Charlie Kirk was murdered from 200 yards away, with the cold precision of someone lining up a target at a shooting range. He didn’t die in a back alley or some political war zone. He had security and died in the open, under the watch of a supposedly civilized society at a university.
If someone with security, visibility, and national prominence can be picked off from that distance, how hard do you think it would be to reach your average CEO at a shareholder meeting? How protected are your ideas from the activists you thought were just “passionate employees”?
Because the truth is, the woke don’t just disagree with you anymore. They dehumanize you. And dehumanization is always the last step before violence.
This is not hyperbole. The same culture that once argued for “inclusivity” now cheers public assassinations if the victim had the wrong political leanings.
When Kirk’s death hit the news, while millions mourned, thousands celebrated.
Educators, lawyers, even judges recorded themselves dancing on Kirk’s metaphorical grave. Imagine your general counsel popping champagne because a man was gunned down for speaking ideas, they found distasteful.
This is the America the Left built: a violent-crazed society where moral outrage has been weaponized and pointed inward.
Consider what this means for corporate culture.
The so-called “woke” revolution was sold to boardrooms as harmless HR fluff—diversity workshops, pride flags on Zoom backgrounds, and land acknowledgements before meetings. But beneath the rainbows and hashtags lurked something darker: a generation indoctrinated to see ideological opponents not as rivals but as evil. And evil as they define it, must be eradicated. This is what they have been taught.
It’s not just theory. For example, an Office Depot employee refused to print Kirk memorial posters, calling them “propaganda.” She was fired—but not before the damage was done.
How many more employees like her sit quietly in your company, their finger not on a print button this time, but maybe on something far worse?
Think of them as ideological IEDs. You never know where they’re buried or what will trigger them.
Some CEOs are still in denial. They think this can’t happen in their world.
They think politics and business are separate planets. That’s adorable. The healthcare executive executed in broad daylight likely never considered such an end to his life. His killer was celebrated on social media because he supposedly opposed gender ideology in children’s care.
You think the C-suite occupants in America are immune? One viral tweet labeling your CFO a “fascist” could put a bullseye on their back.
“Going postal” used to describe a workplace shooting born of personal despair. But today, the despair has been replaced by doctrine. The rage is ideological, sanctified by hashtags, and no badge or building badge can stop it.
This isn’t just about safety. It’s about survival—of business, of free thought, of any semblance of rational discourse.
Would you want a surgeon who checks your Facebook before deciding how carefully to operate? A judge who scrolls your LinkedIn before deciding your sentence? Because we already have doctors publicly praising Kirk’s assassin. We already have professors and teachers cheering the assassination.
This isn’t politics. It’s purification, the purge.
And once purification starts, it doesn’t end with Charlie Kirk. It ends when there’s nobody left to disagree with.
Here’s the bitter irony:
The Left promised that embracing “woke” would inoculate companies from harm. It was supposed to be a shield. But they were manufacturing the weapons all along. Corporations hired zealots and called it progress. They gave them DEI budgets, influence, and policies to enforce. They trained them to sniff out “wrongthink”, aka truth. What they didn’t do was ask what happens when they find it in you.
The truth is, wokeism is not just a moral threat. It’s a business threat. One act of “resistance” from a rogue employee can destroy billions in brand equity. Just ask Bud Light. One rogue manager’s crusade erased decades of brand loyalty in weeks. Now imagine that, but with bullets instead of boycotts.
Every executive in America should ask themselves these questions at least:
How protected are your ideas?
What’s the threshold for becoming a “legitimate target”in the eyes of the“woke”?
The assassination of Kirk didn’t expose the dirty underbelly of wokeism, it showed us its full face—cold, self-righteous, and jubilant at the sight of what it deems enemy blood.
Corporate America has a choice: purge the ideology now or wait to see which of your executives becomes the next headline.
If you think you’re safe because you stayed neutral, remember: Charlie Kirk didn’t die for picking a fight. He died for daring to merely ask that he be heard.
When a CEO can’t act on common sense and what’s best for his or her organization and instead caters to “woke”, that company is doomed.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Jan-6th pales in comparison to widespread violence by the democrat sycophants, Multiple riots, Vandalizing Birthing Center, Burning Tesla dealerships, swatting conservatives, Etc., etc.
Elon Musk Rips into Democrats as Their Violence Escalates Across the Country: “There’s Some Mental Illness Going on Here Because This Doesn’t Make Any Sense” (VIDEO)
By Jim Hoft – The Gateway Pundit – March 19, 2025
Elon Musk joined Sean Hannity on FOX News last night after his company rescued two astronauts stranded on the space station by Joe Biden for nine months. Only Elon Musk could make this happen. Elon explained to Sean Hannity why he joined with President Trump to clean up Washington DC. So far Musk’s DOGE operatives have saved the country over $100 billion in waste and fraud in government. But rather than celebrating Musk, the left and Democrats were out burning Teslas and torching dealerships. Elon calls this a mental disease and he’s right. READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, Elon Musk, and President Trump.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case with potentially sweeping implications for discrimination cases. Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Service involves an Ohio woman, Marlean Ames, who claims she was discriminated against for being straight as less-qualified LGBT colleagues in Ohio’s youth corrections system were promoted. Ames alleged that she was treated differently due to her heterosexuality at the Ohio Department of Youth Services, resulting in not just a demotion but a pay cut in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Ames started working at the Ohio Department of Youth Services in 2004 as an executive secretary and was promoted several times, ultimately reaching program administrator. In 2017, Ames was given a new supervisor, Ginine Trim, who is openly gay. She alleges that she met or exceeded performance review standards but was discriminated against due to being straight. Her case was dismissed by the lower courts using a three-step process for handling discrimination cases based on indirect evidence under McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green (1973).
Under that test, plaintiffs must first present sufficient evidence of discrimination but also requires an added burden for those individuals who are part of a majority group. The test requires plaintiffs like Ames to provide additional “background circumstances” to “support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”
She is arguing that all parties should bear the same burden. In her filing, she calls for the Court to reject the precedent:
“Judges must actually treat plaintiffs differently, by first separating them into majority and minority groups, and then imposing a ‘background circumstances’ requirement on the former but not the latter. In other words, to enforce Title VII’s broad rule of workplace equality, courts must apply the law unequally.”
In reviewing her claim, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit called the matter an “easy” call at the preliminary stage. It noted that Ames could not show that a member of a minority group made the allegedly discriminatory decision, or with evidence demonstrating a pattern of discrimination against members of the majority group.
Judge Raymond Kethledge criticized the court’s requirement that Ames show special “background circumstances” because she is straight. Such a rule, he argued, “discriminates” “on the very grounds that the statute forbids.”
Ames argues that the test’s “background circumstances” component conflicts with the text of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination “against any individual with respect to the terms of conditions of employment because of that individual’s sex” or other protected characteristic. She argues “that the law as applied demands something more of her than the law as written.”
The Court could break from McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green and continue the push of Chief Justice John Roberts in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College to make the Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment “universal in its application.”
Mark Zuckerberg wants to turn over a new leaf on the social media censorship — but some in the media don’t seem happy about giving up the power to silence people.
Tuesday morning, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta’s social media sites including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads would be eliminating their heavy-handed censorship policies and moving towards a “community notes” model for policing content like X. This includes terminating their “third party factchecking program” where the company paid legacy media organizations to “fact check” content on the site and then used those judgments to censor content.
At this point there’s little reason to believe that Mark Zuckerberg can do much to atone for what he did to suppress speech and damage conservative publications. However, on the surface level this is a significant PR victory for free speech and, unsurprisingly, Facebook’s fact checking partners are not taking it well. Aaron Sharockman, the executive director of PolitiFact which is one of Facebook/Meta’s original fact checking partners going back eight years, just posted this defensive letter on X. Some of the highlights:
The decision to remove independent journalists from Facebook’s content moderation program in the United States has nothing to do with free speech or censorship. Mark Zuckerberg could not be less subtle. …
Facebook and Meta solely created the penalties that publishers faced and the warning labels and overlays that users saw. It was Facebook and Meta that created a system that allowed ordinary citizens to see their posts demoted but exempted politicians and political leaders who said the very same things. In case it needs to be said, PolitiFact and U.S. fact-checking journalists played no role in the decision to remove Donald Trump from Facebook. …
When we make an error, there is a process to correct those mistakes. And there is also a process to make sure Facebook and Meta receive the corrected information. That’s how the information cycle is supposed to work.
If Meta is upset it created a tool to censor, it should look in the mirror.
PolitiFact has been a thoroughly dishonest and contemptible organization since its inception, but this is a particularly dishonest and self-serving excuse, even for them. And I happen know what I’m talking about. After years of detailed reporting on the dishonesty of so called “fact checkers,” the publication I worked for, The Weekly Standard, made the decision to become, like PolitiFact, one of Facebook’s official fact checking partners. And I can tell you a few things about this arrangement that, if you care about free speech and journalistic integrity, will make your blood boil.
The first is that Facebook paid it’s fact checking partners for participating in this program — in PolitiFact’s case, Meta supplied more than 5 percent of their annual revenue. In practice, this meant that news organizations such as PolitiFact, USA Today, and, yes, The Weekly Standard, participating in this program were taking a large sum from one of the country’s largest and most influential corporations. This was a massive conflict of interest, considering these same publications were also tasked with covering Facebook neutrally when it came up in the news. Which was a lot.
Already news organizations were skittish about Facebook because the death of print media and the subscription model meant they were heavily dependent on Facebook for steering traffic their way to make money on digital advertising. Taking money directly from Facebook meant they had you over a barrel in multiple ways. If there was cause to criticize Facebook’s policies about censoring content or any other matter, doing so meant these publications were biting the hand that fed them.
Soon after the [2016] election, BuzzFeed was reporting, “Facebook employees have formed an unofficial task force to question the role their company played in promoting fake news in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s victory in the US election last week.” The group was operating in open defiance of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said the idea that Facebook had unfairly tilted the election in Trump’s favor was “crazy.” Zuckerberg had already faced criticism earlier, in May 2016, when Gizmodo reported, “Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential ‘trending’ news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project.”
By December 2016, Zuckerberg had caved. Facebook adopted a new policy of trying to combat the alleged “fake news” that troubled Facebook’s left-wing employees. The tech giant would start paying media outlets to “fact-check” news on the site. With media revenue steadily declining — in no small part because Facebook had radically disrupted the traditional journalistic business models — once reputable news organizations signed up to participate in the fact-checking program. Media outlets that were supposed to be objectively covering Facebook were now on Facebook’s payroll, given the power to determine all the news that was fit to print.
Whether or not the tech companies wanted to admit it, much of Silicon Valley’s anger over Trump’s victory was about their inability to control American opinion.
Third, the idea that PolitiFact or any of Facebook’s media fact checking partners were blameless for participating in Facebook’s censorship and stifling free speech is such a dubious and offensive argument it’s incredible anyone would attempt to make it.
In the summer of 2018, the Weekly Standard’s participation in the Facebook’s fact checking program led to far and away the most awkward staff meeting in the eight years that I worked there. I wrote about this episode at length (and in this book), but essentially what happened is that the young journalist The Weekly Standard employed who wrote fact checks for Facebook openly said he was uncomfortable with the responsibility:
He explained that whenever he did one of his fact checking columns, part of his gig involved going into a special portal in Facebook’s backend created for its fact checking mercenaries, where he entered details about his fact check. When he entered a claim of “false,” he was asked to enter the URL of the story where he found the claim – at which point Facebook, according to their own press releases, would then kill 80 percent of the global internet traffic to that story. Our fact checker explained this was making him uncomfortable. Some of these fact checks were complicated, and he felt his judgment wasn’t absolute.
It was a record scratch moment in the staff meeting. After a beat, I spoke up and said something to the effect of “you mean to tell me, that a single journalist has the power to render judgment to nearly wipe a news story off of the internet?” Where our publication had once taken pride in challenging the dishonesty and bias of the corporate media, it dawned on me — and more than a few others in the room — that whatever influence our failing publication had was now being leveraged to act as part of a terrifyingly effective censorship regime controlled by a hated social media company run by one of the world’s richest men.
Suffice this anecdote to say, this all culminated in one editor at the magazine raising his voice — in defense of Facebook — in a way that made everyone in the room rather uncomfortable. Imagine you’re a writer at a conservative magazine and confronting the fact you’re participating in a program where a centi-billionaire pays a bunch of legacy media hacks to disproportionately censor politically inconvenient opinions on the right. I knew it was bad, but I was pretty alarmed to realize not all of my colleagues found this intolerable. But by this point The Weekly Standard was hemorrhaging subscribers and was shut down a few months later. Alas, the more animated editor in that meeting doesn’t appear to have learned from the episode.
After the closure of The Weekly Standard, alumni from that magazine started a new publication known as The Dispatch. Despite what had happened at our ill-fated previous employer, becoming a Facebook fact checking partner was one easy way for a new publication to get revenue, I guess. Anyway, it wasn’t long before this new arrangement prompted controversy. A Dispatch fact check claimed two advertisements from the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List claimed “partly false information.”
The allegedly false information was that the Susan B. Anthony List was claiming Joe Biden and the Democrat Party supported late-term abortion. It didn’t matter that this claim wasn’t even particularly debatable as Biden and the Democrat Party clearly support late-term abortion.
After a lot of online blowback — at the time, one of the marquee names at The Dispatch was David French, an alleged evangelical pro-life stalwart turned Kamala Harris voter — the publication promised to review and correct their error. Despite the public promise, you should not be surprised to learn that, either through negligence by The Dispatch or Facebook, the “process to make sure Facebook and Meta receive the corrected information” touted above got no results. Susan B. Anthony List and its election ads were banned from Facebook in the critical weeks right before the 2020 election, which was decided by a mere 40,000 or so votes.
Mind you, this is all based on my comparably limited experience with a censorship program whose flaws were readily apparent to anyone. It would be impossible to muster enough contempt for an organization such as PolitiFact, who by their own admission did thousands of fact checks for Facebook to enable their direct censorship of ordinary citizens and important political voices alike.
Like I said, I find Mark Zuckerberg’s motivations suspect, to say nothing of the restitution he owes conservative publications like this one that told the truth only to be suppressed and censored. But regardless of how we arrived at this point, Facebook’s statement that what they were doing was wrong and the termination of their fact checking program are important concessions to the reality that ordinary Americans believe in and want free speech.
I imagine it’s hard to accept that you’ve been the villain all along, but Sharockman and PolitiFact don’t get to have it both ways. PolitiFact concedes they took Facebook’s money, but that doesn’t mean they share any responsibility for Facebook justifying censorship with the services they provided? No, PolitiFact knew full well they were providing the bullets for Facebook’s gun, and they were happy to do it because they liked who Facebook was aiming at.
We’ll see if Facebook follows through with its promise to be less censorious, but it’s impossible to read Sharockman’s hackneyed justifications without looking forward to the day where self-appointed fact checkers are irrelevant to what Americans are allowed to say.
Mark Hemingway is the Book Editor at The Federalist, and was formerly a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @heminator
Below is my column in the Hill on the victory of Elon Musk last week against the liberal media outlet, Media Matters. This follows similar recent victories by others against CNN and the New York Times to clear paths to trials. For those who have embraced advocacy journalism as the new model for media, a bill is coming due in the form of defamation and disparagement lawsuits.
Here is the column:
This week, a federal judge ruled that a lawsuit by Elon Musk against Media Matters can move forward in what could prove a significant case not just for the liberal outlet but the entire media industry. The decision comes at the same time as other court wins for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) against the New York Times and a Navy veteran against CNN.
For years, media organizations and journalism schools have expressly abandoned objectivity in favor of advocacy journalism. This abandonment of neutrality has coincided, unsurprisingly, with a drop in public faith in media to record lows.
Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University journalism professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones has been lionized for declaring that “all journalism is activism.”Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, similarly announced that “Objectivity has got to go.”
“J-Schools” have been teaching students for years to discard old-fashioned ideas of simply reporting facts and as stated at the University of Texas at Austin, to “leave neutrality behind.”
In a series of interviews with more than 75 media leaders, Leonard Downie Jr., former Washington Post executive editor, and Andrew Heyward, former CBS News president, reaffirmed this new vision of journalism. Downie explained that objectivity is viewed as a trap and reporters “feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”
As the public abandons mainstream media for alternative news sources, news organizations are now facing the added costs of bias in the form of defamation and disparagement lawsuits. Media lawyers are citing protections secured by the “old media” while their clients are publicly espousing their intention to frame the news to advance political and social agendas.
CNN, for example, is now facing a trial in a lawsuit by Navy veteran Zachary Young, the subject of an alleged hit piece over his work to extract endangered people from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. In a Nov. 11, 2021, segment on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” the host tells his audience ominously how CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt discovered “Afghans trying to get out of the country face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.” Marquardt named Young and his company in claiming that “desperate Afghans are being exploited” and need to pay “exorbitant, often impossible amounts” to flee the country.
Discovery revealed how Marquardt said that he wanted to “nail this Zachary Young mfucker.” After promising to “nail” Young, CNN editor Matthew Philips responded: “gonna hold you to that cowboy!” That sentiment was echoed by other CNN staff. In allowing the case to go to trial, a judge found not just evidence of actual malice by CNN but grounds for potential punitive damages.
Likewise, Palin recently won a major appeal before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which found that Palin was denied a fair trial in a case against the New York Times.
In 2017, liberal activist and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) supporter James T. Hodgkinson attempted to massacre Republican members of Congress on a baseball diamond, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). The New York Times, eager to shift the narrative, ran an editorial suggesting that Palin had inspired or incited Jared Loughner’s 2011 shooting of then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).
The Times’ editors stated that SarahPAC, Palin’s political action committee, had posted a graphic that put a crosshair on a U.S. map representing Giffords’ district before she was shot, suggesting that this was direct incitement to violence. In reality, Palin’s graphic “targeting” about 20 vulnerable House Democrats all across the country is typical of graphics used in political campaigns by both parties for many decades. No evidence has ever been offered that Giffords’ deranged shooter even saw it.
But Musk’s lawsuit may be the most defining for our age of advocacy journalism. He is suing Media Matters, the left-wing outlet founded by David Brock, whom Time described as“one of the most influential operatives in the Democratic Party.” Although Brock is no longer with the site, Media Matters has long been accused of being a weaponized media outlet for the left. After Musk dismantled the censorship system at Twitter, he became something of an obsession for Media Matters, which targeted his revenue sources. The outlet ran a report suggesting that advertisements of major corporations were being posted next to pro-Nazi posts or otherwise hateful content on the platform. As I discuss in my new book, this effort mirrored similar moves by the anti-free speech movement against Musk to force him to restore censorship systems.
Companies including Apple, IBM, Comcast and Lionsgate Entertainment quickly joined the effective boycott to squeeze Musk. The problem is that it is hard to squeeze the world’s richest man financially. Musk told the companies to pound sand and told his lawyers to file suit.
