GoFundMe shut down a fundraiser for a Canadian protest over cross-border trucker vaccine mandates.
GoFundMe on Friday said it would work with organizers to redistribute the funds to other charities.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called that plan "fraud" saying he'd investigate "deceptive practices."
Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would work with Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to investigate GoFundMe for "deceptive practices" after the company said it would send remaining funds from the "Freedom Convoy" campaign to charities picked by organizers.
In a statement, GoFundMe said $1 million was released earlier this week and that fundraising organizers said the funds would be used for people who were traveling to Ottawa to participate in peaceful protests.
"Given how this situation has evolved, no further funds will be directly distributed to the Freedom Convoy organizers — we will work with organizers to send all remaining funds to credible and established charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers and verified by GoFundMe," the platform said.
Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly told The Washington Post on Saturday that there were a thousand vehicles, roughly 5,000 protesters, and at least 300 counterprotesters in the city.
"This is a siege," Sloly told the Post. "It is something that is different in our democracy than I've ever experienced in my life."
DeSantis on Saturday morning said, "It is a fraud for @gofundme to commandeer $9M in donations sent to support truckers and give it to causes of their own choosing."
Cruz came to the defense of Youngkin after the new governor was heckled at a Virginia grocery store.
A shopper asked Youngkin why he was inside the Alexandria Safeway store without a face covering.
The Texas senator blamed the incident on "Dem Karens" who will "scream at you if you don't obey."
Sen. Ted Cruz on Friday came to the defense of GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia after video surfaced showing a woman needling the governor after he made a maskless appearance while visiting a Safeway store to promote his economic agenda.
The Texas Republican, who backed Youngkin in the 2021 gubernatorial election, tweeted a response to the incident, blasting individuals whom he referred to as "angry screaming Leftists."
"Dem Karens want to tell you how to live your life," Cruz wrote. "And they'll fire you, cancel you, or scream at you if you don't obey."
The conservative lawmaker was using the name "Karen" as a perjorative term — which in recent years has been applied to women who are perceived as overly demanding or entitled — while attempting to associate the moniker with the Democratic Party.
Last year, Cruz actively promoted Youngkin as the first-time political candidate was running to become the first Republican governor elected in the Commonwealth in 12 years.
After defeating former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe last November, Youngkin was inaugurated last month and held a roundtable on Thursday to discuss his plan to eliminate the Commonwealth's grocery tax.
While Youngkin was inside the store in Democrat-heavy Alexandria — just minutes from the White House – a masked woman berated him for his lack of a face covering.
"Governor, where's your mask?" the woman asked the governor in a video tweeted by WUSA9 reporter Matthew Torres.
Youngkin responded to the woman: "We're all making choices today."
"Yeah, look around you, Governor. You're in Alexandria," the woman said. "Read the room, buddy!"
Youngkin on his first day in office lifted statewide school mask mandates, drawing both the support and ire of many parents across the Commonwealth.
While many school districts have complied with the governor's order, several boards — which includes Alexandria — are keeping their mask mandates in place pending ongoing litigation.
In last year's gubernatorial election, McAuliffe easily defeated Youngkin in Alexandria, winning by a 75%-24% margin.
Joe Rogan apologized Friday for using the N-word, saying it was "regretful and shameful."
His apology came after singer India Arie, who is leaving Spotify over his use of the word, posted a montage of him saying the slur 24 times.
A handful of other musicians recently ditched Spotify over misinformation on Rogan's podcast.
Joe Rogan apologized for his use of the N-word after a video montage of him saying the slur 24 times went viral.
The montage was put together by singer India Arie, who announced earlier this week that she is pulling her music and podcast from Spotify over Rogan's "language around race" on his controversial podcast, "The Joe Rogan Experience." Rogan responded in a five-minute video on Instagram on Friday, calling his use of the slur "the most regretful and shameful thing" he's ever had to discuss publicly, while also stating the clips were "taken out of context."
"I know that to most people, there's no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that word, never mind publicly on a podcast, and I agree with that now," Rogan said in his apology. "I haven't said it in years. But for a long time, when I would bring that word up, like if it would come up in conversation, instead of saying 'the N-word,' I would just say the word."
Rogan added that he thinks the N-word is "very unusual" because "only one group of people is allowed to use it," though said he "never used it to be racist."
"It's not my word to use," he said. "I'm well aware of that now, but for years I used it in that manner."
Arie joins a growing list of artists that have parted ways with the Spotify in the past week, including Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash, who followed Neil Young's lead in removing their music from the streamer over concern Rogan is spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.
Mary Trump, the niece of former president Donald Trump, also pulled her podcast from Spotify over the misinformation concerns.
