Trump thinks he can restart the rallies because BLM protests inoculate him against criticism

June 8, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris


According to President Donald Trump’s campaign, the outbreak of outdoor public protests mean he can start holding rallies in large arenas again.

Politico reported Monday that the president will restart his “Make America Great Again” rallies in two weeks even if his older rally attendees run the risk of catching the coronavirus.

“Americans are ready to get back to action and so is President Trump. The great American comeback is real and the rallies will be tremendous,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. “You’ll again see the kind of crowds and enthusiasm that sleepy Joe Biden can only dream of.”

He did not say whether the campaign would be requiring masks, temperature checks or masks to attend.

There are still states that are limiting gatherings, so it’s unclear where Trump will try to hold his rallies. At the same time, there are states that aren’t restricting crowds, like Texas, and are experiencing an uptick in cases and hospitalizations.

Trump is probably most needed in Colorado and Arizona for Sens. Martha McSally and Cory Gardner, both of whom are seen as likely losses for the GOP in November. While Arizona is open to anyone, Colorado’s order encourages outdoor recreation while prohibiting gatherings in groups larger than 10.

Florida has similarly reopened everything after refusing to lockdown. Still, however, Florida is restricting gatherings of 50 people or more.

The swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania limit large gatherings as well that would stop a large Trump rally. In Ohio it is 10 or more and in Pennsylvania, depending on the county, it is 250 or more banned. Michigan won’t allow crowds of over 100 people.

It’s unknown if Trump will do his rally outside at a field or place where people can social distance or if he’ll pack people into smaller locations.

‘The only thing Trump doesn’t want his name on’: President mocked after #TrumpRecession trends nationwide

 June 8, 2020

According to The New York Times this Monday, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced that the United States entered into a recession in February, long before the economic downturn that was triggered by the coronavirus lockdowns.

The news added a new dynamic to the debate over the economy, causing many of President Trump critics on Twitter to point out that the news contradicts Trump’s rosy proclamations about the economy before coronavirus hit.

Trump caused the recession even before the Corona hit? #TrumpRecession pic.twitter.com/0Buf2kr56K
— Isiah Whitlock Jr. (@IsiahWhitlockJr) June 8, 2020

10 months before economist’s predictions, the US economy entered into #Recession in February, BEFORE any US #COVID19 lockdown orders.

When will R’s learn that Democrats Grow the economy while the @GOP, @SenateGOP & @HouseGOP destroys it for their 1% donors.#TrumpRecession pic.twitter.com/SdaeUaLPnQ
— Trinity (@TrinityResists) June 8, 2020

In fact, the U.S. economy went into recession three months after Trump's boast – and before the country went into lockdown

This happened despite $1.5 trillion in tax cuts that created a massive deficit and failed to increase jobs, wages or business investment. #TrumpRecession pic.twitter.com/uxHd6jxJRV
— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) June 8, 2020

It would be nice if everyone could retweet a THANK YOU to @BarackObama & @JoeBiden for creating an economic recovery so strong & enduring that it lasted all the way from June 2009 to February 2020 when the #TrumpRecession began. #ThanksObama! #ThanksBiden! https://t.co/WyYtC6r9ht
— Richard Hine (@richardhine) June 8, 20

The only thing Trump doesn't want his name on: #TrumpRecession.
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 8, 2020

The fact that the #TrumpRecession began before the coronavirus shutdowns is another reminder that the GOP billionaire tax giveaway was a fraud. https://t.co/l9Xrx3ym2X
— Derek Cressman (@DerekCressman) June 8, 2020

Can we please all agree that this experiment of having a dumb TV host and shady real estate developer with no government knowledge, 5 kids from 3 marriages, 6 bankruptcies, 46 charges of sexual assault, and 35,000 lawsuits as president is not going well at all? #TrumpRecession
— Andrea Junker (@Strandjunker) June 8, 2020


BREAKING: "The U.S. economy entered a recession in February, a group of economists declared Monday," ending the Obama expansion — the longest expansion on record.
So you can't blame COVID-19 for the #TrumpRecession
— Black Lives Matter (@HKrassenstein) June 8, 2020


The National Bureau of Economic Research declared Monday that the recession began in February.
This means even without COVID-19, the economy would still tank due to Trump. #TrumpRecession
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) June 8, 2020


Congrats to tRump, it took President Bush 7 years to get us into recession, it’s only took tRump 3 years #TrumpRecession https://t.co/njs0hZoHAU
— Mama Resister (@mama2agn) June 8, 2020


