fortune--2020-09-18--What to watch this weekend on Netflix, Hulu, and more

Between traditional television, video-on-demand releases, and a growing number of streaming services, it can be hard to keep up with what one should watch week to week. Fortune is here to help you keep track of new releases as well as the occasional older title worth checking out. Take a look at this weekend’s notable arrivals, a couple you may have missed earlier in the week, and what else is coming soon:
Netflix
“Ratched” on Netflix stars Sarah Paulson as Mildred Ratched. Netflix
Ratched: Ready for another Ryan Murphy–Sarah Paulson collaboration? Then this series focusing on Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is for you. The psychological thriller drama is available to watch starting Sept. 18.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous: The computer-animated series brings us to a new age of all things Jurassic, while centering on a group of teens at Camp Cretaceous. It’s kid-friendly but also doesn’t “pull any punches,” according to io9. The series premieres Sept. 18.
Earlier this week, The Devil All the Time, which includes Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson in a fairly stellar all-star cast, also became available for streaming. The ninth season of Call the Midwife also arrived on the streamer, along with documentary series Challenger: The Final Flight.
Hulu
Anna Konkle and Maya Erskine star in the second season of “Pen15” on Hulu. Lara Solanki—Hulu
Pen15: If you’re seeking some awkward cringey times that take you back to adolescence, the second season of this series arrives Sept. 18 on Hulu.
Amazon Prime Video
All In: The Fight for Democracy: Just in time for the 2020 election, the documentary—featuring Stacey Abrams and available for viewing on Prime starting Sept. 18—examines the topic of voter suppression in the U.S.
Peacock
From left: Christopher Plummer as Howard Lawson, Claire Forlani as Janet Freeh, Kris Holden-Ried as Dominic Hayes, and Archie Panjabi as Kendra Malley in “Departure.” Shaftesbury—Greenpoint Productions via Peacock
New series Departure, starring Christopher Plummer and Archie Panjabi, debuted on the NBCUniversal streaming service earlier this week. Read Fortune‘s interview with Plummer here.
On TV
The 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards, taking place virtually and hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, will air on ABC Sunday, Sept. 20, starting at 8 p.m. ET.
On VOD
Janelle Monáe stars in psychological horror film “Antebellum,” out via video on demand Sept. 18. Matt Kennedy—Lionsgate
Antebellum: Janelle Monáe stars in this thriller as a woman trapped in the era of slavery in the U.S. South. Read Fortune’s interview with writer-directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz here.
The Nest, starring Jude Law and Carrie Coon, as well as Blackbird, which includes Susan Sarandon and Kate Winslet in its cast, are also available via VOD on Sept. 18.
Coming Soon
Millie Bobby Brown stars in “Enola Holmes,” which comes to Netflix on Sept. 23. Netflix
Enola Holmes, starring Millie Bobby Brown as—who else?—Sherlock Holmes’s little sister, comes to Netflix Sept. 23. Henry Cavill stars as Sherlock, while Sam Claflin plays Mycroft Holmes.


fortune--2020-09-18--Everything we know about Trump’s WeChat and TikTok bans

iPhone ’ s new ‘ orange dot ’ feature warns you when an app is listening

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On Friday, the Trump administration announced a ban on the distribution of TikTok and WeChat apps starting Sept. 20, and piled on even more restrictions on the latter.
Predictably, the news has only created a surge in questions as to what exactly the ban means and how it will play out. Here’s what we know, for now:
–It’s not an outright ban of the two apps…yet. The Department of Commerce announced that users will be prohibited from newly downloading and updating WeChat and TikTok through mobile app stores starting Sept. 20.
–The administration is cracking down harder on WeChat than TikTok this time. In addition to the above, the department has also banned domestic payments processing and fund transferrals on WeChat starting Sept. 20. And it’s forbidding “any provision of internet hosting services” as well as “any provision of content delivery network services” that may enable WeChat’s mobile app functioning in the U.S. Which is… a lot of jargon.
–WeChat is effectively being shut down, according to the administration. While it’s still unclear what exactly all the restrictions mean in terms of functionality for WeChat users, “WeChat U.S. for all practical purposes will be shut down,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fox Business on Friday.
–The deadline for TikTok to find a deal that satisfies regulators seems to have been extended. The new Commerce Department announcement pushes the broad ban of the short-form video app until Nov. 12, seemingly giving the company until then to come together with a deal that satisfies regulators. On Nov. 12, however, the same restrictions that WeChat now faces will also hit TikTok, per the announcement. Which is…going to be interesting as the U.S. presidential elections are scheduled for Nov. 3.
Meanwhile, TikTok owner ByteDance and Oracle are sketching out plans to keep regulators happy and the company alive in the U.S., including a proposal to push U.S. investor ownership of a new TikTok entity over 50%. Oh, and ByteDance may seek to list TikTok Global on a U.S. exchange to address concerns about its Chinese ownership. And wait! We’re not done yet: TikTok has also considered Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom for CEO.
THE BUY-NOW-PAY-LATER BOOM: Affirm, a fintech startup that offers online installment plans on furniture and other goods, raised $500 million in Series G funding, the company revealed Thursday. GIC and Durable Capital Partners led the round, and were joined by investors including Durable Capital Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Wellington Management Company, Baillie Gifford, Spark Capital, Founders Fund, and Fidelity Management & Research Company. With a repeat founder at its helm (Max Levchin, who co-founded PayPal), Affirm sits in a business that has been attracting hordes of funding. Recently, Swedish fintech Klarna, which is also a buy-now-pay-later startup, raised $650 million at a $10.6 billion valuation.
JOIN ME NEXT WEEK: I’ll be moderating a panel at the “Future of NY Tech” event next Tuesday, hosted by Lerer Hippeau and Silicon Valley Bank. Sign up.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Palleon Pharmaceuticals, a Waltham, Mass.-based company treating cancer and inflammatory diseases, raised $100 million in Series B funding. Matrix Capital Management led the round and was joined by investors including SR One, Pfizer Ventures, Vertex Ventures HC, Takeda Ventures, AbbVie Ventures, and Surveyor Capital.
- Lava Therapeutics, a Netherlands- and Philadelphia-based biotech focused on cancer therapies, raised $83 million (€71 million) in Series C funding. Novo Ventures and Sanofi Ventures led the round and were joined by Redmile Group, Ysios Capital, and BB Pureos Bioventures.
- Treez, an Oakland, Calif.-based company focused on automation for the cannabis industry supply chain, raised $13 million in Series B funding. Intrinsic Capital Partners led the round.
- Hysolate, a Tel Aviv and New York-based cybersecurity startup, raised $10 million in funding. Planven led the round and was joined by investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Innovation Endeavor and Team8.
- Forage, a San Francisco-based startup with open-access virtual internships, raised $9.3 million in funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round.
- Bayes, a Berlin-based esports company, raised $6 million in funding. Investors included the Pohlad Family, Fertitta Capital, and Sony Innovation Fund.
- Pachama, a San Francisco-based climate tech company, raised $5 million in additional funding. Investors include Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund and Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
- Imagine Impact, a Los Angeles-based content marketplace and social networking platform designed for entertainment industry professionals founded by Academy Award-winners Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding. Benchmark led the round.
- AirWorks Solutions, a Boston-based developer of autonomous processing software for aerial mapping and surveying, raised $2.7 million in additional seed funding. MetaProp led the round and was joined by investors including Innospark Ventures, Creative Ventures, and Met Fund.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- DCP Capital Partners offered to acquire 51job (Nasdaq: JOBS), a Chinese human-resources company, in a deal that values the latter at $5.3 billion.
- Apollo Global Management is weighing an acquisition of Covestro AG (DE: 1COV), a German plastics maker, per Bloomberg. Read more.
- Sun Capital Partners invested in Mancini's Sleepworld, a mattress retailer serving the Northern California market. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- JMI Equity invested in Bloomerang, an Indianapolis-based donor management software provider to nonprofits. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- TA Associates agreed to acquire a minority stake in DOCU Nordic Group Holdings, a Swedish business intelligence company, from Stirling Square Capital Partners’ third fund. Stirling Square also invested and is the majority shareholder. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
OTHERS
- FLEETCOR (NYSE: FLT) acquired Associated Foreign Exchange, a cross border payments business. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Uber Technologies (NYSE:UBER) plans to sell a part of its $6.3 billion stake in Didi Chuxing, the Chinese ride-hailing company, potentially to investors including SoftBank, per Bloomberg. Read more.
EXITS
- SoftBank Group plans to sell Brightstar Global Group, a U.S. cellphone distributor, to a newly formed subsidiary of Brightstar Capital Partners and plans to maintain a 25% stake in the subsidiary. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- MetLife (NYSE:MET) plans to acquire Versant Health, a Linthicum, Md.-based vision benefits company, for nearly $1.7 billion, from an investor group led by Centerbridge Partners and FFL Partners. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
IPOs
- Kuaishou, a Chinese short-form video startup, plans to raise up to $5 billion in a Hong Kong IPO sometime as early as January, per Reuters. Read more.
- Unity Software, a San Francisco-based 3D video game development platform, raised $1.3 billion in an offering of 25 million shares priced at $52, above range. Investors include Sequoia Capital and Silver Lake. Read more.
- Nuvei, a Canadian payments-processing company, raised $625 million in an IPO. Backers include Novacap and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.
- JD Health, the health unit of Chinese e-commerce giant JD, is preparing for a Hong Kong IPO that could raise $1 billion, per Bloomberg. Read more.
- Oscar, the telemedicine startup, is preparing for a potential IPO in 2021, per Axios.
- Athira Pharma, a biotech developing Alzheimer's treatments, raised $204 million in an offering of 12 million shares priced at $17. Read more.
- COMPASS Pathways, a U.K.-based company developing psilocybin-based treatments for depression, raised $128 million in an offering of 7.5 million ADSs at $17. Investors include Peter Thiel.
- Palantir Technologies, the Denver-based big data company, plans to list on the NYSE on September 29.
SPAC
- Reinvent Technology, LinkedIn Corp. co-founder Reid Hoffman and Zynga Inc. founder Mark Pincus’ SPAC, raised $600 million.
- XL Fleet, a Boston-based vehicle electrification company, plans to go public via merger with Pivotal Investment Corporation II (NYSE: PIC), a SPAC. the merger implies a combined enterprise value of approximately $1 billion.
PEOPLE
- Ara Partners, a private equity firm specializing in industrial decarbonization investments, hired Tuan Tran as a managing director.


