vox--2020-02-06--Billions of wire hangers are used in the US every year. Almost no one buys them.

Billions of wire hangers are used in the US every year .
Almost no one buys them .
Share All sharing options for : Billions of wire hangers are used in the US every year .
Almost no one buys them .
If you are like many Americans , you likely own or have owned a small collection of the billions ( with a b ) of wire hangers that are consumed in the US every year .
And , also like many Americans , you probably came to your stockpile unwittingly — largely through trips to the dry cleaner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of frustration that comes from opening your closet to find these forgotten objects somehow entangled in a metal mare ’ s nest .
In the early 1990s , art dealer Frank Maresca had the unusual experience of such a collection being a sort of godsend .
He needed a “ throwaway show ” for his New York City gallery — something simple and easy to occupy a fallow period on the calendar .
His friend and artist-collector Harris Diamant offered an unexpected solution : his extensive reserve of vintage clothes hangers .
Maresca @ @ @ @ @ @ @ showcasing contemporary outsider art , mounted one of Diamant ’ s wire hangers on the white gallery wall .
Encouraged , he pinned up 169 more .
Soon Maresca had an exhibit ( “ Out of the Closet : American Hangers ” ) and an accompanying write-up in the New York Times .
“ Stop laughing , ” reporter N.R .
Kleinfield told readers .
Within a few days , thanks to , ahem , wire services picking up the story , the exhibit went the print-era equivalent of viral .
Soon the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until they flooded onto the floor .
Daily foot traffic increased into the hundreds .
The mailman dropped off entire canvas sacks of letters from citizens the world over who hoped to convert their own closets into cultural cachet and/or cash .
An inescapable part of modern life to which everyone can relate but no one pays much attention “ The whole thing was funny , ” Maresca says .
“ I mean , who ever gave a moment ’ s thought to a hanger ?
” Therein lies the unusual status of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of modern life to which everyone can relate but no one pays much attention .
A 2007 study by the US International Trade Commission estimated US consumption at 3.3 billion wire hangers annually , or nearly 11 per capita at the time — a figure that does not even account for the wire hangers often included with “ floor-ready ” garments imported from overseas , as long required by major retailers like Macy ’ s and Lord and Taylor .
Upward of 80 percent of US wire hanger consumption comes via dry cleaners @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rest ) , which employ wire hangers as a means of garment storage and transport so cost-effective they are included with their services .
It is wire hangers ’ very ubiquity that may have helped damn them to dangle from the lowest rung on the hanger hierarchy .
Of course , it doesn ’ t help that wire hangers are not particularly good at being hangers , often warping delicate garments that drape from them unevenly , nor that they are still the go-to symbol of illegal abortions in America ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pop culture moment came in a disturbing and class-conscious depiction of child abuse , when Faye Dunaway famously shrieked “ NO ... WIRE ... HANGERS !
” in the 1981 Joan Crawford biopic Mommie Dearest ( surely undoing the goodwill engendered by Halloween ’ s closet scene three years earlier ) .
No less an authority than the so-called Hanger King himself , industry magnate Bernie Spitz , once proclaimed that he would never sell them .
And yet wire hangers pioneered the form .
It is commonly held , by those who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hanger ’ s origins trace to an 1869 patent by a Connecticut man named O.A .
North , who designed what he termed an “ improvement in clothes-hook ” made from “ bent-metal rod or wire.
” ( This crediting is questionable : an 1852 patent for a shoulder-shaped metal wall hanger by fellow Connecticuter W.B .
Olds clearly predates North ’ s , while other predating patents from 1867 and 1868 also more closely resemble modern hangers .
If at least some of these were born independent of one another , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It is no coincidence that this time of more obviously groundbreaking invention is what also produced the humble hanger .
Not until the Industrial Revolution streamlined the manufacturing and shipping processes did most Americans even own enough garments to warrant considerable storage .
Homes built in that era did not typically include closets ; most Americans kept unworn clothes folded in chests or hung on wall-mounted rods .
( Or , in the case of Thomas Jefferson , on a personal contraption dubbed a “ turning-machine.
” ) Once people had clothes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they had hangers they soon had them in excess .
As far back as the 1960s , the Times was advising its readers on using wire hangers to construct bird feeders or a skillet to cook fish over a fire .
Other extracurricular uses became more common : replacing or augmenting TV antennae , breaking into cars , rescuing misplaced keys and rings and baseballs from sewer grates .
Wire hangers have even become a medium for artworks and accessory to a $ 900 Moschino dress mimicking dry cleaner packaging , while the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ employed them as easy fodder for listicles and lifehack videos .
The premise of these how-tos is familiar : Of course you have wire hangers and of course they are awaiting better use .
They are , always , just sort of there .
When Milton Magnus III was a boy in Alabama , a friend asked what his father did .
Magnus told his friend that his father , just like his father before him , manufactured and sold wire hangers .
His friend was taken aback .
In his childhood naivete @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were manufactured or sold at all .
“ Everybody doesn ’ t think about it until someone says , ‘ I make hangers , ’ ” Magnus says , “ and then : ‘ Oh my goodness , I guess somebody has to.
’ ” Magnus is now president of M & B Hangers , the company his grandfather , also named Milton Magnus , co-founded in 1943 after a local dry cleaner complained that the war effort ’ s steel consumption had led to a shortage of wire hangers .
( The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Roy Brekle , had previously been reselling used bottle caps to soda makers . )
Magnus III had at first pursued a veterinary career until in college , he says , “ chemistry and biology and I didn ’ t really agree.
” He began loading M & B trucks during summer breaks and has been with the company since ; his son , Milton IV , is now an M & B sales associate , the fourth generation in America ’ s preeminent wire hanger dynasty .
“ Everybody doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ I make hangers.
’ And then : ‘ Oh my goodness , I guess somebody has to.
’ ” “ We don ’ t worship them or anything like that , ” says Magnus III , whose email signature touts M & B ’ s “ unbending commitment.
” “ We just know that our livelihood depends on it.
” Not long ago , the Magnuses had more domestic company in the industry .
As recently as the mid-2000s , the US boasted seven major wire hanger manufacturers ; by the end @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was the last such company standing .
( At least two others , Indy Hanger and U.S. Hanger Co. , have since emerged . )
In a common story of modern capitalism , the wire hanger industry ’ s contraction is tied to increased global competition .
In the early 2000s , Chinese manufacturers began flooding the market with cheaper products — priced lower by an average of 30 percent compared to domestic hangers — that many feared were intended to drive out US competitors , a process known as “ dumping.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ petitioned the US International Trade Commission to issue a report recommending tariffs on Chinese imports .
The ITC ’ s findings were stark : between 2005 and 2007 , Chinese wire hanger imports had increased from one billion hangers annually to 2.7 billion , bringing their share of the US market up from 36 percent to 81 percent .
At the same time , as stateside manufacturers folded , the domestic industry ’ s production capacity halved ; during the course of the investigation alone , two US companies shuttered their factories and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bush administration , which had declined such action in its first term , imposed tariffs on Chinese wire hanger imports .
That drove up prices — an imported box of 500 lept from around $ 17.50 to nearly $ 40 — and triggered a rare wave of media attention concerning its potential effects on dry cleaners and their customers .
Although , as Magnus III argued to NPR at the time , “ If I pay $ 12.95 to have my suit cleaned and that hanger cost [ the cleaner ] a cent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s $ 12.96 and a half .
It ’ s not a factor.
” A follow-up report from the ITC last year illustrated the tariffs ’ effects .
In 2018 , just 25.9 million wire hangers were imported from China , or less than 1 percent of the pre-tariff total .
Yet imports themselves still totaled a sizable 1.45 billion , and their shifting sources over the preceding decade had produced a game of regulatory whack-a-mole : There are now also Obama-era tariffs on hangers imported from Taiwan and Vietnam , where it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shipped and repackaged to evade US customs .
In 2011 , two Tijuana-based importers received jail time in California for similarly rebranding Chinese-made , US-bound hangers as products of Mexico .
Two years ago , a crackdown on one such fraudulent manufacturer in Southeast Asia disrupted the usual supply chain .
Suddenly without a significant source , importers flooded legitimate makers with orders , creating months-long shipment backups .
“ It was panic time , ” says Mike Ross , owner of Massachusetts-based dry cleaner supplier AristoCraft .
Did prices go up as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Ross says .
“ Not dramatically , though.
” In other words , it ’ s unlikely anyone else noticed .
Despite their seeming disposability , discarding wire hangers can be complicated .
One estimate from the US Department of Commerce puts the annual number deposited in landfills at 3.5 billion , which equates to nearly 200 million pounds of steel .
There are ways to reduce consumption ( many dry cleaners accept customers ’ hangers for re-use , and companies like Pennsylvania ’ s Allied Services have collected , cleaned , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recycle ( Magnus , whose company uses recycled steel to make its hangers , sells his extras to a scrap company ) .
But doing so on a mass scale is difficult given that they are so often consumed incidentally and that their shape and coating can be problematic for the machines often used in mass recycling programs .
The US Department of Commerce puts the annual number of hangers deposited in landfills at 3.5 billion In an increasingly eco-conscious consumer culture , this has created an opening for competition .
In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Schulman continued Connecticut ’ s tradition of hanger innovation by offering dry cleaners free biodegradable paper hangers emblazoned with corporate ads , but his company ’ s website is no longer online .
At times , others have cropped up made from corn and wheat .
Yet all have failed to displace the wire hanger for the same reasons that wood and plastic varieties are not your dry cleaner ’ s choice : Wire ones do the job as cheaply as possible .
Which is not to say that wire hangers are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about 20 years ago , 18-inch hangers supplanted 16-inchers as the industry standard , in accordance with the American masses ’ increasing masses .
Around the same time , M & B debuted a more rounded “ knit shirt hanger ” for polos and the like , now one of three-dozen varieties ( along with the Ultimate King Shirt Hanger and Extreme Ultimate Shirt Hanger ) that can be ordered or , more entertainingly , viewed in 3-D animations on the company ’ s website .