In light of the backlash, Spotify recently announced it will add content advisories to all podcasts discussing COVID-19. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek addressed the controversy in the company's fourth-quarter earnings call this week, saying Rogan is held to the same standards as Spotify's other creators.
Health minister Lord Bethell met with Randox five times, but only one meeting was declared.
Randox was the firm at the heart of the Owen Paterson scandal, paying him £100,000 a year as a consultant.
Internal emails suggest four further meetings between Bethell and Randox occurred.
Health minister Lord Bethell planned to meet with the firm at the heart of the Owen Paterson scandal four more times than previously disclosed, internal emails released by the government suggest.
The government was forced on Thursday to publish internal documents on the relationship between health ministers and Randox, a firm that provided COVID-19 tests after being awarded a £133 million contract.
Paterson, then the MP for North Shropshire, was a paid consultant for the firm, on a £100,000-a-year salary at the time. The documents show the extensive lobbying Paterson did of then-health secretary Matt Hancock and then-health minister Bethell.
They reveal four further meetings were on the books between Bethell and Randox that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has not revealed until now, despite the requirement to publish the details of such meetings on a quarterly basis.
Only one meeting, on April 9, 2020, has ever been recorded between Bethell and Randox, with Paterson present.
But internal correspondence sets out plans for Randox to attend a further four meetings with Bethell:
The weekend of April 4 and April 5 2020, Randox's managing director Peter Fitzgerald is listed scheduled to have a 15 minute call with Bethell. There is no confirmation that the call took place, however transparency records for that weekend show many of the other calls in the same list occurred.
Fitzgerald was present at a call on April 8 2020 with the Testing Taskforce, but neither Fitzgerald nor Randox appear in the transparency register for this meeting.
On May 12 2020, following a briefing call on May 13 for Bethell officials say they will organise a call with Randox on May 14. "The actual conversation should be kept very small [...] plus a lawyer present with a detailed note being taken," one official writes. While planning the call with Randox on May 11 2020, Bethell's private secretary says Bethell had indicated he hoped for a "1:1 with Owen Paterson beforehand as well (who I understand is a consultant employed by Randox".
There is a reference to a call, via Microsoft Teams, between Bethell and Randox on August 7 2020 to discuss a letter sent by Fitzgerald to Hancock on August 6 2020.
Insider asked DHSC if these meetings did go ahead, as outlined in the emails, but DHSC declined to confirm any details on what happened to the meetings.
A message from Lord Bethell's private secretary referring to Randox being present at a meeting with the Testing Taskforce that was not declared.
UK Government
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Randox.
Insider has seen emails from the Good Law Project to DHSC regarding other seemingly missing ministerial meetings, first queried in November 2021, with the Good Law Project yet to receive a proper reply by February 2022, despite assurances from the press office of a response "asap."
The opposition has called for the government to clarify the status of the meetings.
Labour's deputy leader, Angela Rayner MP, told Insider: "This scandal gets murkier by the minute. After months of delay and denial, the government has shown us that there were meetings between Ministers and businesses that won multimillion pound contracts that they did not declare.
"When disgraced Tory politicians meet Tory donors in private and millions of pounds of taxpayers' money is spent, the public will want to know what was said.
"The department and Lord Bethell must correct the record of ministerial meetings immediately with full details."
Jo Maugham, director of the Good Law Project, told Insider: "Recording your meetings for the public record isn't that hard. So when ministers consistently fail to do it you do rather scratch your head and wonder why.
"That question is particularly acute when the transparency they are dodging relates to highly controversial awards of sizeable public contracts to those with political connections."
Bethell's meetings have previously failed to be declared in government transparency registers. 27 meetings held with companies that went on to win £1.14 billion of government contracts were not declared properly, Byline Times reported.
Bethell also claimed that texts with a different firm, Abingdon Health, could not be disclosed as they had been made on a private phone that had been lost. He later said the phone was broken. He also deleted messages but thought they had been backed up, The Sunday Times reported.
The homebuilding sector added 3,600 new jobs in January.
The rate is up 5.3% compared with pre-COVID levels.
More builders means more homes, which could improve housing affordability.
The homebuilding sector is adding more jobs — and that's a good thing because America is way behind on building homes. It could make buying more affordable.
In January, the homebuilding sector added 3,600 new jobs, driving the rate up by 5.3% compared with pre-COVID levels. At the same time, construction wage growth jumped 5.8% year over year representing the highest level in 40 years, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"January's gain is positive news for home builders and housing supply," Odeta Kushi, title insurance company First American's deputy chief economist, told Insider. "We need more homes built to relieve the supply-demand imbalance and in such a labor-intensive industry, more hammers means more homes."
