Robert F. Kennedy Jr. baselessly claimed COVID-19 may have been "ethnically targeted" to spare certain groups.
He said Caucasians and black people were most susceptible, and Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people were most immune.
RFK Jr., who is running for president, is a long-time vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. baselessly claimed that COVID-19 may have been "ethnically targeted" to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
The long-time vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, who is running for president as a Democratic primary challenger, made the comments during a press event in New York City on Tuesday, per The New York Post.
"COVID-19, there is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately," Kennedy said.
"COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese."
"We don't know whether it was deliberately targeted or not, but there are papers out there that show the racial and ethnic differential and impact," Kennedy claimed but did not cite any specific sources.
He further claimed that China was spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing "ethnic bioweapons," and said the US was also developing similar weapons.
The origins of COVID-19 are still unknown, with one hotly contested theory being that the virus might have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Whether or not that theory is correct, there is no known evidence suggesting the virus was made to target specific ethnicities.
Kennedy built a reputation as a prominent anti-vaxxer long before the pandemic, but his impact reached new heights when the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.
One report identified him as being one of 12 people who were responsible for the spread of most disinformation about COVID-19 online.
Members of the Kennedy dynasty previously told Insider that they would not support Kennedy's long-shot bid presidential campaign due to his anti-vaccine views.
The Anti-Defamation League responded to Kennedy's claims about COVID-19 being ethnically targeted in a statement to The Post.
"The claim that COVID-19 was a bioweapon created by the Chinese or Jews to attack Caucasians and black people is deeply offensive and feeds into sinophobic and anti-semitic conspiracy theories about COVID-19 that we have seen evolve over the last three years," they said.
That's the big takeaway from Carson Group's chief market strategist Ryan Detrick, who highlighted just how strong the consumer really is based on various economic datasets in the firm's 2023 mid-year outlook report.
The consumer is important to track for because about 70% of the US economy is driven by consumer spending, which relies heavily on the daily spending habits of more than 300 million Americans.
And current data is pointing to stronger trends today than pre-pandemic.
These are the five key charts that show just how strong the consumer is, and why that strength should continue to shield the US economy from an imminent recession.
1. Monthly debt payments are manageable.
Carson Group
"When thinking about debt, the key question is whether households are able to service that debt," Detrick.
Enter the household debt service ratio, which measures the percentage of consumers' income that is being used to pay off all types of debts, from mortgages to credit card bills to student loans.
Based on estimates from JPMorgan, the household debt service ratio at the end of the second quarter was 9.7%. That figure is well below the 13.2% reading seen in the fourth-quarter of 2007, and it's also below the pre-pandemic average of 11.2%. That gives the consumer plenty of wiggle room to take on more debt if they need to, which would lead to more spending and help lift the economy.
2. Real income growth.
Carson Group
For much of the past two years, wage gains have failed to keep pace with quickly rising inflation. But with inflation finally falling, and wage gains holding steady, that's changed. It means consumers ultimately have more money in their pocket, another good sign that should support the economy going forward.
"Disposable income has grown at an annualized pace of 10% over the first five months of this year. Meanwhile, inflation is running just about 4%, meaning households are seeing real income gains," Detrick said.
3. A healthy balance sheet.
JPMorgan
Consumers have $168.5 trillion in total assets compared to just $19.6 trillion in debt. That's a healthy balance sheet and doesn't suggest a period of weakness ahead.
4. A strong jobs market.
Carson Group
At the end of the day, all that matters is that consumers have jobs, as that's what fuels the bulk of their spending habits. If they have a paycheck, they're spending money. So it's no surprise just how important the strength of the job market is for the consumer, and right now the job market is looking great, with plenty of open positions for those that are looking around.
"The employment-population ratio for prime-age workers (25-54 years), which accounts for labor force participation issues and an aging population, is now at 80.7%. That is higher than at any point between 2002 and 2022. This is truly remarkable, and points to a labor market that is the strongest we've seen since the late 1990s," Detrick said.
5. Strong spending trends.
Carson Group
"Consumption continues to run along the pre-pandemic trend, even after adjusting for inflation... Spending driven by rising real incomes means consumers don't feel the need to borrow to the extent they did before the pandemic," Detrick said.
Gen Z employees entered the workforce amid a time of understanding and empathy from managers.