fortune--2020-09-18--One of the great enemies of the public library is departing

This is the web version of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
A lucky Massachusetts town in the 18th century decided to name itself after Benjamin Franklin and then ask its namesake for a gift. Would the famed writer and statesman send the new town of Franklin a bell for its church? Franklin responded that “sense being preferable to sound,” he would instead send a collection of books for all to share. The gift sparked the formation of the first free public library in the United States—and ignited a movement across the country.
There are myriad reasons for America’s economic success and prosperity, but the free public library has to be on the list.
All this history came to mind on Thursday with the news that one of the great enemies of the public library, publishing scion John Sargent, is leaving the scene. Sargent, whose great grandfather founded Doubleday and whose father also ran the publishing house, is stepping down as CEO of Macmillan, one of today’s “Big Five” publishers that dominate the book market.
Blunt and combative, Sargent was one of the executives at the center of the price-fixing scandal over ebooks a decade ago, but more recently had turned his fire on libraries.
To Sargent, ebook-lending libraries were “cannibalizing sales.” After a few troubling experiments, last year he declared that libraries would be allowed to purchase only one copy each of any new Macmillan ebook for the first eight weeks after it came out. The embargo restriction followed years of the big publishers imposing lending limits and raising prices on ebooks for libraries.
“Libraries are paying publishers, but the value the consumer sees—what comes out of the consumer’s pocket—is zero,” Sargent explained at a large library gathering in January. “There are people saying ‘never buy [an ebook] again, you can get it for free.’”
Many libraries began boycotting Macmillan’s ebooks. “While Macmillan’s e-book embargo aims to squeeze a few more sales out of frustrated library users, it unfairly disadvantages e-book readers who use the library out of need,” Washington state librarian Carmi Parker argued in an op-ed in Publishers Weekly. “Equal access to information regardless of ability to pay is foundational to a democratic society and is why public libraries exist. So, we cannot in good conscience support terms that include such inequity.”
Thankfully, Macmillan relented when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and forced libraries to close and rely even more on ebook lending. But we are still stuck with the vastly different ways the law treats print books versus digital books that allow for publishers to abuse libraries.
We spend a lot of time in Data Sheet focused on the struggles between big tech companies. Of course, what’s at stake in those fights is usually big for all of us too. But there are important battles going on elsewhere. And the fight to keep public libraries vibrant and alive has got to be one of the most important of all.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com
NEWSWORTHY
M to the B. What in the world is going to happen to TikTok? Late on Thursday came news that Chinese owner ByteDance had gotten Treasury Department approval for its plan to have a separate U.S. company run the app with backing from Oracle. And Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom was rumored to be in talks to run the new company. But on Friday morning, the Commerce Department issued a declaration that it would start enforcing an app store ban for new downloads as of September 20 despite the deal.
Probably just a coincidence. The rollout of Apple's new iOS 14 operating system for iPhones on Thursday had a slight hiccup. The software finally lets users pick default apps for browsing and mail, but those settings get reset to Apple's apps every time the phone restarts. Meanwhile, the rollouts of Sony's PS5 and Nvidia's 3000-series graphics cards are spawning shortages and bidding wars.
It's an interesting setup, Mr. Ross. The fraud story at fraud-detection startup NS8 took a new twist on Thursday, as former CEO Adam Rogas was arrested in Nevada and charged with securities and wire fraud. Prosecutors say Rogas used fabricated financial results to raise over $100 million from investors including Lightspeed Ventures. "Rogas was the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse," acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss quipped.
IPO-valanche. Thursday was another busy day for initial public offerings. Telemedicine service Amwell raised $740 million and traded up 28% in its debut. Data analytics firm Sumo Logic raised $326 million and promptly traded up 22%. Still, day two for some other recent IPOs didn't go as well. Snowflake lost 10% and JFrog fell 1%, despite their super-cute stock symbols of SNOW and FROG. Game software developer Unity is next up to start trading after pricing its shares at $52 last night to bring in $1.3 billion.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
As the battle over TikTok heats up, don't forget that the Trump administration is also banning WeChat. Chinese-American author Anna Wang explains on her blog why that's the right move:
It’s true that banning WeChat would cut off Chinese immigrants from their friends and family in China, but it is also true that the Chinese propaganda agencies use WeChat for ‘information warfare’ against the U.S. On top of censoring the WeChat users' speeches, agents who work for China are active in various WeChat groups, posing as just another fellow immigrant while trying to obtain information and recruit talents...Determining how to filter out CCP propaganda from WeChat without inconveniencing Chinese Americans is a difficult job. Still, I’m glad to see that WeChat banned. It will be an inconvenience at first, but it will ultimately be good for Chinese Americans. They’ll find ways to reach their friends and family eventually, and they’ll have less of a chance of being brainwashed.
FOR YOUR WEEKEND READING PLEASURE
A few great long reads I came across this week:
Bezos’s likely Amazon successor is an executive made in Bezos’s image (Washington Post)
Andy Jassy, the leader of Amazon’s cloud computing business, is now the clear heir apparent to Jeff Bezos after the announced retirement of the retail operations chief.
13 Reasons New York isn’t Dead (& Could Never Be) (Messy Nessy)
No matter the circumstance, “life finds a way” in New York City, to quote the wise words of Jurassic Park. This city always had an almost reptilian talent for regeneration.
Ryan Serhant Selfied, Shared and Streamed His Way to $4 Billion in Sales. Now He’s Building His Own Brokerage (Wall Street Journal)
Like Mr. Serhant, a rising crop of agents are upping the ante on personal branding. But are they overshadowing the real estate?
Class Of COVID-19: The Horrifying Sadness Of Sending My Kids To College During A Pandemic (BuzzFeed)
Having your kids leave the nest has always been sad. In 2020, it’s also terrifying.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
iPhone’s new ‘orange dot’ feature warns you when an app is listening By Jeff John Roberts
What’s your biological age? A new app promises to reveal it—and help you slow the aging process By Jeremy Kahn
Apple Watch Series 6 first impressions: A stretchy addition looks great By Aaron Pressman
As investors pull back, this Big Tech darling is flirting with bear territory By Bernhard Warner
By this measure, Snowflake’s IPO wasn’t such a a success after all By Shawn Tully
The reported IPO of TikTok’s Chinese rival is another coup for Hong Kong By Naomi Xu Elegant
NDAs bear blame for some of the worst corporate cover-ups. How that should change By Ariella Steinhorn and Vincent White
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
Some good news for music lovers. The Song Exploder podcast, in which musician Hrishikesh Hirway delves into how great songs were created, is now a series on Netflix (hat tip to Jason Kottke). Episodes go online October 2 featuring Alicia Keys, Lin-Manuel Miranda, R.E.M., and Ty Dolla $ign, but you can watch the trailer now. Have a great weekend.