Among the industry ’ s biggest threats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Valley-driven trends of casual workplaces and working from home , which reduce the demand for dry cleaning and in turn wire hangers .
One unlikely place wire hangers have maintained their appeal is the well-appointed country residence of former D.C. Comics president Jenette Kahn ( located , appropriately , in Connecticut ) .
Kahn attended the Ricco/Maresca gallery show in 1991 and was reminded of the wire sculptures made by Alexander Calder .
Smitten , she forked over a now-forgotten sum — according to the Times , a quarter of the collection was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to own them for herself .
Nearly three decades on , some two dozen hangers remain displayed on a white wall above a colorful Godley-Schwan sideboard , opposite Sandy Skoglund ’ s 1979 photo “ Hangers.
” “ I ’ ve always been known for my very personal taste , ” explains Kahn , whose decorative flourishes also include Jean Cocteau plates and works by Sots Art pioneers Komar and Melamid .
But even Kahn ’ s appetite had its limit ; she bought but a fraction of the 170 in the original @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I don ’ t know what I would have ever done with 170.
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Twice a week , we ’ ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy , why we buy it , and why it matters .

Billions of wire hangers are used in the US every year. Almost no one buys them.
Share All sharing options for: Billions of wire hangers are used in the US every year. Almost no one buys them.
If you are like many Americans, you likely own or have owned a small collection of the billions (with a b) of wire hangers that are consumed in the US every year. And, also like many Americans, you probably came to your stockpile unwittingly — largely through trips to the dry cleaner — and are familiar with the fit of frustration that comes from opening your closet to find these forgotten objects somehow entangled in a metal mare’s nest.
In the early 1990s, art dealer Frank Maresca had the unusual experience of such a collection being a sort of godsend. He needed a “throwaway show” for his New York City gallery — something simple and easy to occupy a fallow period on the calendar. His friend and artist-collector Harris Diamant offered an unexpected solution: his extensive reserve of vintage clothes hangers.
Maresca, whose Ricco/Maresca Gallery is known for showcasing contemporary outsider art, mounted one of Diamant’s wire hangers on the white gallery wall. Encouraged, he pinned up 169 more. Soon Maresca had an exhibit (“Out of the Closet: American Hangers”) and an accompanying write-up in the New York Times. “Stop laughing,” reporter N.R. Kleinfield told readers. Within a few days, thanks to, ahem, wire services picking up the story, the exhibit went the print-era equivalent of viral. Soon the office fax machine was spitting out messages until they flooded onto the floor. Daily foot traffic increased into the hundreds. The mailman dropped off entire canvas sacks of letters from citizens the world over who hoped to convert their own closets into cultural cachet and/or cash.
An inescapable part of modern life to which everyone can relate but no one pays much attention
“The whole thing was funny,” Maresca says. “I mean, who ever gave a moment’s thought to a hanger?”
Therein lies the unusual status of the wire hanger: an inescapable part of modern life to which everyone can relate but no one pays much attention. A 2007 study by the US International Trade Commission estimated US consumption at 3.3 billion wire hangers annually, or nearly 11 per capita at the time — a figure that does not even account for the wire hangers often included with “floor-ready” garments imported from overseas, as long required by major retailers like Macy’s and Lord and Taylor. Upward of 80 percent of US wire hanger consumption comes via dry cleaners (uniform rental services comprise much of the rest), which employ wire hangers as a means of garment storage and transport so cost-effective they are included with their services.
It is wire hangers’ very ubiquity that may have helped damn them to dangle from the lowest rung on the hanger hierarchy. Of course, it doesn’t help that wire hangers are not particularly good at being hangers, often warping delicate garments that drape from them unevenly, nor that they are still the go-to symbol of illegal abortions in America’s pre-Roe dark days. Their most enduring pop culture moment came in a disturbing and class-conscious depiction of child abuse, when Faye Dunaway famously shrieked “NO... WIRE... HANGERS!” in the 1981 Joan Crawford biopic Mommie Dearest (surely undoing the goodwill engendered by Halloween’s closet scene three years earlier). No less an authority than the so-called Hanger King himself, industry magnate Bernie Spitz, once proclaimed that he would never sell them.
And yet wire hangers pioneered the form. It is commonly held, by those who commonly hold such things, that the hanger’s origins trace to an 1869 patent by a Connecticut man named O.A. North, who designed what he termed an “improvement in clothes-hook” made from “bent-metal rod or wire.” (This crediting is questionable: an 1852 patent for a shoulder-shaped metal wall hanger by fellow Connecticuter W.B. Olds clearly predates North’s, while other predating patents from 1867 and 1868 also more closely resemble modern hangers. If at least some of these were born independent of one another, it would suggest a fitting inevitability.)
It is no coincidence that this time of more obviously groundbreaking invention is what also produced the humble hanger. Not until the Industrial Revolution streamlined the manufacturing and shipping processes did most Americans even own enough garments to warrant considerable storage. Homes built in that era did not typically include closets; most Americans kept unworn clothes folded in chests or hung on wall-mounted rods. (Or, in the case of Thomas Jefferson, on a personal contraption dubbed a “turning-machine.”)
Once people had clothes, they soon had hangers, and once they had hangers they soon had them in excess. As far back as the 1960s, the Times was advising its readers on using wire hangers to construct bird feeders or a skillet to cook fish over a fire. Other extracurricular uses became more common: replacing or augmenting TV antennae, breaking into cars, rescuing misplaced keys and rings and baseballs from sewer grates. Wire hangers have even become a medium for artworks and accessory to a $900 Moschino dress mimicking dry cleaner packaging, while the internet’s DIY economy has reliably employed them as easy fodder for listicles and lifehack videos. The premise of these how-tos is familiar: Of course you have wire hangers and of course they are awaiting better use. They are, always, just sort of there.
When Milton Magnus III was a boy in Alabama, a friend asked what his father did. Magnus told his friend that his father, just like his father before him, manufactured and sold wire hangers. His friend was taken aback. In his childhood naivete, he had never considered that they were manufactured or sold at all. “Everybody doesn’t think about it until someone says, ‘I make hangers,’” Magnus says, “and then: ‘Oh my goodness, I guess somebody has to.’”
Magnus is now president of M&B Hangers, the company his grandfather, also named Milton Magnus, co-founded in 1943 after a local dry cleaner complained that the war effort’s steel consumption had led to a shortage of wire hangers. (The eldest Milton and his business partner, Roy Brekle, had previously been reselling used bottle caps to soda makers.) Magnus III had at first pursued a veterinary career until in college, he says, “chemistry and biology and I didn’t really agree.” He began loading M&B trucks during summer breaks and has been with the company since; his son, Milton IV, is now an M&B sales associate, the fourth generation in America’s preeminent wire hanger dynasty.
“Everybody doesn’t think about it until someone says, ‘I make hangers.’ And then: ‘Oh my goodness, I guess somebody has to.’”
“We don’t worship them or anything like that,” says Magnus III, whose email signature touts M&B’s “unbending commitment.” “We just know that our livelihood depends on it.”
Not long ago, the Magnuses had more domestic company in the industry. As recently as the mid-2000s, the US boasted seven major wire hanger manufacturers; by the end of that decade, M&B was the last such company standing. (At least two others, Indy Hanger and U.S. Hanger Co., have since emerged.) In a common story of modern capitalism, the wire hanger industry’s contraction is tied to increased global competition. In the early 2000s, Chinese manufacturers began flooding the market with cheaper products — priced lower by an average of 30 percent compared to domestic hangers — that many feared were intended to drive out US competitors, a process known as “dumping.”
In 2007, M&B successfully petitioned the US International Trade Commission to issue a report recommending tariffs on Chinese imports. The ITC’s findings were stark: between 2005 and 2007, Chinese wire hanger imports had increased from one billion hangers annually to 2.7 billion, bringing their share of the US market up from 36 percent to 81 percent. At the same time, as stateside manufacturers folded, the domestic industry’s production capacity halved; during the course of the investigation alone, two US companies shuttered their factories and pivoted to importing.
The George W. Bush administration, which had declined such action in its first term, imposed tariffs on Chinese wire hanger imports. That drove up prices — an imported box of 500 lept from around $17.50 to nearly $40 — and triggered a rare wave of media attention concerning its potential effects on dry cleaners and their customers. Although, as Magnus III argued to NPR at the time, “If I pay $12.95 to have my suit cleaned and that hanger cost [the cleaner] a cent and a half more, that’s $12.96 and a half. It’s not a factor.”
A follow-up report from the ITC last year illustrated the tariffs’ effects. In 2018, just 25.9 million wire hangers were imported from China, or less than 1 percent of the pre-tariff total. Yet imports themselves still totaled a sizable 1.45 billion, and their shifting sources over the preceding decade had produced a game of regulatory whack-a-mole: There are now also Obama-era tariffs on hangers imported from Taiwan and Vietnam, where it was determined that Chinese products were being shipped and repackaged to evade US customs. In 2011, two Tijuana-based importers received jail time in California for similarly rebranding Chinese-made, US-bound hangers as products of Mexico.
Two years ago, a crackdown on one such fraudulent manufacturer in Southeast Asia disrupted the usual supply chain. Suddenly without a significant source, importers flooded legitimate makers with orders, creating months-long shipment backups. “It was panic time,” says Mike Ross, owner of Massachusetts-based dry cleaner supplier AristoCraft. Did prices go up as a result? “They did,” Ross says. “Not dramatically, though.” In other words, it’s unlikely anyone else noticed.
Despite their seeming disposability, discarding wire hangers can be complicated. One estimate from the US Department of Commerce puts the annual number deposited in landfills at 3.5 billion, which equates to nearly 200 million pounds of steel. There are ways to reduce consumption (many dry cleaners accept customers’ hangers for re-use, and companies like Pennsylvania’s Allied Services have collected, cleaned, and re-circulated millions) and ways to recycle (Magnus, whose company uses recycled steel to make its hangers, sells his extras to a scrap company). But doing so on a mass scale is difficult given that they are so often consumed incidentally and that their shape and coating can be problematic for the machines often used in mass recycling programs.