Many young workers now expect open conversations, mental-health support, and flexibility.
As some of these empathetic values fizzle out, Gen Zers are fighting for them to stay.
Alyx Ang would sit on the floor of her room and cry so hard she would shake.
A month into a summer internship last year, Ang wasn't sure she'd chosen the right career path and felt uncomfortable in her new surroundings across the country from where she'd grown up. It all made for debilitating anxiety, she said.
Ang knew she needed a change. Eventually, she asked her boss for a meeting. Ang was experiencing intense mental-health challenges that were preventing her from completing some of her work, she told her manager, and she needed some accommodations.
"The response to that was her opening up about her mental health, which I did not expect," Ang said of her boss. "For her to be like, 'I completely understand you. Here's how I feel,'" proved to Ang the power of speaking up for what she needed, she told Insider.
Ang is one of many Gen Z employees advocating for themselves on the job — whether it be over flexible schedules, mental-health support, or meaningful work. And she and her peers aren't likely to go back to a suck-it-up version of "professionalism," even as some of the touchy-feely openness that has defined pandemic-era workplaces shows signs of receding.
Many Gen Zers, whose oldest members are now 26, entered the workforce amid COVID-19 lockdowns and a wave of social-justice movements. At that time, asking for what you needed became the default for many workers.
"What the pandemic did was it took the armor away," Davina Ramkissoon, a workplace psychologist in Dublin, told Insider. "Leaders were able to be vulnerable because they were suffering themselves; we were all going through the same thing in a parallel process."
Gen Zers might seem fearless, but they know the realities of speaking up
While some older generations gripe that Gen Zers are hard to work with because they're "entitled" or oblivious to long-standing workplace norms — such as swallowing concerns about personal challenges that bleed into the office — many Gen Z workers know the risk of asking for what they need.
"I have fear of advocating for my mental health," Ang said. "A lot of people have fear."
But for Ang, it was worth it. Two weeks after her conversation, she moved home to finish the internship remotely.
Lana Ivory, a 25-year-old author of a newsletter about Gen Z and an employee at Amazon, said the most important things for her to fight for were being given meaningful work, mentorship, and fair compensation, because those are the most crucial for her success.
"When you're new into your career, you can be tasked with mundane or tactical initiatives, but I think it's super important to learn how to flex those strategic muscles early on," she said. She also isn't scared to say no, she added.
Ivory's manager once told her, "The job will take whatever you give it." Ivory said she held on to that insight: "This means that you have to set boundaries and prioritize your tasks; otherwise, you will end up working endlessly and feeling overwhelmed and undervalued."
While she does good work on the projects she's responsible for, she said, she's aware of her workload and commits only to projects she has the time for so she can avoid burnout.
"The more I practiced advocating for myself, the better feedback I received, and the more comfortable and confident I became doing it," Ivory said.
Gen Z grew up talking about mental health
Ramkissoon said young workers had the language to express emotional needs but that doing so in a professional setting was sometimes jarring for older generations.
"They were like, 'Wait, hang on a minute. My professional hat is on. This is going a bit deeper. I didn't know we were meant to be talking about these things,'" she said.
"What's really interesting about Gen Z is, before you even got into the workplace, you were one of the first generations that were taught about social and emotional intelligence — and at a much younger age," she added.
Many workers were happy to see more empathy enter the workplace earlier in the pandemic, Ramkissoon said.
"Some of those defenses are slowly going back up again, but it's really important that we continue that conversation around mental health because we need it to survive," Ramkissoon added.
Kennedy's campaign refunded the donation, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission on Friday.
Clapton's donation to Kennedy's campaign.
Federal Election Commission
Altogether, Kennedy reported raising $6.3 million since launching his long-shot campaign for the Democratic nomination in April.
President Joe Biden, by contrast, raised more than $72 million between his campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and a joint fundraising committee over the last three months, according to a release.
Clapton also said he'd experienced an adverse reaction to the Astra-Zeneca vaccine, saying his "hands and feet were either frozen, numb or burning, and pretty much useless for two weeks" while blaming "propaganda" for pushing him to get it.
Clapton later discussed his skepticism about the vaccine and his opposition to health mandates during an appearance on Kennedy's podcast.
