fortune--2020-08-18--‘He is clearly in over his head’: Read Michelle Obama’s full speech denouncing Donald Trump

Melinda Gates , Ai-jen Poo , and 9 more women on what the 19th Amendment ’ s 100th anniversary means @ @

Former First Lady’s Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention, as broadcast Aug. 17, 2020:
Good evening, everyone. It’s a hard time, and everyone’s feeling it in different ways. And I know a lot of folks are reluctant to tune into a political convention right now or to politics in general. Believe me, I get that. But I am here tonight because I love this country with all my heart, and it pains me to see so many people hurting.
I’ve met so many of you. I’ve heard your stories. And through you, I have seen this country’s promise. And thanks to so many who came before me, thanks to their toil and sweat and blood, I’ve been able to live that promise myself.
That’s the story of America. All those folks who sacrificed and overcame so much in their own times because they wanted something more, something better for their kids.
There’s a lot of beauty in that story. There’s a lot of pain in it, too, a lot of struggle and injustice and work left to do. And who we choose as our president in this election will determine whether or not we honor that struggle and chip away at that injustice and keep alive the very possibility of finishing that work.
I am one of a handful of people living today who have seen firsthand the immense weight and awesome power of the presidency. And let me once again tell you this: the job is hard. It requires clear-headed judgment, a mastery of complex and competing issues, a devotion to facts and history, a moral compass, and an ability to listen — and an abiding belief that each of the 330,000,000 lives in this country has meaning and worth.
A president’s words have the power to move markets. They can start wars or broker peace. They can summon our better angels or awaken our worst instincts. You simply cannot fake your way through this job.
As I’ve said before, being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are. Well, a presidential election can reveal who we are, too. And four years ago, too many people chose to believe that their votes didn’t matter. Maybe they were fed up. Maybe they thought the outcome wouldn’t be close. Maybe the barriers felt too steep. Whatever the reason, in the end, those choices sent someone to the Oval Office who lost the national popular vote by nearly 3,000,000 votes.
In one of the states that determined the outcome, the winning margin averaged out to just two votes per precinct — two votes. And we’ve all been living with the consequences.
When my husband left office with Joe Biden at his side, we had a record-breaking stretch of job creation. We’d secured the right to health care for 20,000,000 people. We were respected around the world, rallying our allies to confront climate change. And our leaders had worked hand-in-hand with scientists to help prevent an Ebola outbreak from becoming a global pandemic.
Four years later, the state of this nation is very different. More than 150,000 people have died, and our economy is in shambles because of a virus that this president downplayed for too long. It has left millions of people jobless. Too many have lost their health care; too many are struggling to take care of basic necessities like food and rent; too many communities have been left in the lurch to grapple with whether and how to open our schools safely. Internationally, we’ve turned our back, not just on agreements forged by my husband, but on alliances championed by presidents like Reagan and Eisenhower.
And here at home, as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and a never-ending list of innocent people of color continue to be murdered, stating the simple fact that a Black life matters is still met with derision from the nation’s highest office.
Because whenever we look to this White House for some leadership or consolation or any semblance of steadiness, what we get instead is chaos, division and a total and utter lack of empathy.
Empathy: That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The ability to walk in someone else’s shoes; the recognition that someone else’s experience has value, too. Most of us practice this without a second thought. If we see someone suffering or struggling, we don’t stand in judgment. We reach out because, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” It is not a hard concept to grasp. It’s what we teach our children.
And like so many of you, Barack and I have tried our best to instill in our girls a strong moral foundation to carry forward the values that our parents and grandparents poured into us. But right now, kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another. They’re looking around wondering if we’ve been lying to them this whole time about who we are and what we truly value.
They see people shouting in grocery stores, unwilling to wear a mask to keep us all safe. They see people calling the police on folks minding their own business just because of the color of their skin. They see an entitlement that says only certain people belong here, that greed is good, and winning is everything because as long as you come out on top, it doesn’t matter what happens to everyone else. And they see what happens when that lack of empathy is ginned up into outright disdain.
They see our leaders labeling fellow citizens enemies of the state while emboldening torch-bearing white supremacists. They watch in horror as children are torn from their families and thrown into cages, and pepper spray and rubber bullets are used on peaceful protestors for a photo-op.
Sadly, this is the America that is on display for the next generation. A nation that’s underperforming not simply on matters of policy but on matters of character. And that’s not just disappointing; it’s downright infuriating, because I know the goodness and the grace that is out there in households and neighborhoods all across this nation.
And I know that regardless of our race, age, religion, or politics, when we close out the noise and the fear and truly open our hearts, we know that what’s going on in this country is just not right. This is not who we want to be.
So what do we do now? What’s our strategy? Over the past four years, a lot of people have asked me, “When others are going so low, does going high still really work?” My answer: going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else. We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight.
But let’s be clear: going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty. Going high means taking the harder path. It means scraping and clawing our way to that mountain top. Going high means standing fierce against hatred while remembering that we are one nation under God, and if we want to survive, we’ve got to find a way to live together and work together across our differences.
And going high means unlocking the shackles of lies and mistrust with the only thing that can truly set us free: the cold hard truth.
So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.
Now, I understand that my message won’t be heard by some people. We live in a nation that is deeply divided, and I am a Black woman speaking at the Democratic Convention. But enough of you know me by now. You know that I tell you exactly what I’m feeling. You know I hate politics. But you also know that I care about this nation. You know how much I care about all of our children.
So if you take one thing from my words tonight, it is this: if you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don’t make a change in this election. If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.
I know Joe. He is a profoundly decent man, guided by faith. He was a terrific vice president. He knows what it takes to rescue an economy, beat back a pandemic, and lead our country. And he listens. He will tell the truth and trust science. He will make smart plans and manage a good team. And he will govern as someone who’s lived a life that the rest of us can recognize.
When he was a kid, Joe’s father lost his job. When he was a young senator, Joe lost his wife and his baby daughter. And when he was vice president, he lost his beloved son. So Joe knows the anguish of sitting at a table with an empty chair, which is why he gives his time so freely to grieving parents. Joe knows what it’s like to struggle, which is why he gives his personal phone number to kids overcoming a stutter of their own.
His life is a testament to getting back up, and he is going to channel that same grit and passion to pick us all up, to help us heal and guide us forward.
Now, Joe is not perfect. And he’d be the first to tell you that. But there is no perfect candidate, no perfect president. And his ability to learn and grow — we find in that the kind of humility and maturity that so many of us yearn for right now. Because Joe Biden has served this nation his entire life without ever losing sight of who he is; but more than that, he has never lost sight of who we are, all of us.
Joe Biden wants all of our kids to go to a good school, see a doctor when they’re sick, live on a healthy planet. And he’s got plans to make all of that happen. Joe Biden wants all of our kids, no matter what they look like, to be able to walk out the door without worrying about being harassed or arrested or killed. He wants all of our kids to be able to go to a movie or a math class without being afraid of getting shot. He wants all our kids to grow up with leaders who won’t just serve themselves and their wealthy peers but will provide a safety net for people facing hard times.
And if we want a chance to pursue any of these goals, any of these most basic requirements for a functioning society, we have to vote for Joe Biden in numbers that cannot be ignored. Because right now, folks who know they cannot win fair and square at the ballot box are doing everything they can to stop us from voting. They’re closing down polling places in minority neighborhoods. They’re purging voter rolls. They’re sending people out to intimidate voters, and they’re lying about the security of our ballots. These tactics are not new.
But this is not the time to withhold our votes in protest or play games with candidates who have no chance of winning. We have got to vote like we did in 2008 and 2012. We’ve got to show up with the same level of passion and hope for Joe Biden. We’ve got to vote early, in person if we can. We’ve got to request our mail-in ballots right now, tonight, and send them back immediately and follow-up to make sure they’re received. And then, make sure our friends and families do the same.
We have got to grab our comfortable shoes, put on our masks, pack a brown bag dinner and maybe breakfast too, because we’ve got to be willing to stand in line all night if we have to.
Look, we have already sacrificed so much this year. So many of you are already going that extra mile. Even when you’re exhausted, you’re mustering up unimaginable courage to put on those scrubs and give our loved ones a fighting chance. Even when you’re anxious, you’re delivering those packages, stocking those shelves, and doing all that essential work so that all of us can keep moving forward.
Even when it all feels so overwhelming, working parents are somehow piecing it all together without child care. Teachers are getting creative so that our kids can still learn and grow. Our young people are desperately fighting to pursue their dreams.
And when the horrors of systemic racism shook our country and our consciences, millions of Americans of every age, every background rose up to march for each other, crying out for justice and progress.
This is who we still are: compassionate, resilient, decent people whose fortunes are bound up with one another. And it is well past time for our leaders to once again reflect our truth.
So, it is up to us to add our voices and our votes to the course of history, echoing heroes like John Lewis who said, “When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something.” That is the truest form of empathy: not just feeling, but doing; not just for ourselves or our kids, but for everyone, for all our kids.
And if we want to keep the possibility of progress alive in our time, if we want to be able to look our children in the eye after this election, we have got to reassert our place in American history. And we have got to do everything we can to elect my friend, Joe Biden, as the next president of the United States.
Thank you all. God bless.


fortune--2020-08-18--Melinda Gates, Ai-jen Poo, and 9 more women on what the 19th Amendment’s 100th anniversary means to

Melinda Gates, Ai-jen Poo, and 9 more women on what the 19th Amendment’s 100th anniversary means to them