The Trump Recession is official. True, the virus was one source, but his ineptitude magnified it greatly. USA decline in GDP (4.8%) MUCH worse than S Korea (1.3%) because they had a leader and acted. They controlled the virus, death and the economy. #TrumpVirus #TrumpRecession
— Lee Leavitt (@LeavittLee) June 8, 2020

Pictures Show Just How Large The Protests Against Police Brutality Really Are

BUZZFEED PROTEST PHOTOS SEE MORE HERE https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/gabrielsanchez/photos-protest-crowds-police-brutality

COMPTON COWBOYS 


BOSTON NFL PLAYERS JOIN THE PROTEST

Police Are Investigating After A Homeless Man In A Wheelchair Was Allegedly Shot In The Face With A Rubber Bullet

A photographer at the scene told BuzzFeed News the man was in between police and protesters. "And I saw him in the street, bleeding," she said.

Salvador Hernandez BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on June 6, 2020

Mario Tama / Getty Images

An LAPD officer aims a nonlethal weapon during a confrontation with protesters.

The Los Angeles Police Department has launched a personnel investigation after witnesses said a man who is homeless and uses a wheelchair was shot in the face by police with a rubber bullet.

Photos of the aftermath show the man bent over in the chair as blood drips from his forehead down his face. Police officers wearing riot helmets, some of them with armed, stand in the foreground.

"We are aware of the photo and the allegations and we are still trying to understand the context and circumstances around what happened," Josh Rubenstein, spokesperson for the LAPD told BuzzFeed News. "A personnel investigation has been initiated."

The incident happened Tuesday evening in downtown Los Angeles, according to witnesses, as police clashed with protesters after a curfew had gone into effect.

Police released no details about the incident, but a witness to the shooting told BuzzFeed News the unidentified man appeared to be in the line of fire as police fired at a crowd of protesters who were trying to evade police.

Sarah Reingewirtz/Southern California News Grou
A man using a wheelchair is seen bleeding from his face.



"He was in between protesters and police," Sarah Reingewirtz, a photographer with Southern California News Group who was covering the protests that day, told BuzzFeed News. "And I saw him in the street, bleeding."

The curfew had gone into effect at the time and police had blocked off several streets downtown, Reingewirtz said. Hundreds of protesters were still in the streets but, as police started moving in to make arrests, many started running away.

Reingewirtz saw police begin to take protesters into custody as she was walking down Broadway.

Trying to escape police, a large group of protesters tried to enter a building. Someone had opened the door to the building and people started rushing in. That's when Reingewirtz first saw the man, just ahead of the demonstrators.

"You could see him sitting in the street, looking at everyone and he was fine," she said.

Police then turned into the street from the other side, with the man sitting near the sidewalk between a group of uniformed police and the protesters.

"I heard one of the rubber bullets go off, and then [police] came up, and they told us to get back," Reingewirtz said. "He looked like he might have been screaming."


Reingewirtz started taking pictures of the scene, with the man bleeding in the chair and police aiming their weapons at protesters just outside the frame.


"He was just there," she recalled, adding that it took about 10 minutes before officers approached the man and took him away to receive treatment for the wound just above his eye. "It was horrifying and hard to look at."

When first contacted by BuzzFeed News about the incident Friday morning, LAPD said they had no information about the man or his injury.

"Unfortunately we can not speculate on what caused this individuals injury without further investigation," the spokesperson said. Asked if the department had an open investigation into the man's injuries, the spokesperson replied they had no information about him at the time.

Images of his injuries spread quickly online.

By Friday evening, Black Lives Matter and advocates for those experiencing homelessness filed a lawsuit against the LAPD's tactics during the protests that have taken place across the city, including their use of force, holding protesters for up to 12 hours, and arresting people who are unhoused for violating curfew even though they had no place to go.

In the suit, BLM alleges that LAPD has used force to end the protests, including using "less lethal" weapons.

The lawsuit also mentions the Tuesday incident involving the man experiencing homelessness, referring to him as "Cincinnati" in the complaint.

"He pleaded with police not to use force on him before being shot in the face," the suit reads. "But he was not the only disabled person in a wheelchair to be struck in the face by a rubber bullet as the LAPD enforced curfew laws and other misdemeanors in the last week."



The suit also accused officers from targeting people experiencing homelessness, charging that, "Most, if not all of these individuals, are unhoused and had no place they could go to avoid violating the curfew," being enforced by LAPD.