Representatives for Clapton and Kennedy didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
The letter — led by Free Press, Accountable Tech, and Media Matters for America — says the groups have already seen indications that "new users have been testing the boundaries of the platform's moderation and enforcement."
The letter cites "neo-Nazi rhetoric," "election lies," "bigoted slurs," "COVID-19 conspiracies," and more as examples of hateful speech that they have seen rising on Threads, which launched last week.
Meta's press team did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
"Meta must implement basic moderation safeguards on Threads now or the platform will become as toxic as Twitter," Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free Press, said in a press release about the letter.
She added that it's imperative for Meta to establish better content moderation in the lead-up to the 2024 election to prevent the spread of hateful speech and disinformation.
The civil rights groups also accused Meta of "purposefully not extending Instagram's fact-checking program to the platform and capitulating to bad actors."
Those plans are supposed to forgive borrowers' debt after at least 20 years of payments, but administrative errors and other flaws have left many making payment for far longer.
The announcement's fine print shows that only borrowers who have "accumulated the equivalent of either 20 or 25 years of qualifying months" will have their debts forgiven. That means you probably have to be more than 40 years old to get any sort of relief, given that most Americans graduate and start making student-loan repayments in their early twenties.
The Education Department said it will start notifying borrowers who are eligible to have their debt repayments forgiven over the next few weeks.
Six of the court's judges ruled that the education secretary is unable to cancel more than $430 billion of student debt under the HEROES Act, a 2003 law that gives the secretary the ability to modify loans in an emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic.
People in Hong Kong dining at a dim sum restaurant.
China News Service/Getty Images
Disinflationary trends in the US are taking hold partly because of China's weakening economy, according to Ed Yardeni.
Yardeni said on Thursday that the US could continue to see lower inflation without a recession.
China's aging demographic profile and weak consumer spending is disinflationary for the US, Yardeni said.
If the US manages to get inflation back down to the Federal Reserve's long-term target of 2% without triggering a recession, it might have to partly thank China, according to market veteran Ed Yardeni.
Yardeni highlighted in a Thursday note to clients that certain economic forces in China are having a disinflationary impact on the US, and that could ultimately pave the way for a soft landing in the US economy.
"Something is definitely wrong with China's economy," Yardeni said, alluding to the fact that months after the Chinese government lifted its strict COVID-19 lockdown measures, its economy hasn't picked up accordingly.
That has flipped the economic narrative on its head, as many economists had expected at the start of this year that a reopening of China's economy would help lift the global economy while also putting upside pressure on inflation.
But Chinese exports fell in June and the country's imports have remained flat since mid-2021, Yardeni highlighted, and that's leading to lower prices for goods.
"Confirming the weakness in China's economy is that the country's PPI fell 5.4% year-over-year through June, while the CPI was unchanged over the same period," Yardeni said. "China's PPI inflation rate tends to be a leading indicator for the US PPI for finished goods, which fell 2.8% year-over-year in June."
China'sweak economy is exporting disinflationary trends to other countries, and that's a welcome sign for the US Fed, which was likely encouraged by the Wednesday release of the June CPI report, which showed the lowest inflation levels in more than two years. The Producer Price Index for the month released on Thursday was also lower, solidifying the disinflation narrative.
"China's economy has been weakened by the bursting of its property bubble. Its rapidly aging demographic profile is also weighing on consumer spending as China is becoming the world's largest nursing home. This is all deflationary for China and disinflationary for the US," Yardeni explained.
"Bottom line: Inflation can come down in the US without a recession in the US!" Yardeni said.
He is now doubling down on his stance against remote work, saying employees can take up another job if they don't like the commute.
"I completely understand why someone doesn't want to commute an hour and a half every day, totally got it. Doesn't mean they have to have a job here either," Dimon told The Economist in a wide-ranging interview released Tuesday.
Dimon told the publication that some roles at JPMorgan can be hybrid or remote, but such arrangements just do not cut it for some positions.
"It doesn't work for younger kids in apprenticeships, it doesn't really work for creativity and spontaneity, it doesn't really work for management teams," he told The Economist.
"There are real flaws," he added.
Dimon told the media outlet he wasn't opposed to remote work if it works, but he doesn't mind getting rid of it if it doesn't work.
"We're not going to make that decision because we're pandering to employees — that is not the way to build a great company," he said.
He is particularly opposed to those in leadership roles not being around in the office.
