Business

Businesses Saying Goodbye to DEI

Meta and other major companies are moving on from DEI policies.

Meta became the latest company to join the distancing from DEI initiatives, as it announced on Friday that the company will end several diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Meta announced this change in a memo, where the company’s vice president of people, Janelle Gale, said the “legal and policy landscape” surrounding DEI efforts in the U.S. is “changing.”

Many of these DEI initiatives were introduced in 2020, around the last time we changed presidents, when anti-racism protests were peaking throughout the country following the death of George Floyd.

However, with a new president set to enter the White House, and some of those 2020 tensions dissipating, many companies have changed their minds on the necessity, or even the ethics, of the DEI programs. Meta joins fellow companies like McDonald’s, Walmart, Boeing, Molson Coors, Lowes, Ford Motor Co., Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson, John Deere and more, who have removed their DEI programs.

John Deere was the first of the companies to go public, doing so on July 16th, when the company explained it would no longer support “cultural awareness” events and would remove “socially-motivated messages,” saying that diversity quotas and pronoun identification have never been company policy. 

These moves probably speak to the influence of the administration in charge, and even the influence it has on the culture, and what becomes acceptable, as well.

This is the latest part in the 180 swing from Meta, who also recently announced that they will stop the use of fact checkers and banning certain content, instead relying on a community notes feature and allowing a wider range of topics to be posted. 

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, went on the Joe Rogan podcast and shared a story of the Biden administration calling his employees and yelling at them to take certain memes/jokes about the Covid vaccines down. Zuckerberg also said that his companies started to get investigated when they provided pushback to the suggestion of censoring posts. 

Supreme Court to Delete TikTok

Not exactly but they’re leaning towards upholding the ban.

The Supreme Court seems inclined to uphold a law that would force a sale of, or ban, the popular app TikTok in the United States. The justices are concerned about the security of the app and what access it could allow for China, hence the crackdown. The belief is that China’s government has been, or can, exploit the app to spy on Americans. 

The arguments lasted for 2.5 hours on Friday, with the nine justices questioning the lawyers representing TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance, who cited U.S. constitutional free speech safeguards. In fact, the company and its users sued to block the law, due to the violation of the First Amendment. 

The law has been backed by outgoing president Joe Biden, but it hasn’t been defended by president-elect Donald Trump. Fittingly, the ban would go into place on January 19th… the day before Trump is inaugurated. 

Trump did urge the court to put a hold on the ruling to give his administration “the opportunity tp pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case.”

TikTok has been the most popular app worldwide each year since 2019. It even passed Google as the most popular website in 2021. The app was first introduced in 2016.

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Tech

Billionaires Like Their Rockets

Musk and Bezos enter a new age of the Space Race. 

The Space Race was originally between the United States and the Soviet Union. Fast forward 55 years and it’s now become a race between two billionaires. Jeff Bezos was finally ready to launch, with his New Glenn rocket set taking off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida yesterday.

The rocket was built by Blue Origin, the rocket company that Bezos started nearly a quarter century ago. The New York Times first reported on the company's plans for space 15 years ago. And now, it was finally ready to send its rocket to space for the first time. 

“This has been very long awaited,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. 

If the New Glenn expedition goes off without a hitch, it might provide some genuine competition to fellow billionaire Elon Musk and his SpaceX company. In fact, the 320-foot New Glenn packs more than twice the power that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket gives off during takeoff. It is among the most powerful rockets in the world and is Blue Origin’s first designed to be capable of hauling satellites to space.

Previously, the company had only tested this rocket for 24 seconds during a ground test last month.

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Economy

Back to the Office

Employees don’t wanna go, JPMorgan Chase had to disable comments after posting the news...

After forcing employees to return to the office, JPMorgan Chase has now disabled their communication. The bank shut down a discussion on an internal website amongst disgruntled employees who were complaining about the company’s new policy of making its workers return to the office. 

JPMorgan Chase’s senior executives announced in an eternal memo that the company would require roughly 300,000 employees to return to the office five days a week. And within hours, the company then had to shut down the internal communication due to the bevy of complaints. One employee even suggested that the workers unionize against JPMorgan Chase. 

The company cited better learning opportunities and culture as the reasons why they wanted employees to return to offices. The company also said they would provide 30 days notice before forcing the employees to return. However, employees complained about commuting costs, and the effect on stress and mental health, due to the upcoming change.

“We think this is the best way to run our company,” the executives wrote in the memo.

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U.S. News

L.A. Burning

With fires raging across Los Angeles, conspiracy theories and incompetence are running wild.

The fires tragically rage on in Los Angeles. The Rams playoff game tonight vs the Vikings is just the latest in a recent string of sporting events that have been moved out of the city, due to these fires (tonight’s game is being played in Arizona).

The Palisades fire, the largest of the six(!) active fires, shifted east Friday night and triggered a new execution order that included much of the Brentwood neighborhood and parts of Encino. L.A. County spokesman Jesus Ruiz called it a “significant development.” With the (still growing) fire moving in the direction of a “heavily populated area … we’re definitely concerned,” Ruiz added. 

So far at least 11 people have been killed from these fires, which have burned more than 37,000 acres (an area larger than San Francisco!). The fires have claimed more than 12,000 structures and have displaced more than 10,000 people. Former child star Rory Callum Sykes, now 32, was sadly one of the victims.

The Palisades fire is the largest, at more than 21,000 acres, while the Eaton fire has burned more than 14,000 acres. Those blazes are 11% and 15% contained, respectively. 

There are six fires - Palisades: has burned more than 22,000 acres, killing at least five people and is 11% contained. Eaton: has burned more than 14,000 acres, killing at least six people and is 15% contained. Kenneth: has burned more than 1,000 acres and is 80% contained. Lidia: burned through 400 acres and is now 100% contained. Hurst: has burned 800 acres and is 76% contained. And Archer: which just broke out on Friday, during “erratic winds,” has burned through a few dozen acres so far and is not very much contained at all just yet.

A person was taken into custody on Thursday on suspicion of arson in connection with the Kenneth fire, but there was not enough evidence to charge them with a crime. That fire, in the area of Calabasas and Hidden Hills, was first reported on Thursday. There have been other conspiracies about some of the fires being man-made, as well.

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Politics

Trump Wants Greenland

Honestly, we’re not sure if he’s serious or not.

Set to re-enter the White House next week, President-elect Donald Trump has his eyes set on a certain territory… Greenland, which is a largely autonomous territory of Denmark in the Arctic and the world’s largest island.

Trump was first interested in purchasing Greenland back in 2019, during his first term. And recently did not even rule out the use of military force to take control of it. However, any use of military force is expected to create an international incident. 

Danish and European officials have responded negatively, saying Greenland is not for sale and that its territorial integrity must be preserved. 

Greenland is 80% covered with ice, but it also has considerable untapped mineral wealth - making it desirable. It’s been under Danish control for 300 years and currently has a population of 56,000. 

Just last month Denmark announced a new $1.5 billion military package for the Arctic. And while this occurred prior to Trump’s remarks, the Danish defense minister later referred to it as an “irony of fate.”

Dr. Ulrik Gad, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, compared Trump to Chinese President Xi Jinping talking about Taiwan, or Russia’s Vladamir Putin talking about Ukraine. Not great company…

Greenland also has a general consensus that independence will happen eventually and that if Greenland does vote for it, Denmark will accept and ratify it.

From The Hill:

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