemployment has skyrocketed to 11.1%, a multi-decades high. That’s an improvement from the peak unemployment rate of 14.7% two months ago, but economists are questioning the sustainability of America’s jobs rebound with coronavirus infections on the rise again.
In the U.K., too, cracks are starting to show. The furlough program, originally intended to last until the end of May, has now been extended to October, with “tapering” beginning in August. From Tuesday, companies had the choice to bring back furloughed employees part-time, but on their own dime, or keep them on the furlough scheme.
The U.K. economy is now deeply dependent on the program, according to a survey by polling company YouGov earlier this month. A study of more than 500 business leaders found that 51% said they would have to start layoffs within three months of the scheme’s ending, with 21% saying they would have to lay off 30% of their employees, at least.
Meanwhile, a “V”-shaped recovery looks increasingly unlikely. While the U.K. is due to allow restaurants, pubs, and cinemas to reopen this weekend, many small businesses say they can’t afford to do so with social distancing rules in place. A local lockdown, due to spiking cases in the central English city of Leicester, meanwhile, shows that more shutdowns are not out of the question.
Faced with those grueling facts, this week’s layoffs suggest many British companies chose the most unpopular of options: lay off staff in acknowledgement that the furlough plan was only delaying the inevitable.


fortune--2020-07-02--Stimulus Round 2: What does Trump really think about more checks?

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President Trump indicated on Wednesday that he supports additional economic stimulus measures to help American households through the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet he was unclear about what those measures should entail—indicating only that he would support “larger” stimulus checks to Americans while cutting back on unemployment benefits for those who’ve lost their jobs because of the pandemic.
“I support actually larger numbers than the Democrats,” Trump told Fox Business, referring to the $3 trillion HEROES Act passed by the Democratic-led House of Representatives in May, which would provide American households with up to $6,000 in direct stimulus payments.
But the President did not specify what those “larger numbers” would be. He also expressed skepticism about extending unemployment benefits that have provided tens of millions of Americans with needed support—such as an extra $600 per week in unemployment insurance—while the pandemic has forced large swaths of the U.S. economy to shut down.
“We had something where it gave you a disincentive to work last time,” he said. “You’d make more money if you don’t go to work. That’s not what this country is all about… We want to create a tremendous incentive for people to want to go back to work.”
Expanded unemployment benefits—which, like stimulus checks, were passed by Congress via the $2.2 trillion CARES Act in March—are widely believed to have helped insulate the economy from even further damage as a result of the pandemic. Some economists have expressed concerns that conditions could deteriorate if such assistance is withdrawn or insufficiently replaced with weaker benefits.
But Trump said he believed the economy was “headed back in a very strong fashion, with a V”—despite evidence that a so-called V-shaped recovery from the shock of the pandemic is fanciful at best.
Trump added that he would be meeting with congressional lawmakers to “make a determination” on what future unemployment benefits could look like. Again, he was vague on the specifics.
“It’s gonna be a good number, a substantial number,” he said. “People are going to be very happy.”
Reports last week suggested that the President was privately advocating for additional direct payments to Americans, with the belief that they would further strengthen the economy and boost his chances of reelection this fall.
Meanwhile, Trump continued to express his hope that the coronavirus itself—which on Tuesday killed more than 600 Americans—would cease ravaging both the U.S. population and economy.
“I think we’re going to be very good with the coronavirus,” he said. “I think at some point, that’s going to disappear, I hope. And I think we’re going to have a vaccine very soon too.”
While we’re waiting, this nifty tool lets you calculate what you or your family would receive in stimulus checks if the most concrete proposal on the table, the HEROES Act from House Democrats, were to pass.


fortune--2020-07-02--Controversial surveillance startup Anduril gets a $1.9 billion valuation