fortune--2020-09-18--The meaning of Kamala Harris’s viral shoe choice

This is the web version of the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! President Trump faces a new assault allegation, Rent the Runway ditches Unlimited, and we learn more about Kamala Harris, the sneakerhead. Have a restful weekend.
– Converse campaigning. I’ll never pass up a story about what political candidates eat on the campaign trail. Same goes for stories about what they wear.
This cycle, the campaign wardrobe beat has turned to Kamala Harris’s shoes, specifically her penchant for an American staple: Converse Chuck Taylors.
Her sneakers first got earnest attention on Sept. 7 when a video of her de-planing in Milwaukee in Chucks garnered 8 million views in a day. Harris’s shoe choice is not new. She told The Cut all about her Chucks collection in 2018. “I have a whole collection of Chuck Taylors: a black leather pair, a white pair, I have the kind that don’t lace, the kind that do lace, the kind I wear in the hot weather, the kind I wear in the cold weather, and the platform kind for when I’m wearing a pantsuit.”
Fashion, as we know, can be a powerful political messaging tool. So, what do Harris’s shoes say? Lauren Rothman, a D.C.-based political stylist, told Elle that the “affordable American brand is bold yet accessible,” a choice that “radiates confidence” and could boost Harris’s “likability” during a tough campaign. (If you deep-sighed at “likability,” I am with you.)
The sneakers do convey a down-to-earth, approachable attitude. Will they win over voters who dislike the Biden/Harris ticket? Probably not.
But other commentators argue that, beyond changing hearts and minds, Harris choosing a more relaxed look for the biggest political stage could finally convince her peers to do the same.
As women’s work wardrobes have grown more casual over the years, the field of politics has been especially slow to evolve. (Remember ‘Shouldergate‘ in 2017?) Two years ago, The New York Times‘ Vanessa Friedman profiled the Dress to Win class at the Women’s Campaign School at Yale. There, experts gave political newcomers seemingly impossible advice: Your clothes shouldn’t speak for you, but they should say something about you. That needle seems impossible to thread, but with her Chucks, perhaps Harris pulled it off.
At the very least, her sneakers might encourage the growing number of female candidates to appear more authentically on the campaign trail; to—as CNN political analyst Hilary Rosen put it—dismiss any “convention about what female candidates are supposed to wear and do.”
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Assault allegation. President Donald Trump faces a new allegation of sexual assault. Amy Dorris, a former model, says that at the U.S. Open in 1997 Trump "forc[ed] his tongue down her throat, assault[ed] her all over her body and h[eld] her in a grip she was unable to escape from." Trump denied the allegation. Guardian
- Rent the Runway Limited. Rent the Runway, led by CEO Jennifer Hyman, touted the growth of its unlimited service before the pandemic. Now, consumer habits have changed so much that the clothing rental company has scrapped the offering entirely. Its new options for subscribers will offer monthly rentals of four, eight, or 16 items, a change that Hyman says was in the works before March. CNBC
- The ABCs of small biz. In this profile, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat discusses Google's approach to small businesses during the pandemic. Porat is the executive leading the charge on the tech giant's small-business relief efforts. Forbes
- History lessons. Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones's "1619 Project" for the New York Times has drawn the ire of conservatives who object to its framing of American history through the perspective of enslaved people. President Trump went a step further yesterday by saying he would sign an executive order in favor of "patriotic education" through what he called the 1776 Commission. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos also expressed her support for such an effort.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Dataminr hired Bridgewater Associates CFO Nella Domenici in the same role. The Endometriosis Foundation of America hired journalist Diana Falzone as director of media relations and advocacy. Dana Marohn of Morgan Stanley joined ZoomInfo as VP of strategic finance and treasurer.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Out of her Court. The arena at Melbourne Park that hosts tennis's Australian Open bears the name of Margaret Court, the athlete who holds the all-time record of 24 major singles titles (the one Serena Williams has been chasing.) Now tennis star Andy Murray has added his voice to the group calling for Court's name to be removed from the venue because of her history of opposition to same-sex marriage and transgender athletes. "I don’t think her values are what tennis stands for," he says. Reuters
- Wait for it. John Lewis, the U.K.'s retail group that controls Waitrose supermarkets, among other businesses, is set to record its first annual loss since it was established in 1920. The employee-owned business, led by chair Sharon White, also eliminated its annual staff bonus for the first time since 1953. Guardian
- White House wage gap. There's a gender pay gap in the Trump White House, according to an analysis by The 19th. Women in the Trump administration make 69 cents on men's dollar; the Obama White House wage gap was about 85 cents on the dollar, closer to national pay inequity stats. The 19th
ON MY RADAR
Private tutors, pop-up schools, or nothing at all: How employers are helping parents New York Times
It took divorce to make my marriage equal Glamour
Martha Stewart, blissed out on CBD, is doing just fine New York Times
PARTING WORDS
"We haven’t had anyone like them since Destiny’s Child."
-Songwriter Bekuh Boom on the South Korean girl group Blackpink


fortune--2020-09-18--Trump’s TikTok and WeChat ban will go into effect on Sunday

The U.S. Department of Commerce will within days ban the distribution of the Chinese apps TikTok and WeChat through American app stores.
The ban will go into effect on Sept. 20, the department confirmed Friday, despite ongoing talks to spin off TikTok’s non-Chinese operations into a company that would hold a U.S. IPO next year.
In a statement, the department said TikTok’s ban may be lifted if national-security concerns about the video app are resolved by Nov. 12, suggesting President Donald Trump is still open to the idea of a deal around TikTok. WeChat’s functionality, including that for payments, will be blocked in the U.S. on Sunday, but those who have already downloaded TikTok will remain able to use it until that November date.
The deal that is reportedly on the table would see TikTok owner ByteDance form a partnership with the U.S. business-software firm Oracle through a new company named TikTok Global. Walmart is also seeking a stake.
However, the proposed arrangement appears to fall short of the outright sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations that Trump demanded. The deal would also likely require sign-off from Beijing, further complicating the matter.
Trump signed executive orders signaling the bans, with 45 days’ notice, on Aug. 6. The justification lay in the privacy and national-security risks supposedly posed by WeChat, a globally popular messaging, social media, and payments app, and by TikTok, which is a big hit in the U.S. with around 100 million users.
The Department of Commerce’s statement comes shortly after it emerged that Tencent Holdings, WeChat’s owner, had changed the name of the office-focused version of the app from WeChat Work to WeCom. Reuters reported that this was an attempt to skirt the scope of the U.S. ban on WeChat.
However, the statement noted that “should the U.S. Government determine that WeChat’s or TikTok’s illicit behavior is being replicated by another app somehow outside the scope of these executive orders, the President has the authority to consider whether additional orders may be appropriate to address such activities.”


fortune--2020-09-19--Apollo’s Stephanie Drescher on running a global investment firm from her living room