The US Department of Commerce puts the annual number of hangers deposited in landfills at 3.5 billion
In an increasingly eco-conscious consumer culture, this has created an opening for competition. In the late 2000s, an entrepreneur named J.D. Schulman continued Connecticut’s tradition of hanger innovation by offering dry cleaners free biodegradable paper hangers emblazoned with corporate ads, but his company’s website is no longer online. At times, others have cropped up made from corn and wheat. Yet all have failed to displace the wire hanger for the same reasons that wood and plastic varieties are not your dry cleaner’s choice: Wire ones do the job as cheaply as possible.
Which is not to say that wire hangers are completely insulated from outside pressures. Beginning about 20 years ago, 18-inch hangers supplanted 16-inchers as the industry standard, in accordance with the American masses’ increasing masses. Around the same time, M&B debuted a more rounded “knit shirt hanger” for polos and the like, now one of three-dozen varieties (along with the Ultimate King Shirt Hanger and Extreme Ultimate Shirt Hanger) that can be ordered or, more entertainingly, viewed in 3-D animations on the company’s website. Among the industry’s biggest threats, says Magnus, are the Silicon Valley-driven trends of casual workplaces and working from home, which reduce the demand for dry cleaning and in turn wire hangers.
One unlikely place wire hangers have maintained their appeal is the well-appointed country residence of former D.C. Comics president Jenette Kahn (located, appropriately, in Connecticut). Kahn attended the Ricco/Maresca gallery show in 1991 and was reminded of the wire sculptures made by Alexander Calder. Smitten, she forked over a now-forgotten sum — according to the Times, a quarter of the collection was listed for $15,000 — in order to own them for herself.
Nearly three decades on, some two dozen hangers remain displayed on a white wall above a colorful Godley-Schwan sideboard, opposite Sandy Skoglund’s 1979 photo “Hangers.” “I’ve always been known for my very personal taste,” explains Kahn, whose decorative flourishes also include Jean Cocteau plates and works by Sots Art pioneers Komar and Melamid.
But even Kahn’s appetite had its limit; she bought but a fraction of the 170 in the original gallery exhibition. Says Kahn, “I don’t know what I would have ever done with 170.”
Sign up for The Goods’ newsletter. Twice a week, we’ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters.


vox--2020-02-06--What happens next in the coronavirus outbreak? We mapped 8 scenarios.

We ’ re at a pivotal moment in the outbreak of the new coronavirus in China .
Depending on whom you ask , we ’ re either already in a pandemic , meaning there are ongoing epidemics of the virus on two or more continents ; we ’ re hurtling toward one ; or we ’ re on the path to averting a spiraling crisis .
As of February 6 , more than 28,000 people have been infected with 2019-nCoV , as the respiratory virus is known , and 565 people have died .
There are also nearly 200 cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one death in the Philippines .
This toll represents a tragic and stunning increase from a month ago , when it looked like there were no more than 50 patients with the virus in Wuhan , the mainland Chinese city where the virus is thought to have originated .
There ’ s still so much we don ’ t know about 2019-nCoV , including how exactly it ’ s transmitted , where it ’ s spreading , and how deadly it is .
And that uncertainty is important because viruses have funny ways @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flu , ” which was a pandemic , turned out to be much less deadly than feared .
( A disease can be pandemic and not particularly severe . )
Ebola , meanwhile , was known to science for decades and then behaved in ways that caught infectious disease experts off guard during the 2014-2016 epidemic in West Africa .
Given the unknowns about 2019-nCoV , in the coming days and weeks , we ’ re in for some twists and turns .
For now , many experts believe this outbreak could get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health system , spreading in poorer countries with weaker health systems , and sickening and killing thousands more people along the way .
Alternatively , it could get much better , with new cases and deaths steadily dropping .
Here are the key factors that will determine which way it goes .
4 ways this outbreak could take a turn for the worse 1 ) China can ’ t contain the new coronavirus China first reported this outbreak to the World Health Organization on December 31 , 2019 .
Since then , scientific @ @ @ @ @ @ @ began spreading several months earlier , sometime last fall .
Either way , this means that in just the span of a few months , the virus has infected at least 28,000 people in China and spread around the world .
That ’ s an unusually rapid rise for a brand new virus .
It ’ s also stunning when you consider the draconian measures China has taken to control the virus , including an unprecedented quarantine of more than 50 million people .
And there is the very real possibility that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because China may not have the capacity to find and detect new cases , people with mild illnesses may not be going to the hospital and therefore won ’ t be counted , and other countries may not be looking for cases ( more on that in a second ) .
Plus , there have also been questions about China ’ s willingness to share data — and whether officials there are honestly reporting the extent of the problem .
According to a new model , published in The Lancet by academics at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people may have been infected in Wuhan alone as of January 25 .
So what does all this mean ?
“ The way it ’ s looking , if it continues to accelerate , we very well may have a pandemic , ” said Tony Fauci , the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases .
There will be more sicknesses and deaths not only in China , but also in other countries around the world , as cases grow from one-off travelers or small clusters to full-blown outbreaks .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that “ you don ’ t try to control [ the virus ] because it ’ s already everywhere.
” So public health officials would move from attempting containment of the virus to mitigating its impact — setting up hospitals to isolate and care for patients , making recommendations for “ social distancing ” ( like canceling public events ) , and coming up with triaging protocols for the many people who might need hospital care .
2 ) The new coronavirus spreads in countries with weak health systems Of particular concern is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spreading in countries with weaker health systems , where officials would have an even harder time limiting the spread than China has .
Or maybe it already is .
“ For all we know , this is already endemic in multiple countries , ” said Tom Frieden , the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
“ If this spreads widely like the common cold , not even China can control the common cold.
” China is an upper-middle-income country with a world-class network of scientists , a reasonable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and a robust disease detection network , meant to pick up new outbreaks as they happen .
But many countries around the world don ’ t have these advantages .
That ’ s part of the reason , for example , it took months to identify the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa , which eventually sickened more than 28,000 people and killed 11,000 .
Saad Omer , director of the Yale Institute for Global Health , says outbreaks in these low-resource settings pose a particular concern — and not only because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ missed .
“ We know a disease ’ s [ lethality ] differs by population , ” Omer said .
“ It ’ s better when a health care system is more robust and worse when the health system is an issue.
” So even if this new coronavirus doesn ’ t look very deadly in China right now , the same may not be true for countries in Africa .
And Africa may be at particular risk given its links with China , with more than a million Chinese workers there .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ than it seems right now One hallmark of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 was that it didn ’ t just prey on the very young and old ; it killed seemingly healthy people in the prime of their lives .
And even though the case fatality rate — or number of deaths per person infected — was just 2.5 percent , because the world ’ s population was naive to the virus , and the virus could spread easily and kill broad swaths of the population , that 2.5 percent meant 20 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the time the pandemic was over .
With the new coronavirus , “ the deaths still appear to be in people who are at risk of dying of other respiratory diseases — elderly and people with underlying health conditions , ” said Jennifer Nuzzo , an infectious disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security .
So unlike Spanish flu , the novel virus doesn ’ t yet appear to be killing otherwise healthy , young people .
But 2019-nCoV ’ s case fatality rate is also hovering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nuzzo added in the same breath .
( It may be slightly higher in Hubei , China ’ s hardest-hit province and home to Wuhan . )
If this holds , “ that would be bad because of the numbers it ’ s infecting.
” In the worst-case scenario of a global pandemic , a 2 percent case fatality could “ translate to a lot of illnesses and deaths.
” In the past week , Russia , Singapore , and Australia have sealed their borders to China while the US government dramatically escalated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emergency , issuing its highest-level travel advisory ( which essentially reads “ don ’ t go to China ” ) , and temporarily barring foreign nationals who have recently been to China from coming in .
The fallout from these moves is affecting much more than public health ; it ’ s threatening everything from the global economy to China ’ s manufacturing industry , and even business at Chinese restaurants far from the hot zone .
Reports are already piling up to suggest this virus — and the global reaction to it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chinese individuals facing new kinds of discrimination .
And that ’ s on top of the reports of food and medical supply shortages in China .
Beyond the psychological and economic toll , isolating China could have far-reaching effects on the outbreak response — namely , spreading fear and driving cases underground .
“ [ It ] sends a signal to other countries who may worry the US [ or other countries ] will ban travel and make it harder for them in other ways , ” said Nuzzo .
And that isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reporting of outbreaks beyond China .
In fact , other countries may have an incentive to hide cases .
“ Right now we ’ re focused on the disease coming from China to the US , ” said former “ Ebola czar ” Ron Klain , “ but soon it could come from other countries to the US.
” If countries aren ’ t reporting what ’ s happening within their borders , stemming the spread of this disease will be even harder .
4 things that could unfold that would prevent a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ situation would be China containing this virus so that it stops spreading internally and around the world .
In an interview with Stat , the head of WHO ’ s Emergencies Program told reporter Helen Branswell that he still believes containment is possible .
“ That is not to say that the disease won ’ t get ahead of the Chinese authorities completely or get ahead of the other countries that are containing it , ” the WHO ’ s Mike Ryan said .
“ But there ’ s enough evidence to suggest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Ryan pointed to evidence suggesting the virus isn ’ t as transmissible as it might seem right now — including the low rate of infections within households when one person is infected , and the seemingly low number of health care worker infections .
2 ) Local clusters of the disease in other countries don ’ t grow Relatedly , no country where the virus is known to have spread has declared a local outbreak yet .
( That ’ s why the US government is firm that the risk to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ low , even though there are now nearly a dozen cases in the US . )
“ Right now , it ’ s clearly an epidemic in China and whether it becomes a pandemic is going to depend on whether there ’ s sustained transmission in multiple locations around the globe , ” said Fauci .