"I don't know how you can be a leader and not be completely accessible to your people. I do not believe you can be a leader and not be accessible to your people," he told The Economist.
In January, he told CNBC in an interview that while remote work can work for jobs like coding, those in research, and women in caregiving roles, the arrangement doesn't apply to all roles.
Dimon's comments came amid a furious debate about the future of remote work as the world exits from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The future of where and how employees work could have a huge impact on the economy, including in the real-estate sector.
On June 28, 2020, an anonymous letter was published by authors who claimed to be employees of Essence magazine, accusing the publication of fostering an unhealthy work environment.
The company launched two independent investigations, which could not substantiate the claims made in the letter. Some employees felt like their concerns were not taken seriously.
Twenty former and current employees spoke to Insider about their experiences working at the magazine. Despite changes, some remain unsatisfied with the company.
On June 28, 2020, an anonymous group of women under the name of Black Females Anonymous published a damning public letter that shook the core of Essence Magazine, the leading publication for Black women in America.
"The Essence brand promise is fraudulent," the essay, published on Medium, claimed. "The once exalted media brand dedicated to Black women has been hijacked by cultural and corporate greed and an unhinged abuse of power."
The letter alleged an "extremely unhealthy work culture" rife with "pay inequity, sexual harassment, corporate bullying, intimidation, colorism and classism" — one that began when Richelieu Dennis, the beauty mogul behind SheaMoisture, bought the publication in 2018.
After the letter hit the internet, Dennis and the rest of Essence's leadership scrambled to deal with the implosion. In a public statement, Essence denied the allegations, calling them "mischaracterizations" and "unfounded attempts to discredit our brand and assassinate personal character." It also hired two law firms to investigate; their independent reviews could not substantiate claims made in the letter, including those of bullying, harassment, or discrimination.
Still, some employees say they witnessed management become increasingly defensive. The company held town hall meetings over Zoom where they encouraged people to speak up about their concerns. Only by airing out these concerns, they said, could they make the workplace better.
But some former employees who attended the meetings said the sentiment didn't feel sincere. Instead, they believed leadership became obsessed with sniffing out who wrote the letter.
"It was a critical turning point in establishing trust with employees again, and assuring us that our work matters here," a former employee present at the meeting told Insider. "But in the moment we were made to feel replaceable. It was a turning point where a lot of folks checked out."
Rather than listen and take accountability, ex-employees said they felt like leadership tried to undermine their voices and their experiences, just as had been expressed in the open letter.
"Essence is the most deceptive Black media company in America. Why? Essence aggressively monetizes #BlackGirlMagic but the company does not internally practice #BlackGirlMagic," the letter read. "The company's longstanding pattern of gross mistreatment and abuse of its Black female employees is the biggest open secret in the media business."
Insider spoke with 20 former and current employees, ranging across titles and departments, about their experiences working at Essence. Five former employees were still at the magazine in 2022 or 2023; an additional nine worked at Essence during the time the letter was published in 2020.
Many employees who were at Essence in 2020 say they experienced or witnessed a "hellish" and "dehumanizing" culture with a rigidly top-down hierarchy, compensation they were not happy with, and mismanagement — issues that current and recent employees say haven't entirely gone away in the three years since the letter was published. Most of the sources requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation and to protect their careers.
"Essence is a dream place — 'Black girl magic' — but it's a known thing inside, and it's leaking outside, that it's more like 'Black girl tragic,'" one former employee said.
Essence and Group Black did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Insider.
Essence under Time Inc.
Essence Magazine was first published in 1970 at a time when Black business and civil rights leaders called for greater self-determination and empowerment. The magazine was the brainchild of a group of four Black businessmen who identified a lack of publications for Black women in America. It was meant to be a "lifestyle magazine directed at upscale African American women."
Their vision was soon realized. With an initial circulation of only around 50,000 copies per month, the publication's readership grew by a staggering 17-fold within two decades.
Under the helm of Susan Taylor, the publication's long beloved editor-in-chief from 1981 to 2000, Essence's monthly readership surpassed 5 million people, making the magazine a household name in Black communities across America. Taylor was also responsible for launching Essence Festival, an annual event that would become the company's biggest revenue generator, eventually even overshadowing what the magazine itself brought in, and turning the Essence brand into a cultural behemoth.
