Connecticut judge to sanction Alex Jones defense lawyers in Sandy Hook lawsuit after ‘unconscionable’ behavior during contentious depositions


Connecticut judge to sanction Alex Jones defense lawyers in Sandy Hook lawsuit after ‘unconscionable’ behavior during contentious depositions

Zach Murdock, Hartford Courant
Wed, October 20, 2021, 1:41 PM·6 min read

A Connecticut judge will sanction the defense attorneys for Alex Jones in the long-running civil lawsuit brought against the inflammatory online conspiracy theorist by the parents of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre.

Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis announced Wednesday morning that she will impose new sanctions on Jones’ attorneys for violating a court order when they included information from a confidential deposition this summer in a motion seeking to question former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, suggesting Clinton had arranged the families’ lawsuit as a vendetta against Jones after her 2016 loss to former President Donald Trump.

Bellis also will consider additional sanctions over what she called “highly inappropriate” and “abusive questioning” by Jones defense attorney Jay Wolman during a September deposition, during which he demanded the man being deposed search email records on his phone even though the subpoena issued by the court did not require it, she said.

The Connecticut cases are continuing this fall after a Texas judge’s decision late last month to hold Jones responsible for all damages in three similar defamation lawsuits filed there after Jones repeatedly ignored orders to turn over records to the families’ lawyers. Those cases now will be turned over to juries to decide how much in damages Jones must pay to the families while a jury trial in the Connecticut case is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2022.

Frustrated by Wolman’s responses to her pointed questions during the two-hour virtual hearing Wednesday, Bellis lambasted the defense attorney and warned Wolman and his co-counselors to be more cautious before “more damage is done,” she said.

“I think the arguments were baseless and I think the behavior really is unconscionable,” Bellis told Wolman. “There is no confusion, there can be no confusion, about a very straightforward protective order that (defense) counsel themselves filed and asked the court to approve. And I am concerned about a chilling effect on the testimony of other witnesses.”

The exact sanctions over the violation of the protective order will be determined at a hearing in the next few weeks.

Bellis also said she is considering whether to sanction Wolman herself over his September deposition conduct or refer the matter to the state’s Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, which investigates complaints against attorneys. After issuing three warnings to Wolman in May and June, she said Wednesday she is “leaning toward” issuing a sanction herself, but that she will decide at a hearing scheduled for early November.

The sanctions are the latest turn in the highly contentious legal battle against Jones by parents of several children killed in the horrific 2012 shooting that left 20 first graders and six educators dead. The families sued Jones for defamation after he repeatedly portrayed the Newtown massacre as a hoax on his online Infowars show, ostensibly designed to prompt new gun control measures.

Jones has claimed his inflammatory monologues were protected by the First Amendment, even though he now admits he was wrong and has since conceded in court that the shooting did occur.

The Texas judge who ruled against Jones this month noted that he and his Infowars companies have engaged in similar, obstructive behavior in the Connecticut lawsuits, and Bellis has raised similar concerns throughout this year.

Depositions finally began in the Connecticut cases this summer. Attorney Chris Mattei, a lawyer representing the Sandy Hook families, revealed during the hearing Wednesday that Jones’ attorneys’ motion to depose Clinton came in the middle of that first deposition with Erica Lafferty. The filing contends Clinton orchestrated the Sandy Hook families’ lawsuit as a “vendetta to silence Mr. Jones” after her loss to Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

The filing includes two sentences that make reference to an unnamed plaintiff and witness — information available only from the deposition being taken that day that was supposed to be entirely confidential, Mattei contended. Wolman countered that the information did not name Lafferty directly and therefore did not violate the confidentiality rules as he understood them.

Bellis dismissed that argument out of hand, noting the protective order outlining those confidentiality rules was drafted by the defense team and chastised Wolman for not directly answering her questions. She agreed with Mattei’s contention that the filing could have a “chilling” effect on the testimony other witnesses may give during their depositions.

“It was designed to set a tone for their conduct for the rest of the case, and that’s what they did,” Mattei told Bellis. “These unconvincing pleas that somehow the protective order was unclear. ... It is, I think, inexcusable that our clients would give information to Mr. Jones and his attorneys when they have shown such disregard for the protective order.”

Bellis also lambasted Wolman for his conduct during a Sept. 17 deposition of Robert Jacobson, a former video producer for one of the companies that worked with Jones’ show who did not have an attorney representing him at the deposition.

Although Jacobson told Wolman he did not have any documents responsive to Wolman’s subpoena, Wolman “pressured and barraged” Jacobson to search his email accounts on his mobile phone for the phrase “Sandy Hook,” Bellis said. Even after the attorneys arranged to speak with Bellis about the dispute during the deposition, Wolman continued to “harass” Jacobson and may have misled him about whether he was required to search his phone — potentially violating several attorney conduct rules, she said.

“Had the court had any inkling of the abusive questioning that was being conducted by attorney Wolman, I would have immediately — immediately — stopped the deposition. And if I was going to permit any further questioning of that witness, it would have been done in open court,” Bellis said.

Bellis sanctioned Jones in 2019 for not turning over documents and unleashing a 20-minute, profanity-laced tirade about the case on his show, at one point referring to Mattei and a $1 million bounty “to put your head on a pike.” The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld Bellis’ sanction, which barred Jones from filing a motion to dismiss the case, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Jones’ appeal of the decision this spring.

“Because of the concerns I’ve voiced and because of what I’ve heard from counsel for the Alex Jones defendants ... I am very concerned that the defendants in this case, having expressed confusion of a very clear protective order, that there are going to be problems in the future,” Bellis said in concluding the hearing Wednesday. “I strongly suggest, for your own interests, as well as your client’s interests, that you are on the side of caution and seek advice from the court if you have any concerns about how to proceed ... so that you don’t get yourselves in a situation where more damage is done.”

Power Plant Workers Embrace Change as Industry Adds Renewable Energy


Thu, October 21, 2021,

Duke Energy employees in Midwest learn new skills as industry invests in renewables, retires coal

Northampton, MA --News Direct-- Duke Energy

Hap Powell and Ben Niese didn’t expect to work with renewables when they started their careers in the energy industry. But as Duke Energy transitions from fossil fuels to renewables, their roles evolved, too.