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One hundred years ago today, the United States ratified the 19th Amendment, granting women—in theory—the right to vote.
In reality, access to the polls for women has been a 200-year effort. The temperance leagues in the 1820s where women pushed for both abolition and their own political power and the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, where the movement for the right to vote went national, were only the beginning of the push for voting rights.
While women now have the constitutional right to vote, there has been no shortage of voting restrictions aimed to prevent them from doing so. Black women faced restrictions on voting rights until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965—and, some say, still do. Native American women and Asian-American women also faced restrictions on voting rights until well into the 20th century. Even the right to vote for white women faced pushback relatively recently: Mississippi didn’t agree to ratify the 19th Amendment until 1984.
On the centennial of the 19th Amendment, celebrations—thanks to the coronavirus pandemic—won’t be as expected. The anniversary still arrives amid another kind of milestone: More women than ever in history are running for Congress in 2020.
On this 100-year anniversary, Fortune asked activists and community, political, and business leaders to tell us what the 19th Amendment means to them. Below, read what they have to say, from the achievements of the suffragists to the work that remains to be done.
Erin Brockovich, activist
“I am not going to stand here and be grateful, like the right to vote was some gift handed down to us. You didn’t give women the right to vote, you corrected your mistake in ever denying us. That being said, now that we have the power to vote, we need to use it. There is no excuse for not voting. Women suffered in this battle, we owe them that respect, we owe them our voice.”
Crystal Echo Hawk, founder of IllumiNative
Courtesy of Ryan RedCorn
“The ratification of the 19th Amendment was an amazing moment and inspirational milestone for women—but not for all women. I am a Pawnee woman, and like all Native women, the ratification of the 19th Amendment did not include our right to vote. Native peoples were not granted full citizenship by the U.S. government until 1924, and even then, Native communities were not guaranteed the right to vote in every state until 1958.
“The efforts to suppress the vote of Native peoples is not part of the past; it continues today. Just a few months ago, Tribal governments and leaders in North Dakota were in a legal battle with the state over the passage of oppressive voter-identification laws that placed undue hardships on many Native residents living on reservations. The right to vote is only possible if it is possible to vote. Voter-suppression attempts must be remedied before this pivotal election.
“Our vote is fundamental to protecting our future and ensuring our interests are represented in this country. In 2018, Native women were elected to Congress for the first time when Rep. Sharice Davids (the Ho-Chunk Nation) and Rep. Debra Haaland (Pueblo of Laguna) made history. While we celebrate the momentous occasion of women being granted the right to vote, we must also reflect on the work needed to ensure gender and racial equality. We are not free until everyone is free.”
Melinda Gates, cochair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Michael Short—Bloomberg/Getty Images
“As milestones go, the passage of the 19th Amendment was as incomplete as it was important. On the one hand, it was this historic moment when a country founded on the principle that ‘all men are created equal’ finally made room in that vision for women, too. On the other, it only made room in that vision for some women. The 19th Amendment didn’t guarantee women’s right to vote; it guaranteed white women’s right to vote. And so even as we commemorate this milestone, it’s crucial that we acknowledge its complexity.
“One way I’ve been grappling with this history is by reading more about the Black women activists who were unsung heroes in the movement for women’s voting rights. For every suffragist like Susan B. Anthony whose name we know, there are so many more whose names we don’t—including Black women like Mary Church Terrell and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Their erasure from the narrative was no accident. The reason many of us learned at school to picture a white woman when we think of a suffragist is that white suffragists wanted it that way. They were very deliberate about the image they cultivated and about making sure that image had a white face.
“Restoring Black women to their rightful place in the narrative of the 19th Amendment will help us better understand our history—but I also hope it will call us to action. There’s a lot of excitement around the fact that Kamala Harris is the first Black and South Asian woman on the presidential ticket, but the very fact that it’s so newsworthy proves we still have a lot of work to do. I hope that 100 years from now, we have many more milestones to celebrate.”
Barbara Hackman Franklin, former Secretary of Commerce
“The 19th Amendment and the right to vote are very precious to me, and this celebration is hugely personal. Having the vote enabled and encouraged women—like me—to participate in politics and government at the highest levels. That ability to participate enabled me to serve five U.S. Presidents and serve as the second woman Secretary of Commerce.
“Now there is more work to do. Women account for half the U.S. population but are not similarly represented in leadership roles. I firmly believe that more women in governmental leadership would make our society and, indeed, the world a better, more just, prosperous, and safer place. Today a new generation of women must fulfill the 19th Amendment’s promise: more women in leadership—and, at last, a woman President of the United States.”
Katie Hill, former congresswoman
Kyle Grillot—Bloomberg/Getty Images
“I wrote my first book, She Will Rise, thinking a lot about the 19th Amendment: how far we’ve come in the last hundred years, and how much work there is still left to do. In many ways, the work we have left to do is the entire reason I wrote the book. Alice Paul, one of the leaders of the women’s suffrage movement, said shortly after it was ratified, ‘It is incredible to me that any woman should consider the fight for full equality won. It is just beginning.’ I don’t know where she thought we’d be in the fight 100 years after that historic victory. But as far as I’m concerned, we haven’t come nearly far enough. We can’t afford to let another hundred years go by before we get there. And if we don’t fight now, we might even go backward.
“In many ways, the work now needs to be focused on dismantling misogynistic institutions, redirecting resources and authority to young women, and working to install them in positions of power. If I had to boil it down to just one solution to the inequality and sexism women face every single day that stands in our way of being fully autonomous and having the ability and opportunity to access power, it would be this: Elect women because they are women. That is the focus of my work in this next chapter of my life, and the work that all of us need to do, together, to finally achieve the equality we all deserve.”
Maria Teresa Kumar, CEO, Voto Latino
“Even after passage of the 19th Amendment, discrimination, intimidation, poll taxes, and spot literacy tests kept Latinas from voting. And even though the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ensured that people couldn’t be denied the right to vote just because they couldn’t read, write, or understand English, Latinas still faced discrimination at the polls and so many didn’t vote. It wasn’t until 1975 for ‘language minority’ Latinas’ voting rights to be protected—or so it seemed.
“Latinas will still have to jump hurdles to cast their ballot in 2020. Since they earn half what men do, they work twice as long and hard, leaving little time to vote. Domestic workers are ‘taxed’ much the same way. When half of all Latinos have been laid off or had their hours reduced since the pandemic began, earning money to feed their kids is the top priority, not voting. One hundred years later, we still have a lot of work to do.”
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.)
“I am elated to mark the centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment in the same year as Virginia’s historic vote on the Equal Rights Amendment. The aligning of these two events clearly show both how far we have come and where we are fighting to go. The reasons why we need the ERA have become even more apparent in the last year. Women are leading their communities at every level across the country; they deserve more than the 19th amendment. Everyone deserves the ERA—a constitutional amendment that lives forever—and I have faith that we will get it.”
Ai-jen Poo, cofounder of Supermajority and senior adviser to Care in Action
“On the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the legal right to vote, we have an opportunity to reflect on how far we have come, but we’re also faced with the reality of the work that still lies before us. It’s apt that this anniversary falls in the same year we see a woman—and a woman of color—move closer to representing us in the executive office.
“Today, 100 years since the 19th Amendment was passed, we still see acts of voter suppression seeking to keep these voters from the polls, in particular for the upcoming, critical presidential election. We are in a moment of upheaval and uncertainty that highlights the inequities that continue in our society and economy. Domestic workers, who do the work that makes all other work possible, are finding themselves on the front lines of the pandemic: caring for our loved ones who are elderly or disabled, caring for our children, and cleaning our homes. These workers we rely on—and have always relied on—are among the most vulnerable. These women support us. Not all of them can vote; we must vote to protect them and their rights.”
Cecile Richards, cofounder of Supermajority and former president of Planned Parenthood
Gary Gershoff—Getty Images
“Growing up in Texas, women holding elected office were rare. My mother [Ann Richards], who somewhat miraculously was the first woman elected governor in her own right, used to say that on the campaign trail she felt like the two-headed pig at the county fair: Folks came out just to see what a future woman governor looked like. Women who beat the odds in Texas included the late great Barbara Jordan, from Houston. Barbara was the first Black woman from the South to go to Congress. She transfixed the nation as a member of the House Impeachment Committee, for many, the voice of the conscience of our nation. Mom and Barbara would later become fast friends and political allies, and they are who I have in my heart as we contemplate this bittersweet centennial.
“For the suffrage movement was fueled by Black women, who did the work but were ultimately left behind. As we recognize this 100-year mark, it is important to remember that many white women leaders abandoned their sister Black suffragettes, and it was not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that Black women were truly afforded voting protections under the law. That’s history we must know and never repeat.
“Today there are undeniable signs of progress. In 2020 women are the majority of voters, and record numbers of women are running for office and winning. This year, a record number of Black women and women of color are running for Congress. And what sweet justice it is that 100 years after the passage of the 19th amendment the first Black woman, first Indian-American woman, and yes, the first woman, is poised to become Vice President of the United States. Our hearts are full. May we say a prayer to the ancestors—Ann and Barbara and Sojourner and millions more—as we fight forward for a democracy and a government that truly represents all our people.”
Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, former chair of the Maryland Democratic Party
Tom Williams—CQ Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images
“The 19th Amendment extended the Constitution’s promise of security, ‘liberty and justice for all’ to women by formally recognizing our humanity and our capacity to operate as autonomous and intelligent political beings. While progress has been made, our nation is still challenged by its founding bias against women. It is imperative that we continue to battle the stereotypes and prejudices that prevent too many of us from making our best and highest contribution to our Republic. Our nation needs an inclusion revolution that recognizes that the best path for future growth lies in building ladders of success for women and all people of diverse backgrounds.”
Tina Tchen, president and CEO, Time’s Up
“The struggle for voting rights didn’t end 100 years ago. It’s a fight that carries on today, and it is crucial to our goal of achieving gender, racial, and economic justice. Reflecting on this milestone anniversary, I am energized about the progress we have made but clear-eyed about the challenges ahead of us—especially when it comes to women’s political power.
“On the one hand, a record number of women and women of color are running for office across parties, up and down the ballot, including the Democratic vice presidential nominee. On the other hand, political reporters, surrogates, and opinion makers are still perpetuating the kinds of sexist, racist narratives that have derailed women’s political participation for generations. And women of color, who remained disenfranchised long after the 19th amendment was passed, continue to experience entrenched barriers to political participation today.
“We can and must do better to ensure that women can reach our fullest potential in politics—for ourselves, and for the generations that come after us.”