Like most working parents, Stephanie Drescher’s days have looked a lot different since March, when the coronavirus pandemic shut down offices and schools alike—forcing millions of parents and children to see a lot more of one another during business hours.
Of course, that’s been a good thing in many ways. For Drescher—a senior partner at Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s largest alternative investment firms—and her husband, the chance to regularly have lunch with their three children (two boys and one girl, ages 3 to 13) at their home in New York has been a “welcome change.”
Yet it has also come with a new set of challenges for Drescher. As Apollo’s global head of client and product solutions, she leads an 85-person team charged with developing an array of multibillion-dollar investment products for the firm’s global base of institutional investors. Since she joined Apollo in 2004, the firm has transformed from a traditional, buyout-focused private equity player into a multifaceted, alternative investment behemoth that now holds 70% of its assets in the credit space.
In that time, Apollo has grown exponentially; its assets under management now stand at more than $400 billion, thanks in no small part to the diversification spurred by Drescher and others at the firm. In turn, Drescher has established herself as one of the most influential women in the heavily male-dominated world of investment management. In 2014, she was promoted to Apollo’s management committee—the inner circle occupied by cofounders Leon Black, Marc Rowan, Josh Harris, and nearly a dozen other top executives at the firm.
Drescher’s job, she notes, has typically entailed “a healthy amount of travel around the world” for face-to-face meetings with the pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and other investors making up Apollo’s client base. With that travel having been curtailed significantly because of the pandemic, Drescher and her team have had to rely heavily instead on Zoom conferences and telephone calls to keep clients abreast of updates and new developments during an unprecedented, tumultuous time.
“The first stage of the [remote] conversations with our investors was a human one—of wanting to empathize with them, but also being transparent and clear,” Drescher says of the post-lockdown transition. “It was crucial for them to understand that we were there for them. Once they felt comfortable with our clarity around their portfolios and the evolution of the markets, then they wanted to speak about the opportunities.”
The opportunities, it would appear, have been plenty. In April, as the global economy reeled from the initial impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, Apollo saw a chance to capitalize on companies’ need for liquidity during such a challenging time. So like fellow private equity titans Blackstone Group and Oaktree Capital, Apollo set itself an ambitious fundraising target with the goal of taking advantage of distressed opportunities in the credit markets: $20 billion, to be raised over the course of the following year.
Fast-forward three months, and cofounder Josh Harris provided investors with an impressive update on the firm’s second-quarter earnings call in July: Apollo had already raised more than $17 billion in fund commitments, bringing it within reach of hitting its $20 billion target well ahead of schedule.
Finding funds
Through her role at Apollo and her position on the firm’s management committee, Drescher has played an influential part in both raising those funds and devising how they’ll be deployed. In May, Apollo announced that it had closed $1.75 billion in commitments for the latest in its series of Accord dislocation funds, which seek to take advantage of mispriced corporate credit opportunities during times of market stress.
With many investment-grade companies having struggled to maintain their credit ratings amid pandemic-related economic challenges, there have been plenty of opportunities for investors to target those “fallen angels” and purchase their downgraded debt at a discount.
Capitalizing on an influx of investor demand in that space, Apollo managed to raise the $1.75 billion for its latest dislocation fund in a matter of eight weeks during the height of the lockdown. The firm also deployed 70% of its preceding $886 million Accord fund over the course of seven days in March, according to Drescher, to take advantage of buying opportunities during the height of that month’s market volatility.
“We were having daily, if not intradaily, calls to evaluate what was going on in the markets,” Drescher says of Apollo’s approach in the wake of the pandemic’s onset. “We were very active in our conversations with investors and recognized that there was likely more volatility ahead.”
With a long and uncertain economic recovery to come, Drescher believes Apollo should be able to find more “values that are disconnected from the technicals” in the credit market. To that end, the firm has already raised more than $1 billion toward the next fund in its Accord dislocation series, according to sources familiar with Apollo’s operations, with the goal of eventually raising $2 billion to $3 billion in total.
But the Accord series is hardly the largest new credit product that Drescher has helped launch recently. In July, Apollo unveiled a new, $12 billion direct lending platform known as Apollo Strategic Origination Partners—a vertical through which it plans to directly provide companies with loans valued around $1 billion. The platform is meant to fulfill what Apollo deems growing demand for financing deals that sit between “middle-market” direct lending and the broadly syndicated loan market.
While Apollo has been active in the direct lending space, the new Strategic Origination Partners platform will tackle deals of a much larger and more ambitious variety. Drescher and her team managed to finance and launch the platform—securing Abu Dhabi state-owned fund Mubadala Investment Co. as its lead backer—while working virtually entirely remotely.
The platform “fills out a piece of the credit spectrum that has evolved more recently,” according to Drescher, with more companies looking to private lenders for capital as banks have tightened their underwriting standards since the Great Recession. “Direct origination is not new, but our ability to offer corporations these private credit solutions in a large-scale way is a trend advantageous to them.”
Drescher has witnessed firsthand the extent to which credit has driven Apollo’s remarkable growth into an alternative investment powerhouse. When she joined the firm from JPMorgan Chase in 2004, Apollo had only $11 billion in assets under management. By the end of June 2020, that figure stood at $414 billion, with most of that growth coming from a credit platform that—thanks in no small part to Apollo’s success with insurer Athene—is now valued at around $300 billion, or roughly 70% of the firm’s AUM.
Zooming in
For all that success in the credit space, Apollo remains active in its traditional private equity business, and Drescher has helped grow that side of the firm’s business as well. She played a role in closing Apollo’s $24.6 billion flagship private equity fund in 2017—reportedly the largest fund ever raised at the time—and conceiving platforms like Apollo’s hybrid value business, which provides both debt and equity funding to companies.
In April, Apollo deployed a total of $900 million through the hybrid value platform, including a $600 million preferred equity investment in Expedia that is meant to give the online travel booking firm the “financial flexibility and resources to emerge from the current economic environment in a position of strength,” Apollo said at the time.
“We definitely have a value lens through which we look for [private equity] opportunities,” Drescher says. “There’s a willingness to take on complexity in order to find that value. We want to find those circumstances where there’s a company that may be misunderstood or mispriced—and through a very diligent, rigorous process, understand it in a different way that can drive values and create returns where others may not have thought they existed.”
She pointed to Apollo’s experience with Twinkie-maker Hostess Brands—which the firm bought out of bankruptcy in 2013 and turned around, before selling its stake for a lucrative profit in 2017—as an example of its strategy in this regard. Drescher herself sits on the board of ADT Security Services, which Apollo bought out for $7 billion and which recently secured a $450 million investment from Google that will see the Silicon Valley giant market its Nest smart-home products through ADT.
All in all, it’s a lot of responsibility for Drescher and her colleagues at Apollo to balance, especially at a time when most of the firm’s 1,400 employees are confined to working from home and having to juggle their personal and professional lives. To that end, she lauded the firm’s launch of yet another platform: the Apollo Family Network, an initiative designed to offer the firm’s employees and their families support and networking as they navigate the realities of the pandemic at home.
But such challenges aside, Drescher described her colleagues’ abilities to adapt to the new, pandemic-era normal has “exceeded” her expectations—with some help, of course, from the contemporary technologies that have become ubiquitous over the past six months.
“I would say the receptivity to using Zoom has been phenomenal,” she says. “While I personally miss that casual collision around the watercooler, Zoom has given us a different dimension.”


fortune--2020-09-19--How data helped keep Red Bull’s F1 team on track during the pandemic