“ And right now , the majority of non-China infections are travel-related.
” If that trend continues , and the virus isn ’ t yet moving into communities outside China , it ’ ll minimize the risk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus can ’ t spread in poorer countries with hotter climates Among the many mysteries of the new coronavirus : We don ’ t know how it behaves in places with hot climates , such as countries in Southern Africa .
“ Coronaviruses are winter viruses , ” Fauci said .
“ When the weather is warm and moist , these viruses don ’ t spread as well as when the weather is cold and dry.
” While it remains a concern that developing countries in the global south don ’ t have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and do contact tracing , “ The somewhat encouraging news is that the weather in some of those countries is warm and moist ... [ which ] favors against the spread of the coronavirus since it ’ s fundamentally a winter disease , ” Fauci said .
4 ) We learn the virus is not as deadly as it seems With SARS in 2003 , China delayed reporting the outbreak for months .
Then it took several more months to identify the virus causing the disease and develop diagnostics to find infections .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ sequenced within days of its discovery and immediately , countries around the world were able to diagnose cases .
Nuzzo wondered if this immediate diagnostic capability has meant we ’ re finding more cases faster — as well as more mild cases , inflating the numbers and making the outbreak look worse than SARS did initially .
At the same time , we might learn that the disease , while severe enough to have taken the lives of nearly 500 people , is not as deadly as it seems right now .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more asymptomatic cases , the case fatality rate will go down .
“ What I have long suspected is that the 2 percent [ case fatality rate ] may not be right , ” Nuzzo said .
“ We could be 10,000-fold off in our case numbers.
” In the best-case scenario , this outbreak might look more like H1N1 swine flu than SARS or Spanish flu .
When H1N1 was first recognized in 2009 and spread around the world , there were major concerns about its deadliness .
US schools closed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they arrived in other countries , flights were canceled .
Not only did those measures fail to contain the virus , Nuzzo said , it turned out H1N1 wasn ’ t all that deadly .
“ Now we ’ re still living with that virus — it ’ s one that circulates with every flu season , ” Nuzzo explained .
“ I am increasingly in belief that we ’ re in a pandemic , ” she added .
“ When you deal with 25 countries that are reporting cases , case counts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actions being taken — that signals we ’ re in a pandemic.
” But whether this one will look like SARS , H1N1 , or Spanish flu is still very much up for investigation and debate .

We’re at a pivotal moment in the outbreak of the new coronavirus in China. Depending on whom you ask, we’re either already in a pandemic, meaning there are ongoing epidemics of the virus on two or more continents; we’re hurtling toward one; or we’re on the path to averting a spiraling crisis.
As of February 6, more than 28,000 people have been infected with 2019-nCoV, as the respiratory virus is known, and 565 people have died. There are also nearly 200 cases in 26 countries besides China, including one death in the Philippines. This toll represents a tragic and stunning increase from a month ago, when it looked like there were no more than 50 patients with the virus in Wuhan, the mainland Chinese city where the virus is thought to have originated.
There’s still so much we don’t know about 2019-nCoV, including how exactly it’s transmitted, where it’s spreading, and how deadly it is. And that uncertainty is important because viruses have funny ways of surprising us: H1N1 “swine flu,” which was a pandemic, turned out to be much less deadly than feared. (A disease can be pandemic and not particularly severe.) Ebola, meanwhile, was known to science for decades and then behaved in ways that caught infectious disease experts off guard during the 2014-2016 epidemic in West Africa.
Given the unknowns about 2019-nCoV, in the coming days and weeks, we’re in for some twists and turns. For now, many experts believe this outbreak could get a lot worse: burdening the Chinese health system, spreading in poorer countries with weaker health systems, and sickening and killing thousands more people along the way. Alternatively, it could get much better, with new cases and deaths steadily dropping. Here are the key factors that will determine which way it goes.
4 ways this outbreak could take a turn for the worse
1) China can’t contain the new coronavirus
China first reported this outbreak to the World Health Organization on December 31, 2019. Since then, scientific reports have emerged suggesting the disease likely began spreading several months earlier, sometime last fall. Either way, this means that in just the span of a few months, the virus has infected at least 28,000 people in China and spread around the world. That’s an unusually rapid rise for a brand new virus. It’s also stunning when you consider the draconian measures China has taken to control the virus, including an unprecedented quarantine of more than 50 million people.
And there is the very real possibility that the true case toll is even higher — because China may not have the capacity to find and detect new cases, people with mild illnesses may not be going to the hospital and therefore won’t be counted, and other countries may not be looking for cases (more on that in a second).
Plus, there have also been questions about China’s willingness to share data — and whether officials there are honestly reporting the extent of the problem. According to a new model, published in The Lancet by academics at the University of Hong Kong, 75,000 people may have been infected in Wuhan alone as of January 25.
So what does all this mean?
“The way it’s looking, if it continues to accelerate, we very well may have a pandemic,” said Tony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. There will be more sicknesses and deaths not only in China, but also in other countries around the world, as cases grow from one-off travelers or small clusters to full-blown outbreaks.
It also suggests, he added, that “you don’t try to control [the virus] because it’s already everywhere.” So public health officials would move from attempting containment of the virus to mitigating its impact — setting up hospitals to isolate and care for patients, making recommendations for “social distancing” (like canceling public events), and coming up with triaging protocols for the many people who might need hospital care.
2) The new coronavirus spreads in countries with weak health systems
Of particular concern is the potential that the virus could start spreading in countries with weaker health systems, where officials would have an even harder time limiting the spread than China has. Or maybe it already is. “For all we know, this is already endemic in multiple countries,” said Tom Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “If this spreads widely like the common cold, not even China can control the common cold.”
China is an upper-middle-income country with a world-class network of scientists, a reasonable number of health care workers per person, and a robust disease detection network, meant to pick up new outbreaks as they happen.
But many countries around the world don’t have these advantages. That’s part of the reason, for example, it took months to identify the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which eventually sickened more than 28,000 people and killed 11,000.
Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, says outbreaks in these low-resource settings pose a particular concern — and not only because they’re more likely to be missed.
“We know a disease’s [lethality] differs by population,” Omer said. “It’s better when a health care system is more robust and worse when the health system is an issue.” So even if this new coronavirus doesn’t look very deadly in China right now, the same may not be true for countries in Africa. And Africa may be at particular risk given its links with China, with more than a million Chinese workers there.
3) The virus is actually deadlier than it seems right now
One hallmark of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 was that it didn’t just prey on the very young and old; it killed seemingly healthy people in the prime of their lives. And even though the case fatality rate — or number of deaths per person infected — was just 2.5 percent, because the world’s population was naive to the virus, and the virus could spread easily and kill broad swaths of the population, that 2.5 percent meant 20 million to 50 million people died by the time the pandemic was over.
With the new coronavirus, “the deaths still appear to be in people who are at risk of dying of other respiratory diseases — elderly and people with underlying health conditions,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an infectious disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. So unlike Spanish flu, the novel virus doesn’t yet appear to be killing otherwise healthy, young people.
But 2019-nCoV’s case fatality rate is also hovering around 2 percent at the moment, Nuzzo added in the same breath. (It may be slightly higher in Hubei, China’s hardest-hit province and home to Wuhan.)
If this holds, “that would be bad because of the numbers it’s infecting.” In the worst-case scenario of a global pandemic, a 2 percent case fatality could “translate to a lot of illnesses and deaths.”
4) Travel bans isolate countries, spread xenophobia — and exacerbate outbreaks
In the past week, Russia, Singapore, and Australia have sealed their borders to China while the US government dramatically escalated its response — declaring a public health emergency, issuing its highest-level travel advisory (which essentially reads “don’t go to China”), and temporarily barring foreign nationals who have recently been to China from coming in.
The fallout from these moves is affecting much more than public health; it’s threatening everything from the global economy to China’s manufacturing industry, and even business at Chinese restaurants far from the hot zone.
Reports are already piling up to suggest this virus — and the global reaction to it — has exacerbated anti-Chinese sentiment, with Chinese individuals facing new kinds of discrimination. And that’s on top of the reports of food and medical supply shortages in China.
Beyond the psychological and economic toll, isolating China could have far-reaching effects on the outbreak response — namely, spreading fear and driving cases underground.
“[It] sends a signal to other countries who may worry the US [or other countries] will ban travel and make it harder for them in other ways,” said Nuzzo. And that isn’t exactly an enticement for honest reporting of outbreaks beyond China. In fact, other countries may have an incentive to hide cases.
“Right now we’re focused on the disease coming from China to the US,” said former “Ebola czar” Ron Klain, “but soon it could come from other countries to the US.” If countries aren’t reporting what’s happening within their borders, stemming the spread of this disease will be even harder.
4 things that could unfold that would prevent a pandemic
1) China contains the virus
The best salve for the current situation would be China containing this virus so that it stops spreading internally and around the world.
In an interview with Stat, the head of WHO’s Emergencies Program told reporter Helen Branswell that he still believes containment is possible.
“That is not to say that the disease won’t get ahead of the Chinese authorities completely or get ahead of the other countries that are containing it,” the WHO’s Mike Ryan said. “But there’s enough evidence to suggest that this virus can still be contained.”
Ryan pointed to evidence suggesting the virus isn’t as transmissible as it might seem right now — including the low rate of infections within households when one person is infected, and the seemingly low number of health care worker infections.
2) Local clusters of the disease in other countries don’t grow
Relatedly, no country where the virus is known to have spread has declared a local outbreak yet. (That’s why the US government is firm that the risk to the general American public of this coronavirus remains low, even though there are now nearly a dozen cases in the US.)
“Right now, it’s clearly an epidemic in China and whether it becomes a pandemic is going to depend on whether there’s sustained transmission in multiple locations around the globe,” said Fauci. “And right now, the majority of non-China infections are travel-related.” If that trend continues, and the virus isn’t yet moving into communities outside China, it’ll minimize the risk of a pandemic.