fortune--2020-08-18--Sweatpants craze and DIY patios: What the pandemic has taught design-led businesses—so far

This is the web version of Business By Design, a weekly newsletter exploring design’s transformative influence on industry and enterprise. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
The COVID-19 pandemic has sent shockwaves through two key design-led industries: home furnishings and apparel. Border closures have scuttled the constant caravans of interior design and luxury fashion shows in Milan, London, New York, and Paris. In much of the world, shoppers remain hunkered down at home. Retailers including Muji USA, Bombay & Co, Barneys, Brooks Brothers, J. Crew and Nieman Marcus have toppled into bankruptcy.
And yet, in both sectors, there is growth amid the rubble.
The Wall Street Journal noted this weekend that the outbreak has proved a surprise bonanza for U.S. home-improvement giants Home Depot and Lowe’s. At the former, sales rose 6.4% in the quarter ended May 3, more than double growth a year ago; at the latter, sales jumped 12% in the spring quarter above last year.
“Americans, stuck at home without much to do, started painting, building, fixing and decorating,” explains the Journal. “Government stimulus checks buoyed long-delayed home improvements, as did less money spent on restaurants and summer travel.” (A helpful companion piece explores the new ethos of home-renovation: all-white kitchens are out, apparently, while expansive outdoor decks and patios are all-the-rage.)
The pandemic has proved an even bigger boon for Wayfair, the online furniture seller, which posted a $274 million profit in the three months to June 30, its first since going public in 2014. Sales surged to $4.3 billion, up 83% from the same period last year, and the company expanded its active customer base to 26 million, a 46% year-on-year gain. CEO Niraj Shah says Wayfair picked up “a year’s worth” of new customers in just the last quarter.
IKEA, too, is a winner. The Swedish furniture giant had to close about 80% of its 433 stores in 50 countries because of the pandemic. In Europe, some locations didn’t reopen until late May, after being closed for two months. But customers came stampeding back. Jesper Brodin, chief executive of Ingka Group, the parent company that holds and operates most IKEA stores, confessed to the Economist his astonishment that reopenings in Europe became “an effort in crowd control.”
In Britain, meanwhile, The Guardian reports that the surge in “pandemic makeovers” has triggered a parallel outbreak of “flytipping” (illegal dumping) because consumers are buying new furniture faster than local rubbish collectors can get rid of their old stuff.
The cover story of the latest New York Times Sunday Magazine weaves a similar tale about Entireworld, a little-known line of sweatsuits, T-shirts and underwear, that has become a runaway success during the pandemic—even as the rest of the fashion industry seems to be unraveling.
The brand is the creation of Los Angeles-based designer/entrepreneur Scott Sternberg, who initially feared the pandemic meant certain doom. That was a painful prospect for Sternberg; his previous company, a red-hot line called Band of Outsiders, flamed out in 2015. Instead, Entireworld’s sales took off in mid-March. By April, when U.S. clothing sales tanked 79%, Entireworld’s sales climbed by nearly 700%, leaving Sternberg scrambling to keep up with demand.
As the profile’s wry title, “Sweatpants Forever,” implies, one reason for Entireworld’s success might be that its main products are just the thing for schlepping in place: loose-fitting basics that come in cheery colors and at affordable prices.
But author Irina Aleksander also argues that Entireworld is thriving while bigger labels flail because Sternberg has shunned the entire global fashion machine. Instead of jumping on the ever-accelerating hamster-wheel of fashion “seasons,” designing increasingly over-the-top haute couture to get noticed at shows by the fashion press, and adding evermore bizarre flourishes to its products just because the retail buyer demands something “exclusive,” Entireworld sells “direct-to-consumer” via its own website.
It may be too soon to distill the lessons from these case studies. But at the very least they suggest that, for design-led businesses in the post-pandemic era, the road to survival lies in returning to basics, democratizing design by making it accessible for everyone, and using technology to move closer to customers.
More design news below.
Clay Chandler
– clay.chandler@fortune.com
NEWS BY DESIGN
Unprecedented
The 2020 Democratic National Convention kicked off on Monday—virtually, for the first time ever. Major broadcasting networks will air the four-day convention every night, but viewers can also catch the livestream on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Apple TV, or Amazon Prime; Playstation 4 users can watch it on the gaming devices; and Amazon Alexa owners can ask, "Alexa, play the Democratic National Convention." The first night combined pre-recorded clips with live segments in which politicians and activists spoke to viewers through webcams from their homes, sans audience applause, laughter, or other audible hallmarks of physical conventions. Singers across the U.S., wearing red, white, or blue T-shirts, delivered the national anthem on multiplying screens that dissolved into star shapes at the end of the song.
Bad grades
The U.K. government is scrapping use of a controversial algorithm designed to provide A-level grades to high school students after accusations that it was biased against poorer students and students of color. The government instituted the algorithm after canceling A-level exams—the results of which determine if and where students go to university—because of the pandemic. The algorithm accounted for factors that went beyond students' performance, like their schools' historical performance. Students and teachers held demonstrations outside the prime minister's offices to protest the government algorithm.
Rebound
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Saturday authorized a cheap saliva-based COVID-19 test that the National Basketball Associated helped pilot. The test, SalivaDirect, is less invasive than a swab test and could cost just $10 to run in a lab, according to one of the Yale University researchers who developed it. The NBA partially funded research for the test and helped trial it—the league's players are currently playing their season in a "bubble" and take coronavirus tests almost every day.
Postal patent
The U.S. Postal Service filed a patent for technology that would enable Americans to register to vote by phone, scan a QR code to access ballots, and use tamper-proof blockchain technology to keep track of voter rolls and ensure confidential voting data remains secure. The agency filed the patent in 2018, and the application just became public. USPS was reticent about details of a possible rollout in response to a Fortune inquiry. "This is a pending patent," a USPS spokesperson said. "Nothing happens this year. We will have no further comment beyond what is covered in the filing."
Virtual films
When the coronavirus hit, a huge number of films had to suspend, delay, or shut down production as it became unsafe for cast and crew to be in physical proximity. Hollywood is reopening now, but it's returning to a changed production landscape. Virtual production, where filmmakers use LED video wall technology to shoot multiple locations remotely and cobble them together into one scene, may become the production norm.
Voting hub
Facebook has launched a 'voting hub' on its site to provide users with accurate information about the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Facebook hopes to reach 160 million Americans before the November election, and it will promote the hub at the top of users' Facebook feeds starting this fall. The voting hub will compile information from state officials, bipartisan think tanks, and federal agencies like the Federal Voting Assistance Program.
MOST POWERFUL WOMEN
A little break from the news to make a request.
Fortune's Most Powerful Women issue will be published in November and we’re collecting nominations to include on the annual Most Powerful Women lists. The lists—one focused on U.S.-based executives and one focused on execs based outside the U.S.—have long relied on four criteria: the size and importance of the woman’s business in the global economy, the health and direction of the business, the arc of the woman’s career, and her social and cultural influence.
This year, there's a new criterion: how the executive wields her power to shape her company and the wider world for the better. (Examples might include, introducing—and maintaining—hazard pay for frontline employees during the pandemic, instituting gender/racial pay parity, creating a program or business unit that serves a disadvantaged population, measurably reducing the company’s carbon footprint, or creating new hiring pipelines that have resulted in a more diverse workforce.) We’re accepting submissions through this online form until August 24. So if you have any nominations, please send them in.
EVENTS BY DESIGN
August
Web design conference Beyond Tellerrand has rescheduled its August event in Berlin to September next year. However, organizers hope their event in Düsseldorf will continue as re-scheduled in November.
Copenhagen’s NordDesign festival, with its focus on industrial and product design, is online this year and currently underway; it runs until August 24.
The 6th International Conference on Design Creativity will continue as scheduled August 26-28, but will be online rather than in Finland, as initially planned.
Hong Kong’s Knowledge of Design Week will also run online this year, from August 26 to September 3.
September
London Design Festival has decided to go ahead September 12-20, with a stripped-down offline program that will target Londoners much more than international visitors. Other events will be online. The organizers are still figuring out how exactly to proceed.
Design Matters in Copenhagen appears to be carrying on, too, September 23-24, although it is now selling tickets to view a livestream of the event.
November
Dubai’s inaugural architecture festival, d3 Architecture Festival, will run November 11-13 on the sidelines of Dubai Design Week. The event will focus on sustainability—an existential issue for the desert city.
QUOTED BY DESIGN
"This uncertainty feels different: less like one product being overtaken by its rivals and more like an app possibly being murdered just when it seemed at its peak. But the lessons are familiar: No one, from famous creators down to casual viewers, can fully trust the platforms that host the things they care about, no matter where they are in the cycle of relevance."
Abby Ohlheiser, senior editor at MIT Technology Review, writing about the potential U.S. government TikTok ban, how the platform's breakout 'content creator' stars are reacting, and how the app's possible demise stacks up against the fate of erstwhile apps like Vine.
This week’s edition of BxD was curated by Naomi Xu Elegant. Email her tips and ideas at naomi.elegant@fortune.com.