There's been a housing shortage in the US for years, and the COVID-19 pandemic hasn't done the homebuilding sector any favors. Throughout the pandemic, many construction projects have stalled due to a labor shortage and a lack of materials. This has made homebuilding more expensive and difficult, resulting in steep declines in residential construction. As more home builders fill job vacancies, more homes are likely to be built and that could possibly elevate some affordability concerns for homebuyers.
"More housing supply would help bring balance to a housing market suffering from an acute supply shortage," Odeta said. "The result of a more balanced housing market would be moderation in house price growth."
More construction jobs could lead to more affordable housing
The amount of homes available for sale remains near historic lows, but homebuilders, possibly driven by increases in employment, are attempting to change the narrative.
In December, the latest month available for housing construction data, privately built housing starts came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.702 million, marking a 1.4% increase from November. The rate was also 2.5% above December 2020's rate of 1.661 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The Bureau also notes that during the month, single family housing starts, referring to residential construction, fell 2.3% from November's figures to 1.172 million. Despite the decline, the rate is still an improvement from 2020 when levels dropped 10.9% year over year.
"The strong starts in December, a historically slower month amid the holiday season, reflects market optimism in the residential sector, and bodes well for a strong start to 2022," Kelly Mangold of RCLCO Real Estate Consulting, told CNBC.
Although recent increases in production and employment are notable, the residential sector will need to step its game up even more. In early January, the median home sale price spiked 16% year over year to an all-time high of $365,000, and 5.24 million homes are still needed to meet homebuying demand. The National Association of Homebuilders reports that housing construction will need to improve to support the housing market and slow future price growth.
"The key to improving housing affordability is increasing inventory," Robert Dietz, The National Association of Homebuilders Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Economics and Housing Policy, told Insider." Dietz notes that home prices have surged over the last two years and lack of inventory could make home buying frustrating for many potential buyers.
The US added 467,000 jobs in January, even as Omicron gripped America.
It indicates the economy is continuing to mutate along with the virus, adapting to a new normal.
But the economy isn't fully recovered, and the US is still dealing with Covid deaths, inflation, and shortages.
It's been nearly two years of the pandemic, and the economy seems like it's finally adapted.
In January, hiring was unexpectedly strong, with the country adding 467,000 jobs. It was a big surprise: The White House had been anticipating a gnarly jobs report. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast that the country would only add 150,000 jobs.
Instead, January saw strong employment growth, even as the Omicron variant swept across the country. Even December and November weren't as bad economically as originally dreary reports said, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics revising those reports up by 709,000 jobs.
"In the past, we have seen that rises in COVID cases have slowed the job market recovery," Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at Glassdoor, told Insider. "But it's possible that the tenor of that is different now."
Even with 3.6 million workers out sick, the economy boomed. It's all a sign of how business has reshaped itself after two years of a new normal, with Omicron potentially severing the link between a spike in cases and a dive in employment. The economy has mutated with the variants.
A mutating economy
Back when Delta threw a wrench into Americans' hot vax summer, JPMorgan Funds' chief global strategist David Kelly said that the way the economy is "mutating" left it less vulnerable and more productive. He said key shifts that occurred during the first year of the pandemic — like the QR menu at restaurants and video-conferencing boom — would protect the US from another pandemic-related recession.
He was right: While Delta slowed down the speed of the US economic recovery, it didn't pummel the country back into the economic turmoil it experienced the year before. When the even-more-contagious Omicron emerged in December, it felt like March 2020 all over again: Events and shows were canceled, colleges moved final exams online, and it became difficult to get tested for Covid again.
But the recent jobs data has proved that Kelly's theory on a mutating economy still stands in the face of other variants, evolving along with Covid itself.
"If the Omicron variant really has reached its peak and, and is beginning to ebb then yeah, this means that we're on a path to a very solid recovery," Dr. William Spriggs, the chief economist of the AFL-CIO and economics professor at Howard University, told Insider. "We did the stimulus the way we did because it means that households are continuing to spend at a level that can get us to that recovery."
With three-quarters of Americans vaccinated, many are still living their lives with a degree of normalcy and thus keeping the economy running. While Omicron has proved more evasive of vaccines than previous variants, protection against hospitalization remains high — especially for the 27% of Americans who are boosted.
The economy still has a ways to go
There's still plenty of economic turmoil. Every day, 2,600 Americans die from Covid, hospital systems are overwhelmed by the unvaccinated, and a record 8.75 million Americans missed work because they became infected. For many, that means a loss in income — or having to go into work sick.