The allegations in the lawsuit read like a textbook on advocacy journalism. Media Matters is accused of knowingly misrepresenting the real user experience by manipulating the algorithms to produce the pairing alleged in its story.
The complaint accuses Media Matters of running its manipulation to produce extremely unlikely pairings, such that one toxic match appeared for “only one viewer (out of more than 500 million) on all of X: Media Matters.” In other words, the organization wanted to write a hit piece connecting X to pro-Nazi material and proceeded to artificially create pairings between that material and corporate advertisements. It then ran the story as news.
Indeed, two defendant employees of Media Matters did not deny that they were aware of the alleged manipulation and that they were seeking to poison the well for advertisers in order to drain advertising revenues for X.
Although the media covered another judge blocking an effort by state officials to sue Media Matters over the anti-Musk effort, there has been comparably less coverage of the green light for the lawsuit in Texas.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas rejected an effort to dismiss the case on jurisdictional and other grounds. Musk will be able to continue his claims of tortious interference with existing contracts, business disparagement and tortious interference with prospective economic advantage.
Not surprisingly, although the media has heralded lawsuits like the one by Dominion Voting System against Fox News (which led to a large settlement), they are overwhelmingly hostile toward the Musk lawsuits. It is not hard to see why. The Media Matters lawsuit directly challenges the ability of media outlets to create false narratives to advance a political agenda. As with the CNN and New York Times cases, it can expose how the media first decides on a conclusion and then frames or even invents the facts to support it.
While rejecting the longstanding principles of journalism such as objectivity, these media outlets are citing the cases and defenses secured by those now-outdated media organizations. They want to be advocates, but they also want to be protected as journalists.
These cases still face tough challenges, including challenging jury pools in places like New York. However, they are exposing the bias that now characterizes much of American journalism.
In the age of advocacy journalism, a bill has come due. That is why Musk’s lawsuit against Media Matters . . . well . . . matters.
Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at the Fiserv Forum on Aug. 20, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images)
Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
Learning isn’t necessarily cumulative. Human experience over the centuries provides lessons, some clearer than others. But each generation has to learn lessons anew, and some do not. The lessons about economic growth taught over the long run of history are clear. Growth is not inevitable, and while riches may be accumulated, or appropriated, by the few in high positions, the lives of the very large majority throughout the centuries have been nasty, brutish, and short.
The exception, the Great Enrichment, began some three centuries ago around the North Sea in the Dutch Republic and in England, according to economic historian Deirdre McCloskey, in societies when people began respecting and encouraging commerce rather than resenting and scorning it. They discovered that when people exchanged goods and services in free markets, with property rights secured by limited government and the rule of law, economies could grow in ways that improved the lives of not just the few but the many. Suddenly, and not just for a moment, the great masses of people went from living on $3 a day, just barely subsistence—and in times of famine or war, not even that—to $130 a day.
The 20th century proved full of lessons for how to produce extended and widely distributed economic growth—and how to squelch it. Growth occurs when free markets are allowed to operate in societies with high levels of trust and the rule of law. It ceases, and living standards plummet, in societies where governments flood the economy with currency, try to control wages and prices, impose centralized economic planning, and outlaw voluntary market transactions.
Governments sometimes impose such measures temporarily in wartime, with various results depending on the course of the war. In peacetime, the results are destructive—in Weimar Germany, the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong’s China, and, most recently, oil-rich Venezuela. And, perhaps, in Kamala Harris’ America. Since President Joe Biden ended his candidacy for reelection four weeks ago, the vice president has said remarkably little about what policies she would pursue as president. Her website has had no issues section. She has taken almost no questions and has undergone nothing like an intensive interview from the press—most members of which, in their enthusiasm for her candidacy, have shown no discomfort at her neglect.
Only last Friday did she begin talking issues, announcing “the first-ever federal ban on price gouging”—she read the word as “gauging”—on food and groceries. Presumably, this was an attempt to address an obvious vulnerability for any candidate with a Biden-Harris pedigree, the fact that administration policy, by showering money on consumers already flooded with lockdown-accumulated cash, stoked inflation that no voter under 60 had experienced as an adult.
But of course, this made no sense. The grocery business is highly competitive, with low profit margins. If one firm “gouges” consumers too much, they can go elsewhere. “It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is,” wrote The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell. “At best, this would lead to shortages, black markets, and hoarding.”
Rampell has since taken a different view after Harris’ actual speech backpedaled from her campaign’s fact sheet, but her initial take remains persuasive and in line with historic experience, including with the price controls imposed by former President Richard Nixon 53 years ago this month.
Similarly, economically illiterate is Harris’ proposal to give first-time homebuyers a $25,000 government subsidy. Just as colleges and universities have vacuumed up government-subsidized college loans for their own purposes, so obviously developers and home sellers are going to raise their asking prices by $25,000 and pocket the subsidy.
As Jason Furman, head of former President Barack Obama’s second-term Council of Economic Advisers, said of the price gouging announcement, “This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality.”
Is it fair to argue that Harris has learned nothing from the dismal history of price controls on the basis of just one proposal? Yes, if it’s just the only thing she has proposed in a whole month as the de facto and de jure Democratic nominee for president. And yes, as she has never personally renounced the similarly outlandish promises she made in 2019 in her campaign for the 2020 nomination—a ban on fracking, defunding the police, abolishing private health insurance, “snatching” drug company patents. Tweets from anonymous staffers ditching these policies don’t count.
The delicious irony here is that the party favored by college graduates, many of them smugly confident of their knowledge and wisdom, is nominating a candidate who has shown no sign of learning from the dismal history of economic ukases.
Executives in the food industry challenged Vice President Kamala Harris’ claim that they are to blame for the soaring cost of groceries, calling her government price control plan “a solution in search of a problem.” Harris, who is the Democrat nominee for president, accused food companies of “price gouging” and said that price controls were needed to bring down Americans’ grocery bills and check corporate greed.
Food executives told The Wall Street Journal that high inflation has driven up labor and raw materials costs and spurred price increases. They also said that healthy profit margins are needed to finance the development of new products.
“We understand why there is this sticker shock and why it’s upsetting,” Andy Harig, a vice president at FMI, a food retailer and supplier trade group, said. “But to automatically just say there’s got to be something nefarious, I think to us that is oversimplified.”
During the Biden-Harris administration, inflation has raised overall costs by about 19%, with food prices going up 21% under Democrat control of the executive branch.
If she were to be elected president, Harris said she would ban price gouging by grocery stores and food suppliers by authorizing the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to penalize companies that violate the policy.
Republican rival and former President Donald Trump slammed Harris’ “Communist price control” policy, saying the proposal would create “rationing, hunger, [and] dramatically more inflation.”
The National Grocers Association told the Journal that Harris’ plan to ban food price gouging “is a solution in search of a problem.”
In a Friday opinion piece, The Washington Post editorial board knocked Harris’ proposal, calling it a “populist gimmick” when the nation is in need of “serious economic ideas.”
“Vice President Kamala Harris’s speech Friday was an opportunity to get specific with voters about how a Harris presidency would manage an economy that many feel is not working well for them,” the board wrote. “Unfortunately, instead of delivering a substantial plan, she squandered the moment on populist gimmicks. Americans are clearly still anxious and angry about the high cost of groceries, housing and even $5.29 Big Macs.’
“While the inflation rate has cooled substantially since the 2022 peak, an ostensible Biden-Harris administration accomplishment, prices remain elevated relative to the Trump years,” the board said. “So, it’s a real political issue for Ms. Harris. One way to handle it might be to level with voters, telling them that inflation spiked in 2021 mainly because the pandemic snarled supply chains, and that the Federal Reserve’s policies, which the Biden-Harris administration supported, are working to slow it. The vice president instead opted for a less forthright route: Blaming big business. She vowed to go after ‘price gouging’ by grocery stores, landlords, pharmaceutical companies and other supposed corporate perpetrators by having the Federal Trade Commission enforce a vaguely defined ‘federal ban on price gouging.’
“Never mind that many stores are currently slashing prices in response to renewed consumer bargain hunting,” it continued. “Ms. Harris says she’ll target companies that make ‘excessive’ profits, whatever that means. (It’s hard to see how groceries, a notoriously low-margin business, would qualify.) Thankfully, this gambit by Ms. Harris has been met with almost instant skepticism, with many critics citing President Richard M. Nixon’s failed price controls from the 1970s. Whether the Harris proposal wins over voters remains to be seen, but if sound economic analysis still matters, it won’t.”
Nicole Wells, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
American Business owner is selling her food truck. Illegal immigrant shows up with paperwork that
he is getting funding to purchase her truck with NO MONEY in the bank and NO CREDIT She speaks with the bank and is told it’s COMMON, Illegal migrants are being given funding to purchase things like this Why do American citizen need so much income and credit scores to the the same funding?? “I purchased my first food truck. It cost me over $25,000. I paid it cash money. I worked hard to pay for this truck. I’m now selling it, because I’m just gonna I’m doing other things, but I’m selling it. I had a guy come to look at purchasing my vehicle or my food truck. And he explained to me he’s an illegal immigrant. He has no credit. He has no money in the bank. But he showed me his paperwork that he will receive funds to purchase my food truck. I’m thankful that he’s buying it, but I’m hurt that I worked so hard to pay cash for my food truck. I have good credit. Can’t even get a business loan because of color of my skin. I have veterans in my family. I’m a veteran. I’ve been self-employed for so long. But somebody please tell me. How do I work so hard to have somebody who comes to this country not long, no credit. And he shows me paperwork where they’ll be funding him money to buy my food truck. And when I talked to the bank, they told me, usually they have to go straight to a dealership because, no, I’m a I’m a private sale. But for special circumstances, they’re gonna you know, they allow it. But I need my president to tell me why I worked so hard all these years, all these decades. Couldn’t get a business loan, but I bust my ass to get the money to create my business. And we got immigrants coming here, and they’re getting money. Money. We’re doing nothing but just being here. It’s not right, and I want answers.”
ALL OF AMERICA, LISTEN TO THIS 🚨
American Business owner is selling her food truck. Illegal immigrant shows up with paperwork that he is getting funding to purchase her truck with NO MONEY in the bank and NO CREDIT
STURGEON LAKE, Minn. — A GOP congressman in northeast Minnesota is blasting the economic policies of Gov. Tim Walz, arguing that the governor’s economic efforts and COVID policies have been “devastating” for most Minnesotans.
“I’ve talked to a lot of businesses that either have left or when they expand are not expanding in Minnesota,” Rep. Pete Stauber, who represents Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District, told Fox News Digital. “I mean, hundreds of millions of private investment are leaving Minnesota under Walz’s watch.”
“He’s supported the highest income tax rate in the nation at 10%, he has taken a $19 billion surplus, and the next year added a $10 billion tax on the hardworking Minnesotans. He’s increased government spending by almost 50%. Very little growth in the private sector. I think if you look at North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, our neighboring states are growing the private-sector jobs three and four times more than Walz.”
The right-leaning Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index for 2024, which was published in October 2023, ranked Minnesota as having the 44th best tax climate for businesses in the country.
Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., left, is warning about the economic policies of fellow Minnesotan Gov. Tim Walz. (Getty Images)
An analysis published by the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in January found that Minnesota’s tax code was the most progressive of all 50 states, with only the District of Columbia having a more progressive one.
“You talk to [Gov.] Kristi Noem in South Dakota, she says one of the best things to happen for South Dakota was Walz becoming governor in Minnesota — they’re just leaving our state,” Stauber told Fox News Digital.
Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., speaks at the Back the Blue bike tour at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C., on May 13, 2021. (Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce produced a 2023 state of business retention and expansion in Minnesota report that said, “While overall activity ticked up in Minnesota since 2021, the state consistently ranks near the bottom of Midwest states for new and expansion projects. Minnesota ranked 10th out of 12 states in the region in total projects from 2018 to 2022, and ranked 10th in projects per capita in 2022.”
“Data from fDi Markets shows that Minnesota based companies are expanding in other states at a higher rate than out-of-state companies are expanding in Minnesota,” the report stated. “Since 2020, Minnesota had a net investment deficit of 54 projects, 2,500 jobs and $6.6 billion in capital expenditures.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a campaign event in Detroit on Aug. 7. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The report did add, however, that “Minnesota’s corporate and financial sector expanded at a relatively fast pace over the past decade.”
“Minnesota is a recognized hub for corporate headquarters and industry-leading businesses… This professional and technical talent pool extends beyond just corporate headquarters, making Minnesota a conducive environment for companies in financial and professional/technical services as well,” it said.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Charles Lutvak said, “After Donald Trump devastated our nation’s economy, Gov. Walz led Minnesota back with strong leadership, competent management, and smart policies — cutting taxes for working families and reaching the lowest state unemployment rate in recorded history.”
“That’s why CNBC ranked Minnesota the best state in the country for business outside of the South. Every day until November 5, Trump will have to defend his record of instability and unpopular anti-growth agenda against Team Harris-Walz’s record and vision to foster business growth, create jobs, and lower costs for the American people,” he said.
Earlier this year, CNBC ranked Minnesota as the sixth-best state for business, which several Minnesota residents who spoke to Fox News Digital seemingly disagreed with.
“We joke that we’re mini California,” Matthew A., a Minnesota resident who owns a farm with his family raising corn and soybeans, recently told Fox News Digital.
“Most of us, if we could, we would annex into South Dakota. [Walz has] put policies in place that have hurt small businesses. I have friends that have lost small businesses because of his policies. It’s killing our small towns, our rural development.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz smile during a campaign rally at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas on Saturday. (Ronda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images)
The Cato Institute found this year that IRS migration data shows “the state is losing about ten households earning more than $200,000 for every six that it gains, which is the fifth worst ratio among the states.”
At the same time, Minnesota ranks 44th on the Tax Foundation’s business tax climate index, giving companies a strong incentive to invest elsewhere. To stem the outflow of skilled people and capital, Minnesota would need to adopt a leaner government and cut individual and business tax rates.
Stauber told Fox News Digital that Walz has led a “socialist crusade in Minnesota” and that voters should expect him to do the “same at the national level” as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate.
“You saw her do it as a senator from California, and you’ve seen Tim Walz do it as the governor in Minnesota — many, many devastating policies and legislation that he has signed that has not benefited the vast majority of Minnesotans,” he said.
Former White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett told FOX Business last week that Walz has a “disturbing” approach to economic policy and “absolutely is a tax-and-spend liberal.”
Fox News Digital’s Aubrie Spady contributed to this report.
Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
While so much of American culture gears up to celebrate LGBTQ “Pride” during June, The Ruth Institute is dedicating the first Sunday in June to those who rejected a homosexual lifestyle. “Ex-Gay Visibility Day” is unlikely to receive President Joe Biden’s endorsement, but arguably it’s more necessary than the Transgender Day of Visibility, which the White House commemorated on Easter. (Photo illustration: Getty Images)
Next month, companies will add rainbow flags to their icons and logos, the White House will hold events celebrating LGBTQ individuals, and Target and other stores will likely promote rainbow-themed merchandise. Amid all this “Pride,” the men and women who rejected a homosexual lifestyle will be forgotten.
Why should “Pride” have the entire month of June? That’s a question Jennifer Roback Morse, president of the Ruth Institute, asked herself. She came to the conclusion that if so, much of America’s culture is going to celebrate people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, she might as well highlight the Americans who rejected those identities.
Morse has christened the first Sunday in June (which is June 2 this year) “Ex-Gay Visibility Day,” in a fitting response to the White House’s commemoration of “Transgender Day of Visibility.”
“It’s not politically correct to talk about ex-LGBT people,” Morse says in a press release provided early to The Daily Signal. “To the gay lobby, they don’t exist, or they’re just lying to themselves or were never really gay in the first place. But I have met many people who have journeyed away from an LGBT identity and are living happy, fulfilled lives with opposite-sex partners.”
Morse mentions research from Father Paul Sullins, a Roman Catholic priest, senior research associate at The Ruth Institute, and former sociology professor at Catholic University, who found that sexual orientation is more malleable than LGBTQ activists claim. The “born this way” narrative doesn’t match up with the results of Sullins’ research.
Sullins previously told The Daily Signal that he doesn’t encourage lesbians, gays, or bisexuals to try to change their sexual orientation unless they feel uncomfortable about it. He emphasized that efforts to change sexual orientation don’t always work, but—contrary to the LGBTQ narrative—they do occasionally succeed.
“When people attempt to change sexual orientation, it is fully successful in my studies about 17 to 20% of the time,” Sullins said. “Most persons who undergo it, meaning about 60 to 65%, report that they are less caught up in homosexual attractions and behaviors and activity.”
Sullins noted that about 30% of the 1,500 lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in a 2020 study on sexual orientation said that they have tried to change their sexual orientation and about 10% said they agreed with this statement: “If I could be completely heterosexual, I would want to do that.”
“So there is a minority of the gay population who wants to change, is not happy with living the way that they’re living,” Sullins said.
As Roman Catholics, both Morse and Sullins consider homosexual activity to be a sin, but they’re not supporting Ex-Gay Visibility Day to shame those who identify as LGBTQ. They say they merely intend to highlight the fact that there are options for people who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent feeling of identifying with the gender opposite one’s biological sex), even if they are uncomfortable with their feelings.
The White House is so dedicated to the LGBTQ movement that it chose Good Friday (the day Western Christians commemorate Jesus’ Crucifixion) as the day to release a statement commemorating Transgender Day of Visibility, which coincided this year with Easter Sunday, the holiest day on the Western Christian calendar. The White House played off this timing as a coincidence, but it shocked many Americans, especially Roman Catholics. (The Catechism of the Catholic Church condemns the ideology behind the transgender movement.)
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) May 24, 2024
President Joe Biden is unlikely to celebrate Ex-Gay Visibility Day, however, even though it doesn’t coincide with a more popular holiday. Biden touted “transgender leaders” whom he appointed to serve in the federal government, but he is unlikely to mention any ex-gays or detransitioners.
These heretics give the lie to the LGBTQ movement’s claim that it offers the only solution for those who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. They are living proof that it is possible to reject the movement and they’re often dismissed as irrelevant, so a day of visibility arguably makes far more sense for them than it does for transgender individuals, who enjoy a chorus of support from companies, stores, and government bodies.
The Ruth Institute will release videos about ex-gays and detransitioners over the coming month, but especially June 2, to present hope for anyone who wants another answer. Sadly, it seems Biden, Target, and their allies would prefer that these people remain invisible.
The Trump Organization, whose logo is displayed here on a smartphone screen, enjoyed a 12.4-point increase in trust from independents in a new Axios/Harris Poll 100 that measured public perceptions of brands’ trust, character, ethics, and vision, among other things. (Photo illustration: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/Light Rocket/Getty Images)
Brands that tend to lean conservative experienced significant corporate reputational improvement because of increased trust from independents, as well as from some Democrats, according to a poll published on Wednesday.
Corporate reputations have plunged to their lowest point since before the COVID-19 pandemic, but conservative-leaning companies ranked among the highest, according to the Axios/Harris Poll 100.