The reception area at the Aston Martin Red Bull Formula 1 Racing team’s headquarters in the English city of Milton Keynes, a commuter-belt town about 55 miles north of London, features a soaring two-story display case packed with silver, gold, and glittering glass cups, tombstones, and trophies—a visual, in-your-face reminder of the team’s prowess since the energy-drinks company took over the team in late 2004.
Last season, the team’s top driver, the brash 22-year-old Dutchman Max Verstappen, finished third overall, behind Mercedes’s two drivers, Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton—who, for most of the past decade, has dominated his sport the way Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods once dominated theirs.
The Red Bull team thought they were coming into this season with a shot at displacing Mercedes to win the championship for the first time since 2013. But that was before the coronavirus pandemic struck, and turned this season, as it has for every professional sports team in the world, into the strangest season in living memory.
The 2020 F1 season was about to kick off with the Australian Grand Prix (GP) in Melbourne in mid-March when the race was suddenly canceled after a member of the McLaren racing team contracted the coronavirus. Then, as the pandemic gathered pace, the season was suspended for four months.
As was the case for most professional sports, the long pause took its toll. Formula 1 itself—which American billionaire John Malone’s Liberty Media purchased in 2016 for $4.4 billion—reported that its second quarter revenues plunged to just $24 million—compared with $620 million in the same quarter in 2019. That contributed to a $122 million operating loss during the quarter. Liberty injected an additional $1.4 billion in cash into the business through an asset-swap, and it amended the terms of a $2.9 billion loan and a $500 million revolving credit line to keep the sport operating.
Weathering the worst
Individual teams suffered too. Last year, in the second quarter, F1 shared some $335 million in profits with the racing franchises. This year, they got zilch. Red Bull—which made $1.1 million in operating profit on revenues of $314 million in 2018, the last year for which financial results are publicly available—is well capitalized by its owner, the energy drinks company Red Bull, and weathered the pause better than some others. McLaren was forced to raise new capital. One team, Williams Formula 1 Racing, family-owned for 43 years, was forced to sell out to U.S. private equity firm Dorilton Capital.
When racing resumed again with the Austrian Grand Prix on July 5 there were plenty of changes to contend with: There are no fans, sponsors, or guests at the tracks, and only a few authorized members of the media. Teams are allowed to travel with a maximum of 80 staff, with the number allowed on the track prior to a race—when drivers, coaches, engineers, and mechanics from the various teams are often packed close together—restricted to half that number, dropping to just 16 people in the final three minutes before the start. Masks have to be worn at all times at the track, and each team member working in the paddock or pit lane needs a negative COVID-19 test and is retested every five days that he or she is on the road. Teams are required to remain in strict social bubbles. When not at the track, they have to be sequestered in hotels.
There are plenty of changes back at Red Bull’s home base in Milton Keynes too. On the day I visited its eight-building campus, masked employees followed one-way systems, carefully delineated with yellow-and-black tape on the floor, past hand sanitizer stations and signs reminding employees to maintain social distancing. Staff canteens have been restricted to takeaway items only. To minimize any risk of spreading the coronavirus, the workshops where engineers assemble the team’s race cars were off-limits to outsiders. Instead, I was ushered into the team’s cavernous, museum-like events space in a building known as “MK-7.” Here, spotlit examples of every car Red Bull has raced since 2005 are displayed in a fanlike arrangement. Even motionless, their engines silent, they project an energy that belies the room’s hushed stillness –like a pack of lions poised to pounce.
Here, in a glass-walled conference room, Matt Cadieux, the affable, sandy-haired American who serves as Red Bull’s chief information officer, tells me that one of the biggest challenges that Red Bull and other F1 teams faced with the coronavirus is far less visible than absent fans and ubiquitous masks.
220 mph
A melding of a man and machine, F1, more than almost any professional sport, depends on data. As the drivers scream around the track at speeds that can exceed 220 miles per hour, sensors monitor every part of the car, streaming performance figures back to the paddocks, where engineers scrutinize it in real time, looking for telltale signs that motors are overheating, parts are wearing down, or tires are losing their grip. That analysis can make the difference between winning and not finishing at all.
All this data is further scrutinized between races, as engineers puzzle over ways to eke out precious more milliseconds of speed from their multimillion dollar chariots. “We introduce new components targeted for specific races, and we can execute lots of engineering changes throughout the course of the season,” Cadieux says.
But this year, the long pause in racing owing to the coronavirus meant the teams didn’t have that data. “By July, we would normally have accumulated hundreds of laps worth of data from race weekends to help develop the car. But without this physical running, we had to rely heavily on simulated data,” Christian Horner, Red Bull Racing’s team principal, the equivalent of the chief executive officer, says.
One of the prime ways F1 teams generate simulated data is though wind tunnel testing with 40% to 60% scale models. The teams often tweak the car to match the track layout, with the number of straights and corners, and the tightness of those bends, as well as the type of track surface and expected temperatures affecting how a team will tune a car’s suspension, manage its particular tires, and set up the car’s front and rear wing configurations. Those adjustments are tested in the wind tunnel prior to racing.
But to keep racing competitive among teams of varying financial resources, F1 restricts the number of wind tunnel tests a team is allowed to conduct to no more than 65 per week. This year, each of those wind tunnel tests mattered more than ever, Cadieux says. “The importance on the analysis, the insight we get, was more this year because we went a longer period of time without having real physical test data from the race track,” he says.
Running the wind tunnel was more difficult too. The team’s aerodynamics experts would normally have been on the site of the wind tunnel, which is in the English town of Bedford, during the test. Now, owing to COVID, the wind tunnel operators had to be in socially distant bubbles from the analysts, who monitored the tests remotely from Milton Keynes, Cadieux says.
Red Bull worked with data analytics firm Kx, a subsidiary of First Derivatives PLC, to maximize the value it could get out of its limited tunnel tests. Kx is best known for its work in finance, where it helps the trading floors of banks and hedge funds analyze real-time market data. “We hadn’t worked with a Formula 1 team before,” says James Corcoran, the chief technology officer for financial services at Kx. But he said the demands of the racing team and a fast-paced trading floor were surprisingly similar.
Before Red Bull started working with Kx in 2017, Cadieux says, data from a series of wind tunnel tests was gathered, uploaded to a high-performance computing cluster, and analyzed in batches. Kx allows engineers to view the data and analytics in real time, while the test is underway, and make adjustments between each test. The platform also lets the team view and analyze historical data it has stored.
Trouble in Austria
But even with such sophisticated systems, wind tunnel testing and computer modeling can only do so much. There remains a disconnect between these simulations and the real world that is not easily bridged. And when Red Bull finally got a chance to put its two 2020 cars on the track at the first race of the COVID-abridged season—the Austrian Grand Prix held in Spielberg—it was in for a nasty surprise. Hamilton’s Mercedes collided with the Red Bull driven by Alex Albon, spinning it around and taking it out of the race with less than four laps to go. Meanwhile, Verstappen’s car suffered a power failure and did not finish the race—a preview of problems with Red Bull’s Honda-built engines that would continue to plague the team throughout this year’s season.
Ultimately, Cadieux says, there’s no substitute for real races. “In general, early on in the season you have a lot of uncertainty, and you learn a hell of lot in the first few races,” he says. “The first race wasn’t what we expected, but we recovered relatively quickly.”
He says that the key then is to take data from the track and feed that back into the engineering process. “If you’ve done a good job designing the car as a platform,” he says, “it is a few tweaks and you are back on track.”
That statement could just as well be a metaphor for Red Bull this year. After the abysmal first race, it quickly recovered. Its two cars finished in third and fourth in the second race of the year, the Steiermark GP, held a week later on the same track. Its top driver, Verstappen, came in second the week after that at the Hungarian GP.
In a normal season, most F1 races are held two weeks apart, giving teams more time to make adjustments between each. This season, F1’s compressed racing schedule, designed to make up for time lost during the pandemic, means the teams had to compete in an unprecedented six races in just seven weeks—and had three back-to-back races between the end of August and mid-September. “It means that once you get the real race data, get your head around it, update your models and simulations, the amount of lead time you have to actually design and manufacture new parts is compressed, so that adds to the challenge of developing the car,” Cadieux says.
Setting up the car for each race involves a complex web of decisions. “There are hundreds of variables, mechanical but also with software, that you can use to adjust the configuration of the car,” he says. “And understanding all those permutations, earlier in the season, there’s more uncertainty. As you get more experience running the car, it becomes an easier task.”
Going into the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi on Sept. 27, Verstappen is now in third place among F1 drivers, having won the F1 70th Anniversary Grand Prix and managed six podium appearances.
The team is in second place overall, with eight races left in the season, which ends with the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Dec. 13. But given that Red Bull trails the superpower Mercedes team by more than 150 points, it seems likely that its dream of recapturing the championship will have to wait another year.
More must-read international coverage from Fortune :


fortune--2020-09-19--Democratic donations skyrocket after death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sent waves of shock across the country on Friday evening, leading to mass mourning on what would typically be a day of celebration, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. But the news also comes just 46 days before the 2020 presidential election and immediately became politicized.
Within hours of reports of Ginsburg’s death, the donation ticker on ActBlue, a nonprofit organization that enables left-leaning nonprofits, Democrats, and progressive groups to raise money online, began increasing rapidly, with about $100,000 in donations each minute.
One group, Get Mitch or Die Trying, a fund created by Crooked Media which donates to 13 close Senate races in an attempt to flip the Congressional body from Republican-majority to Democratic-majority saw a huge increase in funding. The group reported at least $1.5 million in donations in the hour after Ginsburg’s death was made public.
Hey reporters wondering if this SCOTUS news is motivating Democrats. Here is a chart of donations to our fund to help elect Democrats to the Senate. Donate (or watch the number go up) here: https://t.co/KGWmpELi2L pic.twitter.com/XCEk21Wnyh — Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) September 19, 2020
The donations came in as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made clear that he would attempt to replace Ginsburg with a Supreme Court Justice who was vetted and approved by President Donald Trump. “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate,” said McConnell in a statement Friday evening.
After Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia’s death in 2016, McConnell refused to appoint then-President Barack Obama’s Justice pick, Merrick Garland, to the court, saying that it was an election year and thus unfair.
“In the last midterm election before Justice Scalia’s death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s second term. We kept our promise,” McConnell said in his statement Friday. “Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year.”
Democrats, meanwhile, are saying that a vote to appoint a Supreme Court Justice would be unfair and should wait until after the election on November 3. Logistically, it is unlikely that McConnell would be able to nominate and schedule a vote for the next Justice before the election. If Democrats are able to flip the Senate and potentially the White House, McConnell’s argument would become invalid, thus fueling donations for Democratic candidates.
Even some Republicans question the timeline. “I’d like to fill a vacancy. But we’d have to see. I don’t know how practical that would be,” Senator Lindsey Graham hypothetically told CNN in July. “Let’s see what the market would bear.”


fortune--2020-09-19--Ginsburg’s passing sets stage for contentious political fight over next Supreme Court justice

The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday, at the age of 87, brought a close to one of the most distinguished lives and careers in the history of the American judiciary.
It will also likely spark a contentious debate over the fate of Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court, which now sits vacant with less than two months to go until the 2020 presidential election. In the days before her death, Ginsburg reportedly dictated a statement to her granddaughter expressing her own thoughts on the matter: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
Given her role as one of the leaders of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing, Ginsburg’s wish may not come as a surprise to many conservatives. But her words set the stage for what’s poised to be a fierce political battle over how she should be replaced—and who will have the right to do so.
Ginsburg’s death comes 46 days before this November’s presidential election, and four years after Senate Republicans succeeded in stopping President Obama’s election-year nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court—an appointment that would have seen the late conservative jurist Antonin Scalia replaced by a lame duck Democratic president.
The bitter, protracted fight over Garland’s nomination—and the obstinate tactics employed by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—has lived long in the memory of congressional Democrats. McConnell’s counterpart, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), took to Twitter Friday to echo McConnell’s words from four years ago in calling for Ginsburg’s vacancy to “not be filled until we have a new president.”
The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president. — Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) September 18, 2020
At this early stage, it appears that there may be some bipartisan support for holding off on Ginsburg’s replacement until after the election; Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has reportedly committed to doing just that, while her Senate colleagues Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have previously voiced similar sentiments.
But that may not matter to the powers-that-be in the White House and the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill. By Friday evening, it was reported that President Trump is set to announce his nominee to succeed Ginsburg in a matter of days, while McConnell released a statement that committed to giving Trump’s nominee a vote on the floor of the Senate:
The Senate and the nation mourn the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the conclusion of her extraordinary American life.
My full statement: pic.twitter.com/NOwYLhDxIk — Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) September 19, 2020
Still, it remains to be seen whether Trump and McConnell will be able to rally their troops—and beat off what will surely be fierce opposition—to nominate and confirm a new Supreme Court justice before November’s election. As some observers have noted, it would require a historically speedy process.
FYI, the fastest Supreme Court confirmation in the past 30 years took 42 days.
That was for Justice Ginsburg, in 1993.
The average confirmation, since 1975, takes 67 days.
We are now 54 days from the presidential election. — Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDNews) September 9, 2020
The average number of days to confirm a SCOTUS justice, per CRS, is 69.6 days. Even if Trump nominated someone tomorrow, that is late November https://t.co/C3sKEvLp5E — Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) September 18, 2020
With the Trump administration having just released an expanded list of potential Supreme Court justices, the groundwork has been laid for a contentious battle over the future of the highest court in the land. Having already appointed two justices (Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh), the President and his allies will be keen to further reshape the court in their image, while congressional Democrats will surely fight tooth-and-nail to ensure the court doesn’t swing even further to the right.
Whatever happens, one thing is certain: a historic, unprecedented election year has somehow just become even more unpredictable.


fortune--2020-09-19--5 key Supreme Court cases that highlight Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legacy

Americans mourned the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday, with numerous politicians and scholars pointing to her legacy involving some of the most pivotal legal cases in the nation’s history.
Ginsburg leaves a legacy in which her status as a high-profile member of the court helped score major victories for Democrats and liberals on numerous hotly contested issues. Since her 1993 appointment to the Supreme Court by former president Bill Clinton, Ginsberg participated in landmark cases that covered issues ranging from abortion rights to same-sex marriage.
Justice Ginsburg paved the way for so many women, including me. There will never be another like her. Thank you RBG. — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 19, 2020
Here’s a small sample of some of the key cases in which Ginsburg played a significant role:
United States v. Virginia, 1996
In United States v. Virginia, Ginsberg wrote the majority opinion that would serve as a milestone moment for women’s rights and university admission policies. The case challenged a policy by the Virginia Military Institute that barred women from being admitted to the institution. Although the state of Virginia said it would create a separate educational program for women for the military institute, Ginsberg questioned its merits, writing that “Women seeking and fit for a VMI-quality education cannot be offered anything less, under the Commonwealth’s obligation to afford them genuinely equal protection.”
“Neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with equal protection when a law or official policy denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature-equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities,” Ginsberg wrote.
Olmstead v. L.C., 1999
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Olmstead v. L.C. proved a victory for the rights of people with disabilities. In the case, two women with mental disabilities were ordered to remain in a psychiatric facility even though some medical professionals believed they could live healthy lives in a “community-based program.”
Ginsberg wrote:
States are required to place persons with mental disabilities in community settings rather than in institutions when the State’s treatment professionals have determined that community placement is appropriate, the transfer from institutional care to a less restrictive setting is not opposed by the affected individual, and the placement can be reasonably accommodated, taking into account the resources available to the State and the needs of others with mental disabilities.
Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 2007
Ginsberg famously dissented from the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co, which ended up making it more difficult for workers to sue their employers over allegations of wage discrimination.
The decision was so troubling to Ginsberg, she chose to read her dissent from the bench, which The Washington Post reported at the time was “a usually rare practice that she has now employed twice in the past six weeks to criticize the majority for opinions that she said undermine women’s rights.”
“In our view, the court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination,” Ginsberg said.
Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015
The outcome of Obergefell v. Hodges was a major moment for same-sex couples and the rights of LGBTQ Americans. In the case, a number of same-sex couples sued their respective states over bans against same-sex marriages and not recognizing their legal marriages. Ginsberg’s vote helped overturn the marriage bans; legalizing same-sex marriage in every U.S. state.
“We have changed our idea about marriage,” Ginsberg said during oral arguments. “Marriage today is not what it was under the common law tradition, under the civil law tradition.”
Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, 2016
In the case of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the Supreme Court’s decision helped strike down the contentious H.B.2 law in Texas that imposed a number of regulations on abortion clinics, seemingly designed to deter women from obtaining the procedure, among other critiques. Ginsberg said at the time that “it is beyond rational belief that H. B. 2 could genuinely protect the health of women, and certain that the law ‘would simply make it more difficult for them to obtain abortions.’”
She added: “When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners, faute de mieux, at great risk to their health and safety.”


fortune--2020-09-20--Trump approves TikTok deal involving Oracle, ending international standoff

Donald Trump approved Oracle’s bid for the U.S. operations of TikTok “in concept,” a deal forced by the president’s orders last month declaring the popular video-sharing app a national security threat.
“I have given the deal my blessing. If they get it done that’s great. If they don’t, that’s OK too, ” Trump told reporters Saturday as he left the White House for a campaign rally in Fayetteville, N.C. “I approved the deal in concept.”
The new company, which will be called TikTok Global, has agreed to donate $5 billion to an education fund, which Trump said would satisfy his demand that the government receive a payment from the deal. “They’re going to be setting up a very large fund,” he said. “That’s their contribution that I’ve been asking for.”
Under terms of the deal, Oracle and Walmart will control 20% of the new TikTok Global, according to a person familiar with the matter. Sequoia Capital and General Atlantic, already investors in TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance, are also expected to take stakes in the new company, the person said.
TikTok said in a statement that it was “pleased that the proposal by TikTok, Oracle, and Walmart will resolve the security concerns of the U.S. administration and settle questions around TikTok’s future in the U.S.”
The company confirmed Oracle will host all its U.S. data and secure its computer systems. TikTok said it is working with Walmart on a commercial partnership and it, along with Oracle, will take part in a TikTok Global pre-IPO financing round in which they can take as much as a 20% cumulative stake in the company.
The deal was forced by a pair of bans Trump issued in August citing national concerns over TikTok’s Chinese ownership. The Commerce Department on Saturday delayed by a week a ban that would have forced Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to pull the TikTok video app from their U.S. app stores on Sunday.
TikTok Global will likely be headquartered in Texas and will hire “at least” 25,000 people, Trump said. TikTok will need to hire thousands of content moderators, engineers, and marketing staff that were previously located in China and around the world.
To sweeten the deal for Trump, TikTok promised to hire an additional 15,000 jobs more than the 10,000 positions the company already pledged to fill earlier this year. It’s unclear if there’s a timeline to achieve that target, or any guarantees that it will follow through. Facebook Inc., the largest U.S. social media company, employed about 45,000 people in 2019, while Twitter Inc. employed only 4,900, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Trump is ramping up pressure on Chinese-owned apps in the weeks before the Nov. 3 presidential elections, citing national security concerns about the data U.S. citizens provide to them and the potential for Beijing to use them for spying. The president is trailing his opponent Joe Biden in polls and has sought to portray himself as tougher on Beijing than the Democrat.
While the Chinese government must now sign off on the transaction for it to go forward, as of earlier this week, ByteDance was growing increasingly confident that the proposal would pass muster with Chinese regulators, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
Under the terms of the agreement reached early in the week, ByteDance would retain a majority of TikTok’s assets and control over the algorithm, with Oracle and other U.S. investors taking minority stakes.
Trump seemed to contradict that on Saturday. “It will have nothing to do with China, it’ll be totally secure, that’ll be part of the deal,” he said. “All of the control is Walmart and Oracle, two great American companies.”
Trump spoke with Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison and Walmart Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon on Friday, telling them he still expected the U.S. government to receive a cash payment as part of the transaction, according to people familiar with the matter. They agreed to the educational donation as a way to satisfy Trump’s demand, one of the people said.
The new U.S. company intends to hold an initial public offering in about a year, according to people familiar with the matter. TikTok plans to use the proceeds from the listing for the $5 billion educational grant, one of the people said.
Oracle will get full access to review TikTok’s source code and updates to make sure there are no back doors used by the company’s Chinese parent to gather data or to spy on the video-sharing app’s 100 million American users, according to people familiar with the matter.
The deal came together last weekend, the result of high-level negotiations between ByteDance, Oracle and top Trump administration officials after ByteDance rejected a bid from Microsoft Corp. and Walmart to buy the U.S. TikTok service outright.
Beijing has signaled it would greenlight a deal as long as ByteDance doesn’t have to transfer the artificial intelligence algorithms that drive TikTok’s service, Bloomberg has reported.
The Treasury Department said the deal is subject to a security agreement that requires approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or Cfius. The term sheet that’s been negotiated between Cfius and the companies will now have to be formalized in a document that details the mechanics for implementing the terms of the deal.
That document would likely include requirements related to the establishment of the new company, arrangements governing its relationship with ByteDance, whether an IPO is part of the deal, whether ByteDance will have to divest its entire stake in the IPO and what would happen if for some reason the IPO doesn’t occur, said Aimen Mir, a lawyer at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and a former deputy assistant secretary for investment security at Treasury.


fortune--2020-09-19--Self-driving cars will hit the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in a landmark A.I. race

Next year, a squad of souped-up Dallara race cars will reach speeds of up to 200 miles per hour as they zoom around the legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway to discover whether a computer could be the next Mario Andretti.
The planned Indy Autonomous Challenge—taking place in October 2021 in Indianapolis—is intended for 31 university computer science and engineering teams to push the limits of current self-driving car technology. There will be no human racers sitting inside the cramped cockpits of the Dallara IL-15 race cars. Instead, onboard computer systems will take their place, outfitted with deep-learning software enabling the vehicles to drive themselves.
In order to win, a team’s autonomous car must be able to complete 20 laps—which equates to a little less than 50 miles in distance—and cross the finish line first in 25 minutes or less. At stake is a $1 million prize, with second- and third-place winners receiving a $250,000 and $50,000 award, respectively.
As Matt Peak, the managing director of the event’s organizer, Energy Systems Network, explained, the competition will help researchers discover how to create autonomous vehicles that can handle so-called edge cases when driving. Edge cases, or atypical events, can cause deep-learning systems to stumble because they haven’t been trained to take them into account.
For instance, “fast-moving race cars with obstacles coming at them at lightning-quick speeds,” requiring vehicles to “joust and maneuver” through the track, represent a “quintessential edge-case scenario,” Peak said.
The self-driving car race is part of a larger legacy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s relationship to technological milestones in the auto industry, Peak explained. For decades, researchers have tested cutting-edge auto technologies by racing vehicles at high speeds on the more than 100-year-old circuit. For instance, one race in 1921 tested the capabilities of four-wheel hydraulic brakes in a race, while another race in 1993 tested crash-data recorders; these technologies have since become standard in conventional automobiles.
Researchers use racing as a testing ground for auto technologies “because it’s so extreme and binary,” Peak said.
“There are fewer shades of gray when it comes to margins of error,” he said. It’s much easier to steer a car to safety if it loses control at speeds of 15 mph, “but it’s catastrophic if you are racing at full speed,” he said.
Currently, a team of Clemson University researchers is designing the specifications for the modified Dallara race cars that all competitors will use, said Robert Prucka, an associate professor at Clemson’s department of automotive engineering. The competitors are responsible for developing the deep-learning systems that will pilot the cars.
He said the cars will likely have powerful engines falling in the “375- to 400-horsepower range.” For comparison, the average automobile has a 120-horsepower engine. And instead of one car battery, these race cars will likely have several to supercharge their computerized innards, Prucka said.
These race cars will also have advanced camera systems, radar technology, and lidar technology, which uses lasers to scan the surroundings of a car in order to quickly generate 3D maps, so the vehicle can navigate through roads while avoiding obstacles. While startups and auto companies have typically chosen one particular navigation technology like lidar to power their self-driving cars, these researchers can use all of the latest systems. Prucka said the event’s organizers did this because some universities specialize in one navigation technology over the other, and they wanted to create a level playing field for all participants.
Just because the competitors have access to the latest lidar and related navigation technology doesn’t mean they will have an easy time building capable autonomous systems. As Prucka explained, current lidar systems aren’t designed to scan environments fast enough for extreme speeds, which represents a significant hurdle.
“How do you process this data and make predictions under these kinds of conditions?” Prucka said.
It’s up to participants to decide how much they want their self-driving cars to push the limits when it comes to winning. Human drivers who notice that their cars are close to overheating, for example, may decide to take the risk and finish a race if there are just a few laps left. That’s a scenario that participants have to think about when developing their self-driving cars—the balance between safety and the desire to win.
Prucka also said that the organizers are taking some safety precautions in case something goes awry. For instance, if a team loses a communication signal to their car for whatever reason, the organizers will perform an “executive shutdown.”
Later next year at an unspecified date, competitors will test their deep-learning software in a virtual simulation race, said Ajei Gopal, the CEO of Ansys, which produces simulation software for engineers. While the organizers haven’t finalized what the virtual event will entail, “the intent is that the simulation would look close enough to the actual race.”
“We have never run a simulated race before,” Gopal said of the logistical challenges.
If participants are able to complete the simulated race, they will proceed to the physical race. This portion of the contest will consist of multiple days of qualifying racing, followed by the big race on Oct. 23.
It’s unclear how the current coronavirus pandemic will alter plans if the deadly virus is still widespread next fall.
“As of right now, we’re full speed ahead,” Peak said.


fortune--2020-09-19--Planning to fly for the holidays? 6 things to know before you book

Whether it’s to see family or just to get away for a little vacation, holiday travel for many Americans means hopping a flight in November, December, or January. And traditionally, right around now is when many people start looking for deals.
This year? It’s going to take a while for the public to feel comfortable boarding a plane in a pandemic, much less booking a flight for an uncertain future.
Still, with planes having been flying at only about 30% of capacity, travelers have room and reason to consider taking to the skies this holiday season, normally the most congested time of year. They just have to be ready to navigate a changed industry.
Most visibly, of course, U.S. airlines have effectively implemented COVID-19 protocols: maintaining social distance, requiring facial coverings, disinfecting surfaces, and guarding air quality. Prices for the holidays should be attractive, given that airlines need to boost demand. Even with an increase in volume, the system has space to absorb more passengers and still perform well.
For those willing to buy a ticket, the flying future is shifting in more dramatic ways, too—for this season and beyond.
First, the industry faces challenges over the size of its operations during this unprecedented and extended period of low demand for air travel. Starting Oct. 1, several airlines will be laying off or furloughing thousands of pilots, cabin attendants, and ground personnel.
This ultimately translates to fewer airplanes and routes being available. In its attempt to reduce costs and operating expenses to match diminished demand, the industry will have less choice and availability for travelers. On the plus side, a smaller system has historically always performed more punctually and with fewer baggage-handling mishaps.
Booking flights now, before the reductions take effect, could bring headaches. While many airlines are waiving change fees, it won’t matter if your flight destination is no longer available at any time. On the other hand, waiting to book a flight may not cost more this year, but there is a real possibility that you may not reach your destination without added travel segments and travel time.
Best practices for holiday air-travel booking
My advice: Consider the prospects of fewer flights, altered schedules, and dropped destinations when thinking about holiday travel. Here are a few more best practices for air travel—many of which can ease travel stress in these uncertain times:
Don’t act out of fear; act from a sense of personal responsibility for yourself and those around you. Socially distance, wear a mask, wash your hands, and use sanitizing solutions.
Airlines do not guarantee their schedules, and you should keep this in mind when planning your trip. Recheck the departure and arrival times of your flights a few days before your trip; schedules sometimes change.
Using a travel agent can help explore the changing options available. A small fee upfront is often worth it when plans go wrong. Having an experienced travel agent on your side can help de-stress the situation and save the day.
When selecting a flight, remember that a departure early in the day is less likely to be delayed than a later flight, because of ripple effects throughout the day. If you book the last flight of the day, you could get stuck overnight. Allow plenty of time to make connecting flights. Leave extra time between connections if possible, just in case flights are delayed and flight schedules get changed.
If you have a choice between two connections and the fares and service are equivalent, choose the one with the less-congested connecting airport. This reduces the risk of misconnecting. Also consider potential adverse seasonal weather when choosing a connecting city.
It is wise to pay for airfare by credit card. It provides certain protections under federal credit regulations. When a refund is due, the airline must forward a credit to your card company within seven business days.
Farther down the line, after the pandemic, it’s distinctly possible that some airlines could go under. That slashed demand has hovered around 30% of capacity for months now. Airlines are in serious financial straits.
At the same time, it’s not clear how much more airline industry consolidation, bankruptcy, or company closures this country can stand or the flying public will tolerate.
About three years passed before the industry reached full flight function after 9/11, and it’s likely to take longer now, given this prolonged crisis and profound patterns in demand. Our collective caution, after all, is for good reason: the public’s greater interest and safety.
We should brace for the consequences.
Dean Headley, coauthor of the Airline Quality Rating, is associate professor emeritus in the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University.


fortune--2020-09-20--The founder of wellness startup Mab & Stoke on the growth of ‘pay what you can’ options during the p

The founder of wellness startup Mab & Stoke on the growth of ‘pay what you can’ options during the pandemic

This is an installment of Startup Year One, a special series of interviews with founders on the major lessons they have learned in the immediate aftermath of their businesses’ first year of operation.
After launching a career as an attorney, Christina Mace-Turner quickly realized that law wasn’t for her. A creative person at heart, Mace-Turner shifted gears in 2008 and joined Apple, where she led global business affairs and then content strategy for nearly four years. After Apple, she spent two years as head of partnerships at Flipboard, where her team planned, developed, and implemented key global partnerships with the likes of iTunes, Viacom, the New York Times, and Condé Nast.
Though these positions proved professionally rewarding, Mace-Turner says she wanted to start a business of her own. So in 2016 she cofounded natural skin-care line True Botanicals, overseeing three rounds of financing before exiting in the fall of 2018.
Mace-Turner has since moved on to launch another wellness company, Mab & Stoke, which produces custom herbal supplements tabs, in 2019. She recently spoke with Fortune about her career, her new company, and what the future looks like after completing the startup’s first year in business.
The following interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Christina Mace-Turner, founder of Mab & Stoke Courtesy of Mab & Stoke
Fortune: The wellness industry is hotter than ever, but it’s also crowded. There are also a lot of questions about the effectiveness of ingestible products. What inspired the launch of Mab & Stoke? What makes it stand apart?
Mace-Turner: Honestly, when I left True Botanicals, I had absolutely no intention of starting another company, particularly in the “wellness” world. I was completely burnt out on the grueling hours of startup life. But, ironically, that was what inspired Mab & Stoke. I looked to herbal medicine to help relieve my fatigue, and once I figured out what herbs I should be taking and in what amounts, I was absolutely blown away by the results. In all of my years of dabbling in herbal remedies, I had never experienced the level of impact and efficacy that I did once I got into a daily routine of ingesting the appropriate herbs for my needs.
I’ve heard a lot of people question the efficacy of ingestible products, and while that makes sense on a product by product basis, it doesn’t make much sense to me for the category as a whole. I think people believe and understand things by doing. No one needs to prove to you that a glass of water will quench your thirst, because everyone has experienced that result firsthand. But just as it takes more than a drop of water to rehydrate a person, it also takes more than a scoop or two of plant powder in your latte to experience a plant’s optimal benefits. And if you want targeted results, it needs to be the right plants in a very specific amount with a regular frequency. I think most people never get the correct plants for their needs, or if they do, they rarely ingest enough of them to lead to a perceivable impact. Complicating matters further, our modern lifestyles in the U.S. rarely accommodate the frequency with which most traditional plant supplements need to be taken to be effective, often three times per day.
Sometimes I think people question plant efficacy because so many medicinal plants are so abundant and readily available. The reality, though, is that plants are incredibly complex. Far more complex than water—two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Ginger, for example, is made up of over 700 individual compounds, most of which do not mimic compounds found in the human body, as vitamins do. The synergistic effect of these compounds when ingested is pain relief, digestive support, skin health, and numerous other benefits. We don’t know how all of these compounds work together through clinical trials, because there is so little in it for the drug companies to prove out the efficacy of ginger as a whole plant. You can’t get a patent on ginger. At the end of the day, to suggest that plant medicine is not efficacious feels pretty silly to me. Eighty percent of the world successfully relies on plant medicine for its primary health care and uses it in conjunction with allopathic medicine. Medical doctors outside the U.S. are routinely trained in plant medicine. The fact that plant medicine is not the norm in the United States is more a reflection of regulatory politics than whether or not plants actually work to help people live healthier lives.
I created Mab Tabs because I wanted to share my personal experience of using plants to feel wildly alive and empowered in a way I hadn’t in years. I wanted something my mother would take and my husband and friends. I knew that none of them would ever take something more than once a day and that it needed to be a product experience that was way more appealing than a capsule or bitter-tasting tincture. Most importantly, I wanted to create something where the blends were potent enough to deliver a whole day’s serving of all the herbs they should be taking in a single daily dissolvable tablet.
Mab Tabs are designed to address wellness goals such as physical energy, mental clarity, stress relief, sleep support, immune support, metabolism, and skin support. Courtesy of Mab & Stoke
My initial research was really more personal curiosity than wanting to start another startup. I started seeking out experts in the field, phytochemists, MDs, botanists, and farmers, and, as a result, started contemplating an ideal supplement experience—an herbal super tab—with an elevated design and far greater likelihood of giving you exactly what you need. I learned that it’s not just a question of where plants come from but how and where they are sourced that determines their efficacy for a particular purpose. Deep involvement with the supply chain from farmer to final product was also essential in producing a product that would provide the optimal benefits.
Mab Tabs came about because I couldn’t find anything like them on the market; yet I felt their existence could make a really positive impact on the wellness of others. Mab Tabs are truly a unique product. We make them custom for most of our customers, and we also offer targeted blends that have both near-term discernible impacts (like Focus or Calm) as well as the long-term benefits that come with cumulative use. Each of our blends are carefully crafted and concentrates the power of six to 10 products in one, and can easily be dropped into your morning coffee, your favorite cocktail, or simply your water bottle.
What were some of the biggest hurdles you faced in launching the business? What surprised you the most?
We launched in late January 2020, and, of course, COVID-19 was a massive surprise. To launch into a pandemic has raised all sorts of questions and challenges that we didn’t see coming. One has been about how best to address the significant shift in the consumer market and the focus on products that feel familiar (flour, toilet paper, etc.). The other has been about economic inclusion as a long-term goal for our products, and how best to build a community that reflects all of the people we want to serve.
When I founded Mab & Stoke, my goal was to create a company to help people feel amazing. We all want and deserve good health, but the economic disparity amongst us is a giant hurdle to collective wellness. That’s not something new, but looking at it in the light of a global pandemic, I realized that we had positioned ourselves in the “affordable” luxury market.
That said, with over 51 million people unemployed, it was a trap set for ourselves and would have massively impacted our success had we not rethought how to address pricing. Our initial launch strategy was aimed at building a community of like-minded customers, but had failed to consider the longer-term implications of existing business models relative to economic accessibility.
As such, five months into our launch we introduced a “pay what you can” model. We slashed our margins and now offer three tiers of variable subscription pricing on all our products to allow everyone access to Mab Tabs. This is something we are very proud of and perhaps wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for COVID-19.
There are six to 10 full-day portions of herbs concentrated in a single tab. Courtesy of Mab & Stoke
What kind of feedback have you received from your customers? Is there anywhere you found you needed to make adjustments quickly?
We’ve been amazed by how universally well received our pay-what-you-can program has been. Not only have our customers been highly enthusiastic about the model, they have felt more comfortable suggesting it to their friends and family regardless of economic means. As a result, we saw our subscription rate shoot up 714% in the first month after launch with continued excellent growth going into month two. The program works from a margins perspective because the lowest tier of pricing (basically at cost) is made possible by purchases in the higher two tiers. For every 10 products sold in the top two tiers, a new product is made available at the third and lowest price tier. In other words, our community is self-subsidized by customers who take what they need and enjoy the feeling of supporting others in the community.
One area of this program that we tested came from a number of customers asking us to add a fourth tier that offered subscriptions at a price above our regular retail pricing; this would be a way to give back even more to the community and create even more of the lowest-priced products. We figured why not try it out? For about one month, we tested 130% subscriptions, but there was little interest, so we turned it off. The fourth tier was likely good in theory for people, but when it came down to it, even those with greater resources didn’t want to pay that much for their products. I have found that Internet-based businesses often have this dynamic at play. People say they want a feature, but when you offer it to them, they don’t necessarily ever use it. We may experiment more in this area in the future, but for now we are back to three levels of pricing.
Customers can drop the Mab Tab in any drink—hot or cold—and stir or shake. Depending on the temperature of the beverage, dissolve times vary from one to three minutes. Courtesy of Mab & Stoke
Given the pandemic and economic crisis, how does the current business and public health environment affect the future of the business, from product development to raising capital?
For us, it’s all about staying focused on continued education and making the very best products possible for our customers. We will continue to do this direct to consumers, but we have also started engaging in a number of key partnerships that will extend the reach of our distribution and where you will start to see products infused by Mab & Stoke. These collaborations extend far beyond beverage collaborations into a number of really exciting categories. Basically, if you can enhance the function of a product with plants, it’s in our field of possibilities for future partnerships and collaborations.
Looking down the road five years or so, what do you want Mab & Stoke to look like? Where do you hope it will be?
Without giving away too much, the goal for Mab & Stoke has always been to launch with Mab Tabs. But that remains a starting place, not a destination. Beyond Mab Tabs, if an efficacious product can be made from plants and delivered in a modern form factor, we have it in our sights. We are building the CPG [consumer packaged goods] company of the future; it’s a company that cares about the environment and the wellness of others, and it’s powered by plants.