Today, the magazine has a monthly circulation of over 1 million copies, competing with the likes of Vogue and Elle.
But things shifted in 2000, when Time Inc. — which also owned publications like Sports Illustrated, Fortune, and People — purchased 49% of Essence Communications, then later bought the remaining 51% in 2005. Essence went from one of the few Black-owned magazines in the country to another publication under widespread ownership.
Covers of Essence and Entertainment Weekly, both magazines under Time Inc. in 2015.
Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Entertainment Weekly
The shift to a white- and male-dominated parent company left some employees feeling like Essence operated under "stepchild status" under Time Inc.
One employee at the time said that it felt like Time Inc. "wasn't invested in Essence at all." People struggled with budgets, creating a "bootstrapping" environment. The move to a multi-billion dollar media conglomerate had made some employees hope Essence would be given ample resources; instead, they seemed to operate from a scarcity mentality.
"All of the teams always moved as if there was extreme limitation, like, 'we can't do this photoshoot; we don't have enough money,'" a former employee said.
In 2013, then-president of Essence Communications Michelle Ebanks told The New York Times she understood why some readers were concerned about Time Inc.'s influence on the magazine, but insisted that Essence enjoys "journalistic independence" under their parent company.
Rich Dennis enters the scene
In 2017, the Meredith Corporation announced it would purchase Time Inc. for $2.8 billion, acquiring all the publication's assets, including Essence Magazine. The company had struggled with plummeting print advertising revenue, like much of the publishing industry.
Around that time, Richelieu Dennis came across a Wall Street Journal article about how Time Inc. was looking to sell its majority stake in Essence. Dennis had made his name and fortune as the founder of Sundial Brands, a beauty company that focuses on products for Black women, including SheaMoisture and Nubian Heritage. He had no prior experience in the media industry, but felt strongly about serving the Black community.
By January 2018, Dennis bought Essence from Time Inc. for an undisclosed amount.
"The stars aligned," Dennis told NNPA Newswire soon after the purchase. "We started to think about the implications of what this would mean if Essence were truly brought back into the community."
Richelieu Dennis at the 2023 Essence Ventures Media Upfronts on June 29, 2023.
Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for ESSENCE
Readers celebrated that the magazine was Black-owned again. "This is so so so so so important," one reader tweeted. "We need room for this celebration," said another.
Then-president of Essence Communications Michelle Ebanks, who stayed through the acquisition, said this was a chance for the publication to grow: "This means we can realize our extraordinary potential."
Dennis had brought back hope.
Born in Liberia in 1969 to a family of entrepreneurs, Dennis came to America to attend Babson College, a business school whose gilded roster of alumni includes execs from The Home Depot, PepsiCo, and Accenture. Unable to return home because of a civil war, Dennis started Sundial Brands in his tiny Queens apartment, making soaps and lotions from shea butter and essential oils in his bathtub.
From its modest beginnings, Sundial raked in around $300 million in revenue in 2017, and ultimately sold to Unilever for an estimated $1.6 billion later that year.
"This founder escaped war, created a top skin care brand, and launched a $100 million fund for Black women entrepreneurs," Inc. Magazine wrote of Dennis' accomplishments in 2019.
Richelieu Dennis at Variety Magazine's Power of Women event in 2019.
Margarita Corporan/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images
Some of Sundial's loyal customers lambasted the Unilever sale as a betrayal of its founding mission to support Black women. But Dennis said that these decisions were ways to reinvest in the Black community — a sentiment he echoed when he bought Essence in 2018.
"What we're doing with Essence is not very different from what we've done with Sundial," Dennis told Forbes in 2018 when he bought the magazine. "And that is to serve Black women deeply, to serve women of color in a way that no one else has thought about."
Essence Magazine was Dennis' first foray into the media world, and was just the first in a string of acquisitions that catapulted him to the peak of a Black business empire. His "family-run" private-equity company, Essence Ventures, "endeavors to empower, connect and give ownership to Black communities," according to the company's LinkedIn page. Essence Ventures, too, has invested in brands founded by and for Black women, including Afropunk Festival, hair care company Naturally Curly, and BeautyCon.
"Essence is not a magazine. It's a concept. It's a movement," Dennis told "The Breakfast Club" in 2019. "For us, it wasn't just, 'Hey, let's go buy a magazine.' For us, it was, let's make sure we own the narrative that's happening in our community. Whether or not it made business sense, we were going to do this because we deserve to own our culture."