fortune--2020-08-18--The Black suffragists you should know on the 19th amendment’s 100th anniversary

The text of the 19th Amendment—the constitutional amendment that was ratified 100 years ago today—seems to grant the right to vote to all women. “The rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex,” the amendment declares.
But in reality, the right to vote was immediately accessible only to white women. Black women faced restrictions on voting rights until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965—and, some say, still do. Native American women and Asian-American women also faced restrictions on voting rights until well into the 20th century.
Despite the fact that the 19th Amendment failed to grant universal suffrage, Black women were instrumental in fighting for its passage. On this centennial of the amendment’s ratification, we take a look back at some of the women who fought for the right to vote, though it took another half-century for their vision to be fully realized.
Sojourner Truth, 1864. Library of Congress
Sojourner Truth
Abolitionist Sojourner Truth delivered one of the most famous speeches in favor of Black women’s rights. In 1851, she asked the audience of white women at an Akron women’s rights convention: “Ain’t I a woman?”
Truth was involved in the American Equal Rights Association, which fought for the right to vote for women and Black men.
Mary Church Terrell, between 1880 and 1900. Library of Congress
Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell was president of the National Association of Colored Women and fought for Black women’s right to vote—including by picketing the White House.
Church Terrell, known internationally for efforts including her anti-lynching activism, battled to keep Black women a priority in the fight for suffrage as some white women suffragists began to prioritize white women’s voting rights over rights for Black women.
Ida B. Wells, circa 1910. University of Chicago Library
Ida B. Wells
The journalist who brought national attention to the lynching epidemic across the American South, Ida B. Wells—or Wells-Barnett, as she was also known—also dedicated her efforts to voting rights activism.
Wells fought against white women who tried to exclude Black women from voting rights meetings, demonstrations, and victories as they sought the support of Southern lawmakers. In 1913, Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party organized a parade in favor of women’s suffrage, during which Paul asked Black activists to march at the back of the line. Wells emerged during the middle of the parade to join white suffragettes at the front of the demonstration.
That same year, Wells founded the Alpha Suffrage Club, the first Black woman’s suffrage club in Illinois.
Wells was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 2020.
Harriet Tubman, between 1871 and 1876.
Harriet Tubman
The woman who helped enslaved people find their way to freedom, abolitionist Harriet Tubman also fought for the right to vote in the years following the Emancipation Proclamation.
Tubman shared her own experience under slavery in speeches she gave about the suffrage movement in the late 19th century.
Harriet Forten Purvis, circa 1870s. Library of Congress
Harriet Forten Purvis
Alongside her sister Margaretta Forten, Harriet Forten Purvis helped establish the Philadelphia Suffrage Association in 1866. Purvis also served on the executive committee of the American Equal Rights Association, which fought for the right to vote for white and Black women and for Black men.
Portrait of American journalist, teacher, playwright, and poet Angelina Weld Grimké. Interim Archives/Getty Images
Angelina Weld Grimké
Angelina Weld Grimké was the grandniece of white suffragist Angelina Grimké Weld. A writer, journalist, and poet, Weld Grimké argued in favor of women’s suffrage in her writing.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, circa 1898. Library of Congress
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Abolitionist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a founding member of the American Woman Suffrage Association. Also an activist in the temperance movement, Watkins Harper—a longtime ally of Frederick Douglass—addressed all three causes in her writing.
In an 1873 speech, Watkins Harper said, “Much as white women need the ballot, colored women need it more.”
Nellie Quander incorporated the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Courtesy of Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the Historical Society of Washington, DC and the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Nellie Quander
One of the Quander family, a well-known Black family in the Washington, D.C., region, Nellie Quander served as the president of Alpha Kappa Alpha, a Black women’s sorority.
Quander sought for the sorority to be represented during the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession, her descendant Rohulamin Quander recently told the New York Times. When white suffragists tried to keep Black suffragists separate, Quander and her group—just like Ida B. Wells—joined the white women from her region at the front of the line.
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was born in Boston and devoted her life to the rights of African-American women. Courtesy of T. A. Charron / Massachusetts Hall of Black Achievement / Bridgewater State University
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was an activist for Black women’s right to vote, active in New England as a member of the Massachusetts Women’s Suffrage Association.
St. Pierre Ruffin sought, ultimately unsuccessfully, to represent the National Association of Colored Women in the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. In the late 19th century, she published Woman’s Era, the first U.S. women’s rights magazine by Black women.
Nannie Helen Burroughs, circa 1900s. Library of Congress
Nannie Helen Burroughs
“What can she do without it?” was Nannie Helen Burroughs’ retort to the question of what Black women would accomplish with the vote.
A lifelong educator and activist, Burroughs believed that Black women needed the right to vote to “protect their interests in an often discriminatory society.“
Sarah Parker Remond Courtesy of Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society
Sarah Parker Remond
Sarah Parker Remond worked alongside her brother Charles Lenox Remond in advocating for women to secure the right to vote. Remond signed the first women’s suffrage petition in Great Britain in 1866; she gave lectures throughout the region against slavery.


fortune--2020-08-18--Land O’Lakes CEO Beth Ford explains why farmers need broadband

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Good morning!
Ellen McGirt standing in for Alan Murray, who is still enjoying a well-deserved staycation. I’m not sure if he’s baking, however.
If not, he’s in the minority. As the pandemic shut down the retail restaurant business, it fired up home kitchens across the country, which became one of many sudden problems for Land O’Lakes, the $15 billion farmer-owned cooperative.
“What we normally do, is we make what we call advanced state butter. We manufacture it, and we put it aside for key season,” says Land O’Lakes CEO Beth Ford. “Key season for dairy is Christmas and Thanksgiving when we’re all home baking. Well, now everybody’s home baking.”
Alan and I caught up with Ford on this week’s episode of the Leadership Next podcast (Apple/Spotify), and she shared the kind of rapid innovation that became necessary for the business, and their more than 1,700 dairy farmers, to survive during the quarantine. The consumer piece was easier to fix—sell, don’t store, the butter. But the milk that typically went to restaurant markets had to be repurposed, fast. One of many ideas a new, internal skunkworks team came up with: a co-manufactured new mozzarella cheese product, packaged on behalf of the farmers, and available in grocery stores near them. “The agility of the team has been pretty phenomenal,” she says.
Ford talked about how technology is transforming the dairy industry—that conversation alone will change the way you think about how a farm actually operates. But she sees her job as CEO as inextricably linked with the need to create vital businesses in healthy, rural communities. One thing she knows will help is robust internet. For one thing, the kinds of innovation happening on family farms—from crop yield and animal health data to climate insights—don’t matter much if they don’t have broadband.
“Oftentimes I’ll go [visit a farm], and somebody will have this wonderful invention, their own data and analytics and everything. I say, that’s interesting, but we can’t use it because nobody has broadband out here,” she says. “So it’s not like, ‘my kid can’t stream Netflix.’ This is, ‘I can’t auto-steer the tractor and I can’t pull in this data.’”
But nothing else good happens without broadband, either. The pandemic has made a challenging life even more fraught. Businesses are struggling, kids can’t access virtual school, communities are increasingly food insecure, and entire communities have lost access to health care as rural hospitals have closed. “This is simply unacceptable,” she says. “It leaves us so uncompetitive, it’s unbelievable.”
Ford’s work includes an innovative alliance with Microsoft, another with the Mayo Clinic and other health care providers, and she has shared her big vision for a wired-for-access heartland to every governor in the country, along with Congress, and the White House.
She says it’s part of her job. “We’re owned by farmers. I see their families all the time. We’re owned by local retailers. I see their families, and I’m in their communities all the time,” she says. “And while we put in time…I always say to my board, this isn’t about time. This is about being the conveners. It is awareness, advocacy, action—awareness, advocacy, action.”
More news below.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
This article has been amended to note that Land O’Lakes has an alliance with Microsoft rather than Google.
TOP NEWS
Oracle and TikTok
Oracle (of all companies) is reportedly interested in buying the U.S., Australian, Canadian and New Zealand operations of TikTok, the Chinese short-video app that's captured Generation X's heart and outraged the Trump administration. Microsoft has already been holding discussions with TikTok owner ByteDance; now ByteDance apparently has two credible offers to consider. Financial Times
Huawei restrictions
The Commerce Department has added yet more restrictions to companies wanting to service Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant. The U.S.'s latest move means all chip companies, anywhere in the world, need a license if they want to sell processors to Huawei—as long as they use U.S. design software and equipment to make their wares. Fortune
Good mutation?
A novel-er version of the novel coronavirus is doing the rounds in North America, Europe and parts of Asia. The bad news: the D614G mutation is more contagious. The good news: it seems to be less deadly. As prominent infectious-diseases expert (and politician) Paul Tambyah notes, it is in viruses' interest not to kill their hosts. Reuters
A-levels U-turn
The British government has performed a U-turn on the use of a controversial algorithm to adjust the final grades of this year's school-leavers, who were unable to write exams due to lockdown. The algorithm downgraded 280,000 pupils, by factoring in things like their school's overall past performance—bad news for high-achievers in poorly-performing schools. Now pupils will just be graded via teachers' assessment of their likely results. Of course, most university places have already been filled, based on the now-scrapped algorithmic results. Beleaguered Education Secretary Gavin Williamson is "incredibly sorry for all those students who have been through this." Sky News
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Tesla value
Tesla's valuation yesterday surpassed that of Procter & Gamble, after finishing 11% up on the day—and 339% up so far this year. Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives has raised his Tesla target from $1,800 to $1,900, with a bull-case target of $2,500 (the current share price is $1,835.) Fortune
Amazon probe
Germany's antitrust authority is probing Amazon's punishment of alleged price-gougers during the early days of the lockdown. The watchdog previously forced Amazon to stop prohibiting third-party sellers from selling their products at cheaper prices on other online platforms; now it is checking to see whether Amazon's pandemic price-setting policy is kosher. Fortune
S&P high
The S&P 500 should hit a new high by the end of the month, analysts say. That would mark the start of a new bull market. But why are the markets doing so well, given poor unemployment numbers, congressional deadlock on stimulus, and the likelihood of an imminent wave of fresh economic damage in the fall? Fortune
Single-use plastics
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely set back efforts to phase out single-use plastics, not just because of people flocking to disposable masks and takeaway containers, but also because of bans and taxes being rolled back and recycling activity being reduced. Interestingly, as Fortune's Katherine Dunn writes, the increase in disposable plastic use "has been mostly (if not entirely) offset by the economic hits elsewhere from the pandemic: declines in plastic use for the industrial and commercial businesses that have seen business decline." Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-08-18--Land O’Lakes CEO Beth Ford on the importance of improving rural access to technology