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Government contracts and immigration are a sensitive issue for Silicon Valley.
That’s why Anduril Industries, a three-year-old defense technology company that develops drones and surveillance towers, is taking heat. The company was a target for immigrant-rights activists after selling its products to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency as a “virtual wall” of interlinked sentry towers along the Mexico-U.S. border. Its founder, Palmer Luckey, is known to be a supporter of President Donald Trump.
On Wednesday, the company announced that it has raised some $200 million in Series C funding, valuing the company at around $1.9 billion, nearly double its last funding round in September. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, who was joined by 8VC, Elad Gil, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Human Capital, Lux Capital, and Valor Equity Partners.
And while some consumer tech companies are avoiding the issues altogether, Anduril is finding an opportunity.
“We founded Anduril because we believe there is value in Silicon Valley technology companies partnering with the Department of Defense,” says CEO of Anduril Industries Brian Schimpf.
Lemonade goes public at a discount: The SoftBank-backed home-and-rental insurance company perhaps predictably took a valuation cut ahead of its stock market debut today.
On Wednesday, the company announced that it had raised $319 million in an offering of 11 million shares priced at $29 apiece, with Baillie Gifford, a new investor, indicating interest in acquiring some $100 million in shares in the IPO. The pricing implied a valuation of about $1.6 billion, below its last private market valuation of about $2 billion. The company plans to list on the NYSE as “LMND.”
Of course, how it trades on public markets will be a whole other matter.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURES DEALS
- Annexon, a South San Francisco, Calif.-based clinical-stage company developing therapies for classical complement-mediated disorders, raised $100 million in funding. Redmile Group led the round and was joined by investors including BlackRock, Deerfield Management Company, Eventide Asset Management, Farallon Capital Management, Janus Henderson Investors and Logos Capital.
- Bolt Biotherapeutics, a Redwood City, Calif.-based biotech developing immunotherapies, raised $93.5 million in Series C funding. Sofinnova Investments led the round and was joined by investors including RA Capital Management, Rock Springs Capital and Samsara BioCapital.
- Goldfinch Bio, a fCambridge, Mass.-based company focused on kidney disease, raised $100 million in Series B funding. Eventide Asset Management led the round and was joined by investors including Wellington Management, Ally Bridge Fund, BlackRock, Casdin Capital, Irving Investors, Gilead, Yonjin Capital, and Schroeder Adveq. Read more.
- Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, a Boston-based company developing treatments for Alzheimer's disease and neurodegenerative disorders, raised $30 million in Series B funding. Morningside Ventures led the round.
- Fauna, a San Francisco-based data API for client-serverless applications, raised $27 million in funding. Madrona Venture Group led the round and was joined by investors including ADDITION and GV.
- The Mom Project, a Chicago-based job search site for moms, raised $25 million in Series B funding. 7GC led the round and was joined by investors including Citi Ventures, Synchrony, High Alpha and Silicon Valley Bank, alongside existing investors Initialized Capital, Grotech Ventures, OCA Ventures, Aspect Ventures, Wintrust Financial, IrishAngels, and Engage Ventures.
- Curv, a New York-based digital asset security infrastructure company, raised $23 million in Series A funding. Investors included CommerzVentures, Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Team8, and Digital Garage Lab Fund.
- Zetwerk, an Indian business-to-business marketplace for custom manufacturing, raised Rs 156.4 crore ($20.8 million) in Series C funding. Greenoaks Capital and Accel Partners led the round and were joined by investors including Kalysta Capital Fund, Subhsiah Vellayan, A. Venkatachalam, Kae Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Lightspeed Partners.
- Owkin, a French company using machine learning in medical research, raised $18 million in extended Series A funding. Mubadala Capital and Bpifrance, led the round. Read more.
- Genome Medical, a South San Francisco-based telegenomics technology and services company, raised $14 million. Samsung Catalyst Fund led the round.
- Jüsto, a Mexico City-based online supermarket, raised $12 million in funding. Investors included Foundation Capital, Mountain Nazca and FEMSA Ventures, as well as H20 Capital, SV Latam, and S7V. Read more.
- Bluedot, a San Francisco-based location technology maker for mobile apps, raised $9.1 million in Series B funding. Autotech Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Transurban and new investors Forefront Ventures, IAG Firemark Ventures, and Mighty Capital.
- Riders Share, an Austin-based peer-to-peer motorcycle marketplace startup, raised $2 million in Series A funding. LiveOak Venture Partners led the round.
- Onda, a spirits brand, raised $1.1 million in funding. 25madison led the round.
- Competitive Wedge, a Holland, Mich.-based video interviewing solution, has raised $1 million to date. Investors include Wade Burgess, chief revenue officer at Rev.com.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Valet Living, backed by Ares Management and Harvest Partners, acquired Skinner Waste Solutions, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based waste and recycling provider. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Vida Capital, backed by Reverence Capital Partners and RedBird Capital Partners, acquired assets of Avmont, a longevity risk-based asset manager and advisor. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Mercer Global Advisors, majority owned by Oak Hill Capital and Genstar Capital, acquired ClearRock Capital, a Sun Valley, Id.-based wealth management firm. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Evolution Managers Capital, backed by HC Private Investments and Landon Capital Partners, invested in Greens Farms Capital, a private equity firm. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Platinum Equity acquired Deluxe Entertainment Services Inc.’s distribution business. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Orion Advisor Solutions, a tech-based platform for financial advisors backed by TA Associates, merged with Brinker Capital, an investment management company. Genstar Capital will invest in the company alongside TA. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Propel Insurance, a portfolio company of Flexpoint Ford, acquired HealthCare Services, a Knoxville-based boutique insurance consulting firm. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
OTHERS
- Prosus NV is seeking to acquire EBay’s classifieds business, per Bloomberg. Read more.
- IAC (NASDAQ: IAC) and Match Group (NASDAQ: MTCH) separated. IAC will trade under the symbol “IAC” and Match Group under the symbol “MTCH.”
EXITS
- Teladoc Health (NYSE: TDOC), acquired InTouch Health, a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based telehealth company. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
F+FS
- Hamilton Lane (NASDAQ: HLNE) raised $95 million for Hamilton Lane Impact Fund.