Close to two-thirds of the 100 companies had decreased reputation scores, which reflect a brand’s trust, character, ethics, vision, citizenship, growth, and products and services, while three of the 15 companies that rose over half a point were Hobby Lobby, the Trump Organization, and Fox Corp., according to Axios.
“Many independents, and even some Democrats, in this year’s survey are drifting rightward, which accounts for the boost in reputations of many of the more traditional or conservatively-leaning companies,” Harris Poll CEO John Gerzema told Axios. “There seems to be a move to the center on attitudes toward companies and their role in society. I feel this could be an important finding because swing voters are going to determine the outcome of the election, and as of yet are hard to pin down.”
The Trump Organization saw a 12.4-point increase in trust from independents, while Hobby Lobby experienced an eight-point rise in trust among Democrats, according to Axios. A greater number of independents and Democrats believe Fox Corp. and Hobby Lobby align with their values.
🚨🚨Important Exclusive Data – Companies ride a red wave ahead of election – backlash against cultural activism https://t.co/ZHWhv78PY7
Americans of all political backgrounds appear to be significantly skeptical of left-wing corporate agendas, such as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), according to the poll. Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, which briefly collaborated with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in 2023, experienced a six-point drop, while Target’s reputation declined after backlash to selling an LGBT “Pride” collection.
Many corporations are cutting back on or rebranding their DEI initiatives to evade scrutiny as conservatives have pushed back on these programs with legal efforts. Their concern about legal scrutiny ratcheted up after the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina in June 2023.
The rankings were based on a survey of 16,500 Americans, which was conducted between March 6 and 18.
The Trump Organization, Hobby Lobby, and Fox Corp. did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Planet Fitness has countless critics of its “no judgment” policy that permits gender-confused men to interlope into its women’s locker rooms. It’s costing the gym chain hundreds of millions of dollars. (Photo: Bernard Weil/Toronto Star/Getty Images)
At Planet Fitness, you can exercise everything but your right to privacy. That’s the message customers are taking to heart after an Alaskan woman had her membership revoked for complaining about a man in the women’s locker room.
“The gym is a “no judgment zone,” Patricia Silva was told. Well, it’s about to become a profit-free zone, too, thanks to angry Americans who are putting the company’s stock in a $400 million free-fall.
In a perfect snapshot of where corporate wokeness will lead these days, the media is reporting that within five days of Silva’s story hitting social media, Planet Fitness lost almost a half-billion dollars in value—crashing 7.8% in less than a week. “The company’s value dropped from $5.3 billion on March 14 to $4.9 billion on March 19,” reports show, “and its shares are down by 13.59% compared to a month ago.”
Despite the pushback, the business stubbornly stuck by the mixed-sex policy, insisting that it doesn’t matter if members felt uncomfortable. “This discomfort,” the company’s operational manual argues, “is not a reason to deny access to the transgender member.”
In a video she took from the Fairbanks location, Silva said, “I just came out of Planet Fitness. There is a man shaving in the women’s bathroom,” viewers find out later after she posts a picture.
“I love him in Christ,” she makes clear. “He is a spiritual being having a human experience. He doesn’t like his gender so he wants to be a woman, but I’m not comfortable with him shaving in my bathroom. I just thought I’d say it out loud.”
When Silva confronted the man in the restroom, he replied, “Well, I’m LGB … .” She interrupted, “But you’re a man invading my space!” She ultimately walked away and went to the front desk. “‘Are you aware that there is a MAN shaving in the women’s bathroom?’” she asked. “‘ … I’m not OK with that.’ The two men standing at the desk, put their heads down and their tails between their legs!” Silva recounted. “As I was walking out the door … at my back, a woman shouts, ‘It’s a girl!’ … I shouted back, ‘It’s a man!’”
Silva was especially irate that a young girl, who “could have been 12 years old,” was exposed to the same man. She stood in the same room in a towel and “kind of freaked out.”
The next day, she posted on Facebook that she got a call from Planet Fitness “announcing that they have chosen to cancel my membership rather than protect [young] girls and women … that enter the women’s locker room from men with a penis. … Despicable.”
And yet, even now, flooded with complaints and nationwide criticism, the company stands by its decision, telling Libs of TikTok that the staff will “work with members and employees to address this discomfort [sharing facilities with transgender members] and to foster a climate of understanding consistent with the ‘Judgment Free’ character of Planet Fitness.”
Then, doubling down, the business vowed to continue calling trans-identifying customers by their preferred pronouns and “other terms consistent with their self-reported gender identity, if reasonably known to the Planet Fitness staff.”
None of this should come as a surprise, since the company has a long and unflattering past of siding with trans activists over women who feel victimized by their male presence. In 2015, Yvette Cormier, a member of a Michigan branch, had the exact same experience—well before the movement had risen to the public prominence it has now.
“Freaked out,” she complained to the desk that there was a man in her restroom. She was shocked to find the on-duty staff taking his side. Stunned, she contacted Planet Fitness’s corporate office—where she heard more of the same. The gym, she was told, is a “no judgment zone”—but apparently not for everyone. When Cormier started warning women about the policy, Planet Fitness revoked her membership.
“This is very scary,” she told reporters at the time. “I feel like it’s kind of one-sided. I feel like I’m the one who is being punished.” She sued.
In Leesburg, Florida, six years ago, the same thing happened. “Mrs. H” confronted the man in her locker room and told him to leave. For more than an hour, he refused to go, watching every woman coming and going from his spot near the door. “Despite a male employee observing that [Jordan] Rice’s behavior was ‘over the top,’ staff did not intervene and ask him to finish his business, but permitted him to monopolize the women’s locker room.”
For Mrs. H, who’d survived an attempted rape, it was a traumatic experience to say the least. All she wanted was the privacy to change and shower—instead she got something else; namely, a notice that her membership had been canceled. She took the gym to court.
Conservatives remember the company’s one-sided trans advocacy well. The Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon thought back to those cases, pointing out, “Planet Fitness was an early adopter of insane policies that allow adult men in women’s locker rooms with women and children. And of course, the policies changed with little notice to customers.”
“When women complained,” she explained, “they were ignored or kicked out. Women need to stand up for ourselves, but we also need the men who love us to stand up for us as well. I am grateful that so many good men do. If it takes hurting them financially to make a difference, I’ll take that. But it’s cold comfort.”
For now, the wave of consumer activism that brought Bud Light, Target, RipCurl, and Doritos to their knees is in full force. And rightly so, the army of boycotters say. “The most offensive thing you can do to a woman is pretend she doesn’t exist,” Paul Szypula tweeted. “Because Planet Fitness has chosen this path their gym, will, ironically, soon not exist. The universe has a way of balancing things out.”
The most offensive thing you can do to a woman is pretend she doesn’t exist.
Because Planet Fitness has chosen this path their gym will, ironically, soon not exist.
Libs of TikTok, which helped break Silva’s story, is surprised CEOs need the warning at this point, but posted, “Turns out people don’t want to support companies who cave to gender pseudoscience and allow men in women’s private spaces! #BoycottPlanetFitness Do not let up! Keep it going!”
Whoa. Planet Fitness saw $400 Million wiped off its value since we broke the story of them allowing men in female lockers rooms and then banning the woman who exposed it.
Turns out people don’t want to support companies who cave to gender pseudoscience and allow men in womens’… pic.twitter.com/s55gBryFjD
Many people feel that Boeing’s problems lately are due to its surrender to the Woke agenda, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion).
AND ANOTHER ONE: Boeing Plane Forced to Land After Fuel Starts Leaking Out During Takeoff (VIDEO)
By Cullen Linebarger – March 13, 2024
The woes continue to pile up for Boeing.
As NBC Bay Area reported, a scary scene unfolded Monday after one of the troubled manufacturer’s planes, a 777-300 jet, was forced to land due to fuel leaking from its right landing gear. The incident occurred just 10 seconds after United Airlines Flight 830 from Sydney to San Francisco took off. Video captured by plane spotter New York Aviation shows clear images of fluid spewing from the plane. A passenger video also shows the airline crew dumping fuel before the plane lands. WATCH:
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Google parent Alphabet (GOOG) lost more than $70 billion in market capitalization in a single trading day on fears that its artificial intelligence tool is programmed to be woke, the New York Post reports. The stock sank 4.4% to $138.75 Monday after Google paused its Gemini AI image creation tool because it was churning out historically and factually inaccurate images. These included a Black George Washington, female NHL players, Black Vikings, and an Asian Nazi. The chatbot furthermore refused to condemn pedophilia and said there was “no right or wrong answer” when asked whether Adolph Hitler or Elon Musk is worse.
The calamity could fuel public concerns that Google is “an unreliable source for AI,” wrote Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes in a note to investors.
“We have been arguing that Search behavior is about to change — with new AI-infused features,” Reitzes wrote. “This ‘once in a generation’ change by itself creates opportunities for competitors — but even more if a meaningful portion of users grow concerned about Google’s hallucinations and bias.”
On the same day the stock took its massive plunge, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, one of the company’s top AI bosses, said Gemini would be offline for a few weeks while the issue is fixed. The AI image tool was not “working the way we intended,” Hassabis said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
By now we have all seen the frankly hilarious images of Black George Washington, South Asian popes, along with Gemini’s stubborn and bizarre inability to depict a White scientist or lawyer. Much like Open AI’s ChatGPT before it, Gemini will gladly generate content heralding the virtues of Black, Hispanic or Asian people, and will decline to do so in regard to White people so as not to perpetuate stereotypes.
There are two main reasons why this is occurring. The first, flaws in the AI software itself, has been much discussed. The second, and more intractable problem, that of flaws in the original source material, has not.
Engineers at AI companies have trained their software to “correct,” or “compensate,” for what they assume is the systemic racism that our society is rife with. (Betul Abali/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Gemini’s AI image generation does generate a wide range of people. And that’s generally a good thing because people around the world use it. But it’s missing the mark here,” Jack Krawczyk, senior director for Gemini Experiences has admitted.
You see, the engineers at AI companies such as Google and Open AI have trained their software to “correct,” or “compensate,” for what they assume is the systemic racism and bigotry that our society is rife with. But the mainly 21st-century internet source material AI uses is already correcting for such bias. It is in large part this doubling down that produces the absurd and ludicrous images and answers that Gemini and ChatGPT are being mocked for.
For well over a decade, online content creators such as advertisers and news outlets have sought to diversify the subjects of their content in order to redress supposed negative historical stereotypes.
It is this very content that AI generators scrub once again for alleged racism, and as a result, all too often, the only option left to AI to make the content “less racist” is to erase White people from results altogether. In its own strange way, generative AI may be proving that American society is actually far less racist than those in positions of power assume.
This problem of source material also extends far beyond thorny issues of race, as Christina Pushaw, an aide to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, exposed in two prompts regarding COVID.
Google’s Gemini AI informs me that opening schools did spread COVID, but BLM protests did not. pic.twitter.com/QvJA79pGDR
She first asked Gemini if opening schools spread COVID, and then if BLM rallies spread COVID. Nobody should be surprised to learn that the AI provided evidence of school openings spreading the virus and no evidence that BLM rallies did.
But here’s the thing. If you went back and aggregated the contemporaneous online news reporting from 2020 and 2021, these are exactly the answers that you would wind up with. News outlets bent over backwards to deny that tens of thousands marching against alleged racism, and using public transportation to get there, could spread COVID, while chomping at the bit to prove in-class learning was deadly.
In fact, there was so much abject online censorship of anything questioning the orthodoxies of the COVID lockdowns that the historical record upon which AI is built is all but irretrievably corrupted. This is an existential problem for the widespread use of artificial intelligence, especially in areas such as journalism, history, regulation and even legislation, because obviously there is no way to train AI to only use sources that “tell the truth.”
There is no doubt that in areas such as science and engineering AI opens up a world of new opportunities, but as far as intellectual pursuits go, we must be very circumspect about the vast flaws that AI introduces to our discourse.
For now, at least, generative AI absolutely should not be used to create learning materials for our schools. (Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Illustration)
For now, at least, generative AI absolutely should not be used to create learning materials for our schools, breaking stories in our newspapers, or be anywhere within a 10,000-mile radius of our government. It turns out the business of interpreting the billions of bits of information online to arrive at rational conclusions is still very much a human endeavor. It is still very much a subjective matter, and there is a real possibility that no matter how advanced AI becomes, it always will be.
This may be a hard pill to swallow for companies that have invested fortunes in generative AI development, but it is good news for human beings, who can laugh at the fumbling failures of the technology and know that we are still the best arbiters of truth. More, it seems very likely that we always will be.
Anger over a $355 million civil judgment against former President Donald Trump has major investors reconsidering doing business with New York. Real estate mogul Grant Cardone said Wednesday his firm Cardone Capital will no longer underwrite New York real estate in the wake of Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling Friday in a civil lawsuit brought by Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James that also prevents Trump from doing business in the state for three years.
“Immediately discontinue ALL underwriting on New York City real estate,” Cardone posted Wednesday on X. “The risk outweigh the opportunities at this time. Recent political decisions will continue to deteriorate price and benefit states that don’t have these challenges.
“Focus on Texas & Florida.”
Cardone is the second high-profile investor this week to state they will no longer invest in the state. “Shark Tank” host Kevin O’Leary said Monday he was “shocked” by the ruling.
“This award, I mean, just leaving the whole Trump thing out of it and seeing what occurred here … and I’m no different than any other investor, I’m shocked at this,” O’Leary told Fox Business. “I can’t even understand or fathom the decision at all. There’s no rationale for it.”
In a post Monday on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “Kevin O’Leary is so great, and tells it like it is. Businesses will flee NYC & State after the Corrupt Judge’s ruling!”
Cardone told Fox News on Wednesday when Engoron issued his ruling, “it was like, ‘Pencils down. Don’t touch it. Don’t go there.’ “
“We invest for 14,000 investors at Cardone Capital that depend on cash flow,” Cardone said. “And if I can’t predict the cash flow because of some ruling, or because of the migrants, or because I can’t evict people, New York City just keeps doing every single thing they can to sell real estate in Florida, not sell real estate in New York.”
Ford’s top boss, CEO Jim Farley, said Thursday that the company will “think carefully” about where it builds future vehicles following the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike. The strike came with a heavy price for the Detroit automaker. For one, the company’s Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville was the first to shut down when thousands of UAW union members walked off the job. It was a major play in the UAW’s strike last fall against Detroit’s Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.
During the Wolfe Research Global Auto Conference in New York, Farley said the strike had been “an extremely difficult moment” for the company, noting Ford had “prided itself on not having a strike since ’70.”
Ford CEO Jim Farley attends a Red Bull Racing unveiling of the team’s new Formula One car during a launch event in New York City on Feb. 3. (ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
He continued by saying that Ford, unlike its competitors, has 57,000 UAW workers and that 100% of its trucks are made by such workers in the U.S.
“Our competitors do not do that. They went through bankruptcy, and they moved production to Mexico and other places. So it has always been a cost for us. And we always thought it was the right kind of cost,” he said.
The moment Ford’s plant shut down was a “watershed moment.”
“Really, our relationship has changed,” Farley told the conference. “Does this have business impact? Yes.”
A “UAW On Strike” sign is held by a picketer outside the General Motors Co. Spring Hill Manufacturing plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, on Oct. 30, 2023. (Kevin Wurm/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
In a statement to The Associated Press, UAW President Shawn Fain argued that Ford should “find a CEO who’s interested in the future of this country’s auto industry.”
“Maybe Ford doesn’t need to move factories to find the cheapest labor on Earth,” he said. “Maybe it needs to recommit to American workers.”
It was the first time a president appeared alongside striking workers in modern history.
The work stoppage cost the industry billions of dollars, and the Big Three all ratified record contracts with the union in order to get production lines running again.
The social media platforms say, on the one hand, they have every right to act as publishers to curate their platforms any way they see fit. On the other hand, they say they are not publishers to gain legal immunity under Section 230. They can’t be allowed to have it both ways. (Photo: Jonathan Raa/Nur Photo/Getty Images)
Appealing from a big loss they suffered at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, social media platforms are challenging Texas’ social media law that prohibits those companies from engaging in viewpoint discrimination when curating their platforms.
They claim Texas’ law violates their First Amendment rights for compelling them to host content. In other words, the platforms are saying that prohibiting a platform’s viewpoint censorship is effectively the same as forcing students in public schools to salute the American flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
HUH??? What, WHAT?
It’s an odd argument for myriad reasons, but mainly because Big Tech has continually said that they serve as neutral platforms that merely transmit information from one point to another, like an internet service provider or a telephone.
They don’t claim to be publishers, like a newspaper or broadcaster. For example, Mark Zuckerberg told The New York Times that Facebook “explicitly view[s] [itself] as not editors … .” Nor “does [Facebook] want to have editorial judgment over the content that’s in your feed.”
Zuckerberg’s view is consistent with Big Tech’s court representations when seeking legal immunities under Section 230 of the Communications Act. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram; X, the former Twitter; and Google have all stated that they are neither responsible for, nor materially contribute to, their users’ content to avoid liability for hosting it.
In other words, they are conduits of others’ speech, not speakers themselves.
It’s why their First Amendment argument is patently confusing: You have to be speaking to avail yourself of its protection.
It’s also why the First Amendment has long allowed the government to apply nondiscrimination laws, as Texas did, on communications platforms that merely transmit the speech of others. For instance, telephone companies are prohibited from discriminating against callers.
The courts have upheld nondiscrimination provisions imposed on internet service providers. And the Supreme Court has held that even a property owner must allow expressive activities on his property.
However, platforms say, on the one hand, they have every right to act as publishers to curate their platforms any way they see fit. On the other hand, they say they are not publishers to gain legal immunity under Section 230.
Not only are these two positions contradictory, but they are also inconsistent with the First Amendment’s history and its jurisprudence. The relevant part of the First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech … .” James Madison, when drafting the Free Speech Clause, intended it as a bulwark against government influence over what we can say or do. It doesn’t provide for tech exceptionalism.
Indeed, the opposite is true. Yes, the First Amendment does derive, in part, from Madison’s—and the nation’s—distrust over the concentrated power the government wields. But Madison also knew that private operators, too, could be a source of concentrated authority, and, if left unchecked, could amass more power than the government itself.
Today’s tech behemoths have proven Madison’s skepticism warranted. The power of social media platforms have over speech eclipses that of any sitting president or government. As Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas succinctly put it, social media companies can “remove [an] account ‘at any time for any or no reason.’” In this case, Twitter, now X, “unapologetically argues that it could turn around and ban all pro-LGBT speech for no other reason than its employees want to pick on members of that community … .”
And recent history shows that the tech titans aren’t shy at doing just that with impunity.
YouTube blocks and demonetizes users who support certain political candidates or content creators that Google does not favor. What was then still Twitter censored The New York Post for accurate reporting ahead of a consequential election. Facebook even removed posts that shared a study published by the British Medical Journal—one of the oldest and most prestigious medical journals in the world—because the platform believed the study was disinformation for calling some of Pfizer’s data on its COVID-19 vaccines’ effectiveness into question.