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Beth Ford, CEO of the $15 billion farmer-owned cooperative Land O’Lakes, often sounds more like an activist than she does a Big Ag chief executive. On the latest episode of Fortune podcast “Leadership Next,” Ford talks about her cause: bringing technology to the rural communities that need it to survive the pandemic and in the modern world that often moves forward without them.
Her entry point in that fight is addressing the need for broadband access in rural America. A third of rural schools lack broadband, she said, which affects everything from farmers’ work to children’s schooling to telemedicine visits. To bring access to these communities, Land O’Lakes and Microsoft are partnering up. Ford and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella believe they can improve things at the farm level using technology—and by teaming up with health care organizations, government officials at the local and federal levels, and other groups that care about the cause.
“It’s not just a rural issue. We need to understand that. It’s an American competitiveness issue,” she said. “These are the people that are farming, that are feeding us. This isn’t somebody else’s problem; this is all of our problem.”
Once basic broadband access is more established in rural communities, Land O’Lakes and Microsoft will be able to expand their high-tech, data-heavy agricultural programs that can provide information on weather, crop yield, and more down to the acre. “From there,” Ford said, “we can make all sorts of recommendations. We can work with farmers to find what’s most sustainable and profitable and productive.”
Increased data and technology is “definitely the direction the food industry is moving in,” according to Beth Kowitt, Fortune journalist and food industry expert. In her reporting, Kowitt says she hasn’t seen any other CEO be so visible on this issue. And as agriculture has been slower to warm to technology and its myriad uses in their business, Ford’s advocacy is a welcome departure from the norm.
“We rely on these communities to feed us,” Kowitt said. “Their success is so critical to how we operate as a country, and I think [Ford] knows they need to be strong, that there needs to be a compelling reason for the next generation to stay and work these jobs.”
To hear how Ford thinks her status as the first openly gay woman to become CEO at a Fortune 500 company affects her leadership (or doesn’t), how she believes business’ approach to supply chains will change following the pandemic, and why Land O’Lakes chose to remove the image of a Native American woman from it’s packaging, listen to the full episode.


fortune--2020-08-18--Bulls lay out their case for stocks to hit record highs, and to keep climbing

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Good morning. The S&P 500 closed a mere 12 points from a new all-time high on Monday, led by resurgent tech stocks. This morning, U.S. futures are beginning to rebound, following the lead of European and Asian stocks. There’s a growing sense of inevitability that the benchmark S&P will hit record territory in a matter of days, on its way to a string of new all-time highs.
Here’s what’s moving markets.
Markets update
Asia
The major Asia indexes are mixed in afternoon trade, but the Shanghai Composite continues its impressive run. It’s up 0.3% .
are mixed in afternoon trade, but the continues its impressive run. It’s up . The Trump Administration’s war on Huawei continues with the Commerce Department on Monday adding 38 Huawei affiliates in 21 countries to an economic blacklist , a huge hit to the company’s 5G aspirations.
continues with the Commerce Department on Monday adding 38 Huawei affiliates in 21 countries to , a huge hit to the company’s 5G aspirations. There could be a rival bidder for TikTok’s U.S. business. According to Bloomberg, Oracle is weighing whether to vie against Microsoft for the video streaming app.
Europe
The European bourses are solidly in the green, with the Europe Stoxx 600 up 0.1% after a negative start.
are solidly in the green, with the up after a negative start. Germany ‘s spike in coronavirus cases is concerning, but manageable, Chancellor Angela Merkel says. That’s after the country recorded its most cases since April, and as neighboring European countries begin tightening restrictions amid a rise in cases in recent weeks.
‘s spike in is concerning, but manageable, Chancellor says. That’s after the country recorded its most cases since April, and as neighboring European countries begin amid a rise in cases in recent weeks. Alexander Lukashenko, the longtime leader of Belarus and often called Europe’s last dictator, appears to be losing some of his grip on power. Workers across the country went on strike as mass protests against Lukashenko’s disputed Aug. 9 election victory gather steam.
U.S.
The U.S. futures are flat on Tuesday, though well off their lows. That’s after the Nasdaq and S&P 500 eked out gains yesterday with tech stocks—Amazon, Spotify and Microsoft—leading the way higher.
are flat on Tuesday, though well off their lows. That’s after the Nasdaq and S&P 500 eked out gains yesterday with tech stocks—Amazon, Spotify and Microsoft—leading the way higher. Tesla shares closed up 11% on Monday to a new all-time high following Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives raising his price target to $1,900 . Tesla’s market cap has now surpassed consumer products giant Procter & Gamble.
on Monday to a new all-time high following Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives raising his price target to . Tesla’s market cap has now surpassed consumer products giant Procter & Gamble. Beleaguered plane-maker Boeing is looking to extend buyout offers to employees as it now aims to reduce headcount by more than 10% .
. Lawmakers are still miles apart in their negotiations over a new coronavirus stimulus package. Senate Republicans now plan to introduce a long-shot slimmed-down proposal, but don’t expect any agreement being reached before September.
Elsewhere
Gold continues its impressive run, up above $2,000/ounce , helped by Warren Buffett joining the gold rush.
continues its impressive run, up above , helped by joining the gold rush. The dollar is down. Again.
is down. Again. Crude has rebounded, with Brent up 0.3%.
***
Risk on… and on
We’ve been on watch for a new S&P 500 record for the past week. And, of course, the Nasdaq has been Mr. Reliable, hitting new all-time highs seemingly every trading session. It closed at 11,144.53 yesterday, another record.
This run for the ages, in which the S&P is up more than 50% over the past 102 trading days, is dividing the markets pros. There’s the camp that believes equities are over-priced by just about every historical measure out there. And then there’s the group that feels central bankers and policymakers have set us up for even further gains.
Brian Levitt, Global Market Strategist and Talley Léger, Senior Investment Strategist at Invesco, are among those who believes the “risk-on environment may be here for the long term.”
They lay out a series of reasons why this bull run still has legs. For starters, they believe stimulus measures and loose monetary policy will pump further liquidity into the markets. And, they’re not too concerned about COVID spikes, and the threat of coronavirus lockdowns like the kind we saw in the spring. Most controversially, they see stocks, despite their lofty valuations, as the best game in town.
“Global equity valuations, although not necessarily cheap on an absolute basis, remain attractive to many alternatives,” they write, adding that “investors will likely be willing to pay higher multiples of earnings over time.”
Looking forward, they see us moving into a period of higher and higher equities gains—depending on where you put your money, of course.
“Ultimately,” they write, “we expect this new emerging market and business cycle to be among the longest on record, perhaps even surpassing that of the post-2008 period. A prolonged period of slow growth, low inflation, low interest rates and massive policy accommodations will likely be a period that is conducive to sound performance from credit and equities.”
And since they mention the post-2008 period, here’s a chart (courtesy of LPL Research) at just how impressive a stretch that period was. Between 2012-2019 period, the S&P hit hundreds of all-time highs:
Most investors, no doubt, wouldn’t mind returning to market conditions like the one we saw over the past “risk-on” decade.
***
Have a nice day, everyone. I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
As always, you can write to bullsheet@fortune.com or reply to this email with suggestions and feedback.
Today's reads
The next breakout asset? Price-wary investors are continuing to eye commodities—and not just gold—as the next asset class ready to pop. They see equities as overpriced, and bemoan bonds for delivering dismal returns. It's part of a larger trend towards hunting for alternative assets as the equities market keeps hitting fresh records.
IPO dreams. Robinhood pulled off a $200 million funding round, valuing the popular stock-trading app at $11.2 billion. It was a series G round, which increases the speculation the next stop is a Robinhood IPO.
"Clicks versus bricks." The tech component of the S&P 500 has been powering the benchmark index during this entire bull run. Here's why the tech rally still has legs.
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Market candy
Quote of the day
"Should history repeat, and there’s no guarantee it will, the S&P 500 should set a new all-time high by the end of August."
That's CFRA's Sam Stovall in an investor note yesterday on what to expect from the benchmark index as it nears record territory.