fortune--2020-07-02--KIND’s founder on joining the Facebook ad boycott: ‘It was not an easy decision’

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The founder of KIND Snacks says his company’s boycott of advertising on Facebook won’t end until the social network does more to combat hate speech.
Daniel Lubetzky, founder and executive chairman of KIND, which makes fruit and energy bars, says he took a stand because of the growing ugliness on social media—even though joining the boycott complicated KIND’s marketing strategy. The company had planned to spend nearly $2 million on Facebook ads during the month of July alone.
“It was not an easy decision, even though long-term it was very clear,” Lubetzky said.
In boycotting Facebook, KIND joined hundreds of companies, including Verizon, Microsoft, Unilever, and Hershey’s. Their goal is to put financial pressure on Facebook to do a better job of policing hate speech and eliminating racism on its service.
The campaign, called #StopHateForProfit, started after Facebook last month left untouched several inflammatory posts by President Trump, such as “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” referring to the Minneapolis protests. Under intense pressure, Facebook last week announced new policies to crack down on hateful comments from politicians, but Lubetzky says those steps aren’t enough.
In theory, the Facebook boycott is only during July. But some companies, including KIND, have indicated that they plan to walk away for longer.
Lubetzky, a board member for the Anti-Defamation League, one of several organizations that organized the boycott, spoke with Fortune about KIND’s decision. His comments have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Fortune: Why did KIND Snacks decide to pause ads now, versus previously?
Daniel Lubetzky: It’s intimidating to be alone on these issues. When ADL, Colors of Change, and NAACP created the campaign, it allowed a lot of us to join the movement and not be a lonely voice. We’ve discussed within KIND for years stopping advertising with Facebook, but we just didn’t have the courage. In our case, this gave us the courage to join.
Given your position on the ADL board, why wasn’t KIND one of the first companies to join the #StopHateForProfit campaign? (The company joined more than two weeks after organizers announced the planned boycott.)
I had a very sensitive role. As a board member of ADL, I support this work. And as founder of KIND, I support this work, but I’m not the only shareholder. I had to be careful not to abuse my role as a board member of ADL. I had to let the team make the decision. It moved very fast, but we first needed to get everyone on board.
In a note to KIND employees, you said if Facebook doesn’t take “visible, measurable and assertive efforts” to change things, you would consider indefinitely suspending Facebook ads. What would count as visible, measurable, and assertive efforts?
As humans, we rationalize our beliefs to make them consistent with our economic interests. I actually believe Mr. Zuckerberg believes that what he’s doing is right for society. But I think he believes that because it’s convenient for him to believe it. It allows Facebook to avoid the uncomfortable and costly role of realizing it’s a disseminator of bad content. One of the most senior executives at Facebook, a person I respect a lot, reached out to me for a phone call. I want to listen to them and engage. If there’s honest effort and real work, you’re going to see it. There’s low-hanging fruit like taking off things that are demonstrably false.
Prior to the campaign, were plans already in place to cut spending on Facebook because of the coronavirus?
We were actually planning to double our monthly budget, and then I came in with, “Okay, guys, we need to sign up.” It was like, “Daniel, because of COVID, you wanted us to redeploy more money in ads. Now you’re telling us to stop?” We had a very ambitious plan for product launches in July. We had planned to rely on Facebook heavily, with a budget close to $2 million. We hope the message in July will be taken seriously and they’ll really change things.
Will your ad boycott hurt your sales?
Only marginally. I’m not losing sleep over it. We’re going to deploy a lot of resources to other platforms. It’s primarily going to be TV and online video. There are many other platforms that need to get their act together, too, so we’re trying to look at platforms that are more responsible.
Have you talked to or heard from other companies about boycotting ads?
Over the last several years, yes. It’s a dinner topic almost every week. I worry enormously about the impact of hate festering and being promulgated by social media platforms. I cannot think of a dinner conversation with friends, which includes CEOs and founders, at which this subject doesn’t come up. My father was a Holocaust survivor. He survived because of the kindness of strangers who rose up at the darkest of times to save his life. I’ve done so many efforts focused on empathy and building bridges with people. It’s a lifetime concern.
Does KIND plan to keep its Facebook page and continue posting there?
We haven’t formulated a policy on that. The official perspective is that as long as you’re not giving ad dollars, you can post organically. But it’s a question we want to ask ourselves, too. [As of July 1, KIND’s Facebook page was still available.]