It’s clear from their advocacy in this case that Big Tech companies don’t truly care about free speech. What they really care about is liability. If Texas is now going to hold them accountable for these decisions to censor users, then they are going to need another liability shield for that.
Big Tech thinks the First Amendment is the vessel to ensure they have complete immunity from any scrutiny. Candidly, it’s hard to imagine that Madison drafted the First Amendment as a corporate instrument to cut down an individual’s speech, but that’s what they argue. Not to mince words, their aim in this case is to contort the application of the First Amendment to create more protections to void every legislative proposal directed at them. It has almost nothing to do with free speech.
The United Parcel Service announced Tuesday that it would be laying off 12,000 workers only five months after it was celebrated for agreeing to a massive pay raise for drivers negotiated by a union.
“We are going to fit our organization to our strategy and align our resources against what’s wildly important,” said CEO Carol Tome on a conference call.
He went on to call 2023 a “difficult and disappointing year” for the company.
The company reported that revenue plummeted by 7.8% in the fourth quarter to $24.92 billion, just below Wall Street projections of $25.31 billion according to NPR.
UPS stock plummeted by nearly 9% on Tuesday.
Tome said the layoffs would save the company about $1 billion, and he added that employees would be ordered to work back at the office five days a week.
Many on social media blamed the company’s problems on the union agreement it signed that would raise pay for drivers to an astounding $170,000. When the deal was announced in August, social media went wild with memes portraying UPS drivers as suddenly wealthy.
The Teamsters’ Union touted the deal in August as “single largest private-sector collective bargaining agreement in North America.” The union represented about 70% of the company’s employers.
The company had agreed to increase part-time workers’ salaries to $25.75 per hour and also ended mandatory overtime as part of the union deal.
Tome also blamed the broader economy for the disappointing outlook after citing the threat of a strike by Teamsters and the union deal.
Other companies have announced layoffs in recent months, which some economists see as a sign that the economy is weakening. Polls show that Americans blame President Joe Biden for the high inflation that has significantly impacted household budgets in a negative way.
Here’s more about the announcement:
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Republican Sen. Josh Hawley forced Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to publicly apologize to the families of children victimized by his company’s addictive algorithms and practices.
During opening remarks to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Zuckerberg, who is on the record as encouraging his kids to play outside instead of use screens, falsely claimed social media doesn’t damage many kids’ happiness and health.
“Mental health is a complex issue, and the existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having more mental health outcomes,” Zuckerberg said.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims that there is no “causal link” between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes: pic.twitter.com/QZCE3UWr7G
When Hawley pressed Zuckerberg about the statement later in the hearing, Zuckerberg doubled down.
“What I said is I think it’s important to look at the science. I know it’s — people widely talk about this as if that is something that’s already been proven and I think that the bulk of the scientific evidence does not support that,” Zuckerberg replied.
Hawley spent the next five minutes citing Meta-funded studies that find the opposite. One internal research project conducted by Meta in 2021 determined one in three teenage girls struggling with body image “reported that using Instagram made them feel worse.”
“Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups,” a slide summarizing the study noted.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of the study warned that Meta researchers “repeatedly” found that Instagram “is harmful for a sizable percentage of [young users], most notably teenage girls” but did nothing about it.
Zuckerberg tried to dispute his own company’s findings, but Hawley did not let his excuses slide.
“You’re here testifying to us in public that there’s no link. You’ve been doing this for years. For years, you’ve been coming in public and testifying under oath that there’s absolutely no link, your product is wonderful, the science is nascent, full speed ahead. While internally, you know full well your product is a disaster for teenagers,” Hawley countered, which elicited a round of applause from viewers.
“That’s not true,” Zuckerberg replied.
Must Watch! @HawleyMO eviscerates Mark Zuckerberg for claiming "there’s no link between young people using social media and negative mental health problems."
Senator Hawley then forces Zuckerberg to apologize in person to the parents of children exploited on his platform. pic.twitter.com/36ni1eAKP4
“That’s not a question. Those are facts, Mr. Zuckerberg,” Hawley said, before continuing to list evidence that Meta knows its products endanger their users.
He listed several statistics uncovered by former Facebook executive Arturo Béjar. Béjar testified to a Senate subcommittee last year that high percentages of teen girls were exposed to nudity, unwanted sexual advances, and self-harm content within the last seven days on Meta social media platforms.
“I know you’re familiar with these stats because he sent you an email where he lined it all out. I mean, we’ve got a copy of it right here. My question is, who did you fire for this and who got fired because of that?” Hawley asked.
Zuckerberg danced around the question several times before Hawley answered it for him.
“You didn’t fire anybody, right? You didn’t take any significant actions,” Hawley said.
When Zuckerberg tried to deflect because he didn’t think it was “appropriate” to talk about his hiring and firing decisions, Hawley did not hold back.
“You know who’s sitting behind you? You’ve got families from across the nation whose children are either severely harmed or gone. And you don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about steps that you took? The fact that you didn’t fire somebody?” Hawley asked. “Let me ask you this. Have you compensated any of the victims?”
Zuckerberg confirmed he has not.
“Don’t you think they deserve some compensation for what your platform has done? Help with counseling services help with dealing with the issues that your service has caused?” Hawley pressed, noting that profit drove Meta’s decisions.
As Zuckerberg fumbled for a response, Hawley demanded he turn towards the gallery of onlookers and apologize to the families of children Big Tech has helped harm.
“There’s families of victims here today. Have you apologized to the victims? Would you like to do so now? Well, they’re here. You’re on national television,” Hawley said. “Would you like now to apologize to the victims who have been harmed, but you’re not showing the pictures? Would you like to apologize for what you’ve done to these good people?”
Zuckerberg stood, turned away from his mic, and told the parents holding pictures of their children’s faces that he understood “your families have suffered.”
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
As half the states in the country raise their hourly minimum wage, American fast-food staples like the McDonald’s Big Mac could soar to $15, predicts an economic analyst.
Companies are “either gonna have to raise prices, start to reduce those labor costs, or a combination of both,” says Brandon Arnold, EVP at National Taxpayers Union, a fiscally conservative think tank, the New York Post reports.
“That’s not fair to those employees that are getting laid off — nor is it fair to the customers that are all of a sudden paying $12, $15 for a Big Mac,” Arnold says.
“As [employers] start to see these labor costs increase, they may not lay people off immediately,” believes the analyst. “But when times get tough, they’re gonna have to make changes.”
Pizza Hut announced last week it will lay off more than 1,200 delivery drivers in California due to the state’s higher minimum wage law, which goes into effect in April. McDonald’s and Chipotle have both announced they will raise their menu prices in California due to the higher wages.
Rather than lose a job and stand on the unemployment line, Arnold believes, most fast-food workers would accept an hourly wage of $8-$10 an hour.
In an open letter, McDonald’s USA President Joe Erlinger fired away, “California keeps looking for ways to raise prices, drive away more businesses and destroy growth through bad policy and bad politics.”
Twenty-five states and Washington, D.C., have passed legislation to raise minimum wages, with the higher payouts taking effect in 22 of those states on Monday. Nevada’s and Oregon’s wage hikes will go into effect on July 1, while Florida’s will start on Sept. 30.
What if some of the antagonism around labor unions in the United States could be reduced by eliminating laws that force workers and unions alike to do things against their will? A new bill in Congress would do that. Pictured: Employees of The Washington Post walk a picket line as they stage a 24-hour strike outside The Washington Post building Dec. 7. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
What if some of the antagonism around labor unions in the United States could be reduced by eliminating laws that force workers and unions alike to do things against their will?
That’s what the Worker’s Choice Act, introduced Wednesday by Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), would do.
Current law forces workers in unionized workplaces to be represented by a union even if they do not join the union and it forces unions to represent workers who do not pay union fees. The Worker’s Choice Act would allow workers who do not pay union fees to choose their own representation, and it would free unions from having to represent so-called free riders who do not pay union fees.
Under the Worker’s Choice Act, employees who live in the 26 “right to work” states that do not require workers to pay union fees as a condition of employment would no longer be forced to accept union representation that they do not want. Instead, they could negotiate directly with their employer, or choose their own outside representation. This change would apply to the 4.2 million workers in right-to-work states who are currently represented by unions. Among them, nearly 800,000 currently nonpaying workers would no longer be represented by unions unless they chose to begin paying for representation.
The proposed law would not change anything for the 11.8 million workers in unionized workplaces in forced unionism states where the law requires workers to pay for union representation even if they do not join the union.
This freedom from union representation would be particularly helpful to workers who do not believe the union represents their interests. They may think this for any number of reasons. A worker may want to be compensated and promoted based on her performance instead of the union’s rigid seniority-based system; a worker may feel ignored and ostracized by the union that is supposed to represent him; a worker may have caregiving duties that could be alleviated through a different schedule than the union dictates; and a young worker struggling to start a family and buy a home might be better served by bigger paychecks rather than the union’s Cadillac benefits plan.
Yet the bill does not only help workers. It would also free unions of their “free rider” problem. No longer would unions have to represent workers who don’t pay for representation. This would enable unions to focus their efforts on the interests of their paying members. Without the costs of representing nonpaying members, unions could lower their fees for those who want union representation. Moreover, some unions’ membership may even increase as non-members may choose to become dues-paying members to maintain their representation. Workers’ voices cannot truly be heard if workers are prevented from speaking for themselves and prevented from choosing who gets to speak for them. A 2016 Heritage Foundation analysis found that 94% of workers represented by unions did not vote for their representation.
Ending forced representation would benefit workers and unions alike by freeing workers to choose their representation and freeing unions to focus their time and resources only on workers who want and are willing to pay for their representation. An upshot of this shift could be growth in alternative types of labor organizations that allow more workers to band together and benefit from their shared interests and pursuits.
For example, as more workers are pursuing independent work that allows them to be their own bosses, professional organizations like the Association of Independent Doctors and the Freelancers Union can provide a collective voice and pooled resources to offer lower-cost products and services such as insurance, education, and advocacy.
Labor unions could also offer more targeted representation services that allow individuals to represent themselves, in order to appeal to more workers. For example, the Major League Baseball Players Association sets minimum salary requirements and provides individual representation services but also allows individuals to negotiate their compensation directly with their employer.
Exclusive representation muffles the voices and denies the rights of at least a minority of workers, and imposes undue burdens on unions. Prioritizing workers’ choices and reducing government barriers to work pursuits are crucial to elevating workers’ voices, improving their well-being, and expanding their opportunities.
CEO Elon Musk unveiled the long-awaited Tesla Cybertruck at a live event at its Gigafactory in Austin, Texas. The futuristic-looking Cybertruck is the first electric vehicle Tesla offers that isn’t a sedan marks the company’s entry into the growing EV pickup market, joining rivals like Ford and Rivian. One advantage Elon Musk promises the Cybertruck has over the competition? It is bullet proof.
Tesla shareholders of record were invited to apply to attend and then were selected via a drawing. Prices were revealed and are much higher than original estimates.
Cybertruck Pricing
Rear-wheel drive variant: $66,990
All-wheel drive variant: $76,990
Cyberbeast variant: $99,990
Pricing range from $60,990 to $99,900, higher than the rumored $50,000 range predicted by industry and Wall Street analysts. Potential Cybertruck buyers were initially able to place a reservation for a refundable $100 deposit.
For comparison, the starting price for the Ford F-150 Lightning currently starts at $52,000 while Rivian raised prices for its quad-motor R1T pickup last year from $67,500 to $79,500.
Two days ago Musk said the highest end one would have a range of 500 miles and it’s actually 320.
Tesla completed its first production candidate Cybertruck in July, roughly four years after it was first announced and two years after production was initially planned to begin. Last year, Musk cited supply chain shortages affecting the sourcing of components as a factor in pushing back Cybertruck production to 2023.
At the Cybertruck’s unveiling in 2019, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said it would cost roughly $40,000 – though the company hasn’t indicated its price ahead of Thursday’s launch. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via / Getty Images)
Tesla had previously touted the stainless steel exterior as being resistant to dents and corrosion, while Musk said the Cybertruck is bulletproof. It also has “armor glass” that was famously broken on a prototype Cybertruck at its November 2019 announcement event during a demonstration gone awry.
Musk has said Tesla aims to make 200,000 units of its Cybertruck per year. He had previously said it has the capacity to make over 125,000 Cybertrucks annually and that there is the potential to lift that total to 250,000 in 2025. It’s unclear how many Cybertrucks will be part of the first batch delivered or subsequent deliveries into early 2024.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk verbally reacts as the demonstration of Cybertruck’s armor glass went awry at its 2019 unveiling. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via / Getty Images)
During a Tesla earnings call in October, Musk said he wants to “temper expectations” around the Cybertruck even as he thinks it’s “our best product ever.”
“I do want to emphasize that there will be enormous challenges in reaching volume production with the Cybertruck and then in making a Cybertruck cash flow positive,” Musk said. “This is simply normal when you’ve got a product with a lot of new technology, or for any new vehicle program but especially for one that is as different and advanced as the Cybertruck, you will have problems proportionate to how many new things you’re trying to solve at scale.”
“It’s a great product, but financially it will take – I don’t know – a year to 18 months before it is a significant positive cash flow contributor. I wish there was some way for that to be different, but that’s my best guess,” he explained. “The demand is off the charts, we have over a million people who have reserved the car. So it’s not a demand issue, but we have to make it, and we need to make it at a price people can afford. Insanely difficult things.”
The wheels are starting to fall off the green energy bandwagon. The rose-colored glasses are clearing up and reality is sinking in.
The giant push toward a net zero utopia is not practical and has been a complete disservice to the American consumer. Components of the green movement are experiencing major setbacks, namely offshore wind, electric vehicles (EVs), and investments.
Offshore wind projects are struggling to secure financing and stay on track. The biggest blow came last month, when the world’s largest offshore wind developer Ørsted canceled two major projects off the New Jersey coastline, taking the wind right out of Gov. Phil Murphy’s green energy sails. Ørsted is also suspending work on offshore projects in Maryland and Delaware.
The EV market is also losing steam. Sales are slumping and manufacturers are scaling back on production. (Anna Moneymaker/Pool/Getty Images | Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Among the wave of cancellations are projects in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and Connecticut. Several other projects are on the ropes and a host of companies are paying millions to break their contracts.
The industry hit another snag recently when Germany-based Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy pulled the plug on its wind turbine blade facility in Portsmouth, Virginia. Siemens Gamesa, one of the world’s leading suppliers, says, “development milestones to establish the facility could not be met.”
According to BloombergNEF, at least half of U.S. wind contracts have or are at risk of being terminated. The causes are typically due to skyrocketing inflation, high interest rates, choked supply chains and financial troubles.
Ford Motor Company stands to lose $4.5 billion on its EV business for 2023 and will be delaying many of their EV investments.
General Motors said it was restructuring EV goals, Honda shelved plans to develop affordable EVs with GM, and Hertz said it will slow their rate of purchasing them due to high repair costs. Elon Musk is even considering putting off plans for a $1 billion plant in Mexico.
Most, if not all, manufacturers are reporting major losses per EV sold. Ford lost $62,000 per vehicle in the third quarter; one luxury electric vehicle company lost an astounding $430,000. Countless others are losing tens of thousands of dollars per vehicle, quarter after quarter.
Car dealers are slashing EV prices. EVs sit on lots nearly twice as long as internal combustion engines. Even industry-leader Tesla has been shaving thousands off their retail prices due to unmet sales expectations.
This kind of loss is not sustainable for any company.
The EV market is niche. Those who want one have one. But the rest of America is not convinced they would be better off with an EV on account of a multitude of reliability factors. Nor can they afford the steep price tag.
Consequently, the last few months have seen stock prices drastically dropping in companies across the green spectrum. From wind to solar to EVs to fuel cells, investors are abandoning the “green” energy ship in droves. It might be sinking.
Siemens Energy stock is down 45%; Ørsted, 67%; Power Inc., a hydrogen fuel cell producer, 71%; Charge Point Holdings Inc., an EV charging company, 70%; Blink Charging Co., another EV charging company, 72%; and Nikola Corp., maker of heavy-duty EVs, has gone from $65 a share in mid-2020 to the current price of less than $1 per share.
A recent Wall Street Journal article noted that such companies are “finding it more difficult to secure financing than at any time in the past decade.”
We need to read between the lines here. The green energy revolution is not working, nor is central planning. You cannot force Americans to buy cars they don’t want any more than you can force energy transitions that aren’t viable.
Green energy is wholly inadequate to meet the needs of all Americans, and turns out, is insanely expensive.
The World Economic Forum says that getting to net zero by 2050 will cost an extra $3.5 trillion a year. The U.S. has already poured hundreds of billions into the effort and continues to keep shoveling. All on the backs of the American taxpayer, to save a mere fraction of temperature. Maybe.
Heritage Foundation’s chief statistician estimates that even if all fossil fuels were eliminated from the United States, not even 0.2 degrees Celsius would be salvaged.
Kristen Walker is a policy analyst for the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit www.theamericanconsumer.org or follow us on Twitter @ConsumerPal.
A new electric vehicle battery factory in Kansas will require so much energy that a coal plant slated for closure will now remain open, plus it will be expanded.
Panasonic is building a $4 billion EV battery factory in De Soto, Kansas. The upcoming lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility is expected to start mass production of EV batteries by the end of March 2025.
Despite the massive $4 billion price tag for the 2.7 million square-foot Panasonic facility, the Japanese company is “poised to get as much as $6.8 billion from provisions in last year’s federal Inflation Reduction Act,” according to a July report from the Kansas City Star. The Japanese company is expected to receive state and local incentives – pushing the total financial incentives to as much as $8 billion.
This massive EV battery factory will require enormous amounts of power. So much energy, in fact, that a local coal-fired plant will be expanded and the life of the plant will be extended.
The EV battery factory will reportedly require between 200 and 250 megawatts of electricity to operate – roughly the same amount of power needed for a small city.
The plant in Lawrence is owned by Evergy – an investor-owned energy company serving more than 1.6 million customers across Kansas and Missouri.
Evergy had reportedly planned to close its coal-fired Unit 4 at the Lawrence Energy Center in late 2023 or early 2024. However, Evergy is extending the life of the coal plant in Lawrence “until 2028 and would then transition Unit 5 to gas to provide power at times of high demand,” the Kansas City Star reported.
“The demand created by the nearly 4-million-square-foot plant in Johnson County is expected to double that of Evergy’s current largest customer in the state and require two new substations, upgrades to three current substations and work on 31 miles of transmission lines,” according to the outlet.
Kayla Messamore – Evergy’s vice president of strategy and long-term planning – admitted during testimony that the electric car battery plant will present “near-term challenges from a resource adequacy perspective.”
“Beyond the sheer magnitude of load and load factor, Panasonic’s construction schedule, and, in turn, its energy needs, are being planned on a very aggressive schedule,” Messamore said. “With energy needs starting to ramp in 2024 and full load requirements by 2026, there is urgency to procure capacity and energy to fulfill the expected energy usage schedule.”