fortune--2020-08-18--The world’s largest wealth fund has lost $21 billion so far this year

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, lost $21 billion in the first half of the year as a rebound in stock markets wasn’t enough to erase its record decline earlier this year.
The Oslo-based fund fell 3.4%, or 188 billion kroner ($21 billion), over the period, it said on Tuesday. More details were due to be presented at a press conference set to start at 10 a.m. local time.
“Even though markets recovered well in the second quarter, we are still witnessing considerable uncertainty,” the fund’s Deputy Chief Executive Officer Trond Grande said in a statement.
Grande will be standing in for Yngve Slyngstad for Tuesday’s presentation, as the outgoing CEO skips what would have been his final set of results after 12 years at the helm of the giant sovereign investor.
CEO Drama
It’s been a tumultuous period for the $1.2 trillion fund. In addition to the market chaos that’s played havoc with returns this year, the investor has been dragged into a political debacle over the appointment of its new CEO, hedge-fund manager Nicolai Tangen.
Tangen is set to replace Slyngstad on Sept. 1, though it’s not yet clear whether the government might be asked by parliament to get involved and possibly postpone, or even halt, the transition. The central bank, which houses the fund, has met fierce criticism for its handling of Tangen’s recruitment, specifically for failing to eliminate potential conflicts of interest relating to his personal wealth.
Whoever runs the fund, which was set up in the 1990s to invest Norway’s oil income into foreign securities, will likely have to embark on historic asset sales this year to cover the government’s need for stimulus cash. Withdrawals reached a record 167 billion kroner, or $19 billion in the first half, the fund said on Tuesday.
Investment Returns
Stocks were the fund’s worst investment in the first half, losing almost 7% overall. Unlisted real estate also fell while fixed-income holdings rose. The investor held almost 70% in equities, just under 3% in real estate, with the rest going into fixed income.
For the second quarter alone, though, the fund saw an 18% rebound in its stock portfolio, leading to an overall return of 13.1%. That’s close to the record 13.5% it reported for the third quarter of 2009, when equities bounced back from the financial crisis.
The fund’s biggest holdings were in Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc., Amazon.com and Alphabet Inc., with its technology portfolio returning 14.2% overall in the first half. Financial holdings fell 20.8%. Oil and gas stocks, which the fund has tried to scale back, slumped 33.1%.


fortune--2020-08-18--TikTok’s U.S. business is said to have a new suitor: Oracle

Oracle Corp. is weighing a potential bid for part of TikTok’s business, seeking to rival Microsoft Corp. in the race to acquire the viral video streaming app, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company controlled by billionaire Larry Ellison has made a preliminary approach to other parties, including the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, to partner with it in a bid for the app’s operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the people said, asking not to be identified.
The entry of Oracle could challenge Microsoft’s bargaining position, as the Redmond-based company had been the only party to publicly confirm it was in talks with TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd.. President Donald Trump on Friday ordered ByteDance to sell its U.S. assets within 90 days, adding to an earlier executive order that would prohibit U.S. persons and companies from doing business with TikTok effective 45 days from Aug. 6.
Oracle didn’t immediately respond while ByteDance declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg. Sequoia, a venture investor in ByteDance, also declined to comment. The Financial Times reported on the talks earlier.
Oracle co-founder Ellison is one of the few Silicon Valley moguls to openly support Trump. The billionaire, whose company was once among the industry’s most aggressively acquisitive, has hosted a fundraiser at his estate for the U.S. president. Oracle — the world’s second-largest software maker — is focused on supplying to business customers and has virtually no investments in consumer apps or social media.
Valued at roughly $166 billion, Oracle held about $43 billion in cash or near equivalents as of the end of May, making it one of few companies that could potentially afford the lofty price tag for TikTok. Analysts and bankers have estimated the value of TikTok’s U.S. business at between $20 billion and $50 billion, a wide range that reflects the complexity involved in separating TikTok’s American and global businesses.
ByteDance bought the Musical.ly app in 2017 and merged it with TikTok, creating an app with over 100 million users in the U.S. alone. That deal is now being unraveled by U.S. officials, which have cited national security concerns amid escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing. Now, the company is facing a fast-approaching deadline to reach a deal, or risk facing a complete shutdown of its American business.
Other bidders potentially interested in the assets include Twitter Inc. The social media company is among U.S. tech firms that have also explored possible bids though it’s unclear how far those talks have gone, according to multiple people familiar with the deliberations.


fortune--2020-08-18--Mystery of New Zealand’s new COVID outbreak deepens as it rules out primary suspect

New Zealand’s mysterious new coronavirus outbreak did not originate from frozen food shipments, the country’s health department said on Tuesday.
“Seems clear now that the possibility is being ruled out from that investigation,” said Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield, according to Reuters. He did not provide specifics on the probe but said a full report on it will be released later this week.
Frozen food shipments were the primary suspect in the New Zealand investigation. One of the infected people worked in a cold storage unit, and the virus has been proven to survive in colder environments—like refrigerated supply lines—for a longer period of time.
Ruling out the shipments leaves a huge question mark over the origin of the outbreak, which broke New Zealand’s 102-day streak of no locally transmitted cases.
Public health authorities in New Zealand are still investigating the outbreak, which began on Aug. 11 when four family members in Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, tested positive for the coronavirus. A total of 69 active cases—out of 90 nationwide—are linked to the Auckland cluster. New Zealand reported 13 new cases on Tuesday.
New Zealand’s government had declared the country virus-free in June and lifted all restrictions apart from border controls. The new cases prompted authorities to send Auckland back into lockdown and place restrictions on other parts of the country. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Monday that national elections planned for September would be delayed four weeks because of the outbreak. As of Tuesday, New Zealand had 1,293 confirmed cases and 22 coronavirus-related deaths.
The virus’s tendency to survive longer in the cold bolstered New Zealand’s frozen food shipment theory. Other countries likewise have suspected frozen food as a culprit in recent outbreaks. Officials in southern China’s Shenzhen last week found traces of the virus on chicken wing shipments imported from Brazil. (Shenzhen is currently experiencing a new outbreak.) Authorities in Guangzhou, another southern Chinese city, on Sunday suspended imports of frozen meat and seafood from COVID-19 hotspots over concerns of virus transmission.
In such instances, health officials have not detected virus particles in the food itself, and there is no evidence of food-borne transmission. Rather, they’ve found traces of the virus on surfaces like cold shipping containers and packaging; those remnants can infect people who come into contact with the cargo.


fortune--2020-08-18--U.S. sanctions mean Hong Kong’s leader is having trouble using her credit card

Hong Kong’s leader said she’s having trouble using her credit cards after the U.S. imposed sanctions targeting Chinese officials and their allies in the city.
“As for myself, of course it will have a little bit of inconvenience here and there, because we have to use some financial services and we don’t know whether that will relate back to an agency that has some American business — and the use of credit cards is sort of hampered,” Chief Executive Carrie Lam said in an interview with Chinese state broadcaster CGTN posted late Monday. “But those are really meaningless as far as I’m concerned.”
Lam was one of 11 officials sanctioned earlier this month by President Donald Trump’s administration for their roles in curtailing political freedoms in Hong Kong, amid the implementation of new national security legislation imposed on the city by China in June.
“The most important thing is we feel honorable that we are, at this historic moment, being trusted by the central people’s government to enforce a piece of national law to safeguard national security,” Lam said. “The more that this attracts the critics of China to attack us, the more effective this piece of legislation is to achieve its intended objective.“
Spokespeople for Visa and Mastercard didn’t immediately reply to messages requesting comment outside of business hours.
China’s largest state-run banks operating in Hong Kong are taking tentative steps to comply with U.S. sanctions imposed on officials in the city, Bloomberg reported last week, as they seek to safeguard their access to crucial dollar funding and overseas networks. Major lenders with operations in the U.S. including Bank of China Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp., and China Merchants Bank Co. have turned cautious on opening new accounts for the 11 sanctioned officials, people familiar said.
Virus Control
Lam said Tuesday that she would announce a third round of virus-control measures, as she held her first weekly briefing after summer recess for her advisory Executive Council. She didn’t give a time frame, but said authorities would sort out the details quickly.
“There are still infected people in the community, so we must not let down our guard,” she said.
Hong Kong has extended all existing Covid-19 related social distancing measures for a week — to August 25 — as it continues to battle a new wave of cases. There was still no sign of a steadily decreasing trend in new infections, Lam said, adding that she was still concerned that there are many silent carriers in the community.
Lam said she would give her annual policy address on Oct. 14. The press conference was the first time she has faced local media since the arrest last Monday of media tycoon Jimmy Lai under the national security legislation.
Lam is one of the most visible Chinese leaders in the struggle over Hong Kong’s future. Her attempt last year to pass a bill that would have allowed extraditions to the mainland prompted months of pro-democracy protests, and she’s defended Beijing’s legal right to bypass Hong Kong’s legislature and implement the security law.
The national security measures have fueled concerns about the state of Hong Kong’s autonomy from China, including freedoms of the press and the independence of its judicial system. Both have helped underpin Hong Kong’s reputation as a global financial hub.