Regaining ownership of one's culture would become Dennis' refrain, including with a recent $400 million bid for Vice Media, and with news that his media company Group Black was in talks to buy stakes in Black Entertainment Television, Bustle Digital Group, and Arena, the publisher behind Sports Illustrated. (None of these deals have materialized; Vice Media was ultimately bought out by Fortress Investment Group).
Richelieu Dennis attends the NASDAQ opening bell ringing ceremony as the founder of Essence Ventures and New Voices on February 17, 2023.
Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Essence Ventures at NASDAQ
At Essence back in 2018, employees were hopeful things would change for the better with Dennis at the helm.
"I was genuinely excited. Essence was and always has been a beacon of Black culture, but it was held by white people," one former employee recalled of the transition. "So it was a moment of pride — for all of us."
The reality of Essence under Dennis' early leadership, however, did not meet some staffers' high expectations.
"Essence was once again a Black-owned company and, as executives regularly liked to remind us, we were family. As we all know, however, a company is not your family. It is business," a former editor at the magazine said in a tweet around the time of the anonymous letter.
Crumbling morale
Essence had suffered from a lack of resources under Time Inc., and Dennis and his leadership team were tasked with righting a sinking ship. But the new management faced immediate obstacles it struggled to overcome, leaving some employees questioning their ability to run a media company.
After the sale to Dennis in 2018, management failed to construct a stable infrastructure, eight current and former employees told Insider. There were no annual reviews or promotion outlines, leaving ambitious employees feeling stuck and frustrated. Even those with supportive managers who championed their work struggled to advance in the company, since the buck stopped at the C-suite, employees said.
Only one of the 11 sources Insider spoke with who were there at the time received raises in the first few years of Dennis' ownership, they say. Many of those staff members said they had to juggle multiple responsibilities outside of their original job descriptions and felt it only exacerbated the pain of not receiving a raise — especially as Essence sought to ramp up its digital presence. Dennis had grand visions for Essence and wanted to run the magazine as a multi-faceted "startup," insiders recalled him saying. The industry-wide shift from print to digital meant a demand for more stories, more quickly.
Reporters at Essence in the first few years under Dennis' leadership said they had to write four to five stories per day for the website, while also working on stories for the print magazine. Some editorial staff also took on new podcasts and visual projects, but weren't compensated for the extra work.
"I had basically taken a pay cut from them with the additional responsibilities," a former employee who was there in 2018 to 2020 said. "I was told to take it or leave it. Others didn't get extra for their additional contributions, either, so I felt like I couldn't complain about it. But I did feel insulted."
Some women said the stressful work culture started to affect their mental and physical health. They relied on their "sisterhood" to get through the days.
"The culture is very much a community — a team that translates and speaks well with each other," Sandra Okerulu, a freelancer who worked with Essence in 2018, said of the magazine's employees. "It's clear they believe in the project. This is theirs."
But when staff tried to voice their frustrations to higher-ups, some say they were met with apathy. At multiple town hall meetings from 2018 to 2020, Michelle Ebanks, then-CEO of Essence Communications, said if they didn't like what they were being paid, they could leave out the door, several former employees told Insider.
By the end of 2018, less than a year into Dennis' reign, morale began to crumble.
"You kind of hope that Essence is one of those places that won't treat you like a cog in the wheel, but that wasn't the case," a former employee said.
The new regime
Some of the problems at Essence predated Dennis' purchase, four former employees said, but the real root of the persisting issues lay in the upper echelons of the magazine.
"The cultural rot was from the top down," one former employee said.
In October 2018, Dennis brought in Moana Luu, a self-described multihyphenate from Martinique, to shore up Essence as its chief content and creative officer. Statuesque with a cosmopolitan flair, Luu held a patchwork of jobs in beauty, media, and design before joining Essence. She was a TV producer and host for a local Marticinian pageant show, creative director for a French hair care company, and chief creative officer for a studio based in France called Trace Media, per her LinkedIn profile.
But multiple employees questioned her ability to run a magazine with a storied heritage like Essence.
Essence CEO Michelle Ebanks, Richelieu Dennis, and Essence chief content & creative officer Moana Luu at the 2020 13th Annual ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood luncheon.