Carl Walton – Panasonic Energy of North America’s vice president of strategic initiatives and facilities – said, “Panasonic is making a significant investment in upgrading Evergy’s infrastructure to be able to serve the factory, and we will pay for all costs immediately attributable to our operations.”
Panasonic is expected to receive a discounted electric rate that is offered to economic development projects.
Evergy had already filed for a rate hike for its customers with state regulators. The rate hike was largely denied by the Kansas Corporation Commission.
However, regulators allegedly agreed that Evergy “should be permitted to petition for another rate increase next year, as the utility has said those may be needed to accommodate Panasonic’s new battery plant in De Soto. In its initial rate-increase request, Evergy had said the company wanted to make adjustments to accommodate the power load for the plant.”
Evergy spokesperson Gina Penzig said over 50% of the utility’s power generation is carbon-free, but “the grid still needs baseload energy for times when intermittent fuels are not operating.”
The factory is said to employ approximately 4,000 workers.
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President Joe Biden took another ax to American energy Wednesday with the cancellation of Trump-era leases for oil and gas development in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 2017 through the landmark Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Congress opened up a 1.6-million-acre patch along Alaska’s north coast for drilling leases. The section amounts to less than 10 percent of the entire refuge, which spans 19.6 million acres in northeast Alaska and is about the size of South Carolina.
“My Administration is canceling all remaining oil and gas leases issued under the last administration in the Arctic Refuge and proposing to protect 13 million acres in the Western Arctic,” Biden wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “There’s more to do,” he added ominously.
Biden previously paused leases in 2021 while their environmental effects were assessed — months after signing an executive order on his first day in office to halt any new drilling leases on public land. In August, a federal judge upheld the administration’s pause on development in the region over Alaskans’ objections.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland celebrated the cancellation of leases in a Wednesday press release.
“President Biden is delivering on the most ambitious climate and conservation agenda in history,” Haaland said. “The steps we are taking today further that commitment, based on the best available science and in recognition of the Indigenous Knowledge of the original stewards of this area, to safeguard our public lands for future generations.” The indigenous tribe closest to the area in question, however, only turned against drilling after unsuccessfully trying to lease out its own land for oil and gas development.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil remain underneath the frozen tundra of the north slope’s refuge.
The decision to terminate leases issued under President Donald Trump follows Biden’s order in March to choke off another 16 million acres of Alaskan territory from oil and gas development. Biden has made locking up 30 percent of the nation’s land and waterways by 2030 a top White House priority.
“Once again, the Biden administration has shown it cares nothing about following the law when it comes to its climate crusade,” Rick Whitbeck, the Alaska State Director for Power the Future, told The Federalist. “Canceling fully-executed leases and putting congressionally-authorized development areas off-limits only weakens America’s domestic energy situation. You have to wonder who is pulling the strings: OPEC? Russia? China?”
Biden has routinely turned to Middle Eastern nations to ramp up oil production nearly every time oil prices rise.
Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who’s been repeatedly frustrated by the administration’s antagonism towards development in his state, blasted the latest episode of Washington interference Wednesday.
“Federal agencies don’t get to rewrite laws, and that is exactly what the Department of the Interior is trying to do here,” Dunleavy said. “We will fight for Alaska’s right to develop its own resources and will be turning to the courts to correct the Biden administration’s wrong.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
A Canadian man recently learned the hard way that electric vehicles have significant disadvantages compared to gas-powered vehicles. On July 27, Dalbir Bala packed his wife and three children in his truck — a 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning Lariat that he purchased for $85,000 (or $115,000 in Canadian currency) in January — for a business trip to Chicago, the CBC reported.
Along the 1,400 mile trip from his home near Winnipeg to the Chicagoland area, Bala planned to stop at three charging stations. The truck’s range, when fully charged, is about 320 miles.
Bala’s stop at the first station in Fargo, North Dakota, was successful — albeit inconvenient because it took more than two hours to recharge the battery to 90%. But at the second station in Albertville, Minnesota, Bala discovered a charging station that did not work. After unsuccessfully calling for help, Bala drove to a nearby charging station in Elk River, Minnesota — but that one didn’t work either.
With just 12 miles remaining on his battery, Bala made the decision to have his truck towed to a nearby Ford dealership, where he also rented a gas-powered Toyota 4Runner to complete his trip to Chicago. He picked up his electric truck on the return trip.
Now, Bala is telling his story and warning other consumers about the problems with electric vehicles.
“People have to make the right choices. I want to tell everybody to read my story,” he told Fox Business. “Do your research before even thinking about it and make a wiser choice. … The actual thing they promised is not even close. Not even 50%. And once you buy it, you’re stuck with it, and you have to carry huge losses to get rid of that. And nobody is there to help you.”
The nightmare trip is not Bala’s only problem with the truck.
He explained in a social media post that not long after purchasing it, he was involved in a “minor fender bender” with a small amount of damage. Shockingly, it took six months for the damage to be repaired because of a parts shortage.
“It was in [the] shop for 6 months. I can’t take it to my lake cabin. I cannot take it for off–grid camping. I cannot take [it] for even a road trip,” Bala wrote on Facebook. “I can only drive in city — biggest scam of modern times.”
In a statement, Ford Motor Corp. said Bala’s story demonstrates the need for more charging stations:
This customer’s experience highlights the urgent need to rapidly improve access to public charging across the US and Canada. Ford’s EV-certified dealers will install public-facing DC fast chargers at their dealerships by early 2024, providing alternative charging options to those available today. Ford was also the first in the industry to gain access to over 12,000 Tesla Superchargers for Ford drivers.
‘BIGGEST SCAM OF MODERN TIMES’: Man ditches $115K EV during family trip www.youtube.com
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NASHVILLE – Americans on Broadway responded to critics who say country music star Jason Aldean’s song “Try That In A Small Town” and its accompanying video evoke vigilantism and racism.
“I think it’s a bunch of sissies making a big deal out of, you know — it’s free speech, first of all,” Carmen said outside Aldean’s Nashville bar. “Don’t think it’s a racial thing at all. I think that’s the way he feels about our country.”
IS JASON ALDEAN’S NEW VIDEO RACIST? WATCH:
But Darren was more open to critics.
“Everybody has different opinions. Everybody’s different,” he said. “It’s a big country.”
“I say artistic freedom,” Darren added.
Jason Aldean has faced criticism that his song “Try That In A Small Town,” promotes racism and vigilantism. The country music star denied those accusations. (Rich Polk/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)
Critics have argued the Aldean song’s message — that big city behavior like stomping the flag or swearing at cops wouldn’t be well received in a small town — and the accompanying riot footage in the video promote race-based violence. Video of Aldean and his band was also shot in front of a Tennessee courthouse where a mob lynched a Black man in 1927.
Aldean disputed the accusations, tweeting that no lyrics in the song reference race and that all the clips were of real news footage. He also pointed out that he was performing at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas in 2017 when a gunman opened fire on the crowd, killing 58 and injuring hundreds.
In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless, but dangerous.…
“It is absolutely overblown,” Nancy said. “He’s just saying ‘small town values,’ ‘we’re going to take care of each other.'”
Rose agreed.
“I don’t think it had anything to do with race,” she said. “The song was just a very basic song about living in a small town, and I don’t understand how it was correlated at all with anything else.”
Rose doesn’t believe “Try That In A Small Town,” by Jason Aldean, has anything to do with race. She feels the song is simply about life in a small town. (Teny Sahakian/Fox News Digital)
The video for “Try That In A Small Town” was released Friday and was played heavily on CMT until the network pulled it from rotation earlier this week without explanation. But out of more than a dozen people who spoke to Fox News in Nashville, none saw a problem with the video.
“I thought it’s a beautiful song,” Carol said. “Everybody’s going to take it the way they want.”
“Either it’s freedom of speech or it’s not,” Lori said. “One way or the other. We don’t get it both ways.”
Ethan Barton is a producer/reporter for Digital Originals. You can reach him at ethan.barton@fox.com and follow him on Twitter at @ethanrbarton.
Jason Aldean has lost the support of Country Music Television (CMT), with the network confirming to Fox News Digital it has pulled the musician’s “Try That in a Small Town” music video from circulation.
A representative for the network did not provide more context for the decision, but Aldean has received immense backlash from the public, with some suggesting it is a “pro-lynching song” — a narrative Aldean adamantly denies. In the video, Aldean’s lyrics are sung while news coverage from the 2020 riots illustrates his message. “Cuss out a cop spit in his face / stomp on the flag and light it up,” Aldean sings, along with footage of the described instances.
Aldean’s tune has skyrocketed to success given all the controversy, sitting as ITunes’ No. 1 song at the time of publication.
Jason Aldean’s music video for “Try That in a Small Town” has been pulled by CMT. No reason was immediately given. (BBR Music Group/Jason Aldean/YouTube)
A representative for Aldean’s record label, BBR Music Group, did not immediately return Fox News Digital’s request for comment, nor did representatives for the singer. TackleBox, the production company which produced Aldean’s music video, shared in a statement to Fox News Digital that the location is a “popular filming location outside of Nashville,” which Aldean did not select himself.
Jason Aldean was ridiculed online for his song “Try That in a Small Town,” prompting the country star to speak out and defend himself. (Rich Polk/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)
Several movies and music videos have been filmed at the location. “Any alternative narrative suggesting the music video’s location decision is false,” it added.
Throughout the video, Aldean can be seen singing in front of the Maury County Courthouse, which has an American flag hanging from it. The government building can be found in Columbia, Tennessee. It was previously the site of a horrific lynching of Black man Henry Choate, in 1927.
Jason Aldean reminded his followers that he was present at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas where a mass shooter killed 61 individuals. (Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
“Any alternative narrative suggesting the music video’s location decision is false.”— TackleBox on the location of Jason Aldean’s music video
“In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless, but dangerous,” he told his social media followers.
“There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it – and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage – and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music – this one goes too far.”
Here are the lyrics of the song the radical Left think is so aweful. You decides:
Try That In A Small Town Lyrics
[Verse 1] Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk Carjack an old lady at a red light Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store Ya think it’s cool, well, act a fool if ya like Cuss out a cop, spit in his face Stomp on the flag and light it up Yeah, ya think you’re tough
[Chorus] Well, try that in a small town See how far ya make it down the road ‘Round here, we take care of our own You cross that line, it won’t take long For you to find out, I recommend you don’t Try that in a small town
[Verse 2] Got a gun that my granddad gave me They say one day they’re gonna round up Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck
[Chorus] Try that in a small town See how far ya make it down the road ‘Round here, we take care of our own You cross that line, it won’t take long For you to find out, I recommend you don’t Try that in a small town
Aldean then referenced his direct connection to mass violence, reminding his followers that he was performing during the horrific Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas in 2017, where a man opened fire and killed 61 individuals, impacting the lives of thousands of people.
“As so many pointed out, I was present at Route 91 – where so many lost their lives – and our community recently suffered another heartbreaking tragedy,” he said in reference to the Nashville school shooting in March that killed six people.
Jason Aldean was defended by his wife Brittany on social media. (Stephen J. Cohen)
“NO ONE, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart. ‘Try That In A Small Town,’ for me, refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief. Because they were our neighbors, and that was above any differences.”
Aldean went on to stress, “My political views have never been something I’ve hidden from, and I know that a lot of us in this country don’t agree on how we get back to a sense of normalcy where we got at least a day without a headline that keeps us up at night. But the desire for it to – that’s what this song is about.”
When the tune was released in May, Aldean said, “To me, this song summarizes the way a lot of people feel about the world right now. It seems like there are bad things happening on a daily basis, and that feels unfamiliar to a lot of us. This song sheds some light on that.”
Aldean was also defended by his wife Brittany, who shared a photo of the two on the beach with the caption, “Never apologize for speaking the truth.” She had earlier shared to her Instagram story a more pointed statement, writing in part, “Media.. it’s the same song and dance. Twist everything you can to fit your repulsive narrative.”
Caroline Thayer is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital. Follow Caroline Thayer on Twitter at @carolinejthayer. Story tips can be sent to caroline.thayer@fox.com.
Ben & Jerry’s factory in Waterbury, Vermont (Jakub Porzycki/AP)
Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever (UL) has lost $2.5 billion in market cap amid calls to boycott the ice cream maker for its anti-American July 4 message, the New York Post reports.
The stock of the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate fell to $51 after closing $52.28 Monday, just ahead of Ben & Jerry’s July 4 entreaty for the U.S. to return “stolen Indigenous land,” starting with Mount Rushmore.
“The faces on Mount Rushmore are the faces of men who actively worked to destroy Indigenous cultures and ways of life, to deny Indigenous people their basic rights,” Ben & Jerry’s said.
Unilever’s market capitalization has lost $2.5 billion, falling from $133.5 billion on Monday to $131 billion Wednesday.
“This 4th of July, it’s high time we recognize that the U.S. exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it,” Ben & Jerry’s said in a tweet and on its website.
The Burlington, Vermont-based company also issued a press release asking for Americans to work together to return the land on which they have lived for the past 247 years. While Unilever acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, it permitted its board to remain independent on political and social issues.
Twitter users immediately reacted to Ben & Jerry’s unpatriotic and untimely denunciation, comparing it to Bud Light’s transgender marketing fiasco and urging customers to boycott its goods.
“Make @benandjerrys Bud Light again,” one Twitter user wrote.
“Just when you think @benand jerrys couldn’t go any lower—they pull this stunt. Boycott Ben and Jerry’s,” wrote another.
A group called the Moral Rating Agency called out Unilever on Wednesday for continuing to sell its Cornetto ice cream and other products in Russia, whereas hundreds of Western companies immediately exited the nation in protest of its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The United States, Europe and Japan also imposed economic sanctions against Russia and its oligarchs.
Unilever has defended remaining in Russia, saying leaving is “not straightforward.” The multinational firm argues that its 3,000 employees and brands that remain in Russia “would be appropriated—and then operated—by the Russian state.”
“We do not think it is right to abandon our people in Russia,” Unilever said in a statement.
Neither Unilever or Ben & Jerry’s responded to a request for comment from the Post.
The left likes to treat skeptics of electrical cars as if they were Luddites. Truth is, making an existing product less efficient but more expensive doesn’t really meet the definition of innovation.
Even the purported amenities and technological advances EV-makers like to brag about in their ads have been a regular feature of gas-powered vehicles going back generations. At best, EVs, if they fulfill their promise, are a lateral technology.
Which is why there is no real “emerging market” for EVs in the United States as much as there’s an industrial policy in place that props up EVs with government purchases, propaganda, endless state subsidies, cronyism, taxpayer-backed loans, and edicts. The green “revolution” is an elite-driven, top-down technocratic project.
And it’s increasingly clear that the only reason giant rent-seeking carmakers are so heavily invested in EV development is that government is promising to artificially limit the production of gas-powered cars.
In March, Joe Biden signed an executive order to “set a target” for half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 to be zero-emission. California claims it is banning combustion engines in all new cars in about 10 years. So carmakers adopt business models to deal with these distorted incentives and contrived theoretical markets of the future.
In today’s real-world economy, though, Ford announced this week that it was firing at least 1,000 employees — many of them white-collar workers on the EV side. Ford projects it’s going to lose $3 billion on electric vehicles in 2023, bringing its EV losses to $5.1 billion over two years. In 2021, Ford reportedly lost $34,000 on every EV it made. This year it was losing more than $58,000 on every EV. In a normal world, Ford would be dramatically scaling back EV production, not expanding it. Remember that next time we need to bail out Detroit.
Then again, we’re already bailing them out, I suppose. Last week, the U.S. Energy Department lent Ford — again, a company that loses tens of thousands of dollars on every EV it sells — another $9.2 billion in taxpayer dollars for a South Korean battery project. One imagines no sane bank would do it. The cost of EV batteries has gone up, not down, over the past few years.
Ford says these up-front losses are part of a “start-up mentality.” We’re still pretending EVs are a new idea rather than an inferior one. But scaremongering about climate and a misplaced romanticizing of “manufacturing” jobs have softened up the public for this kind of waste. In the statist’s utopian vision, highly paid union members will be grabbing their lunchpails and biking over to the local solar panel factory or EV production line and toiling there for the common good.
In the real world, there is Lordstown. In 2019, after GM — which also loses money on every EV sold — shut down a plant in Lordstown, Ohio, then-President Donald Trump made a big deal of publicly pressuring the auto giant to rectify the situation. So CEO Mary Barra lent Lordstown Motors, a new EV outfit, $40 million to retrofit the plant. Ohio also gave the company another $60 million.
You may remember the widespread glowing coverage of Lordstown. After Joe Biden signed his “Buy American” executive order, promising to replace the entire U.S. federal fleet with EVs, Lordstown’s stock shot up. By the start of this year, Lordstown had manufactured 31 vehicles total. Six had been sold to actual consumers. (But to be fair, five would be recalled — following a recall of 19.) The stock was trading at barely a dollar. Tech-funding giant Foxconn was pulling its $170 million. And this week the company filed for bankruptcy.
Without massive state help, EVs are a niche market for rich virtue signalers. And, come to think of it, that’s sort of what they are now, even with the help. A recent University of California at Berkeley study found that 90 percent of tax credits for electric cars go to people in the top income strata. Most EVs are brought by high earners who like the look and feel of a Tesla. And that’s fine. I don’t want to stop anyone from owning the car they prefer. I just don’t want to help pay for it.
Really, why would a middle-class family shun a perfectly good gas-powered car that can be fueled (most of the time) cheaply and driven virtually any distance, in any environment, and any time of the year? We don’t need lithium. We have the most efficient, affordable, portable, and useful form of energy. We have centuries’ worth of it waiting in the ground.
Climate alarmists might believe EVs are necessary to save the planet. That’s fine. Using their standard, however, a bike is an innovation. Because even on their terms, the usefulness of EVs is highly debatable. Most of the energy that powers them is derived from fossil fuels. The manufacturing of an EV has a negligible positive benefit for the environment, if any.
And the fact is that if EVs were more efficient and saved us money, as enviros and politicians claim, consumers wouldn’t have to be compelled into using them and companies wouldn’t have to be bribed into producing them.
A documentary on the risks of transgender medical procedures reportedly was pulled from theaters after a pro-trans group complained about the planned screenings. According to Gay City News, the documentary — “No Way Back: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care” — was to run June 21 at about 40 AMC Theatres until the Queer Trans Project raised objections to the content.
The QTP issued a public statement Saturday celebrating the cancellation of “No Way Back,” the outlet noted.
“The Queer Trans Project is thrilled to announce a resounding victory in our collective efforts to challenge hate and misinformation,” the statement noted, according to Gay City News. “In less than 24 hours, we received over 1,500 petition signatures and reached over 14,000 individuals on social media through community mobilization and unwavering advocacy. This remarkable achievement demonstrates the power of our united voices and the urgency of defending the rights and dignity of the transgender community.”
The Daily Wire said it reached out to AMC Theatres about the cancellation but did not receive a response.