That's not to mention other blows to the economy that existed before Omicron: soaring inflation, a housing crisis, and a serious supply-chain shortage, to name a few. But that jobs and productivity are growing is evidence of how we've learned to be flexible — just like the economy.
Healthcare experts have warned against succumbing to pandemic fatigue. We still need to be vigilant as variants continue to evolve. There may be more systemic measures to take to get to full recovery while keeping workers safe and protecting their income.
"People will get better labor force participation when we fix the care economy," Spriggs said. "People need paid sick days, and they need that ability to be on leave and come back to work."
US Senate candidate Tom Nelson, a Democrat from Wisconsin, says party leaders in Washington are hurting congressional hopefuls like him by not embracing a ban on lawmakers trading stocks.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images
Democrats against a congressional stock trade ban are hurting flyover country candidates, they say.
They argue it's both bad politics and bad policy as Democrats try to hold on to their majorities.
Some Republicans are attempting to outflank Democrats by touting stock trade restrictions.
Out in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, two flights and lengthy Lyft ride from Capitol Hill, US Senate candidate Tom Nelson follows events in Washington with disbelief as leaders of his own Democratic Party resist banning members of Congress from buying and selling stock.
Nelson, the county's elected executive, is particularly bamboozled by President Joe Biden's unwillingness to back any of the several bipartisan plans to have emerged or re-emerged since Insider's "Conflicted Congress" project in December revealed numerousfinancialconflictsof interest and widespreadviolations of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, a law designed to prevent them.
Biden wants Congress to "determine what the rules should be," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.
But Nelson said it's "a bad mistake" for Biden to sit it out.
"He's got to get in the ring. He can't lead from behind," said Nelson, who's running in a crowded Democratic primary for a shot at challenging two-term incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican. "Democrats need a win — we need a big win. I'm concerned that he's not embracing this issue."
Nelson's outrage is shared by a growing number of Democratic congressional candidates who don't work in Washington, DC, but want to. And they're making a congressional stock ban a thick plank in their campaign platforms.
US Senate candidate Lucas Kunce in Missouri not only wants to ban members of Congress from trading stocks, but he also wants to toss them in jail if they don't comply.
US Senate candidate John Fetterman in Pennsylvania said Wednesday that "there isn't any voter I've ever spoken to that says, 'yes, we should allow members of Congress to either protect their investments or make money based off the information they come in contact to."
Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Tim Ryan, both Ohio Democrats, as well as Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat, have recently featured their support for congressional stock trade bans in their campaign fundraising messaging.
"Members of Congress have access to highly confidential information that the public does not," Ryan's campaign wrote in January. "But this is still legal thanks to politicians who only look out for their own bottom line."
Democratic leaders must understand that they're at significant risk of losing majorities in the US House and US Senate during the 2022 midterms if they don't spearhead "common sense" efforts to bolster the public's trust in government, such as stock trade bans, Nelson said. That includes Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, he said.
Pelosi's endorsement of lawmakers' right to trade individual stocks, followed recently by a reluctant course change, is particularly vexing because it cuts against what most Democrats want Congress to do, Nelson added, citing recentpolls.
"Speaker Pelosi should be leading, Sen. Schumer should be leading. This is not only good policy, it's good politics," Nelson said. "But they're out of touch. And that's dangerous. It's dangerous because we're in a very challenging environment for Democrats, we're in the midterm, and our party is in power. There's very little room for error … This is a blunder."
GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters in Arizona has called on Congress to ban its members from trading individual stocks.
Gage Skidmore via Creative Commons/Wikimedia Commons
Republicans embrace a congressional stock ban
Republican US Senate candidate Blake Masters in Arizona, for one, is already attempting to outflank Democrats by embracing a stock ban. He, too, has panned Pelosi — one of the wealthiest members of Congress whose venture capitalist husband, Paul Pelosi, frequently trades stocks and stock options — as a poster politician for congressional corruption.
In Pelosi's own California congressional district, Democratic socialist Shahid Buttar is hammering the House speaker on her stock ban reluctance as part of his longshot attempt to upend her in a June 7 primary.
Democratic leaders' resistance to a congressional stock trade ban, Buttar told Insider, reveals their willingness to "prioritize capitalism over democracy.
"That preference, and Pelosi's history of putting her stock portfolio before the public interest, violate the oath of office and demand accountability," he said.
Both Buttar and Nelson said they're at least mildly encouraged that Pelosi, increasingly squeezed by both liberals and conservatives, said she won't block stock ban bills from coursing through the legislative process.
But it'll take all Democratic leaders offering wholehearted support of such a ban — up to and including Biden — to give left-of-center candidates across the country proper political cover during the 2022 midterms.