"They were all tightly handcuffed from the time they were arrested, transported across town to Brentwood, held for processing and then released, homeless on the streets of Los Angeles during a city-wide curfew," the suit reads.

After the suit was filed, LAPD confirmed a personnel investigation had been launched into the incident.

The man's identity has not been revealed, and it's still unclear what condition he is currently in.

The Woman In The “Lose Yo Job” Video Told Us How It Changed Her Life
“Other people keep telling me I helped them so much, but they don’t understand — nobody understands — how much this video going viral like this is helping me," Johnniqua Charles told BuzzFeed News.

Julia Reinstein BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on June 8, 2020,

Courtesy of Johnniqua Charles / Via Instagram: @getthisdance
Johnniqua Charles with her son, Juju.

Four months ago, Johnniqua Charles was homeless, dealing with an addiction, and estranged from her family when she had a run-in with a security officer.

Now, because of a video of that incident that's gone viral in recent days, Charles’ life is beginning to turn around.

“I’m just overwhelmed, and I’m such a humble person [that] to see that, it’s just amazing to me,” she told BuzzFeed News. “I’m just glad that it’s something so positive.”

A 27-year-old from Dillon, South Carolina, Charles is the woman in the viral video that’s come to be known as “Lose Yo Job.” In the video, she questions a security guard as to why he is detaining her, then turns her protests into an ad-libbed song and dance.



DJ Akademiks@Akademiks
💀08:28 PM - 03 Jun 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite
“Why are you detaining me? You about to lose yo job,” Charles says in the video. She then begins singing and dancing. “You about to lose yo job. You about to lose yo job. Get this dance! You about to lose yo job ‘cause you are detaining me for nothing.”

She and her sister, Andrea, don’t know why the video is suddenly everywhere, but it’s exploded in popularity in just a few days.

With people in every US state and around the world protesting police brutality against the Black community, Charles’ song became a viral hit at the perfect moment. The catchy and timely tune has provided some laughter during a difficult time, and it has even been sung and displayed on signs at protests.

The video has spread even further after several DJs created remixes that went viral. The most popular one is by DJ Suede the Remix God and iMarkkeyz, who also remixed Cardi B’s coronavirus video in March.


KC_in_NYC@KC_in_NYC
Amidst all the chaos, craziness and crying, Black people have always been able to find a way to inject humor - and music - into the situation. It's probably what has kept us sane through all these years. #YouAboutToLoseYoJob https://t.co/oc1qf2JBwL07:45 AM - 05 Jun 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite

The video was first posted on Facebook by the guard, Julius Locklear, on Feb. 5. “Okay IM NOT POSTING THIS TO BE FUNNY TOWARDS THIS SUBJECT!!!!” Locklear wrote in his Facebook post. “I’m posting it cause that rap was lit like I wish I could put a beat to it lol.”

Locklear, whose day job is in bail enforcement, told BuzzFeed News the incident happened at Diamonds Gentlemen’s Club in Dillon on Feb. 5. Locklear's colleague filmed the incident because his body camera wasn't working. He said he detained Charles for trespassing after he twice asked her to leave the club. Charles said she had been trying to get into the club after it closed because she accidentally left her purse inside.

“I guess he thought I was going back in just to go back inside the club, but he wouldn’t allow me, and that’s how the argument between me and him started,” Charles said. “I told him to suck my dick, and that is the moment he basically put the handcuffs on me and tussled with me a little bit.”

"I just let her vent," said Locklear, "and exercise her freedom of speech."

"The situation had nothing to do with race or discrimination," he said. "You can see me handling it professionally and trying to keep a straight face, but I couldn't."

Locklear called sheriff's deputies to the scene, but Charles was ultimately not arrested and was told she was free to go.

“He didn’t have a reason. He didn’t have anything to charge me with,” she said. “Because what would be the charge?”

Locklear, for the record, said he did not lose his job.

Charles said she first found out the video had gone viral last week when a former classmate sent it to her on Facebook. She isn’t very active on social media, she said, so she didn’t realize how popular it had become until her sister reached out to her.

Charles said she had been homeless, dealing with a drug addiction, and doing sex work to survive until very recently. She hadn’t spoken to her family since around November, and they were caring for her 3-year-old son, Juju.

“I’d been on the streets, and they’d been looking for me,” Charles said. “And I guess they seen that this video could basically change my life, and they put out a whole search party to find me.”