fortune--2020-08-19--So many Americans still struggle to win the vote

Former First Lady Michelle Obama offered a clear and full-throated call for a united electorate and a better democracy in her speech at the virtual Democratic National Convention last night.
She began by condemning the Trump presidency in no uncertain terms.
“Whenever we look to this White House for some leadership or consolation or any semblance of steadiness, what we get instead is chaos, division, and a total and utter lack of empathy,” Obama said. And she affirmed her belief in his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. “Joe knows the anguish of sitting at a table with an empty chair, which is why he gives his time so freely to grieving parents,” she continued. “His life is a testament to getting back up, and he is going to channel that same grit and passion to pick us all up, to help us heal and guide us forward.”
But despite the divisive and desperate times in which we live — “if you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can,” she said — she also asked us to stick to the high road, even now.
“Going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else,” she said. “We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight.”
It was a powerful moment and a poignant preview of today’s solemn remembrance: A century ago today, white women won the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment. It would be decades of bloody struggle before Black women secured theirs. A similar fate befell Native American women, who were embraced early on by suffragettes enthralled by their matriarchal societies, only to be forced to advocate alone after the victory was in sight. The stories of hundreds of powerful BIPOC voting rights and equity advocates have been scrubbed from history, a legacy of inclusive leadership that would have served us well over the 20th century.
And yet here we are, lifted up by the first Black First Lady at a time of tremendous pain, on the eve of an anniversary that excluded her from the very system she worked so hard to transform. A message mirrored, as always, by Black women activists, organizers and advocates who are asking us to believe in our ability to finish the work. Obama’s answer, spelled out in a now best-selling charm necklace was: V-O-T-E.*
Yes. And as we all know, the call is more complicated than it seems.
In the middle of a pandemic, a gerrymandering, voter suppression and now a postal service crisis, it’s clear that the vote must be re-won for many Americans.
Inextricably linked with the right to vote must be the responsibility to ensure that anyone who is eligible should be allowed to cast their ballots safely, securely, and without fear. This country made an ugly mistake a century ago. We cannot afford to leave anyone behind this time.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
*The “vote” necklace was created by BYCHARI, a Los Angeles-based, sustainable jewelry design line founded by Jamaican-born designer Chari Cuthbert. Yes, Michelle Obama thinks of everything.
On point
The Guggenheim announces a diversity plan to address charges of racism Complaints about the storied New York museum began to swirl last year after guest curator Chaédria LaBouvier went public with allegations of racist treatment and discrimination during her time presenting the 2019 exhibition of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. This past June, some 200 current and former employees published a letter entitled “A Better Guggenheim,” with a detailed action plan for equity and improvement. After an independent review of the allegations related to the Basquiat exhibit, number one on their list, the Guggenheim has announced a two-year initiative to work on the rest — including hiring and development of professionals of color and a new committee to review acquisitions and exhibitions through a racial equity lens.
New York Times
Glossier under fire for failing to support Black employees while wokewashing My colleague Emma Hinchcliffe interviewed 18 former Glossier employees, all of whom worked at the company’s New York City flagship or Los Angeles retail store. Many had stories to tell about being left to fend for themselves in the face of overt racism — brace yourself for a blackface story — or microaggressions from customers, particularly galling considering the company’s inclusive mission and donations to anti-racist causes. But when retail staff were laid off earlier this month, the complaints were made public in an open letter. “On most occasions, we editors [the term used for retail associates] had come to expect no intervention and little recourse — not even reassurance of our safety,” they write. Managers “cultivated a commitment to a customer satisfaction that undermined workers’ wellbeing so completely that it strayed from conventional deference to the buyer and instead for an ingratiating model — one that was totally submissive and deeply humiliating, particularly for those of us who are BIPOC.”
Fortune
You into diversity? Companies are hiring! A growing list of companies and institutions like the Guggenheim are now building out their diversity staff (looking at you, Glossier), and that just might be a problem. "If you're a Black person in corporate, you're sort of saying, 'What took you so long to awaken to the plight and challenges that we have as Black people — not only in society, but inside our walls?'" said Paul Francisco, the chief diversity officer at State Street tells WBUR. He offers essential tips for anyone starting from scratch. Malia Lazu of Berkshire Bank offers the best advice for anyone considering a new diversity job. "If businesses are looking for a chief diversity officer to fix their racial woes, I would say my grandmother's good old saying, which is: 'Show me your budget and I'll show you what you care about,'" she said.
WBUR
Pinterest hires its first Black board member The news out of Pinterest, long thought to be the kinder, woker tech company, has not been good. In June, two employees on the company’s public policy team, Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, went public with claims of unequal pay, discrimination, and retaliation. Then, Francoise Brougher, their former chief operating officer, filed a lawsuit this month, claiming she was fired for raising issues of gender discrimination. And to call attention to allegations widespread discrimination, some 350 out of 2,400 workers staged a virtual walkout last Friday. The walkout delayed the announcement of Andrea Wishom, president of real estate company Skywalker Holdings and former Harpo Studios executive, to its board of directors. In a statement, CEO Ben Silbermann said the search took months. “Andrea has spent her career outside of Silicon Valley and has a vision for reimagining the board/employee relationship.”
Techcrunch
On background
Don’t wokewash. It won’t work We are now in the “statement fatigue” phase of our racial reckoning. Granted, it’s a fine line — you can’t say nothing, but companies need to be mindful that their big, splashy statements leave them vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy. (CC: Whole Foods, Pinterest, and Adidas.) Erin Dowell and Marlette Jackson, equity and inclusion professionals writing in the Harvard Business Review, tapped their own networks and their own expertise to compile this playbook for anti-racism work at the corporate and individual level. It’s excellent; please include them on your holiday card lists. This line stood out: “A commitment to corporate structural evolution means that executive leadership must be willing to change the way in which the organization works.” I’ll be needlepointing this on a pillow.
HBR
Is Thailand gearing up for a revolution? A new generation of activists have been taking to the streets in Thailand, demanding widespread change. More than 10,000 people showed up at Bangkok’s Democracy Monument over the weekend, a risky move in a country known for its military crackdowns. “We have no choice but to come out,” one woman told the New York Times. “This government has got to go.” The movement is largely focused on breaking up corporate monopolies, removing the military’s hold on political leadership, and decentralizing power through democratic reforms. A fascinating read.
New York Times
Stop “playing devil’s advocate already.” Seriously, stop It’s a sketchy move under the best of circumstances, but when it’s about race, it’s downright insulting. Advice columnist Daniel Mallory Ortberg responds to a Black reader who was sent an article during a discussion with a white friend that resurrected the racist belief that some races, ahem, have lower IQs than others. The friend then covered his tracks with a “hey, I’m just saying that this is what people say” disclaimer. Yes, Ortberg says, you can be upset by this. “Why does he feel like it’s important to communicate those beliefs by proxy, and why did he think it was important to communicate them to you specifically?” Either say what you’re going to say and own it, or admit that you just don’t know what you don’t know about race. Gah.
Slate
This edition of raceAhead was edited by Karen Yuan.
Today's mood board
New method of sorting the mail, as practiced by Southern slave-holders, or attack on the Post Office, Charleston, S.C.


fortune--2020-08-18--S&P 500 hits a new record, erasing last of pandemic losses

Wall Street clawed back the last of the historic, frenzied losses unleashed by the new coronavirus, as the S&P 500 closed at an all-time high Tuesday.
The day’s move was a relatively mild one, nudging the index up 7.79 points, or 0.2%, to 3,389.78. That eclipses the S&P 500′s previous record closing high of 3,386.15, which was set Feb. 19, before the pandemic shut down businesses around the world and knocked economies into their worst recessions in decades.
The S&P 500′s milestone caps a furious, 51.5% rally that began in late March. The index, which is the benchmark for many stock funds at the heart of 401(k) plans, is now up nearly 5% for the year.
The stock market’s sprint back to an all-time high also means that the gut-wrenching, nearly 34% plunge for the S&P 500 from Feb. 19 through March 23 was the quickest bear market on record. It lasted barely more than a month. Compare that with the 19.6 months that it’s taken the average bear market to bottom out, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.
Tremendous amounts of aid from the Federal Reserve and Congress helped launch the rally, which built higher on signs of budding growth in the economy. More recently, corporate profit reports that weren’t as bad as expected have helped boost stock prices.
The market spent the past few days within striking distance of a new high, but falling short of the milestone, until the last minutes of trading Tuesday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 66.84 points, or 0.2%, to 27,778.07. It remains 6% below its record set in February. The Nasdaq composite had already returned to a record, thanks to huge gains for the big tech stocks that dominate it. It hit a new one Tuesday, climbing 81.12 points, or 0.7%, to 11,210.84.
The lightning recovery is even more remarkable considering how much the economy is still struggling and how uncertain the path ahead remains. Millions of Americans are continuing to get unemployment benefits, and businesses across the country are still shutting their doors. COVID-19 continues to seep throughout the world, with more than 5.4 million known cases and 170,000 deaths in the United States alone.
Many investors acknowledge the disconnect between the stock market and the broader economy, but they say the rally has been built on top of several supports.
Key among them is that the Federal Reserve and Congress have plowed trillions of dollars into the economy, to keep it from plunging even more deeply and to prevent a full-blown financial crisis. Their unprecedented moves helped halt the S&P 500’s free-fall in March.
More recently, the stock market’s rally has morphed from relief that the worst-case scenario of a full-blown financial crisis is off the table to hopes that the economy is on the mend. As widespread lockdowns of businesses have eased since the spring, data from across the economy have been showing improvements.
A report last week said 963,000 U.S. workers filed for unemployment benefits, for example. It’s a sickeningly high number, but it’s also the first time the tally has dropped below 1 million since March. With such budding economic improvements in hand, investors are looking further into the future and betting on one where corporate profits can broadly bloom again after a vaccine for COVID-19 hits the market later this year or in 2021.
The five biggest companies in the S&P 500 by market value, meanwhile, have continued to pile up blowout profits, even as earnings crater for the rest of the market. These Big Tech companies increasingly drive the S&P 500’s movements almost by themselves, and they’ve benefited from the pandemic because it accelerated work-from-home and other tech trends. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google’s parent company are all are up more than 16% for 2020 so far.
The market’s huge gains have been slowing in recent weeks, and many investors say the easiest gains have been made. But optimism remains strong across much of Wall Street. At Goldman Sachs, strategist David Kostin raised his year-end forecast for the S&P 500 to 3,600 from an earlier outlook for 3,000.
At the same time, though, many risks are still hanging over the market.
Investors are still waiting to see if Congress and the White House can get past their partisan differences and agree on more aid for the economy. Without the stimulus, analysts say the economy won’t be able to make the recovery that investors have been assuming is on the way. And that assumption is a huge reason the stock market is as high as it is.
Rising tensions between the United States and China, meanwhile, threatens trade between the world’s two largest economies. Tech stocks have had a few stumbles recently amid worries that China could retaliate against U.S. moves by targeting U.S. chip makers and others.
Perhaps the biggest threat of all is if a vaccine for COVID-19 fails come to the market as quickly as markets are expecting. That could quickly take a chunk back out of the market’s huge rally.
For now, though, the market’s momentum remains on a gentle upward slope. Even Treasury yields have recently been making a move higher, though their ascent slowed on Tuesday.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury dipped to 0.67% from 0.69% late Monday. In March, the yield had touched its record low just beneath 0.34%.
Higher yields can be an indication that investors are upgrading their expectations for inflation and the economy. But they can also pull some buyers away from stocks into bonds, hurting stock prices in the process.
“It’s important to recognize that the bond market doesn’t seem to trust this rally,” said Brian Price, head of investment management for Commonwealth Financial Network.


