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Contrary to popular belief, no great migration in pandemic

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Contrary to popular belief, there has been no great migration in the U.S. during the pandemic.

New figures released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau show that the proportion of people who moved over the past year fell to its lowest level in the 73 years that it has been tracked, in contradiction to popular anecdotes that people left cities en masse to escape COVID-19 restrictions or in search of more bucolic lifestyles.

In 2021, more than 27 million people, or 8.4% of U.S. residents, reported having moved in the past year, according to the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement.

By comparison, 9.3% of U.S. residents moved from 2019 to 2020. Three decades ago, that figure was 17%.

Besides giving rise to shelter-in-place restrictions, the COVID-19 pandemic may have forced people to postpone life-cycle events such as marriages or having babies that often lead to moves. But the decline is part of a decadeslong migration decline in the U.S., said William Frey, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution.

“These numbers show a lot of people didn’t move or moved at a slower rate,” Frey said. “But it’s a longer-term trend.”

That’s not to say that nobody moved. The one uptick in mobility patterns last year took place in longer-distance moves, from state to state, compared to moves within a state or county. Those 4.3 million residents who moved to another state may have done so because of the pandemic, Frey said.

Other factors contributing to Americans staying put have been an aging population, since older people are less likely to move than younger ones; the ability to telecommute for work, which allowed some workers to change jobs without having to move; and rising home prices and rents that kept some would-be movers in place, demographers said.

“I think the boom in remote work because of COVID coupled with the economic shock is the big reason,” said Mary Craigle, bureau chief for Montana’s Research and Information Services.

Among those who moved in the past year, a little under half cited housing-related factors as the reason, almost three times those citing job-related reasons and almost double family-related reasons. Of the 12.3 million people citing housing reasons, more than a third wanted a bigger, better or newer house or apartment, according to the survey.

Those with a bachelor’s degree or graduate degree had higher mobility rates than those with no high school degree or only a high school education.

Among regions, the South had the largest net migration, 576,000 new residents, while the Northeast lost the most – 146 million people. There were flows of people moving from rural areas into metro areas, as well as people moving from principal cities to suburbs in the same metro areas, though not in numbers that varied from past years.

Mobility in the U.S. has been on a downward slide since 1985 when 20% of U.S. residents moved. That was an era when Baby Boomers were young adults, beginning careers, getting married and starting families. In comparison, millennials, who today are in the same age range as their Baby Boomer cohorts were in the mid-1980s, are stuck in place due to high housing costs and underemployment, according to an analysis Frey did last year.

The slowdown in American mobility is part of a recent stagnation in population dynamics in the U.S. The 2020 census shows that the U.S. grew by only 7.4% over the previous decade, the slowest rate since between 1930 and 1940. Earlier this week, the Census Bureau revealed that the population center of the U.S. moved only 11.8 miles (19 kilometers), the smallest shift in 100 years.

Copyright © 2021 The Washington Times, LLC.

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Musk sells more shares than he needs to pay current tax bill

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DETROIT (AP) – Elon Musk is selling more Tesla shares than he needs to pay current tax obligations, and experts say he’s either converting part of his fortune from stock to cash, or he’s saving for bigger tax bills that will come due next year.

As of early Wednesday, Musk had sold roughly 8.2 million shares in the electric car and solar panel maker in the past nine days, worth a total of just over $8.8 billion.

Of those, Musk sold 2.8 million shares worth about $3 billion specifically to pay taxes on three tranches of stock options that he exercised this week, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That means he has sold roughly $5 billion more in shares than he needs at present.

Under a compensation plan from 2012, Musk has options to buy 26.4 million shares. The options expire next year, and the tax bill will come due. Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives estimates the bill to be $10 billion to $15 billion, depending on the stock price. Musk’s options so far allowed him to buy shares at $6.24 each, and the stock is selling for around $1,080.

Erik Gordon, a University of Michigan business and law professor, questioned why Musk would sell that many shares now to pay obligations that come due next year. He said accruing for future tax liabilities makes sense only if Musk expects the stock price to drop.

“If you think the stock is going to go up, or if you think the stock is going to stay the same, you wouldn’t be selling extra shares,” he said.

On Nov. 6, Musk asked his 60 million Twitter followers if he should sell some of his Tesla stock. “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my stock,” he wrote. According to Musk, 58% of those who responded said yes.