3) The virus can’t spread in poorer countries with hotter climates
Among the many mysteries of the new coronavirus: We don’t know how it behaves in places with hot climates, such as countries in Southern Africa.
“Coronaviruses are winter viruses,” Fauci said. “When the weather is warm and moist, these viruses don’t spread as well as when the weather is cold and dry.”
While it remains a concern that developing countries in the global south don’t have the health systems to detect the virus and do contact tracing, “The somewhat encouraging news is that the weather in some of those countries is warm and moist ... [which] favors against the spread of the coronavirus since it’s fundamentally a winter disease,” Fauci said.
4) We learn the virus is not as deadly as it seems
With SARS in 2003, China delayed reporting the outbreak for months. Then it took several more months to identify the virus causing the disease and develop diagnostics to find infections.
By contrast, the new coronavirus was sequenced within days of its discovery and immediately, countries around the world were able to diagnose cases.
Nuzzo wondered if this immediate diagnostic capability has meant we’re finding more cases faster — as well as more mild cases, inflating the numbers and making the outbreak look worse than SARS did initially.
At the same time, we might learn that the disease, while severe enough to have taken the lives of nearly 500 people, is not as deadly as it seems right now.
If more cases are discovered, or even more asymptomatic cases, the case fatality rate will go down. “What I have long suspected is that the 2 percent [case fatality rate] may not be right,” Nuzzo said. “We could be 10,000-fold off in our case numbers.”
In the best-case scenario, this outbreak might look more like H1N1 swine flu than SARS or Spanish flu. When H1N1 was first recognized in 2009 and spread around the world, there were major concerns about its deadliness. US schools closed, people from North America were quarantined when they arrived in other countries, flights were canceled. Not only did those measures fail to contain the virus, Nuzzo said, it turned out H1N1 wasn’t all that deadly.
“Now we’re still living with that virus — it’s one that circulates with every flu season,” Nuzzo explained.
“I am increasingly in belief that we’re in a pandemic,” she added. “When you deal with 25 countries that are reporting cases, case counts that continue to grow despite very aggressive actions being taken — that signals we’re in a pandemic.” But whether this one will look like SARS, H1N1, or Spanish flu is still very much up for investigation and debate.


vox--2020-02-05--Acronym, the dark money group behind the Iowa caucuses app meltdown, explained

This isn ’ t how Acronym wanted to rocket onto the national stage .
The Iowa caucuses debacle drew a lot of attention to a new app made by a company called Shadow that was at the center of many technical failures of the evening .
And it ’ s also putting scrutiny on Acronym — the Democratic group that backed Shadow — which has sought the spotlight in recent months , though probably didn ’ t hope for this situation .
Acronym is a relatively new Democratic group that launched in 2017 and got active around the 2018 midterms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in a word , complex .
Acronym is a nonprofit , but it also has a political action committee — under its nonprofit are for-profit entities that its nonprofit sometimes pays into .
It is brazen and ambitious , which is not unique for a political strategy group , but it ’ s also somewhat shadowy and secretive .
And it ’ s been trying to distance itself from the Iowa debacle , even though it ’ s really at the center of the storm .
Acronym is a lot of things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to political media , you ’ ve probably noticed stories about Acronym popping up here and there in recent months .
In November , the New York Times covered its plan to launch a $ 75 million digital advertising campaign to counter President Donald Trump in 2020 , and the Wall Street Journal profiled a former Facebook employee who was embedded in the Trump campaign in 2016 and has since joined Acronym ’ s ranks .
Bloomberg wrote about the Courier Newsroom , a for-profit media company under Acronym ’ s umbrella that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ news , countering a tactic often employed by the right .
Acronym ’ s CEO , Tara McGowan , has quickly become a high-profile figure in Democratic politics and digital strategy .
Acronym talks a big game when it comes to its political strategy prowess — though it ’ s new enough and opaque enough that it ’ s not entirely clear what the organization is actually delivering .
Now that Shadow , one of the companies affiliated with Acronym , is under the microscope , Acronym is too .
In the wake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has tried to distance itself from Shadow .
In a statement , spokesperson Kyle Tharp said that Acronym just happens to be an investor in the firm , along with others .
“ Acronym is a nonprofit organization and not a technology company , ” Tharp said .
Except it ’ s more complicated than that .
Shadow is a tech company , and both Acronym and Shadow have described their relationship as an acquisition , not an investment , in the past and on multiple occasions .
Acronym and McGowan in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — McGowan has often touted it on Twitter and talked about it on a podcast as recently as last month .
But now , Acronym has scrubbed its website of mentions of launching Shadow and says it ’ s just one of multiple investors along for the ride .
Acronym ’ s decision to distance itself from Shadow — or perhaps lying about it altogether — is making the situation worse , not better .
“ I don ’ t think they ’ re evil , but in their thirst to take over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ donor money , they leveraged their political connections to get contracts that they didn ’ t have the expertise to fulfill , ” one Democratic strategist told me .
“ There ’ s this whole group of organizations that are feeding each other , and they ’ re ultimately all controlled by the same group of people ” But there ’ s a lot more to Acronym than Shadow .
Under its nonprofit umbrella are multiple for-profit operations beyond Shadow , including the digital media operation Courier Newsroom and Lockwood Strategy , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Acronym also operates a political action committee called Pacronym and publishes a podcast hosted by McGowan as well as a weekly newsletter .
“ There ’ s this whole group of organizations that are feeding each other , and they ’ re ultimately all controlled by the same group of people , ” another strategist said .
Acronym has for months been building itself up as one of the loudest players in the room in Democratic strategy .
Now , people are starting to look under the hood .
Acronym did not return @ @ @ @ @ @ @ On Wednesday evening , McGowan published a lengthy post on Medium as well as a series of tweets attempting to clarify the situation .
She sought to cast Acronym as an investor in many of its projects , though she did acknowledge some “ warts ” in Shadow ’ s operations and wrote that “ progress requires taking calculated risks and doing things differently.
” McGowan also appeared to distance herself and Acronym from Shadow .
She did not acknowledge Acronym ’ s attempts to downplay its relationship with Shadow , including altering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ since 2017 — and its reputation has skyrocketed in recent months McGowan , 34 , has deep ties to the Democratic Party and has worked in Democratic circles for years .
She started her career as a journalist and according to her LinkedIn profile got into politics when she worked as press secretary for Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island in 2010 .
Then in 2011 , she went over to the Obama White House where she worked as a digital producer , after which she had stints at Tom Steyer ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later headed digital strategy at Democratic super PAC Priorities USA Action .
In early 2017 , McGowan founded Lockwood Strategy , a digital strategy firm she still runs .
A month later , she launched Acronym .
On its website , Acronym describes itself as a “ values-driven organization focused on advancing progressive causes through innovative communications , advertising , and organizing programs.
” The organization claims that its affiliated PAC helped get 65 progressive candidates elected in 2018 with “ new tech and digital-first strategies to register and turn out voters.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s development in recent years : its intertwining with Facebook , its ability to get good press , and , in turn , its growing popularity with donors .
In September 2019 , Ozy profiled McGowan as the Democrats ’ “ most dangerous digital strategist.
” In November 2019 , the New York Times ran a splashy story about Acronym ’ s plan to raise $ 75 million to push back against President Donald Trump on Facebook .
The organization had raised only about 40 percent of that amount at the time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Brad Parscale , has cultivated a public reputation for himself as a political digital guru — which , depending on who you ask , is or is not an accurate portrayal — and Acronym plans to answer that .
And it has some big names in tow , the most prominent being former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe , who told the Times that the idea behind the effort was to have a Facebook ads mechanism in place before the Democratic Party ’ s nominee has been picked .
“ Our nominee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , have to pull together the party and turn around on a dime and run a race for a completely different audience , ” he said .
Weeks later , the Wall Street Journal published a profile of James Barnes , a former Facebook employee who had been embedded with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential race .
The 2,500-word story cast Barnes as a figure who had seen the light and come over to the Democrats ’ side with Acronym to try to undo what he ’ d done in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the only former Facebooker in Acronym ’ s ranks ; earlier in the day on Monday , hours ahead of the caucuses , a former Facebook data scientist announced he was joining the organization .
McGowan herself has become an increasingly common fixture in media stories , often commenting on the issues of the day .
( Acronym has spoken with and sent statements to Vox about digital political strategy in the past . )
When Google announced it would limit microtargeting around political ads , igniting speculation Facebook might follow suit , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wouldn ’ t curb disinformation but would instead “ hinder campaigns and others who are already working against the tide of bad actors to reach voters with facts.
” She said the decision affects Google ’ s ad inventory as well as inventory across the internet .
“ They are essentially using their market power to limit how campaigns can speak to voters where they get their information , ” she said .
But there are indicators that things within Acronym are not as seamless as they would appear from the outside .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is “ far and away the most disorganized place I ’ ve ever been a part of.
” According to the staffer , leadership says it ’ s just the “ startup environment ” of a new company , but it ’ s unclear how many people work at Acronym , or who they work for .
There are a lot of blurred lines between the various Acronym outfits — for example , job links on the Courier News website redirect to Lockwood Strategy .
Acronym has gained popularity with big donors , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a dark money group .
That means donations to its 501 ( c ) ( 4 ) nonprofit don ’ t have to be reported , and we don ’ t entirely know who their money is coming from — or how much they have .
But Federal Election Commission filings show Acronym ’ s PAC , Pacronym , is doing pretty well .
Billionaire hedge funder Seth Klarman gave $ 1.5 million to the PAC in the fourth quarter of last year , venture capitalist Michael Moritz $ 1 million , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ among others .
As Recode ’ s Teddy Schleifer pointed out this week , the donation was Moritz ’ s first since 2011 , and his largest disclosed political contribution ever .
To raise that much money and obtain such a high profile , an organization like Acronym has to talk a big game .