Rich Polk/Getty Images for Essence
In the letter, Luu was accused of "workplace bullying, flamboyant overspending, and lack of leadership on production budgets and deadlines." Multiple sources told Insider they had similar experiences with Luu, with some sources feeling like she caused issues of the magazine to be late to press because of last-minute changes, or shifting deadlines.
Some sources felt that both Dennis and Luu lacked "deep knowledge" of the publishing industry, leading to a lot of "misunderstanding about the time and effort needed to publish a monthly magazine," as one former employee put it.
Some employees who worked with Luu felt she also fostered a "mean girl" workplace.
"She pretty much came in trying to be the Black version of 'Devil Wears Prada,'" a former editor said. Another former employee felt Luu held "very little respect" for the women who worked at Essence.
Luu commented on people's weight and appearance, six sources said.
When an editor with a curvier body type pitched an idea for a video, Luu reportedly responded, "You on camera? No no no," the editor told Insider.
"She told me that she needed someone beautiful with a lot of social media numbers, not me," the editor said. "I just stopped after that."
Another former employee who witnessed the interaction corroborated the incident.
"A big part of Essence's platform has been showcasing the varied beauty of Black women: all shapes and sizes, all shades, all hair textures," a former longtime editor at the magazine said.
"But when Moana came on board, she was only interested in a certain aesthetic, and she wanted that certain aesthetic to be the face of the brand," the editor said.
During Luu's tenure, Essence did promote on-screen personalities including Danielle Young, who used the platform to champion body positivity and speak out against texturism.
An investigation into the allegations made in the Medium post in 2020 "did not find that Ms. Luu treated anyone differently" according to a public statement by Essence.
The investigation also found that "several witnesses reported hearing her make insensitive comments" and that some employees felt her management style was "intimidating and brash."
Luu said she was "adamant that [was] not her intent to bully anyone," according to the investigation.
Around the same time, other employees followed suit. According to five former employees, some staffers did not feel aligned with Luu's mission of globalizing a publication that was founded for Black American women and felt the new leadership was sidelining the demographic they were originally meant to uplift. (These sources could not speak specifically to why Wilson or Montgomery chose to leave).
Luu did not respond to requests for comment.
Allegations of nepotism
Dennis' hope to foster a "family" at Essence played out in more ways than one. The new regime at Essence in 2018 and its sister companies included multiple members of Dennis' own family, including his wife and two daughters.
In the company's first several months under Dennis, there was no official human resources department, according to 11 former employees. Dennis' wife, Martha, became the de facto interim head of HR, nine former employees said. A 401(k) document from November 2020, viewed by Insider, lists Martha Dennis as the contact person, alongside the address of Essence's office in Industry City, Brooklyn.
Some Essence employees who spoke to Insider said they felt uncomfortable raising issues with the magazine owner's wife.
"If I didn't have any complaints, it was because I didn't know who to go to," one former employee said. "With the owner's wife being in charge of HR, it didn't feel like a safe space to go to."
In their findings, the independent investigation claimed that there was "no evidence to suggest that Ms. Dennis was appointed to lead HR or that she ever led HR," but rather that she "assisted" with HR matters.
Dennis' daughters, Rechelle and Sophia, were given the reins to launch Essence Girls United, the Gen Z branch of the magazine. Rechelle was only a year out of college when she joined Essence, her LinkedIn shows. She also founded SheaGirl, a skincare company for teens under her father's company SheaMoisture, when she was a sophomore in college.
Outside of Essence, Dennis' sister Richelyna Hall was chief impact officer of New Voices, the organization Dennis founded to support women entrepreneurs of color, as recently as 2021. New Voices has hosted pitch competitions at EssenceFest, Essence magazine's annual festival, according to its website, and its portfolio companies — which it refers to as its "family" — have been featured on the magazine's cover and in write-ups.
A non-disclosure agreement that management asked employees to sign before a company event at the Dennis' Hamptons residence in the summer of 2019 included language that prevents them from speaking about "Dennis, Dennis' family members and children, friends, companies, business ventures, business associates," according to a copy Insider viewed.
These types of agreements are a way for companies to control what people say, labor and employment lawyer Alan Lescht said. He added that it's not typical for NDAs to name specific people.
Some Essence staff bristled at the NDA.