fortune--2020-07-02--Riding Apple’s coattails to an IPO

Riding Apple’s coattails to an IPO

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Steve Jobs famously hated the “enterprise” business, the glad-handy market for selling computers to companies. Enterprise computing meant hawking wares to IT departments, who then bestowed beige boxes, and worse, on the captive multitudes who had no choice but to take what they were given. Jobs wanted to sell directly to his customers, known in commercial terms as consumers.
Thus a prejudice was born at Apple. In the glorious second reign of Steve Jobs, roughly 1997 until his death in 2011, companies that wanted to buy Apple devices mostly could go to the damn store and buy them like anyone else. This wasn’t strictly true. Apple didn’t ignore powerful customers. But the focus was on selling high-priced equipment—Macs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads—to consumers willing to pay a premium.
Tim Cook, an IBMer by upbringing, didn’t look down his nose at the enterprise and began emphasizing Apple’s interest during his tenure as CEO. A company called Jamf, in Minneapolis, sprung up in the early aughts to do something Apple wouldn’t: Make it easy for corporations to manage all the Apple devices their employees wanted them to buy.
That history lesson is relevant because Jamf, now owned by the voracious private-equity firm Vista Equity, is going public. The company has more than $200 million in annual revenues—all from managing Apple devices for corporate clients. (I had no idea what Jamf was, beyond as an annoying prompt that appears when I boot up my Mac, before it filed to go public.) The company doesn’t make money because Vista loaded it up with debt, which the IPO will lessen if it goes off as planned. Apple also recently acquired a small rival of Jamf called Fleetsmith, so things could get interesting.
In its IPO filing, Jamf estimates that Apple recorded more than $40 billion of enterprise revenue in 2019. That’s 15% of the total. Not bad for a business the company once shunned.
Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
Four letter word. They're already calling it techopalooza. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will appear together later this month at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. The committee, which is probing possible antitrust violations by the big tech companies, hasn't decided whether the hearing will be in-person or remote. In other antitrust action, 20 consumer groups including Public Citizen and the Open Markets Institute asked regulators to block Google's $2 billion acquisition of Fitbit.
My complication had a little complication. Speaking of Facebook's problems, the company disclosed on Wednesday that some developers were collecting user data they shouldn't have. The company didn't say how many users were affected by the issue, which allowed apps on the platform to collect data even if not used for more than 90 days. Facebook is also shutting down its short video app Lasso, which was aimed at stealing some of TikTok's crowd, and Hobbi, a Pinterest-like personal project app.
No shop for you. With the pandemic raging across the United States, Apple is closing more stores it had reopened just in May. Another 30 outlets will shutter again in states ranging from California to Idaho to Alabama.
Stay off of my (virtual) lawn. In an interesting ruling about the value of Internet addresses, the Supreme Court ruled that generic words, which ordinarily cannot be trademarked, can be trademarked when attached to a dot com. In the case at hand, Booking.com won the right to trademark its name. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg points out, consumers do not use "Booking.com" as a generic term. "If ‘Booking.com’ were generic, we might expect consumers to understand Travelocity—another such service—to be a ‘Booking.com,'” she wrote.
When one door closes. Fulfilling a requirement of the T-Mobile-Sprint merger, Dish Network completed its acquisition of Boost Mobile, Sprint's prepaid brand, for $1.4 billion. In other merger news, VMware announced a deal to buy data backup and recovery service Datrium for an undisclosed price.
And in the darkness bind them. VC Peter Thiel must really, really love the Lord of the Rings series. Since naming his surveillance analysis company Palantir after the seven seeing stones of Middle Earth, he's also backing Anduril, named after the sword used by Aragorn. On Wednesday, Anduril, which builds drones and other surveillance tech, said it raised $200 million in a deal valuing the startup at almost $2 billion. That would give the company unicorn status, but there are no unicorns in Middle Earth. Perhaps Thiel would call it a giant eagle?
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
There are many genres and subgenres of TikTok videos, from the hilarious to the sublime. Wired writer Louise Matsakis looks into one of the most surprising: prison TikTok–which features videos actually made in and about prisons. She spoke with prison historian Heather Ann Thompson of the University of Michigan.
Even the most lighthearted videos on Prison TikTok serve an important political purpose, says Thompson. Incarcerated people are frequently painted as barbaric villains, she says, but Prison TikTok focuses on their everyday humanity. “The reason that people find that so shocking but interesting to watch is because we have been sold this false bill of goods that the people behind bars are animals,” she says. “This shows that they are somebody’s mother, somebody’s father, somebody’s kid. And they do in fact sometimes laugh, despite the brutality all around them.”
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Conservative social media darling Parler discovers that free speech is messy By Danielle Abril
Couples can now split a Spotify premium membership By Aric Jenkins
Civil rights groups urge Microsoft to end NYPD partnership By Jonathan Vanian
Tech companies aim to bring back live gatherings—with rules By Michal Lev-Ram
PPP extension: What small businesses need to know now By Anne Sraders
Hollywood must adapt to remote work or suffer the consequences By Peter Jackson and Kenneth Williams
7 new books to read in July By Rachel King
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
Many July 4th fireworks celebrations have been cancelled but there's another reason to check out the night sky this weekend. During the full moon, people in North and South America will be able to see a partial lunar eclipse during the night of July 4-5. There's no Data Sheet tomorrow, as we're off in honor of the holiday, so you'll have plenty of time to get ready. See you back here next week.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com