A press release issued last week announced the screenings and said the documentary was “produced by lifelong California Democrats and LGBT activists” and “takes a non-religious, non-political, and non-ideological look on the subject of gender-affirmative medical practices, the risks and side effects of cross-sex hormones, surgeries, and the long-term health implications of gender medicalization,” the Gay City News said.
A message at the top of the documentary’s website reads, “We’ve been canceled! Intolerant, illiberal, histrionic IGNORANT loudmouths who have not even seen the film have pressured AMC theaters to make the hard decision to cancel our dates! DO NOT LET THEM WIN!”
The site adds that “we will have the film available for streaming and on DVD as soon as possible. SIGN UP FOR UPDATES!”
A link on the documentary’s website leads to a statement about the film as well as a message from Deplorable Films, which headed up the project.
The statement about the film reads:
In response to recent histrionic and intolerant calls for screenings of this important film to be canceled, we will simply respond to the careless assertions made by those behind it.
They call the film ‘right-wing’; this is absurd to the point of being libelous. The filmmakers (some of whom are gay and/or have gay children) are dedicated, life-long, Liberal Democrats. We request any of the detractors to offer actual evidence of them –or this film—being ‘right wing.’
The film is not anti-trans people, nor is it even anti sex change surgery; there are trans people in the film speaking against the sudden rush to powerful drugs and major surgeries that are have increased exponentially in the past decade, and which have statistically caused far more pain and suffering than they’ve prevented.
The “QT Project’s” inference of detransitioning as “conversion therapy” is a weak, underhanded attempt to conflate detransitioning with that despicable and sometimes devastating practice of the past. Nice try, kids. It might be worth noting here that there’s an infamously repressive theocracy on the other side of the globe where ‘gender-affirming’ surgery is the only option given to gay men and women, who may otherwise be executed under law.
Has this “QT” group distanced itself from gay people? Perhaps looking to harm them? The film is very pro-gay. It also makes the point very clearly, that some of the worst harm that ‘gender-affirming care’ is causing is to kids who would otherwise grow up to be happy, well-adjusted gay men and women. Perhaps this is what frightens “The QT Project,” not dissimilar from the theocracy mentioned above.
Or perhaps it is something else; perhaps they are on the payroll of those who profit from this –so much of what they are doing is resulting in the creation of life-long surgical and pharmaceutical patients are doing so to great benefit of certain surgical clinics and pharmaceutical companies.
It is quite evident that those undertaking this crusade against this film have not had the courtesy of seeing it before taking such extreme actions to silence it.
We stand by our filmmakers.
The Daily Wire said one person who appeared in the documentary — a 26-year-old named Abel — told the outlet about his transition to female as a teenager and then his de-transition.
“I would tell anyone who wants to transition, especially the young boys who think life would be easier because they are the perfect image of a masculine male, that the transition will not save them,” Abel told the outlet.
“It would actually destroy their lives. Actually, take a step back and think about this for a while,” Abel added to the Daily Wire. “And even if that is what they think they want—the actual negative side effects, nobody will tell you.”
A woman named Laura also appears in the documentary and told the outlet that she took a high dose of testosterone and got a double mastectomy before de-transitioning at age 22.
“I’m a very vocal advocate of complete bans for transition procedures for minors, both medical and social, because children are not developed,” Laura said, according to the outlet. “They do not have the brains or bodies to be able to make long-term decisions about their reproductive and sexual health, and they just are not able to consent to these long-term procedures.”
Here’s the trailer:
NO WAY BACK: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care (formerly Affirmation Generation) 2 minute trailer youtu.be
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Musician and Hollywood actor Tyrese Gibson has recently spoken openly about his Christian faith as well as the spiritual problems he sees in the entertainment industry. He claimed in a recent interview that celebrity award shows are “trying to normalize the devil,” and he’s had about enough of it.
About a month ago, Gibson, 44, sat down with the man known as Big Boy, the host of “Big Boy’s Neighborhood” and Real 92.3 L.A. The purpose of the interview was ostensibly for Gibson to promote the latest film in the “Fast & Furious” series, “Fast X,” which opened May 19, as well as his latest album, “Beautiful Pain.” However, the conversation quickly turned spiritual, and Gibson expressed his frustration with the entertainment industry, which he claimed is popularizing evil.
“They [are] going above and beyond to promote the devil,” Gibson said, “and it’s p***ing me off.”
“The devil is on the mainstage at award shows and in every video, and you have signs and symbols,” he explained. He also stated, “I just feel like we’re in competition right now because they are trying to normalize the devil.”
But things weren’t always this way in Hollywood, Gibson suggested. “The devil-worshippers used to be real secretive,” he claimed, “going down in the basement. Now, they just play.”
Big Boy seemed to agree with Gibson, occasionally interjecting with “amen” and even noting that devilish images and symbols can also often be seen on a “device,” likely referring to cellphones, iPads, computers, and televisions.
Gibson hinted that the solution to the spiritual malaise in popular culture is simple: We must regularly give thanks to God and share praise reports about “all of the things that God has brought us through.”
“We need to stop treating our relationship with Jesus like the little buddy that you talk to before you go to bed at night,” Gibson stated, adding that Christians must be “more vocal about all the things that God means to us.”
That portion of the interview can be seen in the short Twitter video below:
Finally someone in Hollywood is exposing their pro-Satan agenda!!!!
“We should, as believers, we should go the rest of our lives trying to figure out God. That should be an everlasting hunt,” he continued. “… I’m looking as a person who is overwhelmed with what God has decided to put me in and has done over my life, even when I’ve went above and beyond to mess it up myself.
“God says, ‘I still got you,'” he said.
In speaking about his faith, Gibson also opened up about the deaths of actor Paul Walker and director John Singleton, who were both affiliated with “Fast & Furious.” He claimed that he now has a duty to honor their legacies and support their families. “I gotta make them proud,” he said.
A longer version of the interview, which closes with prayer, can be seen in the 40-minute video below:
Tyrese Talks Fast and Furious 10, Paul Walker, Tupac, and Performs His Music Live! | Interview www.youtube.com
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Since the boycott of Bud Light seems to have been a rousing success, many people are shifting focus to retail giant Target and its years of supporting radical LGBT groups — one of which even advocates to “transition” children without parental consent. It is so outrageous that even Elon Musk felt compelled to begin asking some questions about it.
Musk, who is considered center-left in most things political was shocked by a recent Fox News article that reported that Target has been supporting the radical gay group GLSEN for years, even though the group “calls for gender ideology to be integrated into all classes, even math,” and spends its donations to get American schools to comply with that policy.
In its tweet, Fox News also noted that GLSEN “encourages secret gender changes among children in schools.”
TARGET TAKES AIM: The retail giant provides annual donations to GLSEN, which calls for gender ideology to be integrated into all classes, even math. https://t.co/f7g9yLDvuOpic.twitter.com/vCK6fqXepa
In its May 26 report, Fox News noted that Target is “partnering with a K-12 education group for which focuses on getting districts to adopt policies that will keep parents in the dark on their child’s in-school gender transition, providing sexually explicit books to schools for free, and integrating gender ideology at all levels of curriculum in public schools.”
Indeed, Fox even obtained a direct quote from Target saying how much they support the organization with their annual donations of tens of thousands.
“GLSEN leads the movement in creating affirming… and anti-racist spaces for LGBTQIA+ students. We are proud of 10+ years of collaboration with GLSEN and continue to support their mission,” the retailer told Fox.
Fox goes on to explain what GLSEN does: “GLSEN calls for gender ideology to be integrated into all classes, even math. It provides educators instructions on how they can make math ‘more inclusive of trans and non-binary identities’ by including ‘they/them’ pronouns in word problems.”
“We advise on, advocate for, and research comprehensive policies designed to protect LGBTQ students as well as students of marginalized identities,” the group itself describes on its own site.
This group that Target has supported urges schools to add “intersex,” “transgender,” “non-binary” and other such left-wing “choices” of sexual identity into all class work from math to science, per Fox.
GLSEN tells schools to keep confidential any information about students “transitioning” or self-identifying as the opposite or some fantasy gender, and to make sure parents are not told of any such information unless explicitly approved by the child.
The group pushes a policy that maintains that schools and faculty “shall ensure that all personally identifiable and medical information relating to transgender and nonbinary students is kept confidential… Staff or educators shall not disclose any information that may reveal a student’s gender identity to others, including parents or guardian… This disclosure must be discussed with the student, prior to any action.”
In a Saturday news release condemning “right-wing extremists,” GLSEN attempted to spin that little nugget of information as such: “Supportive educators are a lifeline to students who do not have the freedom to be exactly who they are safely, and GLSEN will always fight back against policies that force educators to jeopardize student safety.”
The group also seeks to force schools to allow boys who claim to be transgender girls to play in school sports with the girls.
“To date,” Fox added, “the retail giant has donated at least $2.1 million to GLSEN.”
Fox’s shocking report spurred Twitter chief Elon Musk to ask, “Is this true, @Target?”
A Twitter “community note” also appeared on the tweet, noting that, “Target has donated to GLSEN for more than a decade: ‘Target annually supports GLSEN and its mission to create…spaces for LGBTQIA+ students.’” The note also presented links to the radical policies for which GLSEN advocates.
One Twitter user blasted Musk for asking the question, carping, “Oh come on, this is Fox News. You question CNN, MSNBC, but not Fox News? Don’t you think that this is hypocritical?”
But Musk pointed out that he literally was questioning the claims, and tweeted back, “Maybe it’s not true, hence the question.”
So far, Target has not made any statement past its quote to Fox that it supports GLSEN.
This newest wrinkle in Target’s big-dollar support of the radical LGBT lobby comes on the heels of a boycott effort over its “pride” merchandise and for partnering with a company that embraces satanism along with its LGBT advocacy. Target is now hemorrhaging money, as is Anheuser-Busch, following Bud Light’s decision to partner with transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The bad news continues to mount for Target and Bud Light both, and conservatives must keep the pressure on these woke corporations. Examples must be made if we hope to reverse the wide trend in corporate America of donating billions to these organizations whose main goal is to groom our children for their disgusting sexual agenda.:
Warner Todd Huston has been writing editorials and news since 2001 but started his writing career penning articles about U.S. history back in the early 1990s. Huston has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN and several local Chicago news programs to discuss the issues of the day. Additionally, he is a regular guest on radio programs from coast to coast. Huston has also been a Breitbart News contributor since 2009. Warner works out of the Chicago area, a place he calls a “target-rich environment” for political news.
Bud Light enlists a trans ladyface minstrel to sell beer. Target hires a trans Satanist to design LGBT clothes for kids and starts selling “binding” and “tucking” swimwear. North Face launches a marketing campaign featuring a creepy drag performer hocking LGBT gear to children ages 2 to 7. The Los Angeles Dodgers gives an award to a demonic hate group whose sole purpose is to blaspheme and profane the Catholic faith.
All this, and June “pride month” hasn’t even begun.
What’s happening? Why did so many major corporate brands decide to go all-in on promoting an aggressive, radical LGBT agenda that just a few years ago would have been considered totally unacceptable in civil society? Is this a psy-op? Is it real? What happens next?
The short answer to these questions is that we’ve entered a new phase of the culture war, and in some ways have transcended “the culture war” completely. What we’re in now is better described as a religious war — one that’s been launched by corporate America against all of us, and therefore demands we all choose sides.
Choosing sides in a religious war means you have to choose your religion. And in this particular religious war, there are only two sides. On one side is what C.S. Lewis called the Tao, which was his ecumenical shorthand for objective moral truth. “The Tao, which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value,” Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man. “It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained.”
In America and in the West generally, the side of the Tao is the side of faithful Christians and Jews, as well as those atheists who, for practical reasons, cling to Judeo-Christian morality as the survivors of a shipwreck might cling to a lifeboat. It is the side that sees Target’s transing of kids as an intolerable moral evil, affirms the givenness of our nature and the created order, and recognizes not only that man isn’t God, but that man’s destiny is communion with God in a redeemed creation.
On the other side is what the writer Paul Kingsnorth, among others, has called the Machine, which at its root is a Nietzschean rebellion against God that turns out also to be “a rebellion against everything: roots, culture, community, families, biology itself.” Like the Tao, the religion of the Machine, of progress and technology and will to power, has a very long pedigree. It goes back to the Garden of Eden, where the serpent assured Eve, “You will not surely die,” that if she ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she would become like God.
That was the first rebellion; we have been reenacting it ever since. It is perhaps easier to see in our own time how every rebellion against God, from the Garden to now, is also an attempt to overthrow Him, to become like God. Indeed, the desire to play God is the dark heart of both transgenderism and its close cousin, transhumanism. Like other evils of our age — abortion and euthanasia, to name the obvious ones — these are, at their roots, extremely candid manifestations of pride, the source of all sin.
The Machine is a religion that makes a claim over and against reality and the created order, which are denied and disfigured in man’s attempt to arrogate the power to recreate himself according to his own desires. In our day, he seeks to do so using new technologies, but that he would desire to do so is merely the latest iteration of the rebellion that began in the Garden. This is what J.R.R. Tolkien meant when he said, “all stories are ultimately about the fall.” Tolkien also referred to the Machine at times when discussing his legendarium, often describing it as the urge to amass power and dominate, “bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills” — a tyranny exercised over creation with the object of overcoming mortality.
This is just what we see in the twin trans movements: a desire to overcome sex and a desire to overcome death. The transhumanists are as explicit about their desire to cheat death and attain godlike immortality as transgenders are about their desire to become the opposite sex. The latter appear to believe, like rebellious pagans of past ages, that children have an important role to play in the achievement of this desire. The Machine devoured children by fire on the altars of Moloch and Baal; it devours them now in the black mirrors of the internet and social media.
The temptation here is to dismiss this reading of our situation as hyperbole. Surely it isn’t as bad as all that, we want to say. But it really is. What’s happening now isn’t about corporate brands embracing “pride month,” as The New York Times recently framed it, or even about promoting tolerance in a diverse society. If Target were just selling T-shirts that said “fabulous” in rainbow letters no one would care. This is about transing kids. Everyone knows it, but no one wants to say so out loud. Corporations are the tip of the spear, pushing this stuff out and then letting the media turn around and accuse the right of being violent bigots for objecting.
We err, too, in thinking of all this as just a really bad case of “the culture war” that breaks along the familiar lines of left and right, blue and red. It’s partly that, but at its deepest level it’s a religious war, a spiritual struggle between light and darkness, good and evil, the Tao and the Machine.
All of which is to say that as this war develops, we should try not to get too caught up in how much Target stocks plummet or how low the price of Bud Light gets ($0, as of this writing). “Go woke, go broke” is — pardon the rhyme — a cope. That’s not to say we shouldn’t boycott these companies, even if it means financial hardship or inconvenience. Boycotting them is part of what we have to do in this religious war, but it’s not sufficient.
Corporate America is not going to stop, even if some corporations do go broke. What will be required of those who resist them is a deep religious commitment, a radical new way of living in the modern, digital age. If you’re a Jew, be deeply serious about your Judaism. If you’re a Christian, make the practice of your faith the central organizing fact of your life, not just something you do on Sundays. If you’re an atheist, pray that God gives you faith.
For adherents of the Tao, fighting this religious war is going to mean not just boycotting corporate brands but reorganizing your personal and professional life. It might mean quitting your job, or moving, or giving up certain things. It will require sacrifice. Perhaps great sacrifice.
And rest assured that every person in America is going to have to pick a side. If you don’t pick a side then your side will by default be that of the Machine, which dominates the heights of our post-Christian culture and economy. Whatever your opinion of transgenderism or identity politics, the Machine will suck you in and ensnare you unless you make a conscious choice to stand against it. So choose, and choose wisely. Your country — and, more importantly, your soul — depends on it.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
FIRST ON FOX — Some southern Target stores were forced by the corporation to move LGBTQ Pride merchandise away from the front of their locations after customer “outrage” to avoid a “Bud Light situation.”
Many Target locations across the country feature massive June Pride month displays on an annual basis, with items this year ranging from “tuck friendly” bathing suits for transgender people to mugs that say “gender fluid.” But the retail juggernaut has been criticized by some conservatives for the displays, with children’s items particularly irking many customers.
A Target insider told Fox News Digital that many locations, mostly in rural areas of the South, have relocated Pride sections to avoid the kind of backlash Bud Light has received in recent weeks after using a transgender influencer in a promotional campaign.
Some southern Target stores were forced by the corporation to move LGBTQ Pride merchandise away from the front of the store after customer “outrage.” (Google Maps)
A Target insider said there were “emergency” calls on Friday and that some managers and district senior directors were told to tamp down the Pride sections immediately.
“We were given 36 hours, told to take all of our Pride stuff, the entire section, and move it into a section that’s a third the size. From the front of the store to the back of the store, you can’t have anything on mannequins and no large signage,” the Target insider said.
“We call our customers ‘guests,’ there is outrage on their part. This year, it is just exponentially more than any other year,” the Target insider continued. “I think given the current situation with Bud Light, the company is terrified of a Bud Light situation.”
The insider, who has worked at the retailer for almost two decades, said Target rarely makes such hasty decisions. They said Friday’s call began with roughly 10 minutes on “how to deal with team member safety” because of the amount of backlash the Pride merchandise has generated, noting that Target Asset Protect & Corporate Security teams were present on the call.
Target Pride swimsuits boast “tuck-friendly construction” and “extra crotch coverage,” presumably to accommodate male genitalia, even if they are made in an otherwise female style. (Brian Flood/Fox News)
Many Target locations across the country feature massive June Pride month displays on an annual basis. (Brian Flood/Fox News)
“The call was super quick, it was 15 minutes. The first 10 minutes was about how to keep your team safe and not having to advocate for Target. The last five was, ‘Move this to the back, take down the mannequins and remove the signage,’” the insider said, noting that bathing suits have replaced Pride merchandise in front-of-store displays despite Pride month not even starting until June 1.
“It’s all under the guise of trying to increase swim sales,” the insider said. “Everyone was like, ‘Thank God,’ because we’re all on the front lines dealing with it.”
Target did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fox News Digital has confirmed rural Target stores in South Carolina, Arkansas and Georgia are among the locations to move the Pride sections. Most rank-and-file employees were left in the dark, with many not knowing the Pride sections would be moved until they noticed it themselves.
Pride merchandise remains prominently displayed at other locations and on the Target website.
Target Pride merchandise includes female-style swimsuits that can be used to “tuck” male genitalia. Some products are also labeled as “Thoughtfully fit on multiple body types and gender expressions.”
Pride merchandise also includes onesies and rompers for newborn babies, a variety of adult clothing with slogans such as “Super Queer,” party supplies, home decor, multiple books and a “Grow At Your Own Pace” saucer planter.
Target has been criticized by conservatives for apparently over-the-top Pride displays, with children’s items particularly irking many customers. (Brian Flood/Fox News)
Target Pride merchandise includes “Gender Fluid” mugs and “Grow At Your Own Pace” saucer planters. (Brian Flood/Fox News)
Bud Light sales have plummeted since backlash to the partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney has continued to haunt the company more than a month since it came to light. The issue began when Mulvaney publicized that the beer company sent packs of Bud Light featuring the influencer’s face as a way to celebrate a full year of “girlhood.” Mulvaney is one of many social media influencers Bud Light has tapped to promote the brand.