Musk also conceded his wealth is tied up in stock, tweeting that he doesn’t get a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. “I have only stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock,” he wrote.

Musk started selling on Monday, and as of Wednesday, he had liquidated about 5% of his holdings. His federal tax obligations could be as high as 40% on proceeds from some of the sales, said Brad Badertscher, an accounting professor at the University of Notre Dame.

Musk could have cut his tax bill on the options in half if he had exercised the options and waited a year to sell the shares, Badertscher said. That’s because with an immediate sale, the gain is taxed as ordinary income. In a year, Musk would pay the much lower capital gains rate, he said.

Wedbush’s Ives said that while the Twitter poll is unorthodox, it telegraphed the sale to investors, preventing a huge selloff in Tesla stock. “If he didn’t do the Twitter poll and just started selling stock, the stock is probably 15% lower than it is today,” Ives said.

As of Tuesday, Tesla’s stock had fallen nearly 14% since Musk agreed to abide by the poll. On Wednesday, Tesla shares were up about 3% in mid-afternoon trading. Ives is confident that investors will see the stock’s value as the sales start to wane.

Musk historically has been adept at moving the price of Tesla stock through tweets, said Michigan’s Gordon. “He’s shown himself to be a master of influencing the price of Tesla stock,” Gordon said. “That’s the story over and over again.”

Messages were left seeking comment from Musk and Tesla, which has disbanded its media relations department.

Copyright © 2021 The Washington Times, LLC.

Joe Manchin doubles down on opposition to paid leave: ‘I’ve been very clear’

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Sen. Joe Manchin III, a key swing vote for the White House’s legislative agenda, reasserted his opposition on Wednesday to including paid leave in President Biden’s multitrillion-dollar social welfare bill.

Mr. Manchin, West Virginia Democrat, said his position on the topic was unchanged, despite intense lobbying from far-left Senate colleagues. 

“I’ve been very clear where I stand,” he said. 

Mr. Biden initially proposed a 12-week paid leave guarantee, but that provision was scrapped after opposition from Mr. Manchin

Since the social welfare bill will need to pass via a budget reconciliation, which allows some spending measures to avert the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold and pass by a simple majority, Mr. Biden opted to avoid the disunity. 

But many Democrats have refused to accept the proposal is dead. 

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, New York Democrat, has been courting Mr. Manchin to drop his opposition. In private meetings, Mrs. Gillibrand has stressed alternative paid leave proposals and various ways to ensure they are fully funded. 

The arguments have failed to sway Mr. Manchin, who said he is increasingly worried that new entitlement programs and federal spending will drive up inflation. 

“I support it. … I just don’t support [unfunded] leave,” Mr. Manchin said recently. “That means getting more debt and basically putting more social programs that we can’t pay for, that we’re having problems [with] now. I want to support paid leave. I want to do it in a bipartisan way.” 

Unlike Mrs. Gillibrand, House Democrats are also maneuvering to include paid leave in the social welfare bill. They’re opting to ignore Mr. Manchin altogether, though. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, has included a four-week paid leave guarantee in her version of the bill. 

“We do this responsibly, fully paying for the means-tested program,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, Massachusetts Democrats. 

Despite the move by House Democrats, most expect paid leave to be stripped from the legislation by Mr. Manchin in the Senate.

USMCA looms over Biden summit with leaders from Mexico, Canada

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Former President Trump in 2020 promised that his newly-minted trade agreement with Canada and Mexico would pour cash and jobs in the U.S. But 16 months later, the double whammy of COVID-19 and supply chain chaos has blunted its impact.

The landmark deal, known as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, was expected to add more than $67 billion to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product and create 176,000 new jobs. The pact, however, went into effect on July 1, 2020, one of the deadliest months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the three countries began to emerge from a pandemic, the supply chain crisis hit, disrupting global trade.

The future of the USMCA will be among the topics discussed when President Biden meets with the leaders of Mexico and Canada on Thursday.

The economic turmoil has made it difficult to assess if the USMCA is a win for its participants. And experts say it’s still unclear how everything will shake out and if the deal is as significant in the post-COVID-19 world.

“We lost the first year because of COVID so it’s really hard to put the perspective on USMCA that would normally occur because of the economic dislocation caused by COVID,” said Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, a conservative group that advocated for the USMCA.