fortune--2020-07-02--U.S. unemployment rate fell in June to 11.1% as employers bring back more workers

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The unemployment rate dropped from 13.3% in May to 11.1% in June. That’s the second straight month of a pickup in hiring after the jobless rate topped out at 14.7% in April—the highest level since 1940.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) jobs report finds the U.S. economy added 4.8 million jobs in June, following the addition of 2.5 million net jobs in May. Economists projected 3 million jobs would be added in June, so the data is better than expected.
The June jobs numbers also show the economic slump is still hitting some communities harder than others. The jobless rate among white workers is 10.1%, compared with 13.8% for Asian workers, 14.5% for Hispanic workers, and 15.4% among Black workers. Among adult men the rate is 10.2%, compared to 11.2% among adult women.
A second straight month of an improving labor market signals employers are rehiring, and the economy has moved from contraction to recovery. But that rebound is about to be tested by spiking COVID-19 cases in many states and a wave of re-closing orders.
“The real risk now is we start backsliding and start contracting again,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. The resurgence of the virus, he says, is already decreasing some economic activity in Texas and Florida.
This official unemployment rate of 11.1% is likely undercounting the actual level of joblessness from June. The BLS defines the unemployed as people without jobs who are also looking for new positions. Some laid-off workers may be waiting it out before starting their job search, given the deadliness of the virus.


fortune--2020-07-02--3 steps, 5 years: How one academic built a racially-diverse team