fortune--2020-08-18--Here’s what could happen to stock markets if the Trump-Biden election results are contested

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The 2020 election will likely be controversial—in more ways than one.
With a wrench thrown into traditional voting procedures because of the coronavirus pandemic, partisans on both sides of the aisle are already tossing around the possibility of a messy election—and perhaps one where one side contests the results. And for investors, uncertainty means one thing: volatility.
To be sure, even in 2016 when the outcome wasn’t formally contested, markets briefly panicked after Donald Trump secured the presidency, before recovering (and, indeed, rising considerably) in the following days. But when results are debated and investors are left in limbo, things can get especially dicey, analysts at UBS say.
“If history is any guide, we would expect to see some initial equity market volatility as investors grapple with the resulting policy uncertainty,” Thomas McLoughlin, head of Americas fixed income at UBS Global Wealth Management, wrote in a note Monday. “Markets abhor uncertainty.”
Democrats have already raised their concern that Trump will interfere with the election, especially given concerns about the dependability of mail-in voting through the embattled and budget-challenged U.S. Postal Service. Trump himself postulated at a White House event on Tuesday that if the election involved a large number of mail-in ballots, “It’ll end up being a rigged election, or they will never come out with an outcome. They’ll have to do it again. And nobody wants that, and I don’t want that.”
The upshot? Investors should probably buckle up for a bit of a bumpy ride come November.
What happened in 2000?
The most relevant and “instructive” example of what happens to markets when an election result is contested is the Bush-Gore presidential contest in 2000.
George W. Bush, the Republican nominee and then-governor of Texas, lost the popular vote to Vice President Al Gore. The contest was decided in the Electoral College, where the result hinged on who won the state of Florida, where voting tallies were hair-raisingly close. “The subsequent recount was exceptionally time-consuming,” UBS’s McLoughlin writes. The Supreme Court eventually intervened to let stand a preliminary count that awarded Bush the state. Gore conceded, and Bush secured the victory roughly six weeks after Election Day.
In that interim, “Markets initially reacted negatively to the absence of a clear winner. London’s FTSE surged on news that … Bush had won but gave up the gains on news of the planned recount,” McLoughlin notes. The S&P 500 dropped roughly 6% in the two weeks following the election, Fortune calculated, while the Dow fell around 5% in the two weeks “as litigation threatened to prolong the uncertainty,” McLoughlin writes.
Litigation is a key concern for 2020, too: McLoughlin suggests that “this year’s election is likely to be the most litigated in history.” He writes that by some counts plaintiffs have “already filed 192 lawsuits in at least 41 states across the nation arising from changes to voting procedures in the wake of the pandemic,” plus others that predated the pandemic.
The good news is that the market volatility in such cases is generally short- lived, UBS notes. In fact, McLoughlin points out that subsequent research has shown the worst impact to markets comes within four trading days of an “uncertain election outcome.”
Current polls show presumptive Democratic nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden with an edge over the incumbent. Analysts at firms including JPMorgan Chase have suggested that investors shouldn’t be too concerned about a Biden presidency—and argue he may actually be good for stocks.
“It’s not the case that the minute there’s a changeover in the White House, everything on the campaign platform becomes policy,” Charles Schwab chief investment strategist Liz Ann Sonders recently told Fortune. “I do happen to think a Biden presidency isn’t this guaranteed disaster for the stock market.”
Yet with all the moving pieces, the headline for investors here is to be “prepared for volatility in the event of an inconclusive result,” says McLoughlin. That said, fleeing into “safe haven” assets like gold or treasuries may be premature. Adds McLoughlin: “Any initial volatility should dissipate over time.”


fortune--2020-08-18--Elon Musk’s SpaceX gets a stratospheric valuation in its latest funding

SpaceX took in $1.9 billion in new funding this month and plans to raise more, capping off a busy period that includes its first successful human spaceflight, a launch for a satellite-based Internet service and work on a massive ship slated to carry people to Mars.
The company, founded by Elon Musk, sold the bulk of its planned $2.07 billion offering to investors starting Aug. 4, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday. SpaceX plans to sell another $165 million in equity and preferred stock.
Seventy-five investors have participated in the latest round of funding, which will value the company at $46 billion, Bloomberg News reported last week. That would rank SpaceX as one of the most valuable venture-backed U.S. companies.
SpaceX’s fundraising comes during a fertile period, both for the Tesla sister company and capital markets more broadly. Technology companies, Tesla in particular, have been especially favored as the stock market flirts with a record high.
Tuesday’s filing came the same day that SpaceX made a record sixth flight for one of its Falcon 9 rocket boosters. The company delivered 58 of the company’s Starlink satellites to orbit, along with three SkySat satellites for Planet Labs Inc.
SpaceX has said that the latest version of the Falcon’s first stage can fly at least 10 times without major refurbishment. The Florida launch also marked more than 50 successful landings for the rocket’s first stage.
The company has launched more than 600 satellites for Starlink, a high-speed Internet network that could begin commercial service late this year for customers in northern North America.
On Aug. 2, SpaceX successfully returned two astronauts from the International Space Station after a 64-day mission. The SpaceX Dragon demonstration trip, which began May 30, was the first time a private contractor had flown National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel aboard a private spacecraft. SpaceX’s first regular taxi flight for NASA, scheduled for mid-October, will take four astronauts to the space station.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is constructing prototypes in Boca Chica, Texas, of its heavy-lift Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket. The company plans in 2023 to fly Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his guests on the first private space-tourism jaunt around the moon.
On Aug. 4 a Starship prototype called SN5 flew about 500 feet high before landing successfully. A similar craft, SN6, may perform a similar test this month. SpaceX ultimately plans to fly as many as 100 people aboard the 394-foot (120-meter) tall Starship back and forth to the moon and Mars.


fortune--2020-08-18--Business groups don’t expect to implement Trump’s ‘unworkable’ payroll order

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A coalition of more than 30 industry groups—representing employers including restaurants, factory owners and drug stores—published a letter on Tuesday saying they do not expect to implement President Trump’s executive order to cut payroll taxes.
The order in question, issued on Aug. 8, calls for businesses to suspend the collection of the 6.2% Social Security levy from workers’ paychecks—a move intended to stimulate the economy, which is still reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, by boosting take-home pay.
But as Tuesday’s letter explains, the order is impractical since the measure would only defer the payments, not eliminate them—leaving employees with a stiff tax bill in 2021. The industry coalition describes the situation as “unworkable” and “unfair.”
“Many of our members consider it unfair to employees to make a decision that would force a big tax bill on them next year. It would also be unworkable to implement a system where employees make this decision,” reads the letter, which was issued by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Other signatories to Tuesday’s letter include the National Association of Realtors, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Home Furnishings Alliance.
The letter concludes by saying that most of the signatories will likely decline to implement the proposed deferral. The upshot is that workers are unlikely to see any changes to their paychecks in the near future.
The only way such changes would occur is if Congress passes a law to forgive the collection of payroll taxes deferred under the order—a move supported by both the President and the signatories of Tuesday’s letter.
The political reality, however, means Congress is unlikely to pass such a measure—given the deadlock between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, and the impending November election.
The executive order concerning payroll taxes is one of four orders issued by the President following the breakdown of stimulus talks in Congress earlier this month. The legality of the orders, including one to unilaterally extend unemployment benefits, has been questioned.