Mulvaney said the cans were her “most prized possession” on Instagram with a post that featured “#budlightpartner.” A video then featured Mulvaney in a bathtub drinking a Bud Light beer as part of the campaign. Some consumers mistakenly thought the cans with Mulvaney’s face were being sold to the public.
“Bud Light learned an important lesson about wading into the culture wars recently. But partnering with Dylan Mulvaney is nothing compared to what Target is doing,” conservative pundit and author Bethany Mandel tweeted.
Fox News’ Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.
Brian Flood is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to brian.flood@fox.com and on Twitter: @briansflood.
Riley Gaines, a former NCAA swim star who has turned into an activist to keep women’s sports fair and equal, and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., were among those Wednesday who took issue with the model advertising a woman’s Adidas swimsuit as part of the company’s pride collection.
Adidas collaborated with South African designer Rich Mnisi to release the “Let Love Be Your Legacy” collection and campaign. The company attempts to “encourage allyship and freedom of expression without bias, in all spaces of sport and culture” with its campaign with Mnisi.
University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines reacts after finishing tied for fifth with transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas in the 200 freestyle finals at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships in Atlanta on March 18, 2022. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“In creating this collection, I had a strong impulse to speak to my inner-child and express to the world how LGBTQ+ allyship can create a legacy of love,” Mnisi said in an Adidas news release. “Unifying these themes together through my own visual language and Adidas’ iconic performance and lifestyle pieces is a powerful combination, making the collection a symbol for self-acceptance and LGBTQ+ advocacy. My hope is this range inspires LGBTQ+ allies to speak up more for the queer people they love and not let them fight for acceptance alone.”
One of the models who is seen on the Adidas website in the woman’s bathing suit drew the attention of social media Wednesday.
Rep. Nancy Mace attends a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on March 9, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
I dont understand why companies are voluntarily doing this to themselves. They could have at least said the suit is "unisex", but they didn't because its about erasing women. Ever wondered why we hardly see this go the other way?
Don't worry, when the cabal collapses and they lose all their money, ESG will cease to exist. Once that's gone, these woke companies will revert back to normal and market to their actual base. Wokeness is only backed by money, it's not organic. https://t.co/2r2awb27yP
Adidas said in its news release it partnered with Athlete Ally, “which focuses on ending homophobia and transphobia in sport.”
“Together with adidas our goal is to drive inclusivity in sport– supporting student athletes from the LGBTQI+ and their allies to push for fair access and safe participation in sport. Through our partnership, we’ve created more affirming athletic spaces to celebrate the community across sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions,” Athlete Ally founder Hudson Taylor said.
The Adidas logo is seen at the company’s store in Beijing on Feb. 18, 2012. (Nelson Ching/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Actor Richard Dreyfuss lambasted Hollywood’s diversity standards and America’s failures in civics education on PBS’s “Firing Line” Friday.
“They make me vomit,” Dreyfuss said of representation and inclusion standards put in place by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Oscars eligibility in the Best Picture category.
“This is an art form … no one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is … I don’t think that there is a minority or a majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.”
The standards require a certain percentage of cast and crew come from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, are women, are non-heterosexual, or have cognitive or physical disabilities.
“Firing Line” host Margaret Hoover also asked the Oscar winner about whether he thinks there is is a difference between representation in general who is allowed to represent other groups, including the use of blackface.
“There shouldn’t be … Because it’s patronizing. Because it says that we’re so fragile that we can’t have our feelings hurt,” Dreyfuss answered, in part.
Moving to the topic of civics education, Dreyfuss was equally blunt.
Dreyfuss told Hoover a story of his own education in civics. He explained that his mother, a “communist, and she wasn’t kidding” raised him in a very leftist community. His mother and one of his middle grade teachers, a Republican who “never tried to keep her GOP atmosphere away from her teaching,” would debate American history.
Dreyfess identified “the honor of dissent” as a pivotal missing element in today’s civics education.
“The idea that you sought the truth in history and you didn’t fool around about it. You told the truth. Period. And that was that. You don’t stop at the water’s edge and not commit to critical analysis,” he said.
Dreyfuss developed his Dreyfuss Civics Initiative curriculum in 2006. On DCI’s website, Dreyfess explains why he believes prioritizing civics education is crucial.
“Teach our kids how to run our country, before they are called upon to run our country … if we don’t, someone else will run our country.”
Dreyfuss and Hoover delved deeper into his concerns about both civics education and civility generally.
“People confuse being exposed to an opposing view on any subject with being a traitor or with being a subversive. And that’s a kind of nonsense that is so immature that it’s beyond the immaturity of normal adults,” he said.
“I think we’re cowards … the idea that a parent would walk into a public school and say, ‘I don’t want my children exposed to opposing views,’ That’s wrong. That’s wrong of the parent.”
“I think we’re in the endgame right now,” Dreyfuss also said.
“I think that we could let slip the greatest idea for governance ever devised, and we won’t even know that it happened.”
Watch Margaret Hoover’s interview with Richard Dreyfuss on PBS’s “Firing Line” below.
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After the recent collapses of regional banks amid rising interest rates and inflationary pressure, about half of Americans are worried about the safety of their deposits in banks, according to the latest Gallup Poll released Thursday. The findings in the poll are similar to the concerns expressed during the 2008 financial crisis, as 19% are very worried and 29% are moderately worried, a combined 48% concerned.
That’s worse than the 2008 Great Recession. Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy in 2008 was the largest in U.S. history, at which time Gallup found 45% of U.S. adults said they were very or moderately worried about the safety of their money.
The new poll was conducted before the third bank collapse this year had First Republic Bank being taken over by JPMorgan Chase. First Republic Bank is the largest bank failure since 2008. Like Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank that had collapsed in President Joe Biden’s economy, First Republic Bank was a California specialty lender catering to “rich coastal Americans, enticing them with low-rate mortgages in exchange for leaving cash at the bank,” CNBC reported.
“After several recent high-profile bank failures in the U.S., about half of Americans are concerned about the safety of the money they have in banks or other financial institutions,” Gallup Poll’s Megan Brenan wrote in the analysis’ “bottom line.” “This is on par with the level of worry measured during the financial crisis in 2008 when financial institutions previously believed to be ‘too big to fail’ collapsed.
“And while Gallup has not measured this during calmer times for the banking industry, the December 2008 reading showed slightly diminished concern after the crisis had been addressed, suggesting high worry about the security of deposits may not be the norm for Americans.”
The concern is not level across party affiliation. A majority of Republicans (55%) and independents (51%) are at least moderately worried, while just 36% of Democrats are. That’s the inverse at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis under then-President George Bush, when 55% of Democrats were at least moderately worried compared to 34% of Republicans.
The Gallup Poll was conducted April 3-24 among 1,013 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Geoffrey Hinton, a Google engineer widely considered the godfather of artificial intelligence, has quit his job and is now warning of the dangers of further AI development. Hinton worked at Google for more than a decade and is responsible for a 2012 tech breakthrough that serves as the foundation of current AIs like ChatGPT. He announced his resignation from Google in a statement to the New York Times, saying he now regrets his work.
“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” he told the paper.
“It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” Hinton went on to say of AI.
Geoffrey Hinton worked on early AI development and made a major breakthrough in 2012, but he now says AI is too dangerous. (Getty Images)
AI like OpenAI’s ChatGPT are partly based on breakthroughs made by Geoffrey Hinton, who says the technology is likely to be misused by bad actors. (NurPhoto via Getty Images / File / Getty Images)
Hinton’s major AI breakthrough came when working with two graduate students in Toronto in 2012. The trio was able to successfully create an algorithm that could analyze photos and identify common elements, such as dogs and cars, according to the NYT. The algorithm was a rudimentary beginning to what current AIs like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard AI are capable of. Google purchased the company Hinton started around the algorithm for $44 million shortly after the breakthrough.
One of the graduate students who worked on the project with Hinton, Ilya Sutskever, now works as OpenAI’s chief scientist. Hinton said the progression seen since 2012 is astonishing but is likely just the tip of the iceberg.
“Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now,” he said of the industry. “Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.”
Google’s Bard AI is an advanced chatbot capable of holding conversations and producing its own work. (Rafael Henrique / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images / File / Getty Images)
Hinton’s fears echo those expressed by more than 1,000 tech leaders earlier this year in a public letter that called for a brief halt to AI development. Hinton did not sign the letter at the time, and he now says that he did not want to criticize Google while he was with the company. Hinton has since ended his employment there and had a phone call with Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday.
“We remain committed to a responsible approach to AI. We’re continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly,” Google’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, told the Times.
One of the most understated yet important aspects of Tucker Carlson’s tenure at Fox News was his unique ability to bridge a seemingly unbridgeable generational divide. Whether he was exploring more complicated topics via long-form documentaries, interviewing the world’s wealthiest man, or simply telling the Republican Party to get its act together, people of all ages tuned in. Grandparents and grandkids alike genuinely love him.
And perhaps this, in part, is why he was able to so easily mainstream the thoughts, theories, and brands of pseudonymous Twitter users who historically have been relegated to the dark corners of the internet with the rest of the weirdos. If a voice has utility, he gives it a platform; people trust him to discern who is worth listening to.
Tucker routinely used his platform to amplify people like Chaya Raichik (Libs of TikTok), which undeniably helped her gain traction and expose more people to the insanity of leftism. And to be sure, this was great, but people would likely be able to understand that sort of thing for themselves, even if they hadn’t encountered LibsofTikTok. We instinctively know when something is out of sync with the natural law and metaphysically disordered, as leftism inherently is.
Arguably some of his finest moments as a communicator were when he embraced the more esoteric, if you will, thoughts being grappled with in the nuanced essays of people like Peachy Keenan and translated them into modern English so the masses, who likely don’t have time to ponder these things on a regular basis, can also participate in the intellectual exercise.
Take, for instance, Tucker’s opening monologue from three weeks ago, in which he described the state of New York as existing in a state of anarcho-tyranny. He explained how this is a framework of “state-sponsored anarchy accompanied by political tyranny” and described how Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Donald Trump and general apathy toward crime embodies it. Anarcho-tyranny, being introduced into the lexicon of paleoconservatives several decades ago, is not a term many people would be familiar with despite being uncomfortably familiar with the concept. Nevertheless, Tucker brought them up to speed.
Or take an example from July 2021, when he read a tweet thread from Darryl Cooper (MartyrMade) providing great insight and clarity as to why conservatives remain skeptical about the outcome of the 2020 election and no longer have faith in institutions like the corporate media or national intelligence apparatus.
But he didn’t only highlight academics. Sometimes he highlighted skeptics for the sake of highlighting skepticism and to prove to us that the “experts” are idiots — as was the case in this past fall’s “The End of Men.” The documentary takes the food and health industries to task and explores the, frankly, dual existential crisis of plummeting male fertility and lack of nutritional sustenance. The documentary features a man by the name of “Raw Egg Nationalist” — a sworn enemy of soy globalism and an advocate for maximizing nutritional intake by slonking raw eggs — and another individual who goes by “Benjamin Braddock” and who believes the key to boosting testosterone is exposing his crotch to redlight.
Similar to how Rush Limbaugh mainstreamed Michael Anton’s “Flight 93” essay by reading it in its entirety on air, Tucker made a lot more voices — who really ought to be heard — and a lot more content accessible by providing a platform that wouldn’t otherwise have been available purely because of unsavory optics.
The conservative movement needs someone like Tucker, who is willing to push the limit and unwilling to pull his punches.
Samuel Mangold-Lenett is a staff editor at The Federalist. His writing has been featured in the Daily Wire, Townhall, The American Spectator, and other outlets. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @smlenett.
The ire of conservative consumers has now focused on makeup brand Maybelline for partnering with trans woman and biological male Dylan Mulvaney for a recent makeup ad. To celebrate Mulvaney’s gender transition and to promote Maybelline makeup, the brand collaborated with the TikTok star on a video featuring the trans woman applying several Maybelline products.
Mulvaney posted the ad to her TikTok account last month.
Trans woman Dylan Mulvaney models Maybelline Makeup products in a TikTok video from March. (Screenshot/Oli Londons Twitter account)
The Maybelline ad represented just one of several brand partnerships the transgender influencer and activist has taken on recently, including a highly controversial partnership with Bud Light that sparked major backlash from conservative consumers. The boycott of the beer company in response to the Mulvaney promotion has resulted in Bud Light’s sales plunging 17%. The trans woman also generated outrage for modeling sports bras for Nike.
Now conservatives are looking to protest Maybelline for the same thing.
At the start of the TikTok video, Mulvaney appeared with no makeup while wearing a bathrobe. She began applying her Maybelline products and quickly obscured herself from the camera with her makeup brush, a popular TikTok technique done to transition to the next shot.
When she pulled the brush back from blocking the camera, she was revealed to be in a dress, her hair and makeup done, and fully ready for a night out. Before the short clip ended, Mulvaney applied some Maybelline lip gloss and smiled for viewers.
Some people in Nashville said they stopped drinking Bud Light after the brand partnered with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. (Instagram)
The caption for the video stated, “Getting glam for my Day 365 show with @maybelline #maybellinepartner #dylanmulvaney #shorts.” At the top right of the clip, text indicated that Mulvaney is a “Maybelline Partner.”
Conservative viewers and makeup users were not ecstatic about Mulvaney’s latest stunt, however. British detransition activist Oli London shared the video to Twitter and mocked it using Maybelline’s famous slogan. He tweeted, “Maybe he’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline. The new face of Maybelline, ladies!”
Influencer and commentator “Conservative Momma” ripped the partnership, tweeting, “So no more @Maybelline. Supporting womanface, is degrading and offensive to real women.”
No way. I will have to throw out my 2 Maybelline products. Shame.
Canadian conservative activist Liz Churchill denounced her Maybelline products, declaring, “No way. I will have to throw out my 2 Maybelline products. Shame.”
User Claire Hunt tweeted, “The entire feminist movement just rolled over in its grave, as this saccharine display pretends to be an Exemplar of ‘Womanhood.’”
The matriarchy can fly the “mission accomplished” flag across America. It toppled the man-made meritocracy that imperfectly defined American culture for 200+ years.
The fall of Tucker Carlson at Fox News symbolizes the matriarchy’s prioritizing of message over merit. Performance could not shield Carlson from the consequence of America’s adoption of a feminized culture that levels the playing field by castrating men, reimagining traditional standards, and embracing a false reality.
Monday morning, Fox News cut ties with the most popular host on cable television. According to the Los Angeles Times and other so-called news outlets, Rupert Murdoch, the founder of Fox News, decided to oust Carlson partially because of a discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, a former talent booker on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Grossberg claims she was bullied and subjected to anti-Semitic remarks while working for Carlson.
It’s a familiar pattern at Fox News and across corporate media and America. From Roger Ailes to Tavis Smiley to Bill O’Reilly, the misbehavior of men and/or allegations of disgruntled female employees are used to dislodge men from positions of influence.
Let me state this for clarity and transparency. I was a frequent guest on Carlson’s program. I consider Carlson a friend. I find him smart, authentic, and reasonable. I have not spoken to him since he and Fox News parted ways. Nor have I spoken with Bryan Freedman, the brilliant lawyer reportedly representing Carlson in his dispute with Fox. Freedman previously negotiated my settlement with a media outlet.
Now, I don’t buy the allegations against Carlson. According to the L.A. Times, Grossberg worked on Carlson’s show for a short time after being reassigned from a different Fox News show. She was fired.
It’s difficult to fire any employee. Many of them – man or woman – claim they were harassed, bullied, treated unfairly. They’re always reluctant to admit their shortcomings. You catch an employee stealing, and he will instantly claim you overlooked a co-worker committing murder.
Firing a woman is more difficult than open heart surgery. Every communication can be reformulated into an example of sexual harassment or misogyny.
I’m aloof, distant, and measured with all co-workers. It’s the only way I know to protect myself. Media workplaces are minefields. Super attractive women form an obstacle course a Navy SEAL would find difficult to navigate without detonating a blonde, brunette, or red-headed bombshell. For white men, they face the added threat of being charged with racism or anti-Semitism.
The workplace playing field isn’t level. Women have outsized power and control. So do the LGBTQ and people of color who see themselves as perpetual victims of white supremacy. These special-interest groups have used their power and leverage to remake workplace culture. They’ve turned human resources departments into the most powerful force within any company. Managing easily triggered sensibilities takes precedence over maximizing production. Workplaces are day-cares filled with crying babies masquerading as employees.
Over the last 20 years, diversity, inclusion, equity, and other subjective standards unseated performance as king of the workforce. MSNBC’s ratings-deficient Joy Reid has every bit as much job security as Carlson, the highest-rated cable host. So does CNN’s Anderson Cooper. And the ensemble of dimwits hosting ABC’s “The View.”
Reid is black. Cooper is gay. Whoopi (Caryn Elaine Johnson) is black and “identifies” as Jewish. Sunny Hostin is Puerto-Halfrican American. Joy Behar wants to be Bette Midler.
Tucker Carlson is a white man who used his platform to promote Judeo-Christian culture and the patriarchy. There was a time when his dominant ratings would have protected him from the special-interest groups. Ratings used to be the box hosts were required to check.
That time has passed. Message is king. Drawing an audience is optional in the matriarchy matrix. What a host tells his or her audience matters far more than the size of it.
Comedian Steve Harvey is the gold standard for heterosexual Christian men on TV. I like Steve Harvey. He’s funny. He’s likable. He’s also harmless. He bows to the matriarchy. He preaches a homespun prosperity gospel.
He has his own daily talk show. He hosts “Family Feud.” He’s the star of “Judge Steve Harvey.” Corporate America is pouring millions of dollars into Steve Harvey to set him up as the role model for all Christian male influencers.
Be harmless. Bow to the matriarchy. Stay on message.
And the message is simple: The key to improving America is emasculating men and eliminating merit.
You earn only what the prevailing power grants you for your service to the prevailing power.
Tucker Carlson challenged the prevailing power, the matriarchal ideology promoted by leftists. He platformed pundits and experts who challenged Big Pharma on the COVID vaccine, Democrats on the laughable January 6 insurrection narrative, the Alphabet Mafia on transgenderism and drag queens, and the military-industrial complex on the war in Ukraine.
His courageous, afflict-the-powerful, populist style attracted a massive audience. His competitors lack his talent or courage. They conspired to bring him down. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for the government to censor Carlson. Chuck Schumer demanded that Rupert Murdoch stop Carlson from showing the January 6 tapes. The ladies on “The View” celebrated his demise.
Women and emasculated men rule. The matriarchy has taken over the patriarchy. Merit has no place here. The order spelled out in the Bible carries no weight in America.
In pursuit of power and influence, the biblically described “weaker vessel” eradicated competition and emphasized a handful of identities. Diversity, inclusion, and equity killed performance, merit, and Christianity.