That ’ s what some of the four Democratic strategists I spoke with — all on the condition of anonymity so they could speak freely on the matter — see as part of the problem .
Acronym knows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those who are eager to get in on the next big thing , to buy into what it ’ s selling .
“ Their pitch is that everyone is doing it wrong , and they ’ re here to disrupt and innovate , ” one Democratic strategist told me .
“ And they don ’ t always follow through with that in a successful way.
” “ On paper it sounds great , ” another strategist said .
“ Investors want to invest in shiny , new , cutting-edge things , but there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evidence there.
” Part of the issue is that Acronym ’ s structure is complex , unusual , and opaque .
Its major plank may be a nonprofit , but the entities under it are not .
McGowan runs Lockwood Strategy and is , presumably , paying herself a salary out of the companies coffers , which is not illegal .
Shadow and the Courier Newsroom are also private companies .
So sometimes , when Acronym makes public pronouncements about what it ’ s going to do and spend on , it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coming from — or where it ’ s ending up .
For example , in October , Acronym said it would spend $ 1 million on digital impeachment ads in swing states .
And its FEC filings show that many independent expenditures for digital ad buys against Trump were filtered through Lockwood Strategies , which McGowan runs .
That ’ s all really hard to track .
“ With public pronouncements about things they ’ re doing that don ’ t happen , there ’ s less transparency about why , ” one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ raised questions about the Courier Newsroom , which runs hypertargeted local news with a lean to the left .
Last year , McGowan told Bloomberg that Courier Newsroom planned to focus on six swing states — Arizona , Michigan , North Carolina , Pennsylvania , Virginia , and Wisconsin — and “ fill the news deserts , deliver the facts favorable to Democrats that [ McGowan thinks ] voters are missing , and counter right-wing spin.
” While politically biased news is hardly a new phenomenon in American politics — look at Fox @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for example — the Courier Newsroom launch did raise some eyebrows .
If this were a Republican operative declaring its strategy like this , a lot of Democrats probably would have criticized it .
So the reaction from the left has been a bit awkward .
Lachlan Markay at the Daily Beast drilled down on what ’ s so odd about Acronym ’ s approach : Acronym ’ s founders made a bet that donors are often willing to throw money at vague digital projects , especially amid anxieties about the 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in terms of online and data strategy .
And so they ’ ve built out a complex organization that lets them raise money and spend money — including on themselves — with their actual impact remaining unclear .
At least until Iowa .
Acronym ’ s founders made a bet that donors are often willing to throw money at vague digital projects Acronym changed its story after the Iowa caucuses screw-up Sometimes , despite the best of intentions , technologies fail .
And when they do , many would argue that the best @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tech to own up to the problem and quickly try to fix it .
But that has not happened in Iowa .
This is not to say that Acronym is to blame for the meltdown in the Iowa caucuses .
However , it ’ s become increasingly clear that the organization hurried to distance itself from the situation .
After it came out that the Shadow-built app , which according to Vice was called the IowaReporterApp , was at the center of the Iowa caucuses delays , Acronym came out with a statement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the tech company .
It read , in part : But the tenuous relationship described in the statement above doesn ’ t appear to be accurate .
Or at the very least , both Acronym and Shadow have described their relationship differently in the past .
Shadow was initially a tech firm named Groundbase , founded by Hillary Clinton campaign veterans Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis and funded by progressive nonprofit Higher Ground Labs .
The company was struggling after its campaign texting platform failed to take off , and Acronym stepped in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from going bankrupt .
They launched Shadow from there and new products , including an email app that was supposed to help the Democratic Party centralize its data .
In a 2019 article , Shadow described its flagship product as a “ universal adapter for political data and technology.
” In practice , what that means is pretty indecipherable .
Acronym distancing itself from Shadow is a new development .
In 2019 , McGowan celebrated acquiring Groundbase and marketed the company openly on Twitter .
Acronym put it on its website as well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doesn ’ t own Shadow entirely , the organization has previously said it is “ launching ” Shadow and described the deal as an acquisition .
On LinkedIn , Niemira lists himself as a former Acronym employee .
The problem is , Acronym left a lot of evidence that suggests it used to have a much closer relationship with Shadow than it ’ s now admitting to .
According to the Intercept , for instance , Acronym and Shadow share an office space in Denver , Colorado , and as recently as last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ sole investor ” in Shadow .
The , well , shadow around Shadow has been part of what ’ s so weird about the Iowa debacle .
Prior to Monday , Shadow ’ s involvement in the Iowa caucuses had been kept secret .
The Iowa Democrats said they were using a new app , but they wouldn ’ t name it , arguing that it was a security precaution to keep it from being hacked .
Had they not been secretive about it , maybe someone would have noticed the problems @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Multiple sources told the Times that the app was under-tested and that caucus volunteers were poorly trained on how to use it .
Curiously , David Plouffe was asked about Acronym and Shadow on MSNBC on Monday as the Iowa caucuses debacle unfolded .
Plouffe , seemingly unfamiliar with the app , said he didn ’ t know about it and had spoken via text with the CEO — presumably McGowan — who confirmed that Acronym was an investor in the tech .
“ I have no knowledge of Shadow or what ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s entirely possible that Plouffe hadn ’ t heard of Shadow , as a board member whose main role seems to be to boost the group ’ s profile and fundraising .
The Acronym team seems to have decided to stick with that distancing of ties to the app .
Regardless of the level of Acronym ’ s involvement , it still remains unclear how Shadow managed to release such a problematic app for such an event as important as the Iowa caucuses .
One strategist I spoke with speculated this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an overly ambitious agreement between Shadow and the Iowa Democratic Party , which reportedly paid just $ 60,000 for the app .
Perhaps there was just too much excitement over the new , shiny thing .
“ This has all the markings of a pet project of someone who says , ‘ Oh , we can do that , ’ ” the strategist said .
“ You let a company that has no track record just build the most important thing you ’ ve probably done in the last decade , and yeah @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Was Iowa just a massive screw-up , or is there something more nefarious at foot ?
At best , Acronym ’ s behavior around Shadow could be described as odd .
That and the Iowa Democratic Party ’ s initial secrecy around its relationship with Shadow has led to a number of conspiracy theories around the app malfunction and results delay .
Some Bernie Sanders supporters have suggested this is an effort to undermine the Vermont senator , who prior to the caucuses was leading the polls , and boost a more establishment-friendly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Some on Trump ’ s side have claimed this amounts to rigging the election as well .
And after the Des Moines Register ’ s Iowa poll was pulled from being released over the weekend , suspicions and conspiracies had already been afoot .
Shadow is raising even more suspicion now that its work with Democratic candidates has also been revealed .
Buttigieg , Joe Biden , and plenty of others have paid Shadow for services , and in the past , McGowan has expressed her support for Buttigieg .
( McGowan ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Buttigieg . )
Some Acronym employees have previously worked for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and are well-connected among Democratic insiders .
Many on the left — especially Sanders supporters who believe the cards were stacked in favor of Clinton in the 2016 election — are highly skeptical of the legitimacy of the Democratic primary .
During the last election , the Democratic National Committee held few debates and at awkward times , which some alleged was an effort to keep Sanders from getting airtime , and undertook other efforts that appeared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her early in the process , seemingly anointing her the nominee .
Sanders ’ s backers believe the Democratic establishment doesn ’ t want him to win the nomination this time , either ( and indeed , some don ’ t ) and worry about what lengths they might go to in order to stop him .
Iowa ’ s big app fail doesn ’ t appease those concerns , and Acronym ’ s lack of transparency around its ties doesn ’ t help .
That there is some bad blood regarding Acronym @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in any competitive industry — has become clear in the wake of the Shadow debacle .
One strategist told me that the scrutiny on the organization was natural — it ’ s very young , very hyped , and seems primed for a misstep .
Another was more cutting in their assessment of the situation : “ People have been waiting for this to blow up and did not foresee that this would blow up in quite a spectacular way .
”

This isn’t how Acronym wanted to rocket onto the national stage.
The Iowa caucuses debacle drew a lot of attention to a new app made by a company called Shadow that was at the center of many technical failures of the evening. It’s also putting scrutiny on Acronym — the Democratic group that backed Shadow — which has sought the spotlight in recent months though probably didn’t hope for this situation.
Acronym is a relatively new Democratic group that launched in 2017 and got active around the 2018 midterms in digital organizing. Its structure is, in a word, complex. Acronym is a nonprofit, but it also has a political action committee — under its nonprofit are for-profit entities that its nonprofit sometimes pays into. It is brazen and ambitious, which is not unique for a political strategy group, but it’s also somewhat shadowy and secretive. And it’s been trying to distance itself from the Iowa debacle, even though it’s really at the center of the storm.
Acronym is a lot of things all at once
If you pay attention to political media, you’ve probably noticed stories about Acronym popping up here and there in recent months.
In November, the New York Times covered its plan to launch a $75 million digital advertising campaign to counter President Donald Trump in 2020, and the Wall Street Journal profiled a former Facebook employee who was embedded in the Trump campaign in 2016 and has since joined Acronym’s ranks. Bloomberg wrote about the Courier Newsroom, a for-profit media company under Acronym’s umbrella that runs multiple local sites that deliver left-slanted news, countering a tactic often employed by the right. Acronym’s CEO, Tara McGowan, has quickly become a high-profile figure in Democratic politics and digital strategy.
Acronym talks a big game when it comes to its political strategy prowess — though it’s new enough and opaque enough that it’s not entirely clear what the organization is actually delivering. Now that Shadow, one of the companies affiliated with Acronym, is under the microscope, Acronym is too.
In the wake of the Iowa caucus debacle, Acronym has tried to distance itself from Shadow. In a statement, spokesperson Kyle Tharp said that Acronym just happens to be an investor in the firm, along with others. “Acronym is a nonprofit organization and not a technology company,” Tharp said.