Charles and her family reconnected on Saturday, and she’s now living with them and trying to rebuild her life.

Both sisters agreed that the video going viral is what helped make this happen.

“At first I didn’t think much of [the video], but then I got on Instagram and I saw even more people saying, ‘Who is this woman?’” said Andrea. “So I was like, OK, this is an opportunity for my sister to be known. If the world wants to know who she is, why not let the world know who she is?”

Andrea set up an Instagram for her sister, started selling T-shirts, and created a GoFundMe that has raised more than $30,000 so far.

“The only reason that the GoFundMe and those platforms were created were people were begging to donate to her,” Andrea said. “Once I made her Instagram, people were flooding in, saying, ‘How can I bless her? She just blessed my day so much. She just made my day.’ So the only reason it was created was so people could bless her life.”

The money will go toward Charles and her son, Andrea said, “and also to better herself with whatever resources she needs to keep her on the right track, just to keep her here.”

Charles said this moment has been the “breakthrough” that she desperately needed.

“Other people keep telling me I helped them so much, but they don’t understand — nobody understands — how much this video going viral like this is helping me, because it’s giving me the breakthrough I so badly needed for so long,” she said.

Since she’s not very active on social media, Charles said, she still doesn’t totally understand quite how viral the video is. But she’s not letting her viral fame go to her head. “I just want to keep being normal,” she said. “I don’t want to consider myself quote-unquote famous or a celebrity. I can’t do that.”

For now, Charles said, she’s focusing on getting healthy and making up for lost time with her family and her son. “It’s a lot of tears from everybody. They just want to be reassured,” Charles said. “Because it’s been ongoing with me battling this addiction — this has been, like, six years — and they just want to be reassured that this is no more, that they don’t have to stress about where I may be. They never want me to be in the streets ever again and live that lifestyle.”

Andrea said she’s just grateful that this video has reunited their family and given Charles a better chance at a happier life.

“I just feel like this was all from God,” Andrea said. “These people have been blessing her and doing that out of the kindness of their heart. I just feel like that’s all God.”

Julia Reinstein is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Black Lives Matter demonstrators driving change in policing policies

Orion Rummler, Rebecca Falconer


Demonstrators face off with law enforcement personnel near the Seattle Police Departments East Precinct in Seattle on June 6. Photo: David Ryder/Getty Images

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged on Sunday reforms and cuts for the first time to police funds and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan announced plans for a major shake-up of the city's policing.

Why it matters: These are the latest examples of Black Lives Matter protesters driving changes in policing policies after almost two weeks of nationwide demonstrations that began over the death of George Floyd and other African Americans in custody.
Many Black Lives Matter protesters are calling for some police funds to be reinvested elsewhere and for systemic issues in law enforcement to be fixed.

What's happening: In Minnesota, where Floyd died on May 25, a veto-proof majority of nine members of the Minneapolis City Council signed a pledge at a rally on Sunday to begin the process of dismantling the Minneapolis Police Department as it currently exists.
In New York City, De Blasio said Sunday he would divert policing funds to social services, with the details being announced before the July 1 budget deadline, per the New York Times.

In Seattle, Durkan, announced on Friday a 30-day ban on city police using tear gas.
On Sunday night, she committed to policing reforms including issuing an emergency order on Monday requiring officers turn on body cameras during public protests and a review of crowd dispersal tactics, chemicals, and de-escalation techniques.
Durkan also called for an independent state prosecutor to investigate and prosecute officers who use deadly force and she committed to identifying "at least $100 million to invest further in community-based programs that invest in Black youth and adults, including employment programs, Black-owned businesses and programs that provide alternatives to arrest and incarceration."

Go deeper ... Vox: Park Police call it a "mistake" to insist tear gas wasn't used in Lafayette Square

Civil rights leaders call for more diverse oil and gas industry

Amy Harder, author of Generate

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

America’s leading civil rights leaders are calling on the oil and gas industry — dominated by white men — to hire more women and people of color.

Why it matters: The effort, led by Rev. Jesse Jackson and National Urban League President Marc Morial, has been underway for weeks, though the topic has taken on a new urgency in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd.

Driving the news: Jackson and Morial are calling on the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, a trade group representing natural-gas transportation companies, to increase racial and gender representation across the industry, including on boards of directors and C-suites.
“We believe that through the development of a workforce that reflects the country’s demographics, upward mobility will take place in underserved, urban, rural, middle class and other communities,” Morial said in a May 18 letter to Alex Oehler, INGAA interim president.
“I urge your association and member companies to double your efforts to include more women, African Americans, Latinos and Asian Pacific executives amongst your ranks,” Jackson wrote in a May 5 letter to Oehler.