Mr. Biden isn’t expected to make any changes or tweak the deal, which earned overwhelming support from Democrats and was popular among labor leaders. The AFL-CIO, one of Mr. Biden’s biggest backers, supported the USMCA, saying it would keep jobs in the U.S.

Thursday’s meeting will be the first White House summit for the three leaders since 2016. Mr. Trump famously ditched the meetings, which began in 2005.

Instead, Mr. Trump forced Canada and Mexico to the negotiating table to rewrite the previous three-way pact, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which had proven least beneficial for the U.S.

On Thursday, Canada and Mexico are expected to press Mr. Biden about his proposed tax credit for American-made electric vehicles, which could take a bite out the auto-assembly business across the border. The tax credit is part of Mr. Biden’s ambitious $1.75 trillion social welfare and climate bill.

Both Canada and Mexico say the proposal gives an unfair advantage to U.S. manufacturers. It also runs afoul of the integrated manufacturing process that exists between the three countries.

The impact of COVID-19 on the USMCA extends beyond just business shutdowns that have slowed trade. It has also made it difficult to measure the impact of the agreement’s novel wage requirements in the auto industry.

Under the USMCA, 40% of a car must be manufactured in a plant where workers make at least $16 an hour to avoid U.S. import tariffs. The move was expected to raise wages for Mexican workers, who pull down the lowest wages among the three nations.

COVID-19 stalled hiring in Mexico, preventing workers from fully realizing the benefit.

“COVID-19 has also introduced a number of issues surrounding the treatment of workers, particularly migrant workers in the United States and organizing efforts and collective action in both countries, exacerbating some of the tensions,” said Desiree LeClercq, a professor of labor law at Cornell University.

Americans want ‘fair shake’ for faith-based groups, protection for vaccine refusers: survey

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Most Americans say that religious groups providing community services should qualify for government funding alongside their secular counterparts, according to the 2021 Religious Freedom Index survey released Wednesday. 

The annual online survey, released by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, found that 71% of respondents held the view — up 6 percentage points over last year. 

“As Americans bounce back from a divisive year, we see an increased commitment to a wide range of religious freedom principles,” said Luke Goodrich, senior counsel at Becket and co-editor of the survey. “This across-the-board support shows a renewed confidence that protecting religious exercise and expression benefits American culture and civic life.” 

Sixty-two percent of respondents said people of faith should be free to voice their religiously based opinion in public, even on controversial matters, and 63% agreed with a statement that “parents are the primary educators of their children.” They said parents should have the final say in what their children are taught and support the right of parents to keep children out of “morally objectionable” public school content. 

Sixty-three percent said religious student groups should have a place on public university campuses in the same way as secular student organizations. 

Fifty-two percent said worship services are essential (62% for funerals) and the government should not ban such gatherings. 

The survey found significant support for religious exemptions to vaccine mandates: 46% said workers who decline a COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds shouldn’t be fired for doing so. Respondents who work with people of faith were much more likely to support such objections, the survey found. 

“After a period where we all have experienced restrictions on daily life at some level, Americans seem more averse to placing restrictions on their neighbors, coworkers and friends for their religious beliefs,” said Katie Geary, content manager at Becket and co-editor of the index. “As Americans work together to bridge partisan divides, this naturally extends to greater support for religious freedom.” 

The online survey is conducted each fall by the independent firm Heart and Mind Strategies. It uses a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults who opt in for such polls. Becket said that probability sampling is not typically done for such online panels, but a hypothetical calculation of such a probability would show a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

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They Love Crypto. They’re Trying to Buy the Constitution.

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“We’re going to stop it from going into more private hands and actually open-source it, make it a public good,” said Alice Ma, one of the organizers.

In truth, ConstitutionDAO is more a symbolic gesture to decentralization technology than a real-world demonstration of it. Some in the group had initially hoped to make participants fractional owners of the Constitution, but that plan fell apart, possibly because it could run afoul of securities laws. The current plan is to issue crypto tokens, called $PEOPLE, that will entitle participants to vote on certain decisions governing the Constitution’s use, but won’t confer any actual ownership.