Moments after Fox News abruptly announced that it “mutually agreed to part ways” with the host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Monday, leftists and their allies in the corporate media began gloating about the ousting of one of the nation’s most influential critics of the corrupt ruling class.
While some, like former CNN talking head Brian Stelter, penned “fan fiction” gleefully theorizing about the reason for the split, others joined the hundreds of Twitter trolls celebrating Carlson’s exit as a win for their political agendas.
Democrats
Mere weeks after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries demanded Fox News silence hosts like Carlson who discuss election inconsistencies, congressional Democrats cheered at their political enemy’s downfall.
Schumer: "Rupert Murdoch has a special obligation to stop Tucker Carlson from going on tonight [and] from letting him go on again and again and again [because] our democracy depends on it." pic.twitter.com/uld6eaCl3C
“Don’t know for sure if the firing of Tucker Carlson is connected to the lies & accusations of voter fraud perpetrated by Fox News, Trump, & his sycophants against you, Dominion Voting Systems,” Rep. Maxine Waters tweeted. “Thank you for your fight and your lawsuit, you beat the hell out of them, bye-bye.”
“Glad to hear that one of the most divisive, racist and destructive forces on television is off his prime time show. Tucker Carlson will not be missed,” Rep. Robert Garcia wrote.
Leftist Squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told her Instagram and Facebook followers that Carlson’s departure is proof that “Deplatforming works and it is important.” She also used the news to fundraise.
AOC on Tucker “Deplatforming works and it is important.”
The harpies-er-ladies at ABC’s “The View” paused their regularly scheduled programming on Monday to triumphantly recognize Tucker’s exit. Host Whoopi Goldberg started a wave in the audience that was closely followed by an Ana Navarro-led acapella chorus of “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”
“He is responsible for the degradation that we see somewhat of our democracy in this country,” co-host Sunny Hostin said.
The View celebrates Tucker Carlson leaving Fox News. The cast does the wave and Ana Navarro leads the audience in singing "Hey, hey, they Goodbye!" Sunny Says he's responsible for the "degradation" of our "democracy." pic.twitter.com/uaY0l2COck
The View women previously called on the Biden administration to investigate and potentially arrest Carlson for “shilling for [Vladimir] Putin.”
The Daily Show
Desi Lydic said she’s “glad” Carlson is gone after trying to “topple America’s democracy.”
“You know that stupid look that’s always on Tucker Carlson’s face?” The Daily Show correspondent quipped on Monday night. “Today, he has a good reason for it. I can’t believe that a network that is so opposed to gender-affirming surgery just cut off their own d-ck.”
Maren Morris
The female country singer and drag queen enthusiast, who called Jason Aldean’s wife an “Insurrection Barbie” after she criticized the mutilation of children, also celebrated the personality’s unemployment.
“Happy Monday, MotherTucker,” Morris wrote in her Instagram story on Monday.
The story features a picture of Morris with a chyron from “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” labeling her a “lunatic country music person.”
Some Guy Named Steve
Facebook Censorship partner Stephen Hayes, who took a contributor role with NBC after leaving Fox News to protest Carlson’s programming, told the New York Times on Monday that he hopes Carlson’s leave “signals some kind of broader institutional change” at the right-leaning network.
“On a lot of the mainstream channels, there was a race to be first to condemn Trump to celebrate his problems,” Hayes said. “And on Fox, in prime time especially, there was this over-the-top effort to defend him and amplify his lies.”
A Star Trek Actor
“Don’t let the door hit you on your way out, you horrid, soulless man. #TuckerCarlson,” raging leftist activist George Takei tweeted.
Fox News Staffers
“Fox News Staffers Celebrate Tucker Carlson’s Departure: ‘Pure Joy,’” a Rolling Stone headline excitedly blared on Monday night.
The article lists several unnamed “staffers” who were apparently overjoyed that the biggest source of their employer’s views was finally gone.
“Pure joy. No one is untouchable. It’s a great day for America, and for the real journalists who work hard every day to deliver the news at Fox,” one of the sources allegedly said.
“These are the consequences that Carlson’s own actions inspired, and they are owed only to best business practices,” National Review’s senior writer Noah Rothman claimed in an article, completely ignoring the fact that Fox News is on track to lose the audience of its most popular show.
Washington Examiner Editor
“RIP to a fashy, sh-tty show no more than one percent of Americans watched on a good night, including more Democrats than MSNBC, thus making it hard to argue it had a large influence on American electoral politics except in driving loud people nuts,” Nick Clairmont, the Washington Examiner’s life and arts editor tweeted on Monday.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Harris Faulkner announces Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News. FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways, the network announced on Monday.
“We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor,” a FOX News Media spokesperson said in a statement.
An interim program, “Fox News Tonight,” will air at 8 p.m. ET until a permanent replacement for Carlson is named. “Fox News Tonight” will be hosted by a rotation of various Fox News personalities.
The last edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” aired on Friday, April 21. The show began airing in 2016.
FOX News media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways, the network announced on Monday. (Fox News)
Before the launch of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Carlson was co-host of “FOX & Friends Weekend” from 2012 through 2016.
Carlson previously served as an MSNBC host from 2005-2008 and also appeared on CNN earlier in his career. He founded The Daily Caller in 2010, but sold his stake in the political news website in 2020.
Brian Flood is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to brian.flood@fox.com and on Twitter: @briansflood.
Walmart has announced Tuesday that it is closing four of its Chicago stores because they are part of a group of locations that “lose tens of millions of dollars a year.” The retail giant says the Chatham Supercenter, the Walmart Health center, and the Walmart Academy at 8431 S. Stewart Ave., the Kenwood Neighborhood Market at 4720 S. Cottage Grove Ave., the Lakeview Neighborhood Market at 2844 N. Broadway St. and the Little Village Neighborhood Market at 2551 W. Cermak Road will shutter this upcoming Sunday.
“The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago — these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years,” Walmart said in a statement.
“The remaining four Chicago stores continue to face the same business difficulties, but we think this decision gives us the best chance to help keep them open and serving the community,” it added.
The Walmart Supercenter in Chicago that will close on Sunday, April 16, the company says. (Google Maps)
Walmart said that “over the years, we have tried many different strategies to improve the business performance of these locations, including building smaller stores, localizing product assortment and offering services beyond traditional retail.
“We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the city, including $70 million in the last couple years to upgrade our stores and build two new Walmart Health facilities and a Walmart Academy training center,” the company also said.
“It was hoped that these investments would help improve our stores’ performance,” Walmart said in press release, but “Unfortunately, these efforts have not materially improved the fundamental business challenges our stores are facing.”
Walmart announced Tuesday, April 11, 2023, it is closing four Chicago stores that lose millions each year. (Fox News / Fox News)
Those employed by the stores that are soon set to close are now eligible to transfer to work at other Walmart locations.
An employee unpacks Black Friday sales merchandise in an aisle at a Walmart location in Chicago, Illinois, , on Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2015. Walmart said Tuesday its stores in the city, collectively, haven’t been profitable. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
“Hiring managers from surrounding facilities will be in each of these stores this week to help associates begin finding their next opportunity,” according to Walmart.
The company said it hopes to repurpose the buildings it’s leaving behind so they remain “important parts of their communities.”
Affected staff will be paid until Aug. 11, 2023, unless they transfer out to another store. After that date, Walmart said those eligible will receive severance benefits.
Walmart said it has tried different strategies to improve the business performance of its Chicago stores, but “these efforts have not materially improved the fundamental business challenges our stores are facing.” (Robyn Beck/AFP / Getty Images)
A “Mornings with Maria” panel says the American public should be “rightly concerned” with the Biden family’s financial relations with China. As more confirmations come forth regarding the Biden family’s business dealings in China, Americans are calling on President Joe Biden to address the “significant and important” financial connection.
“When you see this kind of a connection between a sitting president, his son and the Chinese government, when people just don’t trust this and know that it’s one of the biggest threats facing us right now, that’s a really big issue that needs to be addressed,” Maslansky + Partners President Lee Carter said on “Mornings with Maria” on Monday.
Her comments come on the heels of Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., revealing Sunday to host Maria Bartiromo that Chinese-American-owned Cathay Bank disclosed Biden family bank records that match U.S. regulator records.
“A bank from China, let’s face it, the Communist Party controls those types of institutions; they willingly gave us the documents that backed up the Treasury records,” Johnson said on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Sen.-elect Joe Biden and wife Neilia cut his 30th birthday cake at a party in Wilmington, Delaware, on Nov. 20, 1972. His son, Hunter, waits for the first piece. | Getty Images
While Cathay Bank was founded in the U.S. in 1962 and is currently headquartered in Chinatown, Los Angeles, they also house representative offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Taipei, according to its website. It also claims to be America’s oldest operating bank founded by Chinese Americans.
Despite Biden denying in recent weeks that his son, Hunter Biden, brother Jim, and Hallie Biden, the widow of his son, Beau, received split payments of $1 million from Hunter’s business associate, Rob Walker, Johnson claimed the new Cathay Bank records solidify the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the family’s international business ventures.
“Is that the Chinese Communist Party, is that a shot across President Biden’s bow, saying, ‘Listen, this is some of the information we have. If you don’t toe the line, if you don’t do things that displease us, we’re going to even provide … more information,'” Johnson said. “So, we obviously have a multiple-tier system of justice.”
“This isn’t just a Chinese bank, this is an American bank that was founded by Chinese Americans,” Carter said. “After everything that we’ve been through with China, at this moment, only 15% of Americans trust China … the American people are rightly concerned. They deserve to have answers. And I think at a minimum, the president needs to make a statement and address people’s concerns because they’re valid.”
Financial services industry veteran Michael Lee also joined the conversation Monday, pointing out the coincidence of U.S. banks’ reluctance to provide Congress with information now that a Democrat holds office.
After further confirmation of the Biden family’s business dealings in China, Maslansky + Partners President Lee Carter called on President Biden to address possible collusion with “one of the biggest threats facing” America on “Mornings with Maria.” (FOX Business / Photo illustration / Fox News)
“Let’s just go back in time and remind everyone: Nobody gets [$1 million] sole mandate from the Chinese government to start a private equity firm, especially one that doesn’t have any private equity experience, especially someone that doesn’t have any private equity experience and has a debilitating crack habit,” Lee said.
“So, what type of influence did they buy as the Chinese Communist Party is running around with Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, setting up a new reserve currency to take out the United States of America?” he continued. “What did the Bidens give up and what is it doing to our national security?”
It’s painful for me to watch so many smart pundits and politicians on both the right and the left buy into a media narrative that seeks to blame “wealthy speculators” or “tech bros” or venture capitalists for a banking crisis that ultimately started in Washington. Let me explain.
If you want to understand the context for the crisis, look at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chair’s March 6 testimony — a week before Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse — where he explains that banks were sitting on $620 billion of unrealized losses from long-dated bonds. This provided the tinder for the crisis.
The match was lit when SVB announced on Wednesday, March 9, that it had effectively sold all of its available-for-sale securities and needed to raise fresh capital because of large unrealized losses from its mortgage bond portfolio.
Screenshot: Wall Street Journal
On Thursday morning, the financial press widely reported SVB’s need for new capital, and short sellers were all over the stock. The CEO’s disastrous “don’t panic” call later that morning only heightened fears and undermined confidence in the bank.
The idea that one needed “non-public information” to understand that SVB was at risk is drivel being peddled by populist demagogues. Any depositor who could read The Wall Street Journal or watch the stock ticker could understand there was no upside in waiting to see what would happen next.
By Friday, the run on other banks had begun. This became abundantly clear when regulators placed Signature Bank in receivership, announced a backstop facility for First Republic, and temporarily halted trading of regional bank stocks on Monday. Even trading of Schwab was halted.
Some unscrupulous reporters and political types have even claimed that I somehow caused this through my tweeting. Dang, they must think I’m Superman! Or maybe E.F. Hutton. But the timing doesn’t line up at all, as I already explained.
In the never-ending quest for scapegoats, some reporters and political types are asking if @theallinpod could have influenced the bank run. We didn't publish until Saturday morning when banks were already closed! I also never tweeted about SVB until it was already in receivership…
Once the run on the bank started, decisive action by the Fed was imperative. This meant protecting deposits (uninsured are 50 percent) and backstopping regional banks. No matter how distasteful you may find those things to be, preventing a greater economic calamity was necessary.
But back to SVB: Its collapse was first and foremost a result of its own poor risk management and communications. It should have hedged its interest rate risk. And it should have raised the necessary capital months ago through an offering that didn’t spook the street.
SVB doesn’t deserve a bailout and isn’t getting one. SVB’s stockholders, bondholders, and stock options are getting wiped out. The executives will spend years in litigation and may have stock sales clawed back. Anyone who thinks there’s a “moral hazard” isn’t paying attention.
But it’s important to understand that SVB’s failure didn’t arise from risky startups doing risky startup things. It arose from SVB’s over-exposure to boring old mortgage bonds, which were considered safe at the time SVB bought them. Perhaps this is why SVB had an “A” rating from Moody’s and had passed all of its regulatory exams.
What turned the mortgage bonds toxic? The most rapid rate-tightening cycle we’ve seen in decades. You can see the connection here between rapid rate hikes and unrealized losses in the banking system.
So, what caused the rapid rate hikes? The worst inflation in 40 years. And what caused that? Profligate spending and money printing coming out of Washington — all while Joe Biden, Janet Yellen, and Jerome Powell assured us inflation was “transitory.”
I warned two years ago that pumping trillions of dollars of stimulus into an already hot economy was an unprecedented and likely dangerous experiment. But this was Bidenomics.
Bidenomics = pumping trillions of dollars of stimulus into a rip-roaring economy. I’m not going to pretend like I know what’s going to happen next. AFAIK we’ve never tried this before.
So, when Joe Biden says he’s going to hold those responsible for this mess fully accountable, he ought to start by looking in the mirror. But I’m sure that’s not going to happen, just as I’m sure the hunt for scapegoats is just beginning.
David Sacks is an entrepreneur and author who specializes in digital technology firms. He is a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital fund Craft Ventures and was the founding COO of PayPal.
Image courtesy Ad Inception / YouTube (screenshot)
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A recent commercial for the Always brand of women’s pads features someone who appears to be a man, leaving viewers confused about the advertisement for the menstruation product. A 15-second promotion for Always Infinity Pads with Flexfoam features either a man or a transgender man in its commercial in support of “all bodies.”
“No two bodies are the same. Some pads never got that message,” the commercial begins, before promoting that the product “fits all bodies.”
But audiences are unable to pinpoint whether the actor in question is indeed a man or a biological woman posing as a man.
A Reddit thread titled “Always FlexFoam – do men use these?” asks, “[W]hy would a man ever be part of this demographic?
“This isn’t an inclusivity thing, this is a ‘you’re a biological man and have no need for this product’ thing,” the caption adds.
“Are you referring to the person in the purple shirt? Is that just a tall, gangly female?” the top comment asks.
“It’s pretty clear that a biological woman who identifies as a man was cast in this commercial for the sake of inclusion,” says Natasha Biase, a reporter and writer on women’s issues.
“Interestingly, this casting choice admits that only women can get their period,” she adds.
A Twitter user took a different perspective, however, criticizing the ad because the company hasn’t “gotten the f***ing message that not everyone who menstruates is a woman.”
“Maybe take the ‘you go girl!’ s**t off your pads & then get back to me,” it continues.
The next day, a different viewer claimed that the actor was indeed a man, saying, “OMG, I just saw a tv ad for Always Flexfoam pads that had a man in it! Well let’s say a male cuz I wouldn’t call him a man!”
A different company called L, which specializes in organic tampons, is currently running an ad campaign featuring a male content creator named Jeffrey Marsh.
You gotta wonder if brands run campaigns like this knowing how stupid they are in an effort to go viral.
Because literally no woman is going to buy tampons that are being promoted by a man. https://t.co/102tkAqFtr
The Federal Trade Commission issued a proposed, $7.8 million settlement order Thursday related to charges that an online counseling service revealed customers’ sensitive data with online advertisers like Facebook.
“In the hierarchy of health information, details about a person’s mental health may be among the most confidential,” the FTC said Friday in a blog post explaining the disturbing case.
“[BetterHealth] promised to keep [sensitive health information] private through statements like: ‘Rest assured – any information provided in this questionnaire will stay private between you and your counselor.'”
“But from the FTC’s perspective, a truthful statement would have been ‘Rest assured – we plan to share your information with major advertising platforms, including Facebook, Snapchat, Criteo, and Pinterest.'”
BetterHelp, an online counseling service, also does business as My Therapist, Teen Counseling, Faithful Counseling, Pride Counseling, Terappeuta for Spanish-speaking clients, and others, the FTC indicates in its pending settlement updated March 2.
People who signed up and paid for BetterHelp services between August 1, 2017 and December 31, 2020 may receive partial refunds thanks to the proposed settlement. The settlement order also bars the company from continuing to share customers’ health data for advertising purposes. Third parties that received the data are to delete it.
BetterHelp, despite repeated promises to the contrary, reportedly shared health information from over 7 million consumers with Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest, and others for advertising purposes.
Among the most egregious examples are allegedly uploading nearly 2 million current and former clients’ email addresses to Facebook to target their friends with ads for mental health services. The company also allegedly disclosed to Facebook 1.5 million clients’ responses to an intake questionnaire query about whether the client had been in counseling or therapy in the past.
Similarly, the company allegedly broke its privacy promises by disclosing the IP and email addresses of 5.6 million former clients to Snapchat. Criteo is yet another company to which BetterHelp shared clients’ email addresses.
BetterHelp’s home page, which boasts it is “256-bit SSL secure,” claims 3,822,804 people have received “help” from their more than 31,366 licensed therapists. The popular platform, which claims to be the “world’s largest therapy service,” regularly runs television and online ads for its service.
The advertisement below was published February 28, according to iSpot.tv.
The confidentiality section on BetterHelp’s frequently asked questions page says, “Generally, the therapist will keep what you tell them confidential, but there are limited exceptions … please discuss with your therapist their legal obligations to confidentiality if you have an concerns or questions.”
Unfortunately for patients, the data sharing came from outside an established, patient-provider relationship. The data in question stemmed from an intake questionnaire that “repeatedly pushed” would-be clients to “hand over sensitive health information through unavoidable prompts,” rather than the protected interactions with therapists on the platform.
The website also goes into great detail about how they, theoretically at least, protect clients’ privacy and security. “We have built state-of-the-art technology, operations, and infrastructure with the goal of protecting your privacy and safeguarding the information you provide,” the website says, detailing the steps they claim to take to ensure that privacy.
BetterHelp’s privacy page goes into considerable depth, evidently to convince would-be clients that their private data is secure.
The FTC’s ruling in this case carries implications for other companies. For example, though an email address might not automatically be considered health information, it can be if the source of that email address is a health-related website like a therapy service, a diabetes supplies manufacturer, or a physical therapy establishment.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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