The intrigue: Even while advocating for a more diverse workforce, Jackson and Morial are also trying to work with the trade group on ensuring affordable access to natural gas, especially for communities of color.
The leaders, along with Rev. Al Sharpton, have recently expressed opposition to a swift move away from natural gas— which is the cleanest fossil fuel, but one that environmentalists nonetheless oppose given its role heating up the planet.
Jackson, in particular, is pushing for a natural-gas pipeline in a low-income, largely black community near Chicago.

For the record: Oehler, who is filling in as CEO until the association finishes its process of hiring a permanent leader, told Axios he plans to respond soon to Morial and welcomes the conversation about diversity. He already responded to Jackson’s letter, though that response was focused on the energy access question.

By the numbers: The oil and gas industry workforce is generally less diverse than American workforce as a whole, and African Americans are especially underrepresented.
6.7%: share of African Americans working in the oil and gas industry in 2015, according to a report published that year by the American Petroleum Institute. That’s compared to 11.7% of the overall workforce that same year.
20.4%: share of Hispanic workers in the sector (compared to 16.4% of the overall workforce that year).
17%: share of women in the industry (compared to 46.8% overall).
(More recent numbers suggest roughly the same picture compared to today's overall workforce.)
54%: Share of new industry jobs women and people of color are projected to fill through 2040, according to a forthcoming study from API not yet released.
Oehler’s staff of roughly a dozen people and his board of directors are overwhelmingly white; its board is also heavily male. API, a far bigger association, is 33% people of color (18% black) and 47% female, according to a spokesperson.

How it works: Ensuring diversity is important for several reasons, experts say, including making sure that organizations’ workforces reflect their customers — as well as the growing evidence that more diverse companies do better financially.
“The argument I’ve made with industry is the importance of trust among communities and the public at large. When you start to try to build coalitions and trust in a community and you bring a monolithic group to that community, then you seem out of step and out of touch, and that’s not the way you build trust.”— Paula Glover, president and CEO, American Association of Blacks in Energy

Racial diversity in the industry’s leadership positions and on boards of directors is almost certainly far less prevalent than the sector’s overall workforce, says Glover. She says it’s hard to even track down numbers given it’s such a small share.
More data exists for women’s increasing roles on boards and in C-suites. The share of female board members in the S&P Global indices nearly doubled since 2000 to reach an average of 15% for the energy sector, according to a recent report by S&P Global Platts.
As part of another recent broader survey on women in energy, McKinsey did a sidebar story on the even greater challenges facing women in color, but that work wasn’t looking at leadership positions and didn’t address people of color generally.

Go deeper:
Civil rights leaders oppose swift move off natural gas
Inside Rev. Jesse Jackson’s push for a natural-gas pipeline
Energy industry joins calls denouncing racism

Editor’s note: This piece was updated to replace 2019's overall employment figures with 2015 ones to compare the same years.

The great economic data crisis

Dion Rabouin, author of Markets


Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios

Economists have long been disparaged for inaccurate predictions, but Friday's jobs report laid bare a new problem for the world's largest economy: questionable data.

Why it matters: Economic data is a crucial element in the movement of asset prices that determine what Americans pay for just about everything.
It's not just the stock market — the yield on U.S. Treasury bonds helps set rates for mortgages, student loans, credit cards and more.
Market moves also determine the value of assets like oil and the dollar, based largely on economic data.

Driving the news: The government's jobs report on Friday wasn't just much better than expected — showing the U.S. added 2.5 million jobs in May, 10 million more than economists predicted — it was full of inexplicable holes and numbers that contradicted other government readings.

To wit, as DRW Trading rates strategist Lou Brien points out, the Labor Department's unemployment insurance report showed that for the week ending May 16 there were 29,965,415 unemployed people receiving unemployment benefits.

The Labor Department's jobs report — which surveys individuals and businesses during the week of May 16 — found there were 20,985,000 unemployed people.

That would mean there were 9 million more people receiving unemployment benefits than there were unemployed people during the exact same survey week.

What they're saying: "Safe to say it is fair to be a bit skeptical of the numbers," Brien said in a note to clients.