"It felt like it was their family, but we weren't part of it. It definitely didn't feel like a family," a former employee said.
'The Truth About Essence'
By June 28, 2020, discontent within Essence had reached a fever pitch, culminating in the explosive Medium essay titled "The Truth About Essence." In addition to allegations of corporate bullying and an unhealthy work culture, the letter called for the resignation of Dennis, Ebanks, Luu, and chief operating officer Joy Collins Profet.
Readers rallied behind the anonymous group of writers in a petition that accompanied the essay. Several of those who signed the petition wrote that the content had deteriorated in the past decade and "fails to speak to Black women."
Another said they noticed that "the advertisements in the magazine contained fewer Black models of varying complexions and looked like something [they'd] see in Vogue or other similar magazines."
Readers also decried the hypocrisy of a Black-owned business and claims of mistreating the Black women who make up the company. "A double slap in the face when it's done by our own," someone wrote.
Essence's management went into damage-control mode. A spokeswoman for the magazine denied that Martha Dennis was the head of human resources, saying that she had "advised the company in its ongoing HR transition," The New York Times reported. In an internal response to employees viewed by Insider, management described HR, which they said they built from the "ground-up," as having been "supported by a family executive" with experience in HR while they searched for a full-time lead.
Dennis, Luu, and Ebanks stepped down from their positions or "had no role in day-to-day operations," the spokeswoman told The New York Times. Collins Profet said she had previously notified Essence of her resignation in 2020 to pursue another opportunity. Essence hired an interim CEO, Caroline Wanga, to help shore up the company. (Ebanks, Wanga, and Martha Dennis did not respond to requests for comment from Insider.)
During the town hall meetings management held following the letter, some Essence employees felt leadership didn't care to understand their employees' grievances, but rather positioned themselves as victims who had been "attacked."
Dennis said that it had been a "difficult day" with "our business being attacked in this way and our team members being attacked this way," during a town hall meeting on June 28, 2020, the same day the Medium post was published, according to a recording of the meeting that Insider reviewed.
In successive town halls, employees said management continued to be "very dismissive" and "disheartening."
"For centuries, Black women's stories of oppression and mistreatment have been written off, and for Essence the brand to plainly state that fully denies accusations without any talk of investigation of the claims — it's always been what's done to us in history," one employee said in a town hall meeting on June 30, a recording of which Insider heard.
Dennis, Wanga, and Martha Dennis defended leadership's efforts. In the June 28 meeting, Dennis said he believed they "brought real change," but to change "a culture that has evolved over 50 years" within two years was near impossible.
"What we really want to hear is an acknowledgement, an apology that says, 'I'm sorry I let you down,'" an employee said in the June 30 town hall.
"It doesn't take away from your greatness. It doesn't take away from your purpose. It doesn't take away from your position in this company and in this world. But it does signify to us you hear us and you see us, and that you see that we're hurting," the employee said.
Former employees say they never received that acknowledgement or apology. Instead, leadership continued to prod and investigate.
Gaslit?
Essence hired two white-shoe law firms to look into the essay's claims in July 2020. Employees said they received emails, sent to their work accounts, asking them for voluntary group or individual interviews. Some said they didn't feel comfortable speaking to the lawyers because they were afraid of retaliation. Others said they didn't receive any emails at all.
The law firms ultimately concluded that the allegations lodged in the essay were unsubstantiated, including claims of bullying, nepotism, and discrimination. The results of the review, published in a statement on Essence's website, also found that "various issues contributing to work culture existed under prior ownership," when Essence was under Time Inc.'s purview.
Another report found allegations from the Medium post of sexual harassment to be unsubstantiated. The sources Insider spoke with said they had not witnessed or experienced inappropriate behavior of the kind alleged in the post.
Not all employees supported the Medium post and the #TakeBackEssence social media movement it catalyzed. Some felt the allegations could damage their livelihoods, and that the writers were disrespecting an institution they'd all worked so hard to uphold — illustrating the difficult position of being a Black woman in an industry where there are so few options available to them.
Other employees felt management's response and the investigation's findings to the essay dismissed their own lived experiences at Essence — even things they had seen with their own eyes, like Dennis' wife performing HR functions or Luu stepping back from the company following the Medium post. (Though recent employees said Luu no longer appears to be involved in the day-to-day operations at the magazine, she switched