In addition, since Sotheby’s accepts only government-issued currency and doesn’t allow DAOs to bid on auctions directly, the group plans to work with a crypto exchange that will convert its Ether to dollars before the bid, and a crypto nonprofit that will place the bid on the group’s behalf. According to the group’s FAQ document, a limited liability corporation will take control of the Constitution temporarily while the DAO figures out a long-term ownership structure.

Many DAOs are speculative in nature; investors buy in hoping that the assets the group acquires will be worth more later on. But ConstitutionDAO’s organizers say making money is not a goal.

“No one is talking about anything related to speculation,” said Will Papper, a San Francisco crypto entrepreneur who is helping to organize the bid. “Everyone’s talking about how we should steward the Constitution.”

Well, that and about a million other things. A spin through the group’s Discord server on Tuesday revealed a torrent of chaotic chatter, debates over fine print and a shocking number of memes involving Nicolas Cage. (Mr. Cage starred in a movie about a plot to steal the Declaration of Independence, which appears to be close enough to the Constitution for the group’s taste.)

There was an audio channel where a man read the entire Constitution, line by line, over a soundtrack of soothing hip-hop beats. There were channels filled with questions for the organizers, which ranged from boring (“Has the L.L.C. structure been run by a tax advisor?”) to intriguing (“Is there a safeguard to make sure the DAO doesn’t vote to eat the constitution? Or other method of destruction?”)

Texas abortion ban stays in force as justices mull outcome

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WASHINGTON (AP) – More than two weeks have passed since the Supreme Court‘s extraordinarily rushed arguments over Texas’ unique abortion law without any word from the justices.

They raised expectations of quick action by putting the case on a rarely used fast track. And yet, to date, the court‘s silence means that women cannot get an abortion in Texas, the second-largest state, after about six weeks of pregnancy.

That’s before some women know they’re pregnant and long before high court rulings dating to 1973 that allow states to ban abortion.

There has been no signal on when the court might act and no formal timetable for reaching a decision.

The law has been in effect since Sept. 1 and the court has been unable to muster five votes to stop it, said Mary Ziegler, a legal historian at Florida State University’s law school. “While there is some sense of urgency, some justices had more of a sense of urgency than others,” Ziegler said.

Meanwhile, the justices are two weeks away from hearing arguments in another abortion case with potentially huge implications for abortion rights in the United States.

The court will take up Mississippi’s call to overrule the two major Supreme Court rulings that, starting in 1973, have guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion. The state law at issue bans abortions after 15 weeks, well before the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb.

Viability, typically around 24 weeks, has been the dividing line: Before it, states can regulate but not ban abortion.

Even before the justices decide what to do about Mississippi’s law and the fate of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Texas’ law has effectively changed the standard at least for the time being.

It bans abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the fetus, usually around six weeks, and deputizes ordinary citizens to enforce the law in place of state officials who normally would do so.

The law authorizes lawsuits against clinics, doctors and anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion that is not permitted by law.

It was designed to make federal court challenges difficult, if not impossible. Federal courts have had no trouble preventing other bans on abortion early in pregnancy from taking effect when they have relied on traditional enforcement.

The Texas law is doing what its authors intended. In its first month of operation, a study published by researchers at the University of Texas found that the number of abortions statewide fell by 50% compared with September 2020. The study was based on data from 19 of the state’s 24 abortion clinics, according to the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.

Texas residents who left the state seeking an abortion also have had to travel well beyond neighboring states, where clinics cannot keep up with the increase in patients from Texas, according to a separate study by the Guttmacher Institute.

The Supreme Court is weighing complex issues in two challenges brought by abortion providers in Texas and the Biden administration. Those issues include who, if anyone, can sue over the law in federal court, the typical route for challenges to abortion restrictions, and whom to target with a court order that ostensibly tries to block the law.

Under Supreme Court precedents, it’s not clear whether a federal court can restrain the actions of state court judges who would hear suits filed against abortion providers, court clerks who would be charged with accepting the filings or anyone who might someday want to sue.

People who sue typically have to target others who already have caused them harm, not those who might one day do so and not court officials who are just doing their jobs by docketing and adjudicating the cases.

The justices’ history with the Texas law goes back to early September when, by a 5-4 vote, they declined to stop it from taking effect.

At the time, five conservative justices, including the three appointees of President Donald Trump, voted to let the law take effect. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court‘s three liberals in dissent.