Except it’s more complicated than that. Shadow is a tech company, and both Acronym and Shadow have described their relationship as an acquisition, not an investment, in the past and on multiple occasions. Acronym and McGowan have touted their work with Shadow — McGowan has often mentioned it on Twitter and talked about it on a podcast as recently as last month. But now, Acronym has scrubbed its website of mentions of launching Shadow and says it’s just one of multiple investors along for the ride. Acronym’s decision to distance itself from Shadow — or perhaps lying about it altogether — is making the situation worse, not better.
“I don’t think they’re evil, but in their thirst to take over the world using a bunch of short-term donor money, they leveraged their political connections to get contracts that they didn’t have the expertise to fulfill,” one Democratic strategist told me.
“There’s this whole group of organizations that are feeding each other, and they’re ultimately all controlled by the same group of people”
But there’s a lot more to Acronym than Shadow. Under its nonprofit umbrella are multiple for-profit operations, including the digital media operation Courier Newsroom and Lockwood Strategy, a digital strategy firm that McGowan runs. Acronym also operates a political action committee called Pacronym and publishes a podcast hosted by McGowan as well as a weekly newsletter.
“There’s this whole group of organizations that are feeding each other, and they’re ultimately all controlled by the same group of people,” another strategist said.
Acronym has for months been building itself up as one of the loudest players in the room in Democratic strategy. Now, people are starting to look under the hood.
Acronym did not return requests for comment for this story. On Wednesday evening, McGowan published a lengthy post on Medium as well as a series of tweets attempting to clarify the situation. She sought to cast Acronym as an investor in many of its projects, though she did acknowledge some “warts” in Shadow’s operations and wrote that “progress requires taking calculated risks and doing things differently.” McGowan also appeared to distance herself and Acronym from Shadow. She did not acknowledge Acronym’s attempts to downplay its relationship with Shadow, including altering its website.
Acronym has been around since 2017 — and its reputation has skyrocketed in recent months
McGowan, 34, has deep ties to the Democratic Party and has worked in Democratic circles for years. She started her career as a journalist and according to her LinkedIn profile got into politics when she worked as press secretary for Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island in 2010. Then in 2011, she went over to the Obama White House, where she worked as a digital producer, after which she had stints at Tom Steyer’s NextGen America and the consultancy Purpose. She later headed digital strategy at the Democratic Super PAC Priorities USA Action. In early 2017, McGowan founded Lockwood Strategy, a digital strategy firm she still runs. A month later, she launched Acronym.
On its website, Acronym describes itself as a “values-driven organization focused on advancing progressive causes through innovative communications, advertising, and organizing programs.” The organization claims that its affiliated PAC helped get 65 progressive candidates elected in 2018 with “new tech and digital-first strategies to register and turn out voters.”
A handful of traits have marked Acronym’s development in recent years: its intertwining with Facebook, its ability to get good press, and, in turn, its growing popularity with donors.
In September 2019, Ozy profiled McGowan as the Democrats’ “most dangerous digital strategist.” In November 2019, the New York Times ran a splashy story about Acronym’s plan to raise $75 million to push back against President Donald Trump on Facebook. The organization had raised only about 40 percent of that amount at the time.
Trump’s reelection campaign manager, Brad Parscale, has cultivated a public reputation for himself as a political digital guru — which, depending on whom you ask, is or is not an accurate portrayal — and Acronym plans to answer that. And it has some big names in tow, the most prominent being former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, who told the Times that the idea behind the effort was to have a Facebook ad mechanism in place before the Democratic Party’s nominee has been picked.
“Our nominee is going to be broke, tired, have to pull together the party and turn around on a dime and run a race for a completely different audience,” he said.
Weeks later, the Wall Street Journal published a profile of James Barnes, a former Facebook employee who had been embedded with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential race. The 2,500-word story cast Barnes as a figure who had seen the light and come over to the Democrats’ side with Acronym to try to undo what he’d done in the last election. Barnes isn’t the only former Facebooker in Acronym’s ranks; earlier on Monday, hours ahead of the caucuses, a former Facebook data scientist announced he was joining the organization.
McGowan herself has become an increasingly common fixture in media stories, often commenting on the issues of the day. (Acronym has spoken with and sent statements to Vox about digital political strategy in the past.) When Google announced it would limit microtargeting around political ads, igniting speculation that Facebook might follow suit, McGowan slammed the decision and said it wouldn’t curb disinformation but would instead “hinder campaigns and others who are already working against the tide of bad actors to reach voters with facts.” She said the decision affects Google’s ad inventory as well as inventory across the internet. “They are essentially using their market power to limit how campaigns can speak to voters where they get their information,” she said.
But there are indicators that things within Acronym are not as seamless as they would appear from the outside. One Acronym staffer told the Outline it is “far and away the most disorganized place I’ve ever been a part of.” According to the staffer, leadership says it’s just the “startup environment” of a new company, but it’s unclear how many people work at Acronym, or whom they work for. There are a lot of blurred lines between the various Acronym outfits — for example, job links on the Courier News website redirect to Lockwood Strategy. And on Friday, Vice published internal documents showing how the operations, including Lockwood, the Courier News, and Shadow, were interconnected under Acronym. (McGowan told the publication that “getting framed as nefarious for doing what the right has been doing is bullshit.”)
Acronym has gained popularity with big donors, while some onlookers have expressed skepticism
Acronym is a dark money group. That means donations to its 501(c)(4) nonprofit don’t have to be reported, and we don’t entirely know who their money is coming from — or how much they have.
But Federal Election Commission filings show Acronym’s PAC, Pacronym, is doing pretty well. Billionaire hedge funder Seth Klarman gave $1.5 million to the PAC in the fourth quarter of last year, venture capitalist Michael Moritz $1 million, and director Steven Spielberg $500,000, among others. As Recode’s Teddy Schleifer pointed out this week, the donation was Moritz’s first since 2011, and his largest disclosed political contribution ever.
To raise that much money and obtain such a high profile, an organization like Acronym has to talk a big game. That’s what some of the four Democratic strategists I spoke with — all on the condition of anonymity so they could speak freely on the matter — see as part of the problem. Acronym knows how to get eager donors, especially those who are eager to get in on the next big thing, to buy into what it’s selling.
“Their pitch is that everyone is doing it wrong, and they’re here to disrupt and innovate,” one Democratic strategist told me. “And they don’t always follow through with that in a successful way.”
“On paper it sounds great,” another strategist said. “Investors want to invest in shiny, new, cutting-edge things, but there’s not a ton of actual evidence there.”
Part of the issue is that Acronym’s structure is complex, unusual, and opaque. Its major plank may be a nonprofit, but the entities under it are not. McGowan runs Lockwood Strategy and is, presumably, paying herself a salary out of the companies coffers, which is not illegal. Shadow and the Courier Newsroom are also private companies. So sometimes, when Acronym makes public pronouncements about what it’s going to do and spend on, it’s not clear where the money is coming from — or where it’s ending up. For example, in October, Acronym said it would spend $1 million on digital impeachment ads in swing states. And its FEC filings show that many independent expenditures for digital ad buys against Trump were filtered through Lockwood Strategies, which McGowan runs. That’s all really hard to track.
“With public pronouncements about things they’re doing that don’t happen, there’s less transparency about why,” one strategist said.
Some observers have also raised questions about the Courier Newsroom, which runs hypertargeted local news with a lean to the left. Last year, McGowan told Bloomberg that Courier Newsroom planned to focus on six swing states — Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin — and “fill the news deserts, deliver the facts favorable to Democrats that [McGowan thinks] voters are missing, and counter right-wing spin.”
While politically biased news is hardly a new phenomenon in American politics — look at Fox News and the myriad right-leaning outlets, for example — the Courier Newsroom launch did raise some eyebrows. If this were a Republican operative declaring its strategy like this, a lot of Democrats probably would have criticized it. So the reaction from the left has been a bit awkward.
Lachlan Markay at the Daily Beast drilled down on what’s so odd about Acronym’s approach:
But in trying to take on such a wide swath of digital political roles, ACRONYM has also been drawn into roles that appear to be in conflict: not just political vendor and vote tabulator, but also ostensibly-independent media mogul and Democratic activist. Such conflicts have been apparent in ACRONYM’s backing of a handful of state-specific media organs billed as editorially-independent journalistic outfits. Through investment in an entity called Courier Newsroom, McGowan’s group has seeded such outlets in the key swing states of Wisconsin, Virginia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. The left-leaning consulting firm Lockwood Strategy, in turn, has helped staff up the outlets, and in at least one case, Lockwood was on the payroll of the Virginia Democratic Party as an ACRONYM-backed outlet favorably covered the party’s 2019 statehouse candidates. In other words, one McGowan company was drawing a paycheck from the party as another pumped out news content boosting its election prospects.
Acronym’s founders made a bet that donors are often willing to throw money at vague digital projects, especially amid anxieties about the 2020 elections and concerns Democrats are lagging in terms of online and data strategy. So they’ve built out a complex organization that lets them raise money and spend money — including on themselves — with their actual impact remaining unclear. At least until Iowa.
Acronym’s founders made a bet that donors are often willing to throw money at vague digital projects
Acronym changed its story after the Iowa caucuses screw-up
Sometimes, despite the best of intentions, technologies fail. And when they do, many would argue that the best path forward is for whoever built the tech to own up to the problem and quickly try to fix it. But that has not happened in Iowa.
This is not to say that Acronym is to blame for the meltdown in the Iowa caucuses. However, it’s become increasingly clear that the organization hurried to distance itself from the situation.
After it came out that the Shadow-built app, which according to Vice was called the IowaReporterApp, was at the center of the Iowa caucuses delays, Acronym came out with a statement saying it was just an investor in the tech company. It read, in part:
Acronym is a nonprofit organization and not a technology company. As such, we have not provided any technology to the Iowa Democratic Party, Presidential campaigns, or the Democratic National Committee. Acronym is an investor in several for-profit companies across the progressive media and technology sectors. One of those independent, for-profit companies is Shadow, Inc, which also has other private investors.