Between the lines: The Labor Department also noted that only 35 states reported pandemic unemployment assistance numbers and just 22 reported claims for extended benefits during that week.
The extended benefits data was missing from the nation's second and fourth most populous states — Texas and Florida — suggesting the number of unemployed people is likely higher than the unemployment insurance data show, not lower by 9 million.

The big picture: Economic data is often incorrect or incomplete in its initial iterations, as it is based on human reporting and techniques as simple as making phone calls and filling out questionnaires.
What's different now is that the shock of the coronavirus pandemic is pushing the potential scale of error to previously unimaginable levels.
However, as Friday's trading action showed, the reports can still move markets.

The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics offered a bit of explanation for some of the irregularities in its numbers, pointing out that data collection for the jobs report was "affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic."

How so: "Although [BLS regional data collection centers] were closed, about three-quarters of the interviewers at these centers worked remotely to collect data by telephone," BLS said in its May jobs report, also noting that no in-person surveys were taken during the month.
The pandemic led to a rate of responses to its survey of households that "was about 15 percentage points lower than in months prior to the pandemic."

There's more: The May nonfarm payrolls report included a “misclassification error” that would have made the unemployment rate "3 percentage points higher" than the reported 13.3%.
BLS said it was "investigating why this misclassification error continues to occur" as it's happened in the last three jobs reports.

Go deeper: Unpacking a surprise jobs report

Governments turn to protectionism in pandemic fallout

Dan Primack, author of Pro Rata

Protectionism is poised to play an elevated role in global dealmaking, particularly as countries grapple with the economic fallout of COVID-19.

Driving the news: Governments are creating new regulations and incentives to maintain local ownership of homegrown companies. 

France’s Finance Ministry on Friday formed a fund to invest in domestic tech companies if they receive unsolicited takeover offers from foreign suitors. It begins with €150 million, managed via state-backed lender Bpifrance, but could expand to €500 million next year. 

Australia has proposed a series of changes related to foreign takeover offers in all sorts of industries, regardless of deal size, including one that would let the country's treasurer force divestitures on the basis of national security. 

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are in various stages of implementing new restrictions of foreign direct investments, with the goal of restricting takeovers by non-EU companies. 

Germany also strengthened its screening of foreign direct investments, initially aimed at health care, but it's expected to expand to other "sensitive" industries like artificial intelligence. 

Sweden today got into the act, with top government officials introducing a series of proposals to better screen foreign direct investments. 

India last month said that companies from its seven neighboring nations, including China, must receive government approval for takeovers of Indian businesses. It also applies to other changes to beneficial ownership. 

The U.S. doesn't appear likely to enact similar restrictions, regardless of White House saber-rattling toward China, although there was that proposal from some congressional Democrats in April to put an overall moratorium on large M&A until the pandemic subsides.

By the numbers: Global cross-border merger activity is down 40% year-to-date, compared to an overall 43% drop in total M&A, per Refintiv. Cross-border deals for European targets, however, are down 5% versus an overall 12% increase in European dealmaking.

The bottom line: The world may be flat, but political policy is marked by peaks and valleys.

IBM is exiting the face recognition business

Ina Fried, author of Login


IBM CEO Arvind Krishna. Photo: IBM

In a letter to members of Congress on Monday, IBM said it is exiting the general-purpose facial recognition business and said it opposes the use of such technology for mass surveillance and racial profiling.

Why it matters: Facial recognition software is controversial for a number of reasons, including the potential for human rights violations as well as evidence that the technology is less accurate in identifying people of color.

What he's saying: "IBM no longer offers general purpose IBM facial recognition or analysis software," CEO Arvind Krishna said in the letter. "IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms, or any purpose which is not consistent with our values and Principles of Trust and Transparency."

The big picture: An IBM representative told Axios that the decisions were made over a period of months and have been communicated with customers, though this is the first public mention of the decision. IBM said it will "no longer market, sell or update these products" but will support existing clients as needed.

What to watch: The letter also included Krishna's suggestions for legislation around police reform and the responsible use of technology. IBM said that AI, for example, has a role to play in law enforcement, but should be thoroughly vetted to make sure it doesn't contain bias. The company is also calling for stricter federal laws on police misconduct.
"Congress should bring more police misconduct cases under federal court purview and should make modifications to the qualified immunity doctrine that prevents individuals from seeking damages when police violate their constitutional rights," Krishna said.
"Congress should also establish a federal registry of police misconduct and adopt measures to encourage or compel states and localities to review and update use-of-force policies."