The abortion providers had brought the issue to the court on an emergency basis. After they were rebuffed, the Justice Department stepped in with a suit of its own.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman granted the Justice Department’s request for an order that put the law on hold. Pitman wrote in a 113-page ruling that the law denied women in Texas their constitutional right to an abortion and he rejected the state’s arguments that federal courts shouldn’t intervene.

But just two days later, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overrode Pitman and allowed the law to go back into effect.

The Justice Department made its own emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. Rather than rule on that appeal, the court decided to hear the two suits just 10 days later and without the benefit of an appellate court decision.

At the arguments, two Trump appointees appeared to have doubts about the Texas law. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh questioned whether the law allowed people who are sued to air their constitutional claims in court and whether it would lead to a spate of copycat laws on abortion and other rights protected by the Constitution.

The court seemed particularly concerned about the “chilling effect” similar laws would produce on other constitutional rights, including speech, religion and gun possession, said Sarah Marshall Perry, a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

The court’s intervention has few counterparts in recent history, and those include Bush v. Gore, the fight over publication of the government’s secret history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers, and Richard Nixon’s effort to keep from handing over the Watergate tapes that ultimately doomed his presidency.

The justices have never said why they opted to hear the Texas cases so quickly or how soon they might be decided.

The time since the arguments is less than a blink of an eye in high-court terms, where months typically elapse between arguments and a decision. But the justices themselves created the expectation that they would move quickly.

“This is obviously important, but there’s not a presidential election deadline looming,” Ziegler said. “Even by Thanksgiving would be extraordinarily fast.”

One possibility is that the court intends to issue a decision before the Mississippi abortion law arguments on Dec. 1.

But Perry said she thinks the court could hold off deciding the Texas case until after it hands down its abortion decision, probably in late June. That would leave the Texas ban in effect.

There’s much more that also might only become clear once a decision comes down.

If the court rules in favor of abortion providers or the Justice Department, will there be an accompanying order that blocks the law? That would be the quickest way to allow abortions after six weeks to resume. Justice Elena Kagan raised the prospect of an order during the arguments.

Will there be a majority opinion that speaks for at least five justices or will the court be fractured so that there are at least five for a particular outcome, but for varying reasons? Either side would be happy with five votes, but a majority opinion carries more force.

How many justices will write separate opinions, on either side? A proliferation of opinions can slow the process, as the justices circulate, comment on and revise opinions in their internal deliberations.

Copyright © 2021 The Washington Times, LLC.

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The Legacy of Mattress Cash Fires

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This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns.

I’ve been having deep thoughts this week. About mattresses and movie tickets.

A fire sale of the cash-burning mattress company Casper and the possible revival of the cash-burning movie subscription service MoviePass have made me reflect on the past decade of changing consumer habits led by technology and bazookas of investors’ money.

Technologists are fixated these days on a potential future of blockchains and metaverses or on spending millions for a copy of the U.S. Constitution because … democracy? But before we move on to the next chapter in technology, let’s consider both the good and ugly in the current one.

On my good days, I believe that the silliness in Silicon Valley and the harms from some uses of technology are far outweighed by the benefits of innovation and optimists who dream outlandishly big. I’m glad that entrepreneurs are working to make cars safer and better for the planet, and I can’t imagine life without a supercomputer in my pocket.

At this moment, though, I’m feeling pessimistic.

Part of the recent legacy of tech is a generation of young companies that have contributed (arguably) clever ideas, but nonetheless become financial zombies. Many have ingrained unhealthy consumer expectations and lost bucketfuls of money.

I wonder if anyone involved in the 2010s tech era has misgivings about these downsides or learned any lessons from them. I hope so, but fear not.

Casper popularized buying online mattresses that are crammed into boxes and delivered to homes. This week, the company reached an agreement to sell the business for a fraction of its former value.

Circumstances might have been different for Casper without the coronavirus pandemic and the freeze in moving goods around the world. But the sale was also a sign that investors didn’t have faith in Casper’s future.

The company — like Uber, WeWork, DoorDash and many other start-ups that were emblematic of the 2010s — has been losing oodles of money after years in business. Casper also disclosed this week that it was at risk of running out of cash within a year, although the company said that the sale, along with loans, planned cost cutting and other steps, should help it stay afloat.