But the tenuous relationship described in the statement above doesn’t appear to be accurate. Or, at the very least, both Acronym and Shadow have described their relationship differently in the past.
Shadow was initially a tech firm named Groundbase, founded by Hillary Clinton campaign veterans Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis and funded by the progressive nonprofit Higher Ground Labs. The company was struggling after its campaign texting platform failed to take off, and Acronym stepped in to inject some cash and keep it from going bankrupt. They launched Shadow from there along with new products, including an email app that was supposed to help the Democratic Party centralize its data. In a 2019 article, Shadow described its flagship product as a “universal adapter for political data and technology.” What that means in practice is pretty indecipherable.
Acronym distancing itself from Shadow is a new development. In 2019, McGowan celebrated acquiring Groundbase and marketed the company openly on Twitter. Acronym put it on its website as well. While Acronym has since clarified it doesn’t own Shadow entirely, the organization has previously said it is “launching” Shadow and described the deal as an acquisition. On LinkedIn, Niemira lists himself as a former Acronym employee.
The problem is, Acronym left a lot of evidence that suggests it used to have a much closer relationship with Shadow than it’s now admitting to. According to the Intercept, for instance, Acronym and Shadow share an office space in Denver, and as recently as last month, McGowan said Acronym was the “sole investor” in Shadow.
If you look at Acronym's "About" page today it says "we invested in Shadow" but if you look at the Wayback Machine from last month it's "we launched Shadow" pic.twitter.com/FM5XVddclh — Kate Knibbs ♀ (@Knibbs) February 4, 2020
The, well, shadow around Shadow has been part of what’s so weird about the Iowa debacle. Before Monday, Shadow’s involvement in the Iowa caucuses had been kept secret. The Iowa Democrats said they were using a new app, but they wouldn’t name it, arguing that it was a security precaution to keep it from being hacked. Had they not been secretive about it, maybe someone would have noticed the problems with it prior to caucus day. Multiple sources told the Times that the app was under-tested and that caucus volunteers were poorly trained on how to use it.
Curiously, David Plouffe was asked about Acronym and Shadow on MSNBC on Monday as the Iowa caucus debacle unfolded. Plouffe, seemingly unfamiliar with the app, said he didn’t know about it and had spoken via text with the CEO — presumably McGowan — who confirmed that Acronym was an investor in the tech. “I have no knowledge of Shadow or what’s happening,” he said. It’s entirely possible that Plouffe hadn’t heard of Shadow, as a board member whose main role seems to be to boost the group’s profile and fundraising. The Acronym team seems to have decided to stick with that distancing of ties to the app.
Regardless of the level of Acronym’s involvement, it still remains unclear how Shadow managed to release such a problematic app for an event as important as the Iowa caucuses. One strategist I spoke with speculated this may have simply been a case of an overly ambitious agreement between Shadow and the Iowa Democratic Party, which reportedly paid just $60,000 for the app. Perhaps there was just too much excitement over the new, shiny thing.
“This has all the markings of a pet project of someone who says, ‘Oh, we can do that,’” the strategist said. “You let a company that has no track record just build the most important thing you’ve probably done in the last decade, and yeah, it was going to fail.”
Was Iowa just a massive screw-up, or is there something more nefarious at foot?
At best, Acronym’s behavior around Shadow could be described as odd. That and the Iowa Democratic Party’s initial secrecy around its relationship with Shadow has led to a number of conspiracy theories around the app malfunction and results delay — none of which have much evidence but continue to persist. Some Bernie Sanders supporters have suggested this is an effort to undermine the Vermont senator, who before the caucuses was leading the polls, and boost a more establishment-friendly candidate, namely, Pete Buttigieg. Some on Trump’s side have claimed this amounts to rigging the election as well. And after the Des Moines Register’s Iowa poll was pulled from being released over the weekend, suspicions and conspiracy theories had already been afoot.
Shadow is raising even more suspicion now that its work with Democratic candidates has also been revealed. Buttigieg, Joe Biden, and plenty of others have paid Shadow for services, and in the past, McGowan has expressed her support for Buttigieg. (McGowan’s husband is also a senior strategist for Buttigieg.) Some Acronym employees have previously worked for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and are well-connected among Democratic insiders.
Many on the left — especially Sanders supporters who believe the cards were stacked in favor of Clinton in the 2016 election — are highly skeptical of the legitimacy of the Democratic primary.
During the last election, the Democratic National Committee held few debates and at awkward times, which some alleged was an effort to keep Sanders from getting airtime, and undertook other efforts that appeared to favor Clinton. Superdelegates pledged to her early in the process, seemingly anointing her the nominee. Sanders’s backers believe the Democratic establishment doesn’t want him to win the nomination this time either (and indeed, some don’t) and worry about what lengths they might go to in order to stop him. Iowa’s big app fail doesn’t appease those concerns, and Acronym’s lack of transparency around its ties doesn’t help.
That there is some bad blood regarding Acronym among Democratic politicos — which is natural in any competitive industry — has become clear in the wake of the Shadow debacle. One strategist told me that the scrutiny on the organization was natural — it’s very young, very hyped, and seems primed for a misstep. Another was more cutting in their assessment of the situation: “People have been waiting for this to blow up and did not foresee that this would blow up in quite a spectacular way.”


vox--2020-02-05--Actor Kirk Douglas has died at the age of 103

The venerable and celebrated actor Kirk Douglas , who starred in more than 80 movies and was nominated for three Oscars , has died .
He was 103 years old .
Douglas was one of the last living legends of Hollywood ’ s Golden Age , known for roles in movies such as the early Stanley Kubrick films Path of Glory ( 1957 ) and Spartacus ( 1960 ) ; Gunfight at the O.K .
Corral ( 1957 ) ; Lonely Are the Brave ( 1962 ) ; and Seven Days in May ( 1964 ) .
His Oscar nominations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , The Bad and the Beautiful ( 1953 ) , and Lust for Life ( 1957 ) , and though he didn ’ t win , he received an honorary Oscar in 1996 .
Along with these roles , one of his most iconic and memorable performances was in Billy Wilder ’ s 1951 film Ace in the Hole , a film that today seems prophetic in its anticipation of how spectacle and scandal would one day drive media and news .
Douglas played Chuck Tatum , an unscrupulous reporter looking to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by manipulating coverage of a man trapped in an Albuquerque , New Mexico , cave .
Douglas also starred in the 1963-64 Broadway production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo ’ s Nest , based on Ken Kesey ’ s 1962 novel .
He also optioned the play but never managed to make it into a movie .
Eventually he gave the film rights to his eldest son , actor Michael Douglas , who produced the Miloš Forman-directed movie .
It won Best Picture in 1976 .
In addition to being one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Douglas was an activist , particularly during the Hollywood Blacklist era .
His company produced Spartacus , which was written by Dalton Trumbo , the screenwriter who , at the time , was blacklisted as one of the Hollywood Ten .
In a daring move , Douglas publicly announced that Trumbo was the writer of the screenplay — until that time , blacklisted artists were forced to use pseudonyms — and on February 3 , 1960 , President John F. Kennedy crossed picket lines in order to see the film .
These acts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of artists suspected of being associated with the Communist party .
In more recent years , Douglas was also a controversial figure .
Following his appearance at the Golden Globes in 2018 , where he handed out an award alongside daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones , a number of commenters on Twitter noted that Douglas was accused by an anonymous blogger in 2012 of having raped actress Natalie Wood when she was 16 .
In an Instagram post announcing his father ’ s death Wednesday , Michael Douglas reflected on the impact his father had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Kirk ’ s life was well lived , and he leaves a legacy in film that will endure for generations to come , and a history as a renowned philanthropist who worked to aid the public and bring peace to the planet , ” he wrote .

The venerable and celebrated actor Kirk Douglas, who starred in more than 80 movies and was nominated for three Oscars, has died. He was 103 years old.
Douglas was one of the last living legends of Hollywood’s Golden Age, known for roles in movies such as the early Stanley Kubrick films Path of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960); Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957); Lonely Are the Brave (1962); and Seven Days in May (1964). His Oscar nominations came for roles in Champion (1950), The Bad and the Beautiful (1953), and Lust for Life (1957), and though he didn’t win, he received an honorary Oscar in 1996.
Along with these roles, one of his most iconic and memorable performances was in Billy Wilder’s 1951 film Ace in the Hole, a film that today seems prophetic in its anticipation of how spectacle and scandal would one day drive media and news. Douglas played Chuck Tatum, an unscrupulous reporter looking to fight his way back into the spotlight by manipulating coverage of a man trapped in an Albuquerque, New Mexico, cave.
Douglas also starred in the 1963-64 Broadway production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, based on Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel. He also optioned the play but never managed to make it into a movie. Eventually he gave the film rights to his eldest son, actor Michael Douglas, who produced the Miloš Forman-directed movie. It won Best Picture in 1976.
In addition to being one of the leading actors of his time, Douglas was an activist, particularly during the Hollywood Blacklist era. His company produced Spartacus, which was written by Dalton Trumbo, the screenwriter who, at the time, was blacklisted as one of the Hollywood Ten. In a daring move, Douglas publicly announced that Trumbo was the writer of the screenplay — until that time, blacklisted artists were forced to use pseudonyms — and on February 3, 1960, President John F. Kennedy crossed picket lines in order to see the film. These acts helped bring an end to the blacklisting of artists suspected of being associated with the Communist party.
In more recent years, Douglas was also a controversial figure. Following his appearance at the Golden Globes in 2018, where he handed out an award alongside daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones, a number of commenters on Twitter noted that Douglas was accused by an anonymous blogger in 2012 of having raped actress Natalie Wood when she was 16.
In an Instagram post announcing his father’s death Wednesday, Michael Douglas reflected on the impact his father had both on his family and the world.
“Kirk’s life was well lived, and he leaves a legacy in film that will endure for generations to come, and a history as a renowned philanthropist who worked to aid the public and bring peace to the planet,” he wrote.