"We can't have stupid decisions coming out of Washington if we want to win," Nelson said.
Angela Macke grows tea, berries, herbs, and more on her 26-acre farm.
Angela Macke
Angela Macke, 52, is the founder of Light of Day Organics, a tea farm in Traverse City, Michigan.
She left traditional nursing after discovering holistic medicine and decided to start a tea farm.
Here's what she says running the tea farm is like, as told to writer Erica Hobbs.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Angela Macke, a tea farmer in Michigan, about her career path. It has been edited for length and clarity.
When I was in college, I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis and suffered from mysterious fevers, rashes, hair loss, and a lack of energy. Despite a faithful regimen of prescribed steroids and pain medications, plus my growing knowledge as a nursing student, nothing seemed to work. By the time I took my RN boards, I knew I needed to find a better solution.
After sitting my boards, I decided to move to Maui to study alternative healthcare and holistic nursing. There, I learned the healing techniques of a macrobiotic diet, eating in season, meditation, and particularly drinking tea daily. I truly believe these changes healed me — I haven't taken any medication now in 30 years.
In 1992, I began my career as a nurse, first in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and later back in Maui
I worked in ER, critical care and cardiothoracic units, and the recovery room. Every day I witnessed life-or-death situations and regularly saw the effects that poor nutrition and lifestyle habits had on the human body and psyche. I knew I could do more.
In 2003, I quit nursing to start my own business, Light of Day Organics, and teach stress reduction and disease prevention using tea.
My home in Michigan sits on 13 acres of farmland. There, I built a licensed commercial kitchen, a meditative yurt to teach classes, and three large irrigated hoop houses, which are green houses with metal hoops covered in plastic to insulate growing plants.
I began experimenting with growing teas and herbs
Macke holding a box of leaves.
Angela Macke
Having grown up on a blueberry farm and completed a master gardening program through Michigan State University, I had some experience growing crops, although most of my tea-growing education was through trial and error.
I also began growing berries, chamomile, lavender, mint, and more to blend in with the tea leaves. In 2005, my farm was Certified USDA Organic and Demeter Certified Biodynamic.
As interest in my teas and tea classes grew, so did the farm — we expanded to 26 acres in 2007 and nearly 75 acres by 2016.
In 2009, I opened an onsite tea shop where customers could order tea by the cup, taste a rotating flight of teas, and purchase loose tea to take home.
Just like in the emergency room, there's no such thing as a typical day on the tea farm
Spring and summer are harvest seasons, and we stay busy hand-picking tea leaves as well as fruit and herbs to blend in our mixes. Some teas require more attention, like our specialty white tea that has to be picked every 28 days.
After harvesting, the tea leaves go through a four-hour process of drying and withering on ventilation trays. Next, we oxidize the leaves either by rolling them by hand or with a tea-rolling machine. Finally, we fire the leaves either in a wok or a low-temperature oven.
I take tea breaks with staff at around 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. and end my farm work by watching the sunset and enjoying a meal made with our fresh produce. I then usually spend a few hours in the evening doing administrative work.
With the harvesting done, fall and winter are a time for less season-dependent work
Macke on her farm.
Beth Price Photography
This is when I do the majority of my blending and packaging — all done by hand — as well as consulting, reorganizing, and preparing for audits.
Before the pandemic, Light of Day was growing steadily and had 11 full-time employees. We often welcomed hundreds of visitors a day during our busy season between Memorial Day and Halloween.
Unfortunately, we had to close the tea shop in March 2020 due to COVID-19, and while I was able to maintain business via online sales, I lost 90% of my revenue and my entire retail store staff.
Things picked up in 2021, and I'm slowly starting fresh with a new team
Though the tea shop remains closed, the space is now used for new product development, tea-based nutritional consulting, and acupuncture treatments.
Last summer, we began offering self-guided tours of the farm and resumed our three-hour tea class workshops, where guests taste different teas and learn about the tea-farming process and health benefits. We also opened an outdoor pop-up trailer where visitors can purchase a hot cup of tea, loose-leaf teas, and tea pots.
Thanks to loyal customers and wholesale accounts like the University of Michigan, revenue is picking up and we're in the midst of a construction project to expand our commercial kitchen.
While I love my job and working in nature, running a farm isn't easy
The days are long and time management can be challenging. Like for so many others, the last two years with the pandemic have been difficult, but the personal freedom I've enjoyed running my own business has made me truly appreciate life in a deeper way.
What I love most about my job is that it's always changing. Although I trained as a healthcare professional and worked daily to save people's lives, it's through growing and sharing tea philosophy that I feel I'm able to make the most positive impact on people. I wouldn't change it for anything.