Also in the last few days, one the weirdest crazes of recent years looked poised for a comeback. MoviePass was thrilling to the people who paid what was initially $10 a month for the chance to watch a movie every day in theaters. It felt like an impossible deal — and it was.

MoviePass lost an unfathomable amount of money, and its parent company filed for bankruptcy nearly two years ago. Now, one of MoviePass’s founders has a plan to resurrect it after acquiring it out of bankruptcy. We’ll see what happens.

Besides the red ink, what connects Casper and MoviePass — along with Warby Parker, Opendoor and many other start-ups of the last decade — is a willingness to reimagine old ways of selling products or services. Even if we never bought what these companies sold, they made stodgy industries change and opened people’s eyes to new possibilities.

It’s worth celebrating the good they have done while also learning from what went wrong. Many of these young companies got big offering unsustainably cheap services or blitzing the internet with ads. That could not last.

They also created an expectation that having a mattress or dinner delivered to our doors is an effortless, no-cost ballet. Instead, many of these services choked landfills with unwanted mattresses, treated workers miserably and contributed to increased traffic in cities. And many of these companies haven’t thrived financially either. Was all that disruption worth it?

It feels as if many of the tech mistakes from the past decade are being repeated on steroids. Electric vehicle companies that have barely produced cars are worth more than many of the world’s automakers. I see a lot of excess hype around NFTs and the blockchain, and new services cropping up that are likely to prove unsustainable.

I want to be an optimist about the ways technology has made our lives better. Right now, I’m not.

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  • What Activision’s C.E.O. knew: The Wall Street Journal published an investigation that found that the video game company’s top executive didn’t tell his board about accusations by Activision employees of rape and other misconduct against men at the company. Activision has been confronted with hundreds of claims of sexual harassment, assault and mistreatment of female employees. My colleague Kellen Browning reported that some employees on Tuesday called for the chief executive to be fired.

  • Is this really necessary? Moscow’s subway system is installing technology to scan people’s faces for entry instead of using a ticket or bank card. Celestine Bohlen writes for The New York Times that privacy advocates fear that this is an unnecessary change that’s a pretext to further surveil Russian citizens.

  • Have a Plan B for that gadget you want: My colleague Brian X. Chen reminds us that consumer electronics like video game consoles and lower-cost laptops are likely to be tough to find for the holidays. Here are his tips for shoppers.

Have you ever really looked at the legs of owls? They are amazing and a teeny bit silly.


We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com.

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Small business sues CNBC show for destroying profits

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A small business owner has filed a $21.9 million lawsuit against NBCUniversal, accusing its CNBC show “The Profit” of fraud by falsely pledging to enrich it.

Steve Weissmann, owner of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Co., filed the lawsuit filed last week in California Superior Court for Los Angeles County. He alleges that following the advice of “The Profit” host Marcus Lemonis bankrupted his company.

“I’m suffering from anxiety and depression because he ruined my business,” Mr. Weissmann, who appeared on Mr. Lemonis’ show four years ago, told The Washington Times. “Based on his direction, we made lots of changes to our business model and stopped selling custom work.”

A CNBC spokesperson told The Times that the network could not comment on pending litigation.

A spokesperson for Mr. Lemonis declined to comment on the lawsuit. Mr. Lemonis is the CEO of Camping World Holdings, an Illinois-based retailer of recreational vehicles and camping supplies.

Nationals hire De Jon Watson as new director of player development

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The Washington Nationals on Tuesday announced De Jon Watson as their new director of player development.

Watson was previously a special assistant to general manager Mike Rizzo from 2017-2021.

“I am thrilled to move De Jon into this role as the director of player development,” Rizzo said in a press release. “He has been an integral part of our success the last five seasons and has a documented track record of success in player development. He has a thorough understanding of our minor league system and has the knowledge and experience to know what it takes to help players reach the major leagues.”

Before coming to Washington, Watson was senior vice president of baseball operations for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Watson, who has worked in professional baseball for more than 35 years, spent most of his career as a player development executive for the Dodgers.

He was the team’s assistant general manager for player development for five years before being the vice president of player development for three years. He started his career as an area scout with the Florida Marlins in 1991.

A former third-round pick of the Royals, Watson, who played five seasons in the minor leagues, has worked as a scouting director for Cincinnati and Cleveland.