• Fox News Is Holding More Cards Than Trump Realizes In the weeks since he lost his re-election bid, Trump has stepped up broadsides against his one-time channel of choice, goading followers to switch from Fox to the more MAGA-friendly alcoves of Newsmax TV and One America News Network. Both have been more willing to hawk the president’s spurious claims of voter fraud, which at Fox are relegated to its nighttime opinion shows — and even there are beginning to fade. For Newsmax and OAN, hitching their wagon to the reality-TV star, even as he’s set to leave the White House, has given them the best chance at pillaging Fox’s ratings and springing from obscurity. (Bloomberg)
• States With Few Coronavirus Restrictions Are Spreading the Virus Beyond Their Borders As the number of COVID-19 cases skyrockets, the extent of the public health response from one state to the next varies. The incongruous approaches and the lack of national standards have created confusion, conflict and a muddled public health message, hampering efforts to stop the spread of the virus. Nowhere are these regulatory disparities more jarring than in the border areas between restrictive and permissive states, where a state’s lax public health policies can wreak damage beyond its borders. (ProPublica)
• Can an Accounting Tool Detect Election Fraud? Benford’s Law, aka the first digit law, has been used to sniff out insider stock trading, tax cheats and accounting fraud. But not all data sets are the same. (Wall Street Journal)
• Confessions of a Clintonworld Exile: Doug Band worked alongside Bill Clinton every day for nearly two decades, first as a body man and then as one of the primary architects of his lucrative and often-fraught post-presidency. Then came a seismic falling out with accusations of self-dealing and soap-opera-level psychodrama. Now, for the first time since leaving Clinton’s orbit, Band goes on the record about his days in Clintonworld. (Vanity Fair)
• Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen. Big Booze wants to keep it that way. There is a frustratingly stubborn gulf between what experts know about alcohol’s cancer risk and the awareness of everyday drinkers. The alcohol industry regularly spreads misinformation to obscure booze’s cancer link. Public health groups are demanding label warnings to give consumers clarity. (The Counter)
• Wildfire Risk Leaves Californians Without Homeowners Insurance Grappling with a climate emergency, companies say they can’t pay for catastrophic losses. Acquiring home insurance has long been a mundane but necessary chore. In California, for hundreds of thousands of residents, it’s turned into a labyrinthine quest that leaves people with expensive, bare-bones coverage. That’s because an increasing amount of Californians have been dropped by their regular insurers after years of devastating wildfires that cost billions of dollars and upended the market. The problem has been getting worse (Bloomberg)
• How QAnon infiltrated the yoga world QAnon, the baseless far-right conspiracy theory, has jumped from anonymous message boards into the mainstream — even finding its way into the world of yoga. Yogis’ interest in the conspiracy-theory movement, which is focused on the notion that a “deep state” cabal of child traffickers runs the world, comes amid QAnon’s shift to an anti-human-trafficking “save the children” guise. (Insider)
• Maria Bartiromo’s phenomenal flop In what will be remembered as one of the Trump era’s foremost abdications of professional duty, the Fox News host said little in her phone interview with President Trump, which aired on this past Sunday’s edition of the program “Sunday Morning Futures.” And when she did speak, Bartiromo aided Trump in spinning his self-serving election conspiracy theories. (Washington Post)
• Scott Atlas will forever be the face of surrender to the coronavirus Since Atlas joined the White House, the number of people who’ve contracted the virus has more than doubled and an additional 101,000 Americans have died of covid-19. That latter figure will almost certainly increase rapidly over the next few weeks, even as Atlas returns to the private sector. (Washington Post)
• Revisiting Hitler’s Final Days in the Bunker It might be argued that, although Hitler at the height of his power was a phenomenon without parallel in modern history, what he became—the cornered man in the bunker—was a psychologically commonplace creature. The spectacle of a power-hungry narcissist receiving his comeuppance is irresistible, and it has played out innumerable times in history and fiction. (New Yorker)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Catherine Keating, CEO of BNY Mellon Wealth Management. The group has $265 billion in assets, Previously, she was the Chief Executive Officer of Commonfund. Keating has been named to the “Most Powerful Women in Finance” list and one of the “Most Powerful Women in Banking” list by American Banker.
Millions Set to Lose Aid as Federal Programs Expire
Source: Statista
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