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Mayor Ella Jones talks about her new leadership of Ferguson, Missouri, tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the CROWN Act, and a WashU professor shares three tips on building a diverse team. The Broadsheet will be off on Friday ahead of the July 4 holiday. Have a wonderful weekend.
– ‘Not an accident.’ The George Floyd protests unleashed a flood of corporate statements about past negligence on the issue of race and vows to right those wrongs; chief among them were commitments to build more diverse workforces. (See: Estée Lauder, Apple, Google, BlackRock, etc.) Pledges are one thing, taking real action is another.
Firms eager to make that next step could learn a lesson or two from a new case study on building a diverse team courtesy of Adia Harvey Wingfield, a professor of sociology and associate dean for faculty development at Washington University in St. Louis.
Her new HBR article outlines how her team, as the title tells it, “built a diverse academic department in five years.”
In that short time, “our department has grown to 13 full-time faculty, nearly half of whom identify as people of color. Not only that, of the eight senior professors in my department, half of us are people of color. Three of these senior faculty are women, and three identify as Black,” she writes. That’s the kind of racial diversity that many in academia say is impossible due to “leaky” pipelines and a dearth of qualified candidates.
Not so, says Wingfield. She outlines three key steps to pulling it off:
Establish support from multiple stakeholders. University leadership, she says, was “emphatic” in supporting the aim of a racially-diverse department, as were Wingfield’s white male colleagues. It wasn’t up to a single person to press the issue, “a phenomenon that often occurs when women or racial minority men are in the minority at work,” she says.
Take intentional action and deploy resources. Wingfield’s team reached beyond social networks and alma maters to find new hires, since such tactics often exclude candidates of color. What’s more, administrators provided financial support to hire and retain top recruits.
Create a culture that welcomes and values all voices. Wingfield’s department includes “the voices and experiences of people of color” in its teaching and research and extends that approach to its own operation and extracurriculars. “[W]e simply refuse to have a ‘colorblind’ organizational culture,” she says.
Her experience is worth reading about in full. It starts with arguably the most important lesson; that what her department achieved “wasn’t an accident.”
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Mayor Jones. Ella Jones won her race to become the first Black mayor of Ferguson, Missouri last month. Now, she tells Vogue about the significance of her election and the rise of Black female leaders in local government. "I think we are saying enough is enough," she says. Vogue
One or the other. In this op-ed, Smitten Kitchen blogger and cookbook author Deb Perelman says what so many parents have been thinking: As more workers are expected back in the office—despite schools and childcare remaining in disarray—why is there no "consideration of the working parents who will be ground up in the gears when they collide? Let me say the quiet part loud: In the Covid-19 economy, you’re allowed only a kid or a job." New York Times
- Primary results. Colorado's primary election on Tuesday saw conservative Lauren Boebert, a gun rights activist and restaurant owner who was recently in the headlines for keeping her establishment open in violation of state restrictions, come out on top over the Republican incumbent; she'll face Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush in November. Two female GOP candidates in Oklahoma, state Sen. Stephanie Bice and businesswoman Terry Neese, will compete in a runoff to challenge Democratic Rep. Kendra Horn. CNN
- Hair for it. Tomorrow will be the first National CROWN Day, honoring the one-year anniversary of the first signing of the CROWN Act banning discrimination against natural hair. Virginia's version of the legislation goes into effect today, making the state the fourth to ban this type of racial discrimination. Guardian
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Wendi Murdoch and NBA EVP for digital media Melissa Brenner join the board of Match Group as the online dating company finalizes its spin-off from IAC. Summit Partners named former SoulCycle CEO Melanie Whelan as managing director as the venture capital firm raised $2.2 billion across two new funds. Essence appointed Caroline Wanga chief growth officer as the media brand faces criticism over its treatment of Black women who work there; Essence has denied allegations of wrongdoing. Notarize hired eZcater's Kate Brigham as VP of product and Wayfair's Denise Forestier as senior director of operations. Yard NYC hired Kelly Stevens as CMO.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Doodle for a cause. Google said it would donate $500,000 to the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, an organization named for the Black trans activist and dedicated to protecting human rights for Black trans people. The search engine's Google Doodle featured Johnson for the last day of Pride Month on Tuesday. CNN
- Island epidemic. After Hurricane Maria, the number of women killed by their partners in Puerto Rico doubled. Activists and survivors of domestic violence say the government's response has been misguided and put more women's lives in danger. Gen
- 'Sit down and watch. Any Baby-Sitters Club fans here? An adaptation of the beloved children's series launched by author Ann M. Martin is coming to Netflix on Friday. Showrunner Rachel Shukert reflects on adapting her version of a childhood touchstone, comparing the project to male producers' nostalgia for comic books and Star Wars. LA Times
ON MY RADAR
Breonna Taylor is not a meme Medium
Fox News fires daytime anchor Ed Henry after sexual misconduct allegation Fortune
Women who sued Harvey Weinstein for sexual misconduct settle for nearly $19 million NBC News
PARTING WORDS
"It’s not only that we’re demanding that these newsrooms be diverse, but our personal experiences must be factored in as well."
-CBS News national correspondent Michelle Miller on the experiences of Black journalists in media