After eight years at the Gibson coal plant in Indiana, Powell switched careers. He’s now operations and maintenance superintendent at Woodsdale and Madison natural gas plants and three solar installations in Kentucky. Many of Powell’s teammates started in coal plants, which, he said, helped them learn how to operate other power plants faster than someone without plant experience.

“They pick it up a lot quicker,” he said, “and we were all really excited to get the opportunity to learn solar.”

So was Niese.

“I think with solar,” Niese said, “I knew it was going to be excellent supplemental power, but I never expected it to be more of a daily-use power.”

While solar and fossil fuels might seem like an unusual pair, natural gas plants like these will help Duke Energy retire 16 gigawatts of coal-fired generation while continuing to provide reliable and affordable electricity. This transition is part of the company’s strategy to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Duke Energy has reduced its carbon emissions by about 40 percent since 2005, retired more than 50 coal units since 2010 and grown its solar and wind portfolio to roughly 200 installations in more than 22 states. Natural gas is not carbon free like nuclear power and renewables, but it emits nearly half as much carbon dioxide as coal plants.

Duke Energy expects renewables to make up its largest generation source by 2050, but traditional generation types like natural gas will work with solar to provide stability while lowering emissions.

How do solar and natural gas work together?

From their control rooms at the natural gas plants, Powell and his team can generate enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of homes in less than 12 minutes. This is much faster than most power plants can begin generating electricity. That flexibility is critical when temperatures are extreme and grid operators need to supply customers with electricity to heat or cool their homes.

Because solar power is intermittent, these natural gas plants (often called peakers) can be ready when the sun isn’t shining.

The operations and maintenance teams at Woodsdale and Madison took responsibility of Duke Energy's solar sites in Kentucky when they started generating electricity in 2017. In Indiana, teams at Wheatland Peaking Station support the solar installation at Crane naval base, too.

Duke Energy employees can monitor the solar sites from the natural gas plants’ control rooms and travel to the sites to make repairs or for planned maintenance about once a month. Combustion turbine technician Niese spends most of his time at Woodsdale and Madison plants testing, repairing and upgrading equipment so the natural gas plants are ready when they’re needed.

Like Powell, Niese said he didn’t expect to work with renewables when he started his career as an electrician.

He joined Duke Energy at a coal plant, too, before coming to the natural gas and renewables operations and maintenance team. In his current role, he enjoys being able to fix things like he did as an electrician, but working in electric generation, he said, is even more rewarding.

“It feels good knowing when you see the lights on in somebody's house or a family's warm in the winter,” he said, “it's because we were able to put power on the grid.”

Duke Energy plans to grow from 10,000 megawatts of solar and wind to 16,000 megawatts by 2025. This will lead to more opportunities in renewables, and Powell said he believes having diverse skills in power generation can only help grow your career, too.

“That was one of the reasons I looked into taking this position here. I enjoy learning new things,” he said, “and you never stop learning in the power industry. If you're not learning, you're not trying because there's always something to learn.”

View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Duke Energy on 3blmedia.com

View source version on newsdirect.com: https://newsdirect.com/news/power-plant-workers-embrace-change-as-industry-adds-renewable-energy-478943055

When truckers voted to unionize, their employer retaliated with illegal layoffs, judge rules

Suhauna Hussain
Wed, October 20, 2021

A trucking company wrongly terminated workers in retaliation for unionizing, a judge ruled. (Brent Wojahn / Oregonian)

Weeks after a group of port truck drivers voted to unionize, they opened their mailboxes to find termination notices from their employer. That letter was a violation of federal labor law, a judge ruled Tuesday in a decision that will reinstate the terminated drivers with back pay and interest.

The drivers worked for Universal Intermodal, an affiliate of Universal Logistics Holdings, which operates several companies that transport freight containers and merchandise flowing through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. They are some of the busiest ports in the Western Hemisphere, particularly in recent weeks with a massive supply chain bottleneck causing gridlock at the Port of L.A. The group of about 30 drivers voted to join a local of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Administrative Law Judge Michael A. Rosas found in his ruling that the company was in violation of federal labor law on multiple counts. He said that the company unlawfully interrogated and fired two employees leading union efforts and that once workers at the facility unionized, it slashed their hours, closed the Compton facility where many of them worked, and laid off the unionized workers in order to punish them for organizing.

The company laid off about 70 employees in total from facilities in Compton and Fontana, including workers employed by its Roadrunner and Universal Trucking subsidiaries.

Rosas found in his ruling that the company laid off these other workers to crack down on future union activity by getting rid of “all employee drivers who were or could be tainted by the union,” and then moving forward with plans to hire new “untainted employee drivers days after the layoff,” the judge wrote.

“Judge Rosas today made clear that the Universal group of companies violated the law at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in a blatant effort to trample on employees’ fundamental right to form a union,” Ron Herrera, the Teamsters port division director, said in a statement. “We cannot allow any corporation, no matter how big, to ignore the law, especially as drivers work tirelessly to address the backlog at the ports and supply our community with the goods they need this holiday season.”

Universal Logistics Holdings did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Universal Logistics labor counsel John Ferrer disputed the allegation that the company closed the Compton facility in response to union activities, writing in a letter referenced in Rosas' ruling that it made the decision to close the facility and lay off port drivers before the union’s certification for “legitimate business reasons.”

“Labor costs were not a factor in the decision to close the terminal,” Ferrer wrote.

Richard Tatge worked for Universal Logistics at its yard in Fontana for almost two years. The San Bernardino resident connected with the Teamsters in August 2019 and began organizing his co-workers.

At first, he had few complaints with the job, Tatge said in an interview in March. But the longer he worked the more he worried about the precariousness of his position. Grievances piled up. Tatge worked 10- to 14-hour days, the cost of medical insurance ate up a huge chunk of his paycheck and the company failed to cover basic truck maintenance. Tatge said turnover among supervisors was high, making it difficult for them to follow through and fix issues raised by drivers.

“It was very much like, ‘If you can’t handle the work, you need to leave,’” Tatge said. “We saw that happening, and we knew we didn’t have much security in that job.”

Workers voted to unionize on Dec. 4, 2019. Two days later, the company decided to close its Compton facility. Drivers’ workloads were reduced, and shortly after, they received notices of termination.

The laid-off drivers’ workloads were transferred to contracted truckers, also known as "owner-operators." In late December 2019, the company solicited applications for employee port driver positions at a facility just four miles north of the Compton facility. The company did not offer those positions to laid-off workers, according to the ruling.

Company and union representatives discussed a potential settlement of the unfair labor practice charges, but those discussions crumbled. At one point, the company's director of labor and contractual relations, Michael Vagts, sent a laid-off worker who was asking to be reimbursed for some gas expenses a $250 check along with a signed “confidential settlement agreement and general release.” The check paystub noted that the payment was for a National Labor Relations Board settlement. The worker did not sign the agreement or cash the check.

A Teamsters organizer wrote to Vagts demanding he cease and desist from engaging directly with workers on a settlement agreement. “Not only does this settlement agreement contain illegal provisions, but the attempt to require (a worker) to waive his vast array of rights for $250 is shameful,” the organizer wrote. Signing such an agreement would have waived the worker's right to more than seven months of back pay, the judge noted.

Rosas' ruling requires that Universal Logistics recognize the union within two weeks as the bargaining representative of all full-time and regular part-time port drivers working or dispatched out of the company facility in Compton. Universal Logistics is also required to "bargain in good faith with the union regarding wages, hours and working conditions, and if an agreement is reached with the union, sign a document containing that agreement."

The NLRB first charged Universal Logistics back in March with about 20 violations of federal labor law. The case was tried remotely via Zoom video conference in June.

State lawmakers and labor advocates have sought to boost protections for truckers — who are often classified as independent contractors and therefore ineligible for basic labor protections, such as the ability to collectively bargain for wages — and crack down on misclassification of drivers. Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 338, written by state Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), that aims to hold retailers accountable when they contract with trucking companies that have repeatedly engaged in driver misclassification.

Although workers at Universal Logistics sought to join the Teamsters for more comprehensive protections, another freight transportation company, XPO Logistics, filed a petition for an NLRB-administered vote to remove Teamsters representation from the workplace. Teamsters officials voluntarily backed out Wednesday rather than move forward with the vote, according to a news release from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which provided free legal assistance to the petitioners.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Low Mississippi River Levels Reveal Sunken WWII Ship in St. Louis

Meghan Overdeep
Thu, October 21, 2021

USS Inaugural St Louis
Paul Sableman/Flickr

The Mississippi River water level was low enough to expose a decaying piece of naval history in St. Louis this week.

The USS Inaugural, a minesweeper used in WWII, was a National Historic Landmark before it broke free of its moorings during historic flooding in August 1993. When, according to the National Park Service (NPS), "the ship suffered a breach in its hull, took on water, and rolled on its side." The rusted ship has remained in that position and partially submerged near downtown St. Louis since that time.

The Mississippi River was reportedly at 3.85 feet and falling when the ship was spotted Tuesday. KTVI's Bommarito Automotive Group SkyFOX helicopter recorded aerial footage (below) of the wreck.

This isn't the first time that low Mississippi River levels have exposed the USS Inaugural. It was revealed in 2012 and again in 2015.

The Inaugural reportedly participated in the invasion of Okinawa and served as a patrol ship in other South Pacific battles during WWII. After the war, the 184-foot ship conducted minesweeping operations in the waters around Japan and Korea, clearing a total of 82 mines during its tenure.

Plans to salvage and restore the USS Inaugural have been deemed "not feasible." The ship has been determined a total loss and will one day be salvaged for scrap metal. That day has yet to come.

Tech founder considering legal action against new Donald Trump social network that ‘copies’ his work

Independent Staff
Thu, October 21, 2021,

(Trump Media and Technology Group)

Donald Trump’s new Twitter-like social network appears to be an unacknowledged clone of someone else’s work, and the original creator is considering legal action.

Eugen Rochko, creator of Mastodon, told The Independent that he had asked his lawyers to assess whether Mr Trump’s new Truth Social service has broken Mastodon’s copyright.

Although Mastodon is open source and can be freely copied by anyone, its software licence requires imitators to make their own source code available and give credit to the original.


Screenshots taken from a leaked early version of Truth Social showed that it still contained pieces of HTML code from Mastodon, and Mr Rochko said that Truth uses Mastodon’s default error message, indicating that it is almost certainly a clone.

“Well, that looks familiar,” the official Mastodon account tweeted on Wednesday evening.

Mr Rochko said: “We pride ourselves on providing software that allows anyone to run their own social media platform independent of Big Tech.

“But the condition upon which we release our work for free in the first place is that as we give to the platform operators, so do the platform operators give back to us by providing their improvements for us and everyone to see.

“That doesn't only benefit us as the developers – it benefits the people that use these platforms, as it gives them insight into the functionality of the platforms that manage their data and gives them the ability to walk away and start their own.

“So as you can see, compliance is very important to us. I have notified my legal counsel to review the given situation. At the moment I cannot comment any further.”

Truth Social has been asked for comment.

A screenshot provided by Eugen Rochko that appears to show Truth Social using Mastodon’s default error image (Eugen Rochko / Truth Social)

Mr Trump’s team announced their new venture with great fanfare on Wednesday, describing it as a future “media powerhouse” with a “non-woke” online streaming service that will compete with Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu.

Within hours, however, hackers had uncovered a live beat version, and social media users were able to hijack valuable usernames such as donaldtrump, donaldjtrump and mikepence.

Mastodon is a free piece of software that can be used to create and run new social networks, designed to escape the centralised rule of Big Tech services such as Facebook and Twitter.

In 2017, Mr Rochko argued that smaller social networks set up by like-minded groups of people would be “less prone to harbouring toxic” behaviour than all-encompassing tech platforms designed to house everyone.

Donald Trump’s social media app ‘Truth Social’ hijacked by fake account before launch


Donald Trump’s social media app ‘Truth Social’ hijacked by fake account before launch

Gustaf Kilander

THE INDEPENDENT
Thu, October 21, 2021, 

Former President Donald Trump’s new social media platform “TRUTH Social” was accessed by Twitter users within hours of its announcement and well before officially opening up for new users to sign up.

Accounts were created under the usernames “donaldtrump” and “mikepence” and the handle “donaldjtrump” appeared to have been hacked or nabbed by someone out to mock the former president.

Mr Trump announced on Wednesday that he was launching a media network – the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) – including a social media platform called “TRUTH Social”, which he said was an effort to “stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech”.

The former president was banned from several major social media platforms following the Capitol riot, when a pro-Trump mob stormed Congress in an effort to stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.

Just a few hours after the announcement, Twitter users had managed to hijack the beta-version of the platform with apparently fake accounts for Mr Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence.

The pinned post for the user “donaldjtrump” was an image of a defecating pig, seemingly in an attempt to mock the former president.

The new platform is said to be scheduled for launch next year, and Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington posted a statement on Twitter saying that the app will be able to pre-order in the App Store by next month.

While Donald Trump Jr told Sean Hannity of Fox News on Wednesday that the platform will be in the beta testing stage for the next several weeks, the site still appeared to be accessible for a time.

Daily Dot tech reporter Michael Thalen tweeted that he “was just able to set up an account using the handle @donaldtrump on ‘Truth Social,’ former President Donald Trump’s new social media website. Although the site is not officially open, a URL was discovered allowing users to sign up anyway”.

In a subsequent tweet, Mr Thalen added: “The public domain for what appeared to be the mobile beta of Trump’s new social media platform ‘Truth Social’ has been taken offline.”

The terms of service of Truth Social says the network has a ban on “excessive use of capital letters”, something Mr Trump employed frequently during his time on Twitter.

Washington Post tech reporter Drew Harwell tweeted that “anyone can create an account on Trump’s social network TRUTH Social using a publicly available link. I literally just registered “mikepence.” The site hasn’t even launched yet and it’s already this vulnerable”.

The beta testing site later appeared to have been taken offline.

Other conservative platforms have also experienced technical difficulties. Frank, a site started in April by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, experienced widespread errors as it was launched, with people unable to sign up and instead being greeted by a 48-hour livestream from Mr Lindell while the platform itself remained inactive.

Former Trump adviser Jason Miller started GETTR, another Twitter-like conservative platform, which was hacked on its first day of operation.

“I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” Mr Trump said in the statement tweeted by Ms Harrington. “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favourite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable.”

“TRUTH Social plans to begin its Beta Launch for invited guests in November 2021. A nationwide rollout is expected in the first quarter of 2022,” the statement also said.

The Independent has reached out to the office of Mr Trump for comment.

Trump’s New Free Speech App Prohibits Users From Making Fun of It

Ryan Bort

ROLLING STONE
Thu, October 21, 2021,

Former President Donald J. Trump files class action lawsuits against social media companies. - Credit: The Washington Post via Getty

There’s plenty to unpack following Wednesday night’s announcement that former President Trump is launching a new “media and technology” group, one that includes a social media platform, Truth Social, promising “open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology.”

Trump has long railed against Big Tech censorship, particularly of himself as he pushed misinformation, hate speech, and violent rhetoric before Twitter banned him in January. “I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up against the tyranny of Big Tech,” Trump wrote. “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced.”

The thing about all of this, though, is that when it comes to everyone’s favorite American President, truth is subjective, and “free speech” comes with more than a few caveats. So, too, is the case for Truth Social, the terms of service for which include a clause stating that users may not “disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site.”

In other words, users can’t make fun of or criticize Truth Social, and it’s up to Truth Social to determine what constitutes said “disparagement.”

The section is an early indication that Truth Social might have a little trouble following through on its promise to provide a “Big Tent” utopia of free-flowing social discourse. If it’s not going to permit bashing the platform, what about bashing, or harassing, other users? What about bashing everyone’s favorite American President? Parler — remember Parler? — promised to provide a similar bastion of free speech but then wound up imposing a bunch of restrictions and banning people, including, at one point, its own founder.

Parler itself was banned by Apple, Google, and Amazon following the Jan. 6 insurrection for allowing hateful, violent rhetoric to spread. Truth Social seems to be implying that it will permit such hateful, violent rhetoric (this is what got Trump banned from Twitter, after all), which seems like it would leave it prone to a similar ban. Parler is back on the App Store now after revising its content moderation policy, presumably having learned that it can’t just give a bunch of white supremacists free rein to post hate speech without facing consequences.

Will Truth Social be forced to learn a similar lesson?

LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK 

Trump’s SPAC Deal Reaches Back to ’80s With EF Hutton as Adviser
Max Reyes
Thu, October 21, 2021, 


(Bloomberg) -- The deal to take former President Donald Trump’s media firm public relies on a storied name from decades ago.

A firm that revived the EF Hutton brand, known for television commercials in the 1970s and ’80s touting its sage advice, is acting as the sole financial and capital-markets adviser to Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company that agreed to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group, according to a statement Wednesday. In June, investment bank Kingswood Capital Markets rebranded as EF Hutton.

The SPAC deal is meant to build a “rival to the liberal media consortium and fight back against the ‘Big Tech’ companies of Silicon Valley,” according to the statement.

EF Hutton gained renown with television commercials that featured the tag line, “When EF Hutton talks, people listen.” The firm was embroiled in a bogus-deposit scandal in the mid-’80s that precipitated its eventual sale.

Trump SPAC Soars as Retail Traders Pump Shares Higher

Bailey Lipschultz
Thu, October 21, 2021,

Trump SPAC Soars as Retail Traders Pump Shares Higher


(Bloomberg) -- Retail investors are piling into the special purpose acquisition company that agreed to take former President Donald Trump’s media firm public as thousands of users pump shares across social media platforms.

Digital World Acquisition Corp., the SPAC that’s set to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group, is Thursday’s top purchase on Fidelity’s platform with about 55,000 buy orders from customers. That was nearly quadruple the purchases for PayPal Holdings Inc., the second-most-bought stock, and more than eight-times the demand for the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (ticker BITO).

The excitement from retail traders who have bought into the YOLO mantra -- you only live once -- was clear with the stock being the most-mentioned company on the popular day-trader chatroom Stocktwits, and as touts on Reddit’s WallStreetBets rivaled the likes of GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. over the past 12 hours.

The SPAC more than quadrupled to $45.50 Thursday after triggering at least five volatility halts on the day. More than 470 million shares changed hands, making it the most traded stock with a value above a penny. The aim of the deal is to rival “the liberal media consortium and fight back against the ‘Big Tech’ companies of Silicon Valley,” according to a statement.

Trump's social media deal ignites 350% gain in SPAC's shares

Medha Singh and Sinéad Carew
Thu, October 21, 2021

(Reuters) -Former U.S. President Donald Trump's deal to create a social media app after Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc barred him won an exuberant endorsement from investors, with shares in a shell company backing the plan closing up more than 350% on Thursday after rising more than 400% earlier in the day.

Trump Media and Technology Group and Digital World Acquisition Corp, a Special Purpose Acquisition Vehicle (SPAC), announced on Wednesday

 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/former-us-president-donald-trump-launches-new-social-media-platform-2021-10-21 

they would merge to create a social media app called TRUTH Social. Trump's company said it plans a beta launch - unveiling a trial version - next month and a full roll-out in the first quarter of 2022.

SPACs use money raised through an initial public offering to take a private company public. This deal's announcement lacked the trappings of the detailed business plans Wall Street is accustomed to in SPAC mergers, from naming a leadership team to giving detailed financing earnings and projections.

Even so, shares of Miami-based Digital World closed up 356.8% at $45.50 a share on Nasdaq after soaring more than 400% earlier in the session. At the closing price, its market capitalization stood at $1.47 billion, up from $321 million on Wednesday.

With volume of more than 477 million shares, it was the most actively traded stock on the exchange, drawing chatter on forums such as Reddit, where retail investors have driven so-called meme stocks to values not supported by mainstream financial analysis. On Twitter and Stocktwits, some users cheered the rally with posts displaying rocket ships and GIFs of Trump.

The venture may provide the first real test of the power of right-wing social media https://www.reuters.com/technology/what-is-trumps-new-venture-what-are-its-odds-success-2021-10-21 with the full force of Trump's support. Questions remain about how it plans to make money and avoid the same issues that led major social media platforms to banish him.

Some investors marveled at the rally and wondered whether the gains would last.

"I have never seen anything like this, such share reaction based on hopes and dreams," Kristi Marvin, a former investment banker who founded research firm SPACInsider, told other investors on a Twitter Spaces discussion.

Others said the market reaction reflected support for Trump as well as a bet that a platform with him would draw followers.

"Up to this point there hasn't been a publicly traded vehicle for those that support the former president," said Jake Dollarhide, co-founder of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Michael O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading in Stamford, Connecticut, said not just Trump supporters but also opponents, media and investors would want to get on the platform to keep track of what Trump says.

Still, its future is far from certain. Digital World, led by former investment banker Patrick Orlando, has launched at least four SPACs and plans to launch two more but none of them have completed a deal yet. Orlando did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

DIRECT AND UNFILTERED

People close to the Republican former president, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said Trump has sought to set up his own social media company since leaving the White House. Trump, contemplating another White House run in 2024, has been frustrated that he does not have a direct and unfiltered connection with his millions of followers after Twitter and Facebook barred him, these people said.

Social media giants suspended Trump's accounts after his supporters rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 following an incendiary speech he gave repeating false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.

Twitter found that Trump posts violated its "glorification of violence" https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension policy

 Facebook found that Trump praised violence https://about.fb.com/news/2021/06/facebook-response-to-oversight-board-recommendations-trump

 in connection with the deadly attack in which rioters sought to block the formal congressional certification of his election loss to President Joe Biden.

In a press release announcing the deal, Trump said, "I'm excited to soon begin sharing my thoughts on TRUTH Social and to fight back against Big Tech."

Facebook shares were up 0.3%. Twitter shares were down 0.6%.

Trump Media said it would receive $293 million in cash that Digital World Acquisition had in a trust if no shareholder of the acquisition firm chooses to cash in their shares.

The soaring share price could increase the likelihood of a deal closing. Investors in the SPAC must eventually choose whether to redeem their shares at the IPO price of $10 per share, which is now much lower than the level at which what many would have bought.

Attempts to float alternatives to Twitter and Facebook have faltered in the past. Parler, a social media app backed by prominent Republican Party donor Rebekah Mercer and popular with U.S. conservatives, had several tech companies cut ties with it https://www.reuters.com/technology/parler-returns-apples-app-store-names-new-ceo-2021-05-17 after the Jan. 6 riot.

GETTR, a Twitter-style platform started by former Trump adviser Jason Miller, claimed more than 1.5 million users in its first 11 days after being launched https://www.reuters.com/world/us/former-trump-aide-miller-launches-social-media-site-gettr-2021-07-01 in July. Miller was unable to get Trump to join the platform.

(Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru, Heather Timmons, Steve Holland, Svea Herbst, Greg Roumeliotis, Lewis Krauskopf and Sinead Carew; Writing by Paritosh Bansal and Ira Iosebashvili; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Will Dunham)

Two Americas: How the US left and right stopped communicating

Issued on: 22/10/2021 -

Former president Donald Trump Trump has spent years battling tech giants that he argues have wrongfully censored him 

Olivier DOULIERY AFP/File

Washington (AFP)

The entirely false notion that Democrats stole the presidency from Trump is likely to be a hot topic on "TRUTH Social," a conservative platform he is adding to the already hyper-polarized US media ecosystem.

Wednesday's announcement of the launch planned for early next year is noteworthy because it bolsters speculation that Trump -- who is banned from Twitter -- is gearing up for another presidential run in 2024.

More profoundly, it demonstrates how the former reality TV star is able to capitalize on deep fractures in American society that are being intensified like never before through the echo chambers of social and traditional media.

Where once Americans could agree on a shared set of facts, now two implacable tribes eye each other suspiciously from their respective siloes, each armed with their own version of reality served up by their favorite media outlet or smartphone app.

Investigative journalist Carl Bernstein, whose reporting on the Watergate affair alongside Bob Woodward helped bring down Richard Nixon, has called for media and politicians to pay more attention to countering misinformation splitting the country.

"The division that is separating and polarizing us in this country is vicious. It is deep," he said. "It is full of hate and anger. And most of that hate and anger is resting on big lies."

Watch conservative Fox News on any given evening, and you could almost be convinced that it is reporting on an entirely different country from the one covered by left-leaning MSNBC, often with almost no overlap in the news agenda.
'Owning the libs'

Depending on whether Americans hone their opinions on Parler or Twitter, Trump is either the last bulwark against a woke cultural tide presaging a socialist takeover -- or the biggest threat to democracy since the Civil War.

The inhabitants of these two competing bubbles rarely encounter information that might challenge their world view or show them what their opponents are thinking. Put more simply, no one talks to the other side anymore.

Carl Bernstein has called for media and politicians to pay more attention to the misinformation dividing America 

Alberto E. Rodriguez GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

It's not just last year's election that gets completely contradictory coverage from right-wing and progressive media sources.

Reporting on the nationwide demonstrations that followed the murder by police of African American George Floyd offered the same dichotomy, with the left being fed images of noble protest for racial justice and the right told the country was on the verge of a violent takeover by communist thugs.

This bifurcation has reached the point where someone's views on a range of hot-button issues -- from abortion, LGBT rights and immigration to gun control and health care -- can be reliably inferred from their choice of cable news channel.

Division has been a hallmark of the Trump era. A record 81 million people voted for Joe Biden in 2020, but the 74 million that voted for Trump marked the second-highest figure ever posted by a candidate.

On the right, figures like the former president's son Donald Trump Jr prioritize "owning the libs" -- sparking outrage and hand-wringing among progressives -- over serious debates about ideology.
Parallel Americas

And in the more militant recesses of the left, every disagreement over race and sexuality is attributed to the supposed innate bigotry of conservatives.

Fox News maintains a loyal viewership but many Trumpists have decamped since the election to further-right conspiracy-mongering outlets such as Newsmax, One America News and the Parler and Gettr social networks.

Newsmax's prime time shows attract up to a million viewers while former White House press secretary Sean Spicer's program on AON is not far behind.

The polarization of the media is a symptom of wider fissures that have seen much of America's wealth concentrated on the liberal-leaning coasts, seen by the more conservative so-called "flyover states" as elite and out-of-touch.

Parler, which offers a home for right-wingers kicked off mainstream social media, was downloaded around a million times in the five days following the election and its user count subsequently hit almost nine million.

There, consumers are fed a daily diet of "culture wars" over the removal of historic statues, athletes who take the knee during the national anthem and the teaching of America's racial history in classrooms.

People who don't use the platform would not likely know what "Laptopgate" means, or be aware of the narrative characterizing Trump as fighting an epic battle against a horde of Satanic pedophiles from Hollywood and the Democratic Party.

"When I'm channel surfing at night, I see two Americas that exist in parallel right now, on side-by-side tracks, "CNN media analyst Brian Stelter wrote after the election.

"Two Americas with completely different assumptions and expectations and information sources."

© 2021 AFP

DUMB AND DUMBER

Houston Pension Buys Crypto, an Asset ‘We Could Not Ignore’

Danielle Moran
Thu, October 21, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- The pension fund for Houston’s firefighters is tip-toeing into cryptocurrency investing.

The Houston Firefighters’ Relief and Retirement Fund, which has $5.5 billion of assets, said it invested $25 million in Bitcoin and Ether through NYDIG, a Bitcoin-focused subsidiary of asset manager Stone Ridge.

“I see this as another tool to manage my risk,” said Ajit Singh, the chief investment officer for fund. “It has a positive expected return and it manages my risk. It has a low correlation to every other asset class.”

State and local government pension funds are a powerful force in investing, overseeing more than $5.5 trillion in assets, according to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. Though as stewards of taxpayer funds they’ve been slow to pile into the speculative mania around cryptocurrencies, Houston’s step isn’t unprecedented. Two Virginia pension funds that first bought digital assets two years ago have recently said they are planning to expand their investments by another $50 million.

With Bitcoin hitting new highs Wednesday and more than doubling since the beginning of the year, some institutional investors are giving crypto another look. This week’s rally, which pushed Bitcoin above $66,000, was spurred by optimism that the launch of the first futures exchange-traded fund for the currency in the U.S. would lead to more mainstream acceptance.

Singh said he preferred direct tokens, rather than taking on risk associated with futures-related investments.

“We didn’t want to get the synthetic exposure,” he said. “We decided to go directly to the token. As more and more institutional adoptions happen, there will be more and more dynamics that develop for supply and demand. And having physical assets -- actual tokens -- gives us in the future the possibility of income generation potential.”

The Houston fund handles retirement benefits for more than 6,600 active and retired firefighters and family beneficiaries. Since 2004, active firefighters have contributed 9% of their salary to the fund, with the city of Houston contributing at least twice that amount.

Singh is confident that the crypto investment will pay off.

“We have been studying this as an asset class to add to our investment portfolio for quite some time; we were watching it, we were analyzing it,” he said. “It became an asset class we could not ignore anymore.”

(Updates with more recent assets under management in second paragraph.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Rogers Chair Ousted by Board After Making Play for Control

Derek Decloet and Scott Deveau
Thu, October 21, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- The board of Rogers Communications Inc. has removed Edward Rogers as chairman in an epic power struggle within the family that controls Canada’s largest cable and wireless company.

The board voted to remove him Thursday afternoon as he was working on a plan to replace five current directors on the 14-member board with his own nominees, according to people familiar with the situation.

Former AT&T executive and Rogers director John MacDonald will become the new chairman. MacDonald was one of the five people Edward Rogers was trying to eject from the board.

The dramatic turn of events comes after weeks of tension inside one of Canada’s biggest public companies, which is in the midst of a $16 billion takeover bid for rival Shaw Communications Inc.

The hostilities among the Rogers clan reached a new level in September when Edward Rogers tried to oust Chief Executive Officer Joe Natale. His plan had been to install Chief Financial Officer Tony Staffieri in the top job and replace much of the executive team.

But the effort was defeated by a majority of the board -- including his sisters and his mother, Loretta Rogers -- and Staffieri was shown the door on Sept. 29.

Power Struggle

Since then, the board has sought to impose constraints on Edward Rogers’s authority, creating a committee to set the rules by which he can interact with Natale and other senior executives. That committee included three people -- MacDonald, director John Clappison and Melinda Rogers-Hixon, Edward’s sister.

To regain his grip on the company, he recruited five new candidates for the board, including Toronto real estate executive Michael Cooper, financier Jack Cockwell, former Rogers executive Jan Innes, broadcast executive Ivan Fecan and Jake Kerr, according to people familiar with the matter.

The battle came to a head in the past 48 hours. On Wednesday, Rogers director Bonnie Brooks sent a letter by email to John Tory, a Rogers family adviser who’s also the mayor of Toronto, according to a person familiar with the events.

‘Scheming’

The letter, sent on behalf of the company’s independent directors, warned that Edward Rogers’s “scheming” against management was putting the company “at great risk.” The directors said upheaval in the boardroom could affect the company’s credit rating at a time when it’s preparing to borrow billions of dollars to pay for the Shaw deal, which still needs regulatory approval.

“The chair wants to run the company, believes he does run the company, and no CEO or management team can operate effectively under these conditions,” the letter said.

One still-unanswered question is what Edward Rogers will do in response. He remains the chair of the Rogers Control Trust -- the family entity that holds the majority of the voting shares at Rogers Communications.

That position gives him broad authority to vote the family’s shares in the public company. He could requisition a shareholder meeting and still attempt to elect his own directors.

However, the provisions of the trust also allow a 10-member advisory committee to change the chair if at least seven members vote in favor, according to the securities filings of Rogers Communications.

The Control Trust committee includes at least three family members who are known to have opposed his plan to dump Natale: sisters Melinda Rogers-Hixon and Martha Rogers and his mother, Loretta Rogers. It also includes Tory and Phil Lind, a longtime adviser to late founder Ted Rogers.

“This has been a challenging time for the corporation and I want to reaffirm on behalf of the majority of the Board our support for and total confidence in the management team and CEO of Rogers Communications,” MacDonald said in a statement Thursday.

Although Rogers has said the Shaw deal is on track to close next year, Shaw shares have dropped for eight straight days on the growing turmoil at Rogers and are nearly 12% below the takeover price.

(Updates with new details throughout)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

The Canada Recovery Benefit is ending, with a new one taking its place

Jessy Bains
Thu, October 21, 2021, 9:30 AM·1 min read


Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during his election campaign tour in Candiac, Quebec Canada, September 12, 2021. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio

The Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) will come to an end on October 23rd and will be replaced with a new program called the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit, which can come into effect in the event of local temporary lockdowns.

"As the CRB has done up until now, this new benefit, the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit would provide $300 a week to workers who are subject to a lockdown including those who are ineligible for employment insurance.” said deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland during a news conference.

The Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) paid $450 per week and was available for people not eligible for Employment Insurance (EI). Those not employed or self-employed for reasons related to COVID-19, or those who had their income reduced by at least 50 per cent due to COVID-19 also qualified.

“These support measures were always designed to be temporary to get us through the crisis," said Freeland. “We’re now in a new phase, one that is very different from the darkest days in the fight against covid”

The Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit (CRSB) and the Canada Recovery Caregiving Benefit (CRCB) will be extended until May 7th, 2022.

"The total cost of these measures through May 7th of next year will be $7.4 billion, that compares to the $289 billion we have spent on income and business supports since the start of the pandemic."

Jessy Bains is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jessysbains.

Amid a Labor Shortage, Companies Are Eliminating Drug Tests. It’s a Trend That Could Create More Equitable Workplaces


Megan McCluskey
Wed, October 20, 2021, 

Urine testing stock photo

Urine testing stock photo Credit - Peter Dazeley—Getty Images

A growing number of companies are eliminating workplace drug testing to attract and retain workers amid a global labor shortage, a new development that experts say has potential to help create greater racial equity in the workplace.

The trend could help to level the employment playing field for Black and brown workers by removing a job requirement that’s a poor indicator of work performance.


“Mandatory drug testing isn’t based on suspicion or unprofessional behavior,” says Aamra Ahmad, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “But a positive test can still cost the person their job, even if the use was legal, or for a medical purpose, or took place days or weeks earlier and doesn’t actually impact job performance.”

Amazon, the second largest employer in the U.S. behind Walmart, announced in June that it would no longer test for marijuana in its pre-employment drug screening program for jobs not regulated by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The company also said it was reinstating employment eligibility for former employees and applicants who were previously terminated or deferred as a result of random or pre-employment marijuana screenings.

Vice reported last month that 9% of more than 45,000 employers worldwide are eliminating job screenings or drug tests as an incentive to “attract and retain in-demand talent,” according to a recent study conducted by staffing firm ManpowerGroup. That equates to around 4,050 employers, in 43 countries, that are no longer disciplining or dismissing employees for recreational drug use.

Administering a drug test for the purpose of evaluating someone’s ability to do their work is hypocritical, says Carl Hart, who is chair of Columbia University’s psychology department and a neuroscientist who specializes in the human response to psychoactive drugs.

“Why drug test when it doesn’t tell you anything?” Hart tells TIME. “If we want to make sure people aren’t intoxicated in a workplace environment, that means looking at their performance. Urine drug tests certainly don’t tell you anything about levels of intoxication or a person’s ability to perform. They’re useless for that purpose.”

One of the reasons Amazon says it made these changes was to help foster a more equitable workplace, Beth Galetti, senior vice president of human resources at Amazon, said in a September blog post. “Pre-employment marijuana testing has disproportionately affected communities of color by stalling job placement, and by extension, economic growth, and we believe this inequitable treatment is unacceptable,” Galetti wrote.

With studies showing that drug testing disproportionately affects people of color and is more prevalent in workplaces where racial and ethnic minorities are employed, Ahmad calls the practice a “problematic” hindrance to workplace equity.

“It’s important to understand how workplace drug-testing connects to the War on Drugs and race. When President Nixon declared his War on Drugs, the goal was to disrupt Black communities, and by that measure the policies succeeded. But the war has failed to curb drug use or improve public safety,” she says. “A problem with random drug testing, in particular, is that we know implicit bias exists. An employer may set out to conduct random drug testing, but the result can have a disparate impact on people of color, whether that’s intentional or not.”

In 2018, a survey of over 1,500 Americans conducted by Detox.net, a subsidiary of American Addiction Centers, found that Black people were more than twice as likely to face repercussions for failing a drug test than white people. While 9.2% of Black respondents reported being reprimanded or fired for testing positive, only 4.4% of white respondents reported the same.

These findings of racial disparities in drug testing also square with a 2013 study by Yale School of Medicine that, in analyzing nearly 70,000 responses in a federal government survey from individuals who reported whether drug testing took place in their workplace, found that drug testing occurs more often in workplaces where racial and ethnic minorities are employed.

“Being of Black race was significantly associated with employment in a workplace that performs drug testing among executive, administrative, managerial, and financial workers, as well as technicians and other support occupations,” a Yale report on the study read, noting that findings indicated that 63% of Black workers were employed in a workplace that performs drug testing while only 46% of white workers were. “Hispanic ethnicity was associated with increased employment in a workplace that performs drug testing among technical and other support occupations.”

Ultimately, Hart says the preoccupation with the morality of drug use allows inequitable War on Drugs policies, like workplace drug testing, to persist.

“It’s about moralism, which really took off in the late 1980s. And nobody’s actually questioned why we do what we do. We just kind of go along with it,” he says. “Think about it. There are people going to work who are running a little late and they speed. Do we care? Of course not. We care about whether they get there on time or not. But they exceeded the speed limit, which means they broke the law. Nobody says anything about that. So why are we selectively focusing on drugs?”

By viewing drug testing as an unfair and discriminatory practice for all, Hart says that companies can continue to take steps in the right direction.

“If you own a company and need people to perform and you’re judging your employees based on their performance, that’s great. But if you start judging them on anything other than that, it’s a problem,” he says. “If we think about drug testing as an equity issue across the board, then everybody can see how they’re all potentially negatively affected.”

A worker in Florida applied to 60 entry-level jobs in September and got one interview

Dominick Reuter

Tue, October 19, 2021, 

• Businesses across the US say they are struggling to find employees, especially for hourly work.

• Joey Holz decided to test their claims, submitting two applications a day in September.

• Holz got one interview, and his summary of the experiment went viral on multiple platforms.

The labor shortage is hitting fast-food restaurants. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Joey Holz recalled first hearing complaints about a labor shortage last year when he called to donate convalescent plasma at a clinic near Fort Myers, Florida.

"The guy went on this rant about how he can't find help and he can't keep anybody in his medical facility because they all quit over the stimulus checks," Holz told Insider. "And I'm like, 'Your medical professionals quit over $1,200 checks? That's weird.'"

Over the next several months, he watched as a growing chorus of businesses said they couldn't find anyone to hire because of government stimulus money. It was so ubiquitous that he joined a "No one wants to work" Facebook group, where users made memes deriding frustrated employers.

Yours Truly puts out a sign for hiring on June 3 in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. AP/Tony Dejak

He said he found it hard to believe that government money was keeping people out of the labor force, especially when the end of expanded federal unemployment benefits did not seem to trigger a surge in employment. The expanded benefits ended in September, but 26 states ended them early in June and July.

"If this extra money that everyone's supposedly living off of stopped in June and it's now September, obviously, that's not what's stopping them," he said. Workers have said companies struggling to hire aren't offering competitive pay and benefits.

So Holz, a former food-service worker and charter-boat crewman, decided to run an experiment.

On September 1, he sent job applications to a pair of restaurants that had been particularly public about their staffing challenges.

Then, he widened the test and spent the remainder of the month applying to jobs - mostly at employers vocal about a lack of workers - and tracking his journey in a spreadsheet.

Two weeks and 28 applications later, he had just nine email responses, one follow-up phone call, and one interview with a construction company that advertised a full-time job focused on site cleanup paying $10 an hour.

But Holz said the construction company instead tried to offer Florida's minimum wage of $8.65 to start, even though the wage was scheduled to increase to $10 an hour on September 30. He added that it wanted full-time availability, while scheduling only part time until Holz gained seniority.

Holz said he wasn't applying for any roles he didn't qualify for.

Some jobs "wanted a high-school diploma," he said. "Some wanted retail experience," he added. "Most of them either said 'willing to train' or 'minimum experience,' and none of them were over $12 an hour."

He said: "I didn't apply for anything that required a degree. I didn't apply for anything that said 'must have six months experience in this thing.'"

Holz isn't alone. Others have also spoken out about their troubles finding work, despite the seemingly tight labor market.

In a Facebook post on September 29, which went viral on Twitter and Reddit as well, Holz said, "58 applications says y'all aren't desperate for workers, you just miss your slaves."

"My opinion is that this is a familiar story to many," he added.

By the end of September, Holz had sent out 60 applications, received 16 email responses, four follow-up phone calls, and the solitary interview. He shared a pie chart showing his results.

Joey Holz

Holz acknowledged that his results may not be representative of the larger labor challenges in the country, since his search was local and targeted the most vocal critics of stimulus spending.

He added that despite the claims of some businesses struggling to hire, his boss had no staffing issues during the pandemic.

"Nobody leaves those positions because he takes care of his people," Holz said, referring to his boss.