fortune--2020-12-08--How AOC showed politicians the power of live-streaming

When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) went live on Twitch in late October to play the multiplayer game Among Us and talk, game, and spar with users, it marked an inflection point in our society. If you were one of the 400,000 people who tuned in, you witnessed a moment in history. AOC and Rep. Ilhan Omar’s use of Twitch, as part of a get-out-the-vote effort, not only shifted the relationship between social media and politics, it also reflected a more significant cultural trend: a broader embrace of authenticity.
Social platforms often haunt politicians. Tweets are almost inevitably threaded with criticisms and one-off remarks that spiral into toxic black holes. This only feeds the existing negativity we feel toward our government, with a 2019 survey from Pew Research Center stating that fewer than 20% of people expressed trust in the federal government. For millennials and Gen Z, many of whom do not remember an era of politics free of social media, these numbers are declining even further, fueling a perception among the young of politics as an inaccessible and antiquated system, overly scripted and out of touch with the average American.
Social media fatigue and community loss on apps like Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat have made the possibility of connection appear even more futile. Platforms that were once fertile for conversation and engagement today feel editorialized, competitive, and combative.
AOC and Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, didn’t use Twitch to lecture or rally; they played a popular virtual game that has taken the Internet by storm. Rather than expecting Gen Z voters to come to a political rally or campaign event and listen to them talk, AOC met them on their terms and signaled that she understood them and their community. Both congresswomen grasped how the platform fostered dialogue and utilized the benefits of live-streaming to land messages without force and ultimately build their credibility.
Here are some highlights from our food & housing benefit stream last week! 👾
I got to ask @theJagmeetSingh about Canada’s COVID policy, which offers $2k a MONTH in relief 🇨🇦
It’s wild how a drive away people have checks & uni healthcare while people here claim it’s impossible. pic.twitter.com/Z8Dtz1wvdx — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 3, 2020
In recent weeks, AOC has been vocal about the efficacy of using online platforms and campaigning tools that enable legislators to actually meet their constituents where they’re at. Openly criticizing the lack of digital and online campaign strategies in some Democratic campaigns, AOC recognized the importance of having a presence on new mediums. These platforms enable politicians to engage in dialogue, understand the reality of the people they represent, and land messaging in forums where constituents are actually listening.
The nature of live-streaming doesn’t leave room for performative engagement, only real conversations. AOC used Twitch to open herself up to three-and-a-half hours of free-flowing dialogue where anything could be said and nothing was taken back. On Twitch, AOC validated her own argument: Only when politicians have a competent online presence—on live streams or other new social media platforms—will they understand what topics and messages are most critical to address.
Although Democrats and Republicans debate how to invest in digital platforms, the case for live-streaming and more candid forms of communication is strong for both parties. Live streams are among the few remaining platforms that don’t push curation and vanity but rather thrive on the opposite—authenticity. There is a stereotype that people use live-streaming platforms to play video games or perform for an audience in a one-directional interaction. In reality, however, live-streaming requires two-way engagement, with viewers sharing their opinions in real time back to creators.
In the nearly four hours that AOC spent playing with fellow gamers, from novices to veterans, her viewership grew because she understood that in live-streaming, you can’t hide. To be successful and fully engage with users, streamers have to open up and be honest. Live-streaming doesn’t work if a streamer cannot effectively foster connection and forge a community. Ultimately, that is what is going to drive political engagement for younger generations.
In recent months, live-streaming has served as a legitimate source of human connection. Gen Z is the loneliest generation, and social media has only made them more alone and isolated. What live-streaming platforms like Twitch, Spoon, IGTV, and others got right is that they provide something that Gen Z needs: community. In a recent survey of users of Spoon, the platform for which I work, 60% identified as Gen Z, and of those, 95% said they had found a community on the platform. Even in infancy, the platform was already building safe spaces for people to connect by nature of being a live-streaming site.
While it’s not every day that one of the most well-known politicians takes to live-streaming to play a game, what is becoming more commonplace is the use of these platforms to reach new people and make new friends. As we see other social media platforms fade for younger generations, live streams will blossom for their ability to inspire real, authentic communities. Now politicians just have to understand the value of being present in the mediums where they are happening.
Fernando Pizarro is vice president of North America for Spoon, an audio-based live-streaming app with nearly 3 million global users.


fortune--2020-12-08--A last-ditch push to save stimulus checks is gaining traction

Stimulus update : Everything to know about the bipartisan $ 300 unemployment benefit plan

For the latest information on the ongoing stimulus negotiations, please check out our coverage here
In the latest topsy-turvy turn of events, stimulus checks may be back on the table. It appears both Democratic leadership and the White House are making a last-ditch effort to get stimulus checks added into the next economic aid package.
On Tuesday, the White House reportedly asked Republican Senate leadership to include a second round of stimulus checks in their economic aid bill, the Washington Post reported. However, the White House is asking for $600 direct payments—not the $1,200 payment sent to most Americans in the spring through the CARES Act.
This ask comes as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is reportedly “softening” to the idea of including stimulus checks in the next package, Politico reported Tuesday. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Bloomberg on Tuesday that she’d still like to see a $1,200 stimulus check in the next bill, and that it’s “up to the President.”
The White House did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment. A spokesperson for McConnell did not comment in response to Fortune’s request.
Another round of $1,200 direct payments had been looking dead in the water. Last week a bipartisan group of senators, including Republican Mitt Romney and Democrat Joe Manchin, announced a $908 billion stimulus proposal that did not include stimulus checks. And surprisingly, the framework of the proposal was quickly accepted by Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the basis for further negotiations; up until that point she had been pushing for a $2.2 trillion package including another round of direct payments. Meanwhile, McConnell had never backed a second round of stimulus checks.
But over the past few days party leadership has started to feel pressure from their rank-and-file legislators to add the checks into the next economic aid package. On the left, Sen. Bernie Sanders is circulating a letter signed by other Democrat senators “demanding” that stimulus checks be included, Politico reported, citing the letter. Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley reportedly asked President Trump to veto any bill that didn’t include more stimulus checks, per Politico.
But even if the checks get reintroduced into stimulus proposals, it doesn’t guarantee the aid’s passage. Other stimulus items like state and local funding—strongly supported by Democrats—and COVID-19 lawsuit immunity for businesses—supported by Senate Republicans—are still major areas of disagreement and are holding up the package. On Tuesday, McConnell suggested that Congress drop both state and local funding and liability protection from the bill altogether in order to pass something quickly, but Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer promptly argued that McConnell was trying to “sabotage” the talks.


fortune--2020-12-08--A depleted workforce and no end in sight: An inside look at America’s ailing health care industry

America’s pandemic response has suffered from a well-publicized lack of PPE, of tests, of contact tracers. But 10 months into the global pandemic, with COVID cases and hospitalizations reaching staggering new levels across the county, the most dire and difficult-to-address of shortages is only getting worse—that of the health care workers needed to tend to patients.
As CEO of AMN Healthcare, America’s largest health care staffing company, Susan Salka finds herself on both sides of this crisis, sending in AMN’s reinforcements to short-staffed facilities—the company has made more than 50,000 placements this year—while scrambling to find a supply of ready health care workers to fill the remaining gaps.
Susan Salka, CEO of AMN Healthcare. Courtesy of AMN Healthcare
Salka, a 30-year veteran of the Texas-based company, which recorded $2.2 billion in revenue in 2019, spoke with Fortune last week about the current situation, the challenges of the pandemic, and the long-term outlook for the health care workforce. Spoiler alert: COVID vaccines won’t solve everything.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Fortune: You run the largest health care staffing firm in the country. Can you tell us about AMN and its history?
Salka: I’ve been fortunate to be here over 30 years and when I started, it was a travel nurse company. That’s still the largest part of our business. That segment of the industry has grown, but back then it was just a cottage industry. There were a bunch of small companies that were traveling nurses around the country to where they were needed most based on shortages or seasonal needs. We grew to be the largest travel nurse company in the industry, but our clients were really wanting more from us, and we were seeing the need to be a more diversified and holistic health care staffing company. We either de novo invested in or acquired other health care disciplines such as physician staffing, allied staffing, pharmacists, health care leaders, billing, coding, revenue cycle, etc.
Right now, most companies of any size in our industry are diversified, but we were the first mover to move from being a single service/single product company into a multidiscipline, diversified health care staffing company. That certainly served us very well in the industry and further expanded our leadership position. In 2010, we launched into a journey of providing different workforce solutions and technology solutions to help [clients] be more efficient at how they contract their contingent staff and hire and manage their permanent staff—things like managed services programs and scheduling, predictive analytics, and then more recently, telehealth options that create a virtual workforce through things like remote language interpretation or remote speech therapy services to students in schools.
I think of our evolution as kind of going through these important step changes in response to the market but also in response to the practicality of you can’t have health care workers everywhere they’re needed physically. Wherever you can introduce technology and telehealth or just create efficiencies so that the precious staff that they have is most efficient, that’s what we’re trying to do.
What are workforce solutions—is that outsourcing?
Previously and still for some hospitals or systems, they’ll work with 50 or 100 different agencies that provide contingent staff. A managed services provider contract centralizes that function with an outsourced partner like AMN. We handle all of the procurement and billing and contracting and credentialing for all the contingent staff. We’ve got big clients like Kaiser and other large systems that just outsource all of their contingent staffing to us—primarily clinical—but we do partner with Randstad for the nonclinical part for what their needs might be. The hospital then has a sort of centralized way of ensuring that they’ve got good processes and consistency of the quality of clinicians that are coming through their doors, even if they have multiple settings, which of course, these days any decent-size system has hospitals, they have clinics, they have home health. Their workforce needs are much more diverse than they were maybe 20 years ago.
What has business been like during the pandemic?
When it all started to flare up in March or late February, I don’t think anyone expected it would be at the levels that we saw in the next few months or now. We took all the precautions you’d expect and transferred our own corporate employees to work from home. A little over 3,000 corporate employees moved to remote work, and that actually went fairly seamlessly.
As the country shut down, at non-COVID-related health care settings we saw an immediate decline in all of our businesses, except for nursing and [a few specialties] because there just weren’t procedures going on, and if you weren’t a patient related to COVID, they don’t want you walking through the door for anything. We felt that impact, and some of our business declined as much as 20%, 30%, 40%. Nursing spiked up, and some areas like respiratory therapists and lab techs also spiked up a bit, but it wasn’t enough to fully make up for some of the declines in the other businesses.
We saw that first wave, and it was very concentrated in certain states like New York and Washington and certain areas, and then that quickly fell off, which was, of course, wonderful. We thought it was sort of behind us and that we might have a few little hotspots pop up. We were actually anticipating that our business would then start to recover in the third quarter slowly, but it would kind of return along with volumes coming back into the health care system. What happened was that, yes, the volume started to come back in non-acute settings and in more normal patient flows, but it was slow. On top of that, of course, the COVID spikes started to emerge across the country. What’s been very different between July through now versus the first wave is that the first wave was very concentrated in a few states. Now it’s kind of everywhere.
What demand looks like now versus a year ago, versus what it looked like in the March, April, May time frame? It’s considerably different. And that changes the dynamic a lot. First of all, the sheer numbers are enormous. In terms of the number of open positions that we have for nurses, they are roughly four times the levels that we saw during the first phase of the pandemic. Then it was pretty much all just ICU and COVID-related; now it’s that plus just normal positions that can’t get filled.
The other thing is that it’s regionally everywhere. I think there’s only three or four states that don’t have demand levels higher than the prior year. And in some areas, it’s twice as much as prior years. It’s very difficult to move that many people around the country that quickly. Our industry is doing a great job overall, but there’s just not enough clinicians. It’s very difficult to make sure that we’re just doing all that we can, but also realizing that we in our industry can’t possibly fill all the jobs out there.
There were shortages of health care workers before the pandemic. Why is that?
We were already feeling the pains of what was expected to be the worst shortage the country has ever seen for nurses and really all health care professionals. It’s driven by the demand increasing for health care services because of an aging population. But also, the availability of professionals is not keeping up with that demand because you have an aging clinical workforce as well. This is one of those things that if you’re not in health care, you probably wouldn’t realize that the average age of nurses and physicians is going up.
We don’t have enough capacity in our schools and residency programs to bring more candidates through to graduate, so we’re hitting this point where demand was rising significantly, even pre-pandemic, and the supply of clinicians was starting to plateau and at some point would even be declining with an aging clinical population. The shortages were already very difficult. The pandemic accelerated that by many years because many existing nurses [have decided] to not return to the workforce during the pandemic, or maybe they just have to stay home, particularly women—over 90% of nurses are still women—to oversee childcare and online education and/or just not wanting to take the risk of getting exposed and having to quarantine or worse yet, get their family sick. They’re opting not to come back to work. And in fact, some of the older nurses, say in their fifties, are choosing to retire. The vacancy rates at hospitals right now is through the roof; they’re the highest that many of our clients have seen in some time because their existing nurses are burned out or they’re just not wanting to come back. As volumes are rising, even if they’re not at full capacity—this is the amazing thing, most hospitals aren’t at full capacity—they might be at 70% or 80% capacity, but even with that, their demand for health care workers is through the roof.
We’re going to have a lingering effect of this accelerated shortage for many years to come. It’s a big concern of nurse executives and educators that we’ve suddenly lost some portion of the health care workforce, nurses in particular, that won’t be returning. It is true for physicians, as well. We had made such great progress as a country in having more women going into medicine. We were at the point where about half the new residents coming into the workforce were women. Women were working less hours because they often had kids at home and wanted to work a part-time schedule, but this has just caused us to take many steps backward in terms of women in medicine.
Do we have data yet on the numbers leaving the workforce?
I think it is too early to know where it’s going to settle. Real-time data is not really available. What I’m sharing with you is more anecdotal. It is why, for example, our demand for travel nurses is the highest that we’ve ever seen historically. It’s significantly higher than when the pandemic started. It’s more than double what our demand was last year. That, I think, is an indicator of the severity because, again, most health care systems are saying they’re not full in terms of volumes, but they just can’t get the staff. They can’t get their own staff to come back.
How does travel nursing work?
Most of our clinicians are travelers. We do local staffing as well, but most of the time, the local nurses are already working with their local hospitals on a per diem basis or maybe they’re in their float pools. Our bigger business and value add is to bring clinicians in from outside the region, maybe across state lines. During the pandemic, one of the positive things that has happened is states have made [regulatory] changes in terms of their willingness to accept a license from another state. Most people are surprised that licensure is still controlled at a state level. There isn’t a national licensure for nurses: If you’re a nurse from Nebraska, and you want to go work in Texas, you have to get a new license when you go to Texas. There is a state compact where they will reciprocate and recognize parts of their license or education, but you still usually have to go through a process and it takes weeks even if they are part of that compact. We needed to get the states to put in place new rules on a temporary basis, at least, that would allow you to just literally walk across state lines without having to go through multiple weeks of processing. That has helped to move people around and mobilize them more quickly.
We have hundreds of thousands of clinicians in our database, and then we’re recruiting more every day. We have actually very high numbers of new applicants coming in, but still, you’ve got to have the right job in the right place, and some people sign up, and then they change their mind or something else changes in their life that causes them to not want to go. This year, we have made over 50,000 placements, some of those are duplicate people that maybe took a couple of assignments, but that gives you context of how many people we’re moving around. We place what we can, but for our managed services clients, we also subcontract with other companies. It’s part of the value proposition to the hospital that they don’t have to deal with 50 different agencies: They just deal with us, and then we deal with all of the subcontractors. We have an excellent network of affiliate vendors, essentially competitors who have subcontracted with us. That makes it more streamlined for them to be able to just get the orders, recruit the clinicians, get them placed, and do what they do best in getting clinicians where they’re needed most. And they don’t have the client side of the equation; we were handling that for them. We had a lot of help from our affiliate vendors this year in making sure that we’re doing all we can.
What type of person is a travel clinician? Do they tend to have a full-time job?
We’re always recruiting for candidates that might want to work now or down the road. Sometimes they want to work just one assignment. Sometimes they want to make it a full-time career of moving around and taking three-month assignments in different locations. Someone may have signed up with us two years ago and never traveled and took a job with us for some reason, but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t still a viable candidate. Most of them have some kind of full-time job.
If they’re signing up for a travel job, they’re either leaving a permanent job or they’re already traveling with another organization. In a few cases, they might have been retired and decided they want to jump back into the workforce. Some of the people that we have working now are what we call lapsed travelers, where they took an assignment with us previously, let’s say two or three years ago, and maybe they went into a permanent job, and now they’ve decided they want to take a travel assignment again. We are always re-recruiting people to some extent. You have your brand-new, never traveled with us before, then you have your lapsed travelers, and then you have people that kind of make a career out of this.
Are you able to meet demand? What does that mean for the health care system? How bad is the situation?
We can’t meet all of the demand—it’s not just us, but as an industry. I don’t think every job is getting filled. We do better, I think, the best within the industry. We have that commitment to our clients—one of the things about being a managed service provider is we make guarantees around our fill rates and how much of the demand we think that we can meet and fill. That’s very challenged right now. We feel quite confident we have higher fill rates than our competitors, but for those that go unfilled, it depends on the position—either the hospital has to take the patients and spread them over fewer nurses, which is not ideal because at some point that just burns out the nurses that much more, or a hospital will have patients transferred to another facility if they don’t have proper staffing.
Just anecdotally, I was having dinner with a friend who’s a surgeon here in Dallas, and he was talking about a patient he had to do eye surgery on, and they had to call eight different hospitals before they could find a place where they had room not because a bed wasn’t available—but because they didn’t have staff to be able to open the bed. You can have a bed, and you can have equipment, but if you don’t have enough staff, then you have to route that patient to another facility.
Are you surprised by how this has played out and just how dire the staffing situation has become?
I could have never foreseen the pandemic and how severe it would be and all the havoc it would wreak within the health care system. However, it’s not surprising to me that the shortage is as severe as it is, knowing what we know about how bad the shortage already was. Nurses in particular are those frontline health care heroes that are really put in the line of fire, as you might say, of the pandemic. And so, the burnout that’s creating and the stress that that’s creating on the workforce, I’m not surprised that it is creating such a severe shortage. It’s not going to end overnight.
We just actually had a discussion with a couple of large health care system leaders who are responsible for their staffing. They were asked the question about the vaccine and whether that will create some immediate relief for the workforce. They said no, they don’t believe it will, because their existing nurses who might get the vaccine are burned out, and they need to give them some time to recuperate. Not every clinician will want to come back. They think that this shortage environment will last well beyond 2021. And to some degree, there will be a permanent loss of the workforce.
Do you agree with that view?
I agree. I’ve heard this from other health care executives and leaders. Obviously, [COVID vaccines] are going to be incredibly helpful, but as far as the clinical workforce, it’s not going to be a quick fix to all of the underlying issues.
At AMN, and I personally feel this way, we feel as if we’ve trained our whole careers for this moment. We just never knew it would come and, of course, wished it hadn’t. But the things that we’re doing now to help during the pandemic are the things that we’ve been training and improving and doing well for many, many years, and now is when it matters most. We feel honored to be able to do our part. We’re helping get these clinicians to where they’re so desperately needed most, supporting them in every way that we can. Our work matters more now than it ever has before. And I can say that, with over 30 years in this business, this is the most important year for this company.
We’ve heard lots of stories of health care workers struggling to get adequate PPE and tests when they need them. What have you observed with your workforce? Is it the hospital’s responsibility, or AMN’s, to take care of these needs?
Regarding PPE, it really is the hospital’s primary responsibility. Of course, we’re communicating with them to make sure that if there’s anything that we can do to be helpful, we’re doing that. But hospitals usually want to and, in fact, insist on providing their own PPE. They might have particular types of equipment that they want people to use; they don’t necessarily want clinicians to always be bringing in their own PPE. So we’re generally just trying to be in a supportive position. Obviously, if we can be helpful in getting them PPE—we’ve sent masks and gowns and goggles to clients trying to make sure they have what they need. We’ve sent some items to our clinicians directly, as well. But the primary responsibility really does reside with the facility to make sure that their workers have the appropriate PPE.
We do communicate with our clinicians on situations when they might have been exposed, and they need to get tested. We have a clinical care team that interfaces with them, and we have our own nurses on staff at a corporate level that then become a care team to communicate with those clinicians about what they need to do to quarantine, to get tested, getting them the resources they need quickly, but also providing emotional support, and if needed, referring them to mental-health professionals. It can be an extraordinarily stressful time for clinicians as they are quarantining and they’re worried about their own health, but they’re also wanting to be at the hospital caring for patients. There’s a pretty big network of mental-health resources that we’ve created to try to ensure that our nurses and clinicians are getting the support they need. For nurses that are on that front line, many of them have referred to having essentially PTSD, and we want to make sure that we’re giving them the resources to get through the situation, but then even afterward, that we’re being supportive.
You’ve spoken about various challenges. What issues are you most concerned with now?
First is making sure that we are supporting our clinicians, and for that matter, all clinicians out in the field to ensure that they can do their best work and that we’re doing everything we can to get them there quickly, efficiently. It includes simple things like expressing gratitude and appreciation for them at every turn. Second, we’re very focused on our own corporate team members as well. While they’re not on the front lines, it’s still very stressful, and a lot of hours and a lot of emotional toll that gets taken through the work that we do because we so desperately want to get every job filled and every clinician to where they’re needed. We’re supporting clinicians that are in difficult situations themselves.
We end up being the partner—if you’re a recruiter, you’re on that journey right along with your clinician. We’re making sure that we’re supporting our own corporate team members: how to handle mental health at work during the pandemic. We’re very mindful of that, and all of our team members are still working remotely, which they want to be, and we’re supportive of that, but we have to make sure that our leaders are learning how to lead in a remote environment. We’re very proud of the culture at AMN. It’s been one of our strengths and, I think, a big part of our success. And now that culture is remote. So how do we ensure that all of our team members feel appreciated, supported, and have access to the resources that they need? I think we’re doing very well, but we’re going to be in this for quite some time. We’ve made the decision not to go back to offices until at least July of next year, other than maybe a pilot—I quite honestly think it’s going to be longer than that. We’re going to be feeling the challenges of the pandemic far past the summer.


fortune--2020-12-08--Could Biden finally get the national minimum wage to $15?

On Election Night last month, one of the most hotly anticipated results from the state of Florida—beyond which presidential candidate would capture the battleground state—was voters’ decision on a proposed near-doubling of the minimum wage.
Ultimately, Floridians voted decisively to raise the Sunshine State’s minimum wage to $15 by 2026, despite the fact that President Trump won the state’s electoral votes and that Florida’s Republican leaders, including its governor, had campaigned hard against the wage boost.
That vote, coupled with the same result in a similar referendum in Portland, Maine, that day, and President-elect Joe Biden’s avowed support for a national $15 minimum wage, promises to reenergize the push to raise it nationwide from a rate that has stood unchanged at $7.25 since 2007.
The Florida and Maine votes “are additional pieces of wind at the back of President-elect Biden and Vice President–elect Harris to take bold action on the $15 minimum wage,” says Mary Kay Henry, international president of the Service Employees International Union, which has 2 million members in the U.S. and Canada, and the leader of the Fight for $15 advocacy group.
But there’s a catch: Whatever the incoming Biden administration’s intentions, any hopes of passing a $15 minimum wage nationally will hinge on the pair of Senate runoffs in Georgia next month pitting Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue against Democrat challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively.
If Democrats prevail in both races—and that’s a big “if”—the party would have half of the seats in the Senate, with Harris as the tiebreaker as vice president. That narrow majority would give Democrats the power needed to pass a bill similar to the 2019 Raise the Minimum Wage Act passed by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.
Still, one of the takeaways in the paradoxical Florida vote is that it shows support for the $15 wage does not necessarily fall cleanly along partisan lines. Florida, a tourism-heavy place with 1 million service workers, became the ninth state to pass such a proposal.
Trickle-up effect
The minimum wage debate is one that flares up periodically in the U.S. While anti-poverty advocates see a higher wage as a tool to lift millions of Americans financially at time of growing income inequality, opponents, including trade organizations representing retailers, restaurants, and other service industries, see it as unnecessary, employment-stifling regulation.
All told, there aren’t all that many Americans making the current national minimum wage. Some 1.6 million workers, or 1.9% of all people paid an hourly wage, make $7.25 (or less if they earn tips too), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But an increase would have a trickle-up effect on people currently making more than that, since those people will demand to continue being paid above minimum wage, says Columbia Business School assistant professor Christian Moser, who is also a senior research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. The Congressional Budget Office last year found that a $15 minimum wage by 2025 would increase income for some 27 million workers.
The push for a national $15 minimum wage first gained steam in the aftermath of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement. President Obama took a shot at it in 2013, gunning for $9 by 2015, but that effort was thwarted by Republicans. That left many local governments to take it upon themselves to raise minimum wage in places like Seattle and California.
Then, in a surprising plot twist, some large companies began raising their internal floor wages to $15 on their own, starting with Amazon in 2018. Target this summer raised its own minimum wage to that level, bringing it to 50% above 2017 levels, prompted by the need to keep workers and motivate them at a time work in stores is more complex than ever.
Other retailers have been less keen about an across-the-board-increase. Macy’s, for one, says compensation should reflect local conditions. “We prefer going on a market-by-market basis,” Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette recently told Fortune. “The cost of living is very different depending on what part of the country you’re in.”
And Home Depot’s finance chief, Richard McPhail, said wages are but one component of worker compensation. “We focus on more than wage. We focus on career opportunities and benefits,” he said in an interview.
Many retailers, notably Kroger and Walmart, have offered bonuses to store workers during the pandemic but stopped short of raising floor wages to $15 permanently. (Walmart’s lowest wage is $11 per hour, but the company provides a minimum of $15 for certain jobs like deli and bakery workers. A spokeswoman for the retailer says that bonuses, paid time off, and benefits should be factored into any assessment of its compensation beyond hourly wages.)
Still, the fact compensation has ticked up shows market forces are good at setting wages, says David French, the senior vice president of government relations at the National Retail Federation, a trade group that represents major store chains.
“The retailers that are hiring are having to hire at higher wages because it’s difficult to find workers,” says French. “The market is working.”
What’s more, with many stores and restaurants struggling during the ever-worsening COVID-19 pandemic, opponents argue mandated wage increases could push many companies over the edge. (Minimum wage increases have typically been phased in over a number of years to allow businesses to adapt.)
“Restaurants are spending more to keep their doors open, while being told they can serve fewer customers. Dramatic hikes in labor costs will push many restaurants into immediate bankruptcy,” Sean Kennedy, executive vice president of public affairs at the National Restaurant Association, told Fortune in an e-mailed statement.
In the meantime, all eyes are on Georgia next month. The big companies seem to be sanguine about it. (French says the NRF has not talked to its members about the $15 minimum wage push recently, suggesting they don’t see a big threat.) And the Democrats know winning both seats in a Republican-leaning state won’t be easy. But the $15 proponents see a rare opening.
“We’re going to fight like hell,” says SEIU’s Henry.


fortune--2020-12-08--Apple debuts $550 over-the-ear headphones into a crowded market

Apple launched its first over-ear headphones, entering a competitive market dominated by rivals such as Bose and Sony, and expanding its push into accessories to supplement revenue generated by its signature iPhone.
The pricey $550 headphones include wireless pairing and noise cancellation, like many on the market. They go on sale Tuesday and start arriving Dec. 15, Apple said on its website. The company touted superior audio quality, ear cups that independently pivot and rotate, and 20-hour battery life in its announcement.
The headphones work with Apple’s voice-activated Siri digital assistant and have a physical side control called the Digital Crown, the same mechanism on the Apple Watch, to control music playback. The headphones come in several colors: space gray, silver, blue, green and pink.
At $550, the headphones are some of the most expensive on the market, rivaling the priciest offerings from Sony, Sennheiser and Dolby. The new model comes about five years after Apple acquired Beats by Dre’s headphone division, putting Apple now in a position to compete with its own subsidiary. The highest end Beats headphones, the Beats Pro, cost $150 less than Apple’s new offering.
The Airpods Max have several microphones and use what Apple calls computational audio to provide its sound quality. The headphones come in a leather case and charge via the iPhone’s Lightning Connector.
Bloomberg previously reported on the new headphones development in 2018 and on the features earlier this year. Apple stopped selling rival headphones and speakers from makers like Bose and Sonos, in September, clearing the way for consumers to focus on the new offering. Apple had aimed to announce the headphones earlier, but it was delayed after the headband was deemed too tight in testing, Bloomberg reported in October.
Apple launched its wireless AirPods earbuds in 2016 when it removed the iPhone’s headphone jack. The product was a surprise hit and powered the company’s wearables sales, giving Apple a key growth driver beyond the iPhone. The AirPods were updated in 2019 and the upgraded AirPods Pro with noise cancellation were released in October of that year. Apple is also planning new AirPods for next year.
In its last fiscal year, Apple generated $31 billion sales from accessories, including AirPods, Beats headphones and the Apple Watch. That’s more than the Mac and the iPad. The accessories business is instrumental to the company’s push to generate more revenue per user as people hold on to their iPhones longer.
Apple on Tuesday also said its $9.99 per month Fitness+ workout service launches on Dec. 14. Apple shares were little changed Tuesday morning in New York.


fortune--2020-12-08--Google and China duke it out over ‘quantum supremacy’

When the recently late daredevil Chuck Yeager became the first human to break the sound barrier in 1947, observers knew it from the thunderous boom that rang out over the Mojave Desert, marking the feat.
For all its epochal-sounding significance, no magnificent sonic clap accompanies the achievement of “quantum supremacy.” No roar pierces people’s ears to confirm the moment a quantum computer performs a specially designed calculation so fast it leaves a traditional computer hopelessly in the dust. Claims of quantum supremacy are harder to parse.
That’s because today’s quantum computers are still highly immature, and the limits of classical computing are not exactly well understood, even by the field’s leading theorists. So demonstrations of so-called supremacy remain a squishy science. (Look no further than IBM disputing rival Google’s celebrated experiment last year.)
It’s with circumspection then that one must regard last week’s quantum supremacy claims by a team of researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei. The group said it produced in 200 seconds a calculation that would take a regular computer 2.5 billion years to replicate—an extremely bold claim. (You can read the paper, published in the journal Science on Dec. 3, here.)
Already, there are big caveats. The Chinese team’s equipment cannot be programmed to do anything else, for example. (Programmability is, usually, considered table stakes for a computer.) Whereas the quantum computer used in Google’s experiment can be adapted to other purposes, the Chinese rig is rigid and inflexible. This is like the difference between building a stick-in-the-ground sundial versus a comparatively more complex accounting tool like an abacus, as one head of quantum research at a major Wall Street bank put it to me. Generally speaking, the abacus is more impressive, or at least more potentially useful.
Then there’s the question of whether the Chinese team’s central claim—that its quantum computer can blazingly outperform a regular computer by a mind-melting factor of 100 trillion—will hold up under scientific scrutiny. Other teams are already reportedly working to refute the assertion; the Google quantum team, not to be outdone, is said to be working to disprove the claim, or at least set it back considerably. John Martinis, a quantum leader who left Google earlier this year, openly shared his doubts about the recent result at an Australian conference yesterday. (Google did not immediately reply to Fortune’s request for comment.)
Despite these reservations, the experiment is worthy of celebration. “It is a first-rate victory for China in quantum computing,” says Greg Kuperberg, a mathematician at the University of California at Davis who specializes in quantum theory. “They are working hard to catch up with the West in scientific research in general, which is a difficult but valuable goal,” he says. (Even if the work “feeds political insecurities in Washington,” he adds.)
The experiment also represents a major proof point for photonics, a light beam–based hardware approach to building quantum computers that has received short shrift compared with other leading approaches, like superconducting qubits (pursued by IBM, Google, Rigetti) and ion traps (Honeywell, IonQ). Each approach has unique advantages and drawbacks.
It will be ironic, of course, if Google pushes back against the Chinese team’s result, similar to how IBM countered its own. Then again, that’s just how science works. “Either they’ll succeed or else the claim will be stronger for it,” Scott Aaronson, a theoretical computer scientist who runs a popular, if niche, blog about the industry, says of Google’s probing.
Whether or not this particular result holds, quantum supremacy experiments are bound to proceed in fits and starts for the foreseeable future. It’s a race between the leading edge in quantum computing and advances in traditional computing methods, each one trying to outpace the other.
It may not be a sonic boom, but it is the pop of a starting pistol.
Robert Hackett
Twitter: @rhhackett
robert.hackett@fortune.com
THREATS
Steering one's own ship. Uber is selling its self-driving car unit to Aurora Innovation and is pouring $400 million worth of investment into the startup so as to better compete with the likes of Alphabet's Waymo. High costs, legal challenges involving trade secret theft, and a fatal accident had beset the subsidiary. In other car news, Tesla's share price dipped 2% this morning after the hype-fueled electric automaker said it planned on a $5 billion stock sale. Regardless, shares are still up nearly 670% (!) since the start of the year.
TikBlock. A second federal judge is blocking President Trump's attempted banishment of ByteDance's TikTok from U.S. mobile app stores. Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., says the Commerce Department is likely exceeding its authority in calling for a ban. China, meanwhile, just banned more than 100 apps for supposed security reasons, including, somewhat puzzlingly, travel app TripAdvisor.
King Kong. Shares in JD Health, a hot telehealth business, soared 60% after its $3.5 billion listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange, making it the bourse's biggest listing of the year. Fintech giant Ant Financial's suspended mega-IPO, squashed at the last minute by regulators, would have been bigger if it had gone off last month. Sounds like Ant isn't out of the woods yet as Chinese regulators suggest more measures may be needed.
Feature set. Google's Pixel phones have some new software tricks, like "adaptive sound," which improves sound quality based on the ambient noise in one's surroundings. Reminiscent of Amazon's Twitch, Google says its cloud gaming service Stadia is going to allow people to livestream directly to YouTube. And springing off last week's column about Facebook's ecommerce ambitions, WhatsApp is adding in-chat "carts" to make shopping easier.
Man, Bill Gates really chilled out.
ACCESS GRANTED
Here at Data Sheet we like to shine a light on the many troubling ways social media goes awry. Apparently, the problems extend far beyond services like Facebook. Meet eBird, an observation tool and scientific database developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which the author of an entertaining article in Outside magazine likens to "a kind of Strava-Yelp-Pokémon Go hybrid for birders." Perhaps it should be no surprise that the project's birder-ranking system can bring out the worst in people. (Is no pursuit sacred?)
Birders are typically friendly, both in person and online, with email exchanges often ending in well-wishes of “Good birding!” But a code of ethics is necessary because, as with any activity that can become competitive, birding has a dark side. Rivalry, animosity, and ego have long been hallmarks of the bird world. Even the famous naturalist John James Audubon plagiarized and invented species to convince members of the English nobility to promote his work. Birders sometimes go to semi-desperate lengths to track down birds, and online platforms like eBird that rank birders and sightings, akin to athletes on leaderboards, can amplify competition.
FORTUNE RECON
Battery startup backed by Bill Gates claims major breakthrough by Aaron Pressman
The IRS effectively canceled the tax break that made PPP loans so valuable by Geoff Colvin
A $100 million ‘virtual power plant’ could put an end to California’s power woes by Jeff John Roberts
California unveils COVID tracing tool co-created by Apple and Google by Amy Taxin and Adam Beam
Using pandemic recovery funds, Europe moves to build up its semiconductor industry by David Meyer
The final days of former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh by Lucinda Shen
Meet the seven key economic advisers who will help Joe Biden lead through the COVID crisis by Nicole Goodkind
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access.Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
ONE MORE THING
Many people have heard of Egypt's famously lost Library of Alexandria, but how many people know about Baghdad's House of Wisdom? As BBC Future relates, the 8th century Islamic academy drew scholars from far and wide in its heyday when it was headed by the great Al-Khwarizmi, the influential Persian intellect, inventor of algebra, and namesake of the resurgently vogue word "algorithm." When the Mongols seized Baghdad in 1258, they destroyed the institution's legacy. "So many manuscripts were tossed into the River Tigris," writes BBC's Adrienne Bernhard, citing folklore, "that its water turned black from ink."


fortune--2020-12-08--The best A.I. movies and TV shows

The best A.I. movies and TV shows

This is the web version of the Eye on A.I. newsletter. Subscribe here.
Good morning, Fortune senior writer Jeff Roberts here with a question: What movie or TV show has done the best job exploring A.I.? I ask because even though Hollywood is notorious for flubbing scientific details, the stories it tells often reflect our collective hopes and fears as a society.
I set about making a list, and the first film to come to mind was the 1968 classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The movie, hailed for its realistic depiction of space flight, features a computer named HAL who goes rogue, commandeering the voyage and killing the astronauts. A fun tidbit is that HAL was inspired by IBM (note the initials are all one letter off). And while few people today would pick IBM as the company most likely to enslave us, 2001’s theme of betrayal by our own machines still resonates.
That fear of losing control of the devices we build is a common story line. Other prominent examples include the Terminator series, the original Alien, and certain episodes of Black Mirror.
But the robots are not always the bad guys. There is another popular A.I. trope in Hollywood in which machines offer connection and even redemption in a world where we’ve lost our humanity. Think of Harrison Ford finding love with a replicant in Blade Runner or Joaquin Phoenix mending his heartbreak with a digital assistant in Her. In some cases—notably the dystopian game show setting of Westworld—the robots’ attempts to become sentient are a rebuke to the moral failings of real humans.
It’s notable that, in the A.I. shows that offer the promise of redemption, the machines that might save us are female. But this stereotype of female empathy is not universal. In canvassing my tech reporter colleagues, a number cited Ex Machina—which sees the protagonist outsmarted by a sociopathic female robot—as a must-watch. Then there is Wall-E, the gentle male robot who helps humanity repair a ravaged Earth.
I confess I haven’t seen the latter two films but plan to soon. Other A.I. shows that came up in my canvass include Westworld precursor, Person of Interest, the new sci-fi series Next, and the 2001 Steven Spielberg film called, appropriately enough, A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
What do you think? Are there any big omissions in our list of top A.I. movies and TV shows? If so, please email me your favorites, and we’ll include your responses in next week’s Eye on A.I. newsletter.
Jeff John Roberts
@jeffjohnroberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
A.I. IN THE NEWS
AI on trial: The criminal defense bar has been pushing back for years against “trial by algorithm.” Now, social justice lawyer are following their playbook to challenge “automated decision-making systems [that create] a hidden web of interlocking traps” that can deprive low income individuals of access to health, education and credit.
A machine gun using AI killed Iran’s top nuclear scientist, using an “intelligence satellite system which zoomed in” on the scientist without killing his wife who was inches away. Or at least that’s what Iranian officials claim. Others are skeptical, saying Iran appears to be stringing together “cool buzzwords” to suggest the hit by Israel could only have been achieved with futuristic weaponry.
AI is overhyped (again): A Scientific American journalist who has been writing about AI for four decades concluded the technology is indeed overhyped. He argues that, over repeated cycles of hype cycles and AI winters, it’s become clear that some fields of AI have stalled and that the tech will never achieve its ambitions for the basic reason that “human and machine intelligence are radically different.”
But the market begs to differ: Investors seem more smitten with AI than ever as C3, which sells artificial intelligence tools to enterprises, plans to go public this week at a higher-than-expected valuation. No word on whether the company name is related to R2-D2’s less popular sidekick.
FORTUNE ON A.I.
Europe is missing out on the A.I. revolution—but it isn’t too late to catch up — By Francois Candelon and Rodolphe Charme Di Carlo
Quantum computing is entering a new dimension — By Robert Hackett
BRAIN FOOD
What was in that explosive Google paper? The tech world has been buzzing about the ouster of Timnit Gebru, who co-led Google's ethical AI team. At the center of the controversy is a paper Gebru co-authored about Google's primary line of AI research. The head of Google's AI program says the paper wasn't up to snuff academically, but others say Gebru was ousted because the paper raised inconvenient questions about a flagship product.
The paper is not circulating publicly but MIT Tech Review obtained a copy and summarized its findings. The publication notes Gebru and her co-author identified four broad ethical issues related to Google's AI research: the massive energy use required to train large language models; the risk of introducing bias when data sets are so large as well as the challenge of auditing them; lost opportunity costs that arise from directing mega-research projects towards money-making ventures; the potential for large language models to deployed for nefarious ends.
Google is sticking with its position that the paper lacked scientific rigor and that the company wasn't given proper time to review it—but several Google veterans note that such strictures have not been applied in the past. Meanwhile, Gebru's co-author warned the company's response could create broader problems:
Bender worries that Google’s actions could create “a chilling effect” on future AI ethics research. Many of the top experts in AI ethics work at large tech companies because that is where the money is. “That has been beneficial in many ways,” she says. “But we end up with an ecosystem that maybe has incentives that are not the very best ones for the progress of science for the world.”


fortune--2020-12-08--Getting to the COVID-19 finish line: A drama in three acts

Vaccines are coming, and there’s no question that they are our best hope. But simply waiting for their arrival puts us on the road to perdition. In the U.S., hospitalizations are almost double their spring peak, and daily deaths are at a seven-day average of more than 2,000—a high we haven’t seen since late April—and they’re continuing to rise.
At this pace, at least 200,000 more Americans will die of COVID-19 by spring 2021, adding to the 290,000 deaths to date. Numbers like these bring us close to the losses suffered in the Civil War, our nation’s deadliest conflict, when 620,000 American soldiers died.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
We think the story of the end of the COVID-19 pandemic must unfold in three acts. To save the most lives and defeat the virus swiftly, we need to understand the coming sequence—even if we will work on all three acts simultaneously.
We managed to flatten the curve last spring, and we know far more about COVID-19 now than we did then. But flattening the curve in the middle of winter, when people can’t socialize outdoors, is a different story. And we now know that telling millions of young, healthy Americans to stay home indefinitely does not work when they’re at no more risk from COVID-19 than from the seasonal flu.
These three acts require holistic and responsive strategies that allow us to fight the current crisis while creating a bridge to the vaccines that are months away from broad distribution.
Act I: Mastering “epinomics”
Act One is about balancing epidemiology and socioeconomics (what we call “epinomics”). An epinomic approach involves managing risk—and the recognition that we cannot eliminate it entirely. We need targeted public health measures that decrease risk with the lowest socioeconomic cost. For example, we know that schools are reasonably safe and extremely important. They should mostly be open. Dining out and traveling, however, come with much higher risk and are not as vital in the short term. These activities should be mostly curbed where prevalence is higher.
For this act to succeed, Congress must pass urgent fiscal stimulus support to give citizens the food, income, and employment security needed to make these measures bearable and compliance possible. We can also include measures to provide support for the most health-vulnerable populations.
Act II: Virus monitoring
Act Two is about scaling a robust monitoring system of testing and tracing to contain the virus—in particular, by undertaking more proactive screening testing of populations, rather than relying solely on reactive testing for likely cases.
Once health measures flatten the virus, and as vaccine administration ramps up, public officials will be under enormous pressure to broadly open society and the economy—and citizens will be more than ready for looser restrictions. But it will still be cold in much of the U.S. in February, March, and April, and vaccines will not yet be readily available to much of the population. To manage at this phase, we’ll need strong testing capacity, which we are still sorely lacking in many regions.
We’ve made real improvements with diagnostic testing in cases where there are symptoms or presumed exposure, but we still don’t have enough rapid tests to randomly and broadly screen entire populations, such as nursing homes, schools, and prisons, so that we can find asymptomatic cases and act fast. And it’s not just about quantity of tests. Many of the rapid tests we have aren’t accurate enough, are even less accurate on kids, and need further approvals by the FDA.
We need national guidance and systemic support to get the necessary level of screening testing in long-term care facilities, schools, businesses, and across society at large. Our modeling suggests that regular screening testing of about 3% of the U.S. population would enable us to relax restrictions to the same degree we could by vaccinating about 40% of the population—which makes broader testing an incredibly important strategy while we wait to complete our vaccine rollout.
Act III: The perfect rollout
Act Three is about completing the administration of vaccines. We got the best early holiday present possible with the announcement of vaccines that are 95% efficacious. Now we begin the hard work of managing the greatest logistical challenge of our time. We need to execute a flawless rollout and provide clear, transparent communications that drive uptake. At the same time, we need to motivate people to continue observing safety measures and maintain virus-monitoring systems until the supply of vaccine doses grows and we can build up to herd immunity in the spring and summer—and declare victory.
*
The challenge through these three acts is how to maintain vigilance. Some people may mostly be worrying about when they can get a vaccine and return to normal life—one where they can stop wearing a mask, travel without fear, and see their colleagues and friends in person. But there are 100 million health-vulnerable Americans and more than 50 million exposure-vulnerable workers on the front lines. The pandemic has so far been extremely regressive, impacting these populations at disproportionate rates. If, given what we now know, we fail to take the appropriate actions over these three acts to limit that regressive impact and protect these 150 million, shame on us.
So what do we do right now?
Traversing the three acts will take a coordinated, whole-society response. As eyes shift to vaccines, all stakeholders have critical roles to play and should take the following immediate actions:
The federal government must act immediately and pass a robust fiscal stimulus package to provide income, food, and employment security to protect those whose livelihoods are hampered by public health measures. Without it, we risk not only another recession but the loss of hundreds of thousands of additional lives. The government must also provide support to protect the health-vulnerable, further technology and testing capacity, as well as implementation guidelines to support screening testing and school reopening. Finally, it must continue to move at warp speed to complete reviews and deployment of vaccines.
State and local governments must get people to wear masks and progressively reduce those activities that best allow them to optimize the epinomics. They should provide the resources to help reopen schools safely. They must redouble their focus on ramping up screening testing and tracing capacity—especially in communities of color that have borne a disproportionate burden to date—so they are ready to contain the virus when we are at lower community prevalence at the end of Act I. Lastly, they need to prioritize the vaccination of populations that are most health- and exposure-vulnerable, while implementing robust strategies for administration, data collection, and communication. The federal government should explicitly dedicate some of its next stimulus package to support states and municipalities in these vaccination efforts.
Business leaders must call on Congress to pass a stimulus bill and advocate for sensible public health measures. They should take extra steps to protect their employees and customers, in part by scaling their own virus-monitoring systems. They should also plan for providing time off for eligible employees to be able to get vaccinated, or sick leave for those who have side effects afterward. Globally, in geographies where their employees may have more difficulty accessing vaccines, they can play a role in securing vaccine supply for the communities in which they operate.
Citizens must wear masks and continue to limit the size, frequency, and duration of gatherings. They should tightly manage an “interactions budget” and only expand it as the virus and public health measures pull back. They should participate in screening testing and support tracing and quarantining efforts, and they should seek access to vaccines as soon as they are eligible.
We have been limping along on the road to perdition. This is our last chance to take the off-ramp to the finish line. Let’s not waste it.
Rich Lesser is president and CEO of Boston Consulting Group. Marin Gjaja is a Boston Consulting Group managing director and senior partner and global COVID response leader.


fortune--2020-12-08--Revenue isn’t back yet, but Airbnb’s valuation may well be

Following DoorDash’s price bump on its planned IPO, home-sharing company Airbnb said that it, too, would seek to raise more than it initially sought from investors.
On Monday, Airbnb said it’s seeking to raise share prices to between $56 and $60 a piece, up from the previous $44 to $50—valuing the company at as much as $42 billion on a fully-diluted basis. Even on an undiluted basis, Airbnb would be set to IPO at a valuation of some $36 billion—putting it above its highest pre-pandemic price tag of $31 billion. In short: public market investors are excited over Airbnb’s comeback, even at a time when the company’s bottom line has yet to bounce back to pre-COVID times.
In fact, private market investors seem thrilled over many tech IPOs at the moment. DoorDash, with its business model arguably under greater scrutiny from public market investors than that of Airbnb’s, is seeking to double its private market valuation in its debut.
It’s a buzzy time for startups: Pre-pandemic, rounds were being closed at a blistering pace, and now they are being done even faster. This New York Times piece from former colleague and Term Sheet writer Erin Griffith details one investor, Rahul Vohra, that is hearing a pitch and signing a deal all in the same day. Addition’s September investment in security company Snyk, meanwhile, was completed within 48 hours of the duo meeting each other for a deal that valued the company at an $2.6 billion. No small pennies here. Which inevitably raises the question—is it getting too buzzy?
WOMEN IN VC, BY THE NUMBERS, IN THE PANDEMIC: PitchBook, alongside Microsoft for Startups and Beyond the Billion, analyzed the coronavirus’ impact on women founders. It found that the “pandemic has disproportionately impacted female founders and CEOs negatively, despite undeniable, long-term gains in VC investment over the past decade.” In the first three quarters of 2020, funding to female founders dropped 31% compared all of 2020 while funding to all-male teams fell just 16%. Read more.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to the reflect that funding to female founders dropped 31% in the first three quarters of 2020 compared to all of 2019. A previous version of the Pitchbook data sent to Fortune suggested that the drop off was compared to the first three quarters of 2019 instead.
VENTURE DEALS
- Dragos, a Hanover, Md.-based cybersecurity firm, raised $110 million in Series C funding. National Grid Partners and Koch Disruptive Technologies co-led the round.
- BioAge Labs, a Richmond, Calif.-based biotech developing medicines for aging-related diseases, raised $90 million in Series C funding. Andreessen Horowitz and Elad Gil led the round and were joined by Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, AARP Foundation, Phi-X Capital, Caffeinated Capital, Redpoint Ventures, PEAR Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, and Felicis Ventures.
- Gotham Greens, a New York-based operator of tech-enabled greenhouses, raised $42 million in funding. Manna Tree led the Series D and was joined by investors including The Silverman Group.
- Remix Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Mass.-based biotechnology company developing small molecule therapies designed to reprogram RNA processing, raised $81 million. Foresite Capital led the Series A while Atlas Venture and The Column Group led the seed.
- Calm, a San Francisco-based maker of a meditation app, raised $75 million in Series C funding, valuing it at $2 billion. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Goldman Sachs, TPG, Insight Venture Partners and Marc Benioff.
- Beyond Identity, a New York-based identity authentication company, raised $75 million in Series B funding. Investors include NEA, Jim Clark, and Koch Disruptive Technologies.
- Luko, a France-based home insurtech company focused on social responsibility, raised €50 million in Series B funding. EQT Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Accel, Founders Fund, Speedinvest, and Orange Ventures.
- Orca Security, a Los Angeles-based security firm, raised $55 million in Series B funding. ICONIQ Growth led the round and was joined by investors including GGV Capital, YL Ventures, and Silicon Valley CISO Investments.
- gohenry, a New York-based maker of an allowance card, raised $40 million. Edison Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Gaia Capital Partners, Citi Ventures, and Muse Capital.
- Tecton, a San Francisco-based maker of a feature store for machine learning, raised $35 million in Series B funding. Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia co-led the round.
- Sundae, a San Francisco-based real estate marketplace, raised $36 million in Series B funding. QED Investors led the round and was joined by investors including Founders Fund, Susa Ventures, Navitas Capital, and Prudence Holdings.
- Centivo, a Buffalo, N.Y.-based digital health plan provider, raised $34 million in Series B funding. B Capital Group led the round.
- SeeTree, a Fresno, Calif.-based A.I. tree intelligence company, raised $30 million in Series B funding. The International Finance Corporation led the round.
- Salt Security, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based API security company, raised $30 million in Series B funding. Sequoia Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Tenaya Capital, S Capital VC, and Y Combinator.
- CodeSignal, a San Francisco-based maker of a technical assessment platform for tech recruiting, raised $25 million in Series B funding. Menlo Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Capital One Ventures, CM Ventures, Human Capital, TripHammer Ventures (Alumni Ventures Group), e.ventures, A Capital, Felicis Ventures and Correlation Ventures.
- Finn.auto, a Munich-based car subscription company, raised €20 million ($24.2 million) in Series A funding. White Star Capital led the round.
- Shippit, a Sydney-based e-commerce and logistics company, raised AU$30 million ($22 million) in Series B funding. Investors included Tiger Global and Jason Lenga.
- OhmConnect, a San Francisco-based startup rewarding consumers for saving energy when the grid is overloaded, raised $20 million from Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners. SIP also invested another $80 million in an OhmConnect virtual power plant.
- Deepcell, a Mountain View, Calif.-based life science using A..I-powered cell classification, raised $20 million in Series A. Bow Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Andreessen Horowitz, 50Y, DCVC, Stanford University, and angel investors including Google’s head of AI Jeff Dean.
- Unit, a San Francisco-based startup helping banks and fintechs build out their tech, raised $18.6 million in funding from investors including Better Tomorrow Ventures, Aleph, Flourish Ventures, TLV Partners and Operator Partners.
- Sunlight, a Cambridge, Mass.-based developer of technology for data-intensive applications, raised $6 million in Series A funding. OpenOcean led the round and was joined by investors including Robert Bosch Venture Capital.
- Modal, a San Francisco-based provider of e-commerce solutions automotive dealers and brands, raised $15 million in Series A funding. American Honda led the round.
- Neuro-ID, a Whitefish, Mt.-based behavior analytics company seeking to detect fraud, raised $7 million in Series A funding. Fin VC and TTV Capital led the round and were joined by investors including Canapi Ventures.
- Sanguina, an Atlanta-based way to track blood hemoglobin levels, raised $4.2 million in a mix of grant and seed funding. Investors included The Seed Lab and XRC Labs.
- Story Health, a San Jose, Calif.-based the healthcare company with virtualized specialty care solutions, raised $4 million in seed funding. Investors included General Catalyst and Define Ventures.
- Jeli.io, a San Francisco-based incident analysis platform, raised $4 million in seed funding. Boldstart Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Harrison Metal and Heavybit.
- Codi, a San Francisco-based provider of daytime workspaces in private homes, raised $7 million in funding. Investors include NFX, Urban Innovation Fund, and ANIMO Ventures.
- The Skills, a Los Angeles-based online education platform focused on professional sport, raised $5 million in seed funding. Will Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Global Founders Capital, 8VC, Maveron, Hack VC, and Correlation VC.
- Luma, a maker of a way to create event pages, raised $3 million in funding. Maven and Venrock co-led the round.
- Quell, a London-based company seeking to gamify working out, raised a $3 million in seed funding. Investors include Twitch co-founders Kevin Lin and Emmett Shear as well as AngelList founder Naval Ravikant. Read more.
- StarStock, a San Francisco-based sports card trading marketplace, raised $1.3 million in seed funding. Investors included Kevin Durant, Rich Kleiman of Thirty Five Ventures, Nigel and Lesley Eccles (co-founders of FanDuel), Jeremy Levine (Founder’s First Fund), Matt Dellavedova (basketball player) and A.J. Vaynerchuk (co-founder of VaynerSports).
- ChopValue, a Vancouver-based company changing chopsticks into durable materials, raised $1.7 million in additional seed funding. Active Impact Investments was the investor.
- Rundit, a Finnish maker of portfolio management and monitoring software, raised €1 million ($1.2 million) in seed funding. Investors included Pierre Weimerskirch and LPEA Luxembourg Private Equity Association.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Spectrum Brands Holdings partnered with CVC Capital Partners in a bid to acquire Conair Corporation, a Connecticut-based seller of personal care appliances, in a deal that could value the firm at about $2 billion, including debt, per Reuters citing sources. Read more.
- EQT acquired a $1.1 billion stake in Beijer Ref AB, a Swedish air conditioning wholesaler, from Carrier Global Corp. Read more.
- Veritas Capital agreed to acquire the federal IT and mission support services business of Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) for $3.4 billion in cash.
EXITS
- The Carlyle Group agreed to acquire the Acrotec Group, a Swiss supplier to the watch and medical technology industries, from Castik Capital. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Moncler SpA (ITA: MONC) agreed to acquire Stone Island, a rival Italian luxury retailer, for 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in cash and shares. Stone Island is backed by Temasek.
- A consortium led by L Catterton agreed to acquire a controlling stake in Truck Hero, provider of functional aftermarket accessories for pickup trucks and Jeep vehicles. The consortium includes a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the Mubadala Investment Company and StepStone Group Inc. (Nasdaq: STEP). CCMP will remain a shareholder.
OTHER
- Aurora Innovation agreed to acquire Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, it’s self-driving unit in a deal that will value the combined company at $10 billion.
- Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) agreed to acquire Apstra, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based data center automation company. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
IPOs
- C3.ai, a Redwood City, Calif.-based company developing ways to deploy AI applications, raised its range. It plans to raise $574 million by offering 15.5 million shares at a price range of $36 to $38. Existing investor BlackRock and new investor Capital Research Global Investors plan to buy 20% of the shares in the IPO while Koch Industries and Microsoft plan to buy $150 million worth of shares in a private placement. TPG and Baker Hughes back the firm. Read more.
- AbCellera Biologics, a Canadian drug discovery company working with Eli Lilly & Co. on its Covid-19 drug, plans to raise $357 million in an offering of 23 million shares priced between $14 to $17. DCVC, Viking Global, and Peter Thiel back the firm. Read more.
- 4D Molecular Therapeutics, an Emeryville, Calif.-based maker of gene therapies, says it plans to raise $100 million in an offering of 4.8 million shares priced between $20 to $22. Viking Global and Pfizer back the firm. Read more.
- Nanobiotix, a French biotech developing cancer therapies, plans to raise $95 million in an IPO of ADSs. Read more.
- Squarespace, the website hosting company, is seeking an IPO in the first half of 2021, per Bloomberg. General Atlantic, Accel, and Index Ventures are among its backers. Read more.
- Igua Saneamento SA, a Brazilian sanitation firm, resumed its plans for an initial public offering for the fourth time.
SPAC
- SoFi, a San Francisco-based fintech lender, held discussions to merge with SPACs, per Reuters. Silver Lake and Peter Thiel back the firm. Read more.
- CF Acquisition IV, the fourth blank check company formed by Cantor Fitzgerald, filed on Monday with the SEC to raise up to $400 million in an initial public offering. Read more.
- 7GC & Co. Holdings, a blank check company seeking a tech business founded by 7GC and Hennessy Capital, filed to raise $175 million. Read more.
FFS
- Wellington Management closed Wellington Hadley Harbor Fund III with $1.8 billion in commitments and up to $400 million from co-investors to invest alongside the fund.
- Apeira Capital, a New York firm seeking to hedge venture-backed startups, is raising $150 million for its first fund, per the Wall Street Journal. Read more.
- Crossplane Capital, a Dallas-based private equity firm that targets control investments in niche manufacturing, closed its inaugural fund with $275 million.
PEOPLE
- SK Capital Partners, a private investment firm focused on the specialty materials, added Randy Dearth as senior director.
- General Atlantic, a private investment firm, promoted five to managing director: Melis Kahya Akar, Luis Cervantes, Christian Figge, Anna Golynskaya and Shaw Joseph. It also promoted Fletcher Gregory, Peter Lafer and Caroline Woodworth to principal.


fortune--2020-12-08--Indiegogo founder launches Vincent, a site to discover alternative investments

Interest rates continue to hover near zero, and many feel the stock market is overbought. In response, some investors are looking to make money by betting on more exotic assets such as art, cryptocurrency, and vintage sneakers.
These sorts of bets—known as alternative investments—are hardly new. Hedge funds and wealthy individuals have dabbled in them for years in an effort to beat the market. But more recently, a growing number of online forums have sprung up to pitch such investments to a broader public. Examples include Yieldstreet, which lets people invest in everything from ships to the outcome of lawsuits, and Masterworks, which invites investors to purchase shares in fine art.
Now, there is a new platform that lets people peruse over 50 of these forums’ offerings on the same website. The site, which has been operating in stealth since this summer, is called Vincent and is the brainchild of Slava Rubin, who founded the popular crowdfunding site Indiegogo.
Rubin says he was inspired to create Vincent given the growing popularity of alternative investments, which, he notes, are expected to grow from $9 trillion to $14 trillion in the next five years.
“As a macro trend in this zero interest rate environment, alternative investments are hotter than ever. But there’s still a significant amount of people intimidated by them,” says Rubin, further explaining his inspiration for the site.
Rubin adds that Vincent is intended to be “the Zillow of investments,” referring to a popular real estate site.
In practice, those who want to explore alternative investments apply a series of filters, including how much they want to invest and the categories to which they are attracted. (Choices include collectibles, art, and real estate). Vincent then displays a range of options drawn from its dozens of partner sites.
The site also asks whether or not the would-be investor is accredited—a distinction that is determined by a person’s net wealth and that can limit the types of investments they are eligible to make. The screenshot below shows a sample of the investments available in the collectibles category:
The chance to own a small share of a rare Nike sneaker or an expensive painting may appeal to many individuals, but it also raises the question of whether all the investments are legitimate. This is especially the case given past controversies involving crowdfunded investment opportunities, which in some cases have proved to be outright scams.
Rubin says Vincent is relying on its partner platforms to keep charlatans off the site, noting that these platforms are overseen by various financial regulators, including the SEC.
As for how the site makes money, Rubin says that investors can use it for free but that Vincent takes a commission from its partners. Rubin launched the site with a $2 million investment, consisting of his own money and that of a handful of angel investors.


fortune--2020-12-08--Looking to build a monster cash pile, Tesla heads back to the markets to sell shares

Tesla is taking advantage of its surging shares by going back to the capital markets for the third time in ten months and raising as much as $5 billion of common stock.
The sale through an “at-the-market” offering program, according to a regulatory filing, meaning the stock will be sold over time at prevailing market prices. After soaring almost 670% this year, Tesla shares dipped as much as 4.2% before the start of regular trading Tuesday.
The raise could lead Tesla’s cash balance to approach $20 billion, Joel Levington, a Bloomberg Intelligence credit analyst, said in a report. The company’s credit quality is now “well in excess” of its ratings even after three upgrades during the global pandemic, he wrote.
Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk is again seizing on a rally that started as the maker of the Model 3 began to post quarterly profits in the second half of last year. The opening of a plant near Shanghai, addition of the Model Y crossover to the lineup, advances in battery technology and anticipation of inclusion into the S&P 500 Index has led investors to assign Tesla a much richer valuation than any other auto manufacturer in the world.
It’s apparently led Musk, 49, to worry about employees taking their eye off the ball. He urged staff on Dec. 1 to be mindful about spending and play a “Game of Pennies” even after Tesla reported its fifth consecutive quarter of profit in October. The automaker had $14.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents at the end of September.
The latest capital raise follows an issue of $5 billion shares in September and a $2 billion offering in February. That has helped Tesla more than double planned spending on plants and equipment this year. The new money will support plans announced in October to double the carmaker’s capital-expenditures budget during the next two years to a range of $4.5 billion to $6 billion.
Tesla is currently building two new factories — one in Austin, Texas, and its first European plant, near Berlin — and expanding output at its existing vehicle-assembly facilities in Fremont, California, and Shanghai.


fortune--2020-12-08--Restaurant workers say the pandemic has brought fewer tips and more sexual harassment

This is the web version of The Broadsheet, a daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! We need a Marshall Plan for Moms, Shemara Wikramanayake makes her first big deal at Macquarie, and restaurant workers report a disturbing uptick in sexual harassment. Have a lovely Tuesday.
– The customer is not always right. With New York City seemingly headed toward a halt to indoor dining amid spiking COVID numbers, the plight of restaurants and restaurant workers has been on my mind.
But while much of the pressure on restaurant employees is coming from the virus—a biological force with no conscience or empathy—what’s really appalling, according to a new report from One Fair Wage, is that strain is being amplified by other humans, who should be fully capable of both.
This NPR story notes that One Fair Wage found that “more than 80% of workers are seeing a decline in tips and over 40% say they’re facing an increase in sexual harassment from customers.” The group even called their report, “Take Off Your Mask So I Know How Much to Tip You,” after one of the comments a worker says she received from a customer. Sixty percent of 1,600 restaurant employees surveyed also said they feel unable to enforce social distancing and masking rules among the customers they depend on for tips.
Ugh. There’s so much to unpack here, from customers’ blatant disregard for their servers’ safety, to the gender dynamics of having to display your body for tips, to an industry that requires workers to submit to such sexist—and now physically perilous!—behavior in order to earn a living wage.
Certainly, COVID-19 has exposed many problems with the current structure of the U.S restaurant business, including its reliance on ultra low wages bolstered by tips. Providing workers with a fair hourly wage certainly seems like a sensible step to take, though I’ll leave that debate to people with far more knowledge of the industry than I possess. What’s clear is the current set-up isn’t working—and that the female workers on the front lines, dealing with aggressive, entitled customers, are bearing an unfair and dangerous share of the dysfunction.
Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Money moves. Shemara Wikramanayake is the most powerful woman in Australian finance as the CEO of Macquarie. One of her first major moves in the role is the $1.7 billion acquisition of American asset manager Waddell & Reed. Bloomberg
- Bold action. Do we need a Marshall Plan for Moms? Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani proposes the idea, which she argues should include a $2,400 monthly check to women who support society with unpaid caregiving and domestic labor. The Hill
- Bezos counts down. Jeff Bezos plans to send the first woman to the moon in 2024 in his company Blue Origin's BE-7 engine. The Amazon founder posted a video of an engine test, noting his planned milestone. CNN
- Economic advisers. Learn more about the team that will advise President-elect Joe Biden on the economy, including Treasury Secretary nominee Janet Yellen; Cecilia Rouse, Biden's choice as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers; and Neera Tanden, Biden's pick for the Office of Management and Budget. Fortune
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: MSNBC named SVP for MSNBC News Rashida Jones as the network's new president, making her the highest-ranking Black woman in the TV news industry. The Miami Herald named Monica Richardson executive editor, making her the first Black woman to lead the newspaper. Citigroup appointed Elissar Farah Antonios as the first woman to run its Middle East & North Africa operations. Revlon hired Martine Williamson as CMO; she previously spent 14 years at the beauty brand before departing five years ago. Laurel Durkay, portfolio manager for global and U.S. real estate securities strategies at Cohen & Steers, joins Morgan Stanley Investment Management as head of global listed real assets. Kathleen Wilson-Thompson plans to retire as EVP and global chief human resources officer for Walgreens Boots Alliance; Zimmer Biomet's Pamela Puryear will succeed her in the role. Tracey Newell, president of Informatica, joins Sumo Logic's board.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- The fight for freedom of speech. Maria Ressa, the Filipino journalist who faced a crackdown from President Rodrigo Duterte, writes about continuing to do her job while faced with nine warrants for her arrest. Ressa says she is fighting not only Duterte, but Mark Zuckerberg, as she's countered disinformation on Facebook in the Philippines. Financial Times
- Party politics. Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is expected to face growing challenges to her leadership from within the Scottish National Party. About 20 people elected to the party's national executive committee last week are critical of Sturgeon. Guardian
- Surprise, surprise. Shares of Stitch Fix, the personalized styling company run by CEO Katrina Lake, got a shot in the arm Monday from quarterly results that beat analyst expectations. The company reported a surprise profit and revenue growth of 10% from the same period last year, which sent shares soaring some 33% in after-hours trading. CNBC
ON MY RADAR
Motherhood in America is a multilevel marketing scheme Gen
A rare pandemic silver lining: mental health startups New York Times
Steve Jobs' daughter Eve Jobs models for Glossier campaign People
PARTING WORDS
“I feel so privileged to be the first person vaccinated against COVID-19. It means I can finally look forward to spending time with my family and friends in the New Year after being on my own for most of the year.”
-Margaret Keenan, 91 of Britain, who was the first person in the world to receive an authorized, fully-tested vaccine on Tuesday. Nurse May Parsons administered it.


fortune--2020-12-09--U.K. warns people with history of severe allergic reactions not to get the COVID-19 vaccine

People with a significant history of allergies should not currently receive the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, the U.K.’s National Health Service said, after two people experienced reactions from the shots.
The warning on Wednesday came a day after the U.K. became the first western nation to begin a Covid vaccination program, following approval of the shot last week by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.
“As is common with new vaccines the MHRA have advised on a precautionary basis that people with a significant history of allergic reactions do not receive this vaccination,” Stephen Powis, national medical director for the NHS in England, said in a statement.
June Raine, chief executive of the MHRA, said her team looked at two case reports of allergic reactions on Tuesday evening. Both of the people, staff members of the NHS, are recovering well, the health service said.
“We know from the very extensive clinical trials that this wasn’t a feature, that if we need to strengthen our advice now that we’ve had this experience in the vulnerable populations, we get that advice to the field immediately,” Raine told a panel of lawmakers.
Pfizer and BioNTech said they’re supporting the MHRA in its investigation.
The U.K. agency had already warned in its prescribing information that people who are allergic to any ingredients in the vaccine shouldn’t take it. Patients with a history of severe adverse reactions to a vaccine or severe allergic reactions to any component of the treatment were excluded from participating in the large study run by the companies before approval.
“In the pivotal phase 3 clinical trial, this vaccine was generally well tolerated with no serious safety concerns reported by the independent data monitoring committee,” the companies said in a statement.


fortune--2020-12-09--‘I’ve had a lot of Harveys in my life’: Meet the female construction company owner who demolished th

‘I’ve had a lot of Harveys in my life’: Meet the female construction company owner who demolished the Weinstein Company’s old office

Our mission to make business better is fueled by readers like you. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
When Barbara Kavovit was called in to pitch her construction business as the right choice to execute plans for new offices at New York City’s 99 Hudson Street, she knew what her angle would be.
“I told them I would take a personal interest in the job, make sure women trades were on the project, and put a woman on as project manager for the day-to-day,” says Kavovit, the owner of Evergreen Construction.
There was a reason behind her vision: The second floor of this Tribeca building owned by Olshan Properties was a former office of the Weinstein Company, the production company once run by Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie producer who has been convicted of sexual assault. The business owned a separate New York office in Tribeca as well.
When the Evergreen team—with a demolition crew that was 35% female, a high rate for the industry—arrived at the site, they found a few lingering signs that this office belonged to a notable former inhabitant. There was no casting couch, but framed posters for some of Weinstein’s more recent films under the Weinstein Company banner sat on the abandoned office’s floors—one of which Kavovit says she smashed with a hammer herself.
Camila Amaral; Courtesy of Evergreen Construction
Kavovit—who, as a former star of the Real Housewives of New York, is familiar with the entertainment business—brought on women-led contractors from Mikoma Electric and Alba Demolition, who executed a design led by Keri Mate of architecture firm Design Republic. The company completed its work on the space last month.
“I had a permanent smile on my face as I watched each wall come down. I took a sledgehammer and started bashing in the walls,” Kavovit says. “I felt a feeling of triumph, of closure, and rebuilding to make it better. It was a shift to me that as a woman-owned business we got hired to take down Harvey Weinstein’s offices.”
Before the demolition by Evergreen Construction. Camila Amaral; Courtesy of Evergreen Construction
The construction industry is notably male-dominated. According to the National Association of Women in Construction, women in 2018 made up 9.9% of the industry, including office jobs. “It’s not an industry that’s easy to get into,” Kavovit says. “It’s an old boys’ network.”
Kavovit’s experience in construction influenced how she thought about the meaning of this particular project. “I’ve had a lot of Harveys in my life,” Kavovit says. “People use their power and influence to take advantage. In entertainment and in the construction industry—mostly men use the same tactics.”
The new offices at New York’s 99 Hudson Street by Evergreen Construction. Keith Montero; Courtesy of Evergreen Construction
The new office is in line with pre-COVID-19 office trends, with natural-lit, open, common spaces rather than a line of private rooms around the floor’s perimeter. For Kavovit, that design was symbolic, as she considered that many of the women who say they were harassed or assaulted by Weinstein say they were brought behind closed doors under the pretext of work meetings. Mate, one of the architects who worked on the space, adds that the old office was “not inviting.”
The new space is “safer, more inclusive. If you’re standing on one side of the office you can see the other,” Kavovit says. “The ghosts are gone.”


fortune--2020-12-09--As COVID deaths rise, Sweden pulls a U-turn and proposes a lockdown law

Sweden’s government proposed a law that would give it the power to close stores in response to a worsening pandemic.
The bill, which would allow the minority coalition to cut shops’ opening hours and limit footfall, is due to take effect in March if it makes it through the consultation process, Minister of Health and Social Affairs Lena Hallengren said on Wednesday. She stressed that the government would only shutter businesses as a last resort, if parliament agrees.
“We are not rid of the pandemic, even if the vaccines obviously brighten the prospects,” Hallengren said. “We see a need to have regulation in place during next year.”
Sweden has so far avoided a full lockdown and relied mostly on voluntary measures to fight the pandemic. That’s in part because the government lacked the legal framework to do more. A temporary law that made it possible to close down businesses expired on June 30, without ever being enforced.
But after a sharp increase in coronavirus cases and deaths, Sweden’s government is stepping up its fight against the pandemic. That includes capping the number of people permitted to gather in public at eight, as well as a ban on alcohol sales after 10 p.m.
But Sweden currently has no legal tools to enforce limits on stores, gyms or the use of public transport. The new law, if passed, would stop short of regulating functions at private homes.
Hallengren also said the government’s goal isn’t to impose future lockdowns.
“We have made severe restrictions to people’s way of life, but it’s not possible to close down entirely,” she said. “However, we need to be able to take more exact measures that also impact places that are not covered by current legislation.”


fortune--2020-12-09--Supreme Court rejects GOP attempt to halt Biden’s Pennsylvania victory

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Republicans’ last-gasp bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the electoral battleground.
The court without comment refused to call into question the certification process in Pennsylvania. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf already has certified Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump and the state’s 20 electors are to meet on Dec. 14 to cast their votes for Biden.
In any case, Biden won 306 electoral votes, so even if Pennsylvania’s results had been in doubt, he still would have more than the 270 electoral votes needed to become president.
The court’s decision not to intervene came in a lawsuit led by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northeastern Pennsylvania and GOP congressional candidate and Trump favorite Sean Parnell, who lost to Pittsburgh-area U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, a Democrat.
“Even Trump appointees & Republicans saw this for what it was: a charade,” Lamb said on Twitter.
Important to note: NO dissenting justices on this order, as well as on the PA Supreme Court order. Even Trump appointees & Republicans saw this for what it was: a charade.
Thanks to @JoshShapiroPA & all the hardworking lawyers who have stayed on duty long past Election Day. https://t.co/UfJpZKB3Ks — Conor Lamb (@ConorLambPA) December 8, 2020
In court filings, lawyers for Pennsylvania and Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, had called the lawsuit’s claims “fundamentally frivolous” and its request “one of the most dramatic, disruptive invocations of judicial power in the history of the Republic.”
“No court has ever issued an order nullifying a governor’s certification of presidential election results,” they wrote.
Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas had offered to argue the case, if the high court took it.
Having lost the request for the court to intervene immediately, Greg Teufel, a lawyer for Kelly and Parnell, said he will file a separate request to ask the court to consider the case on its underlying merits on an expedited basis.
Still, hopes for immediate intervention concerning the Nov. 3 election “substantially dimmed” with the court’s action Tuesday, Teufel said.
“But by no way is this over,” Kelly said on Fox News.
Republicans had pleaded with the justices to intervene immediately after the state Supreme Court turned away their case last week.
The Republicans argued that Pennsylvania’s expansive vote-by-mail law is unconstitutional because it required a constitutional amendment to authorize its provisions. Just one Republican state lawmaker voted against its passage last year in Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled Legislature.
Biden beat Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016. Most mail-in ballots were submitted by Democrats.
The state’s high court said the plaintiffs waited too long to file the challenge and noted the Republicans’ staggering demand that an entire election be overturned retroactively.
In the underlying lawsuit, Kelly, Parnell and the other Republican plaintiffs had sought to either throw out the 2.5 million mail-in ballots submitted under the law or to wipe out the election results and direct the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to pick Pennsylvania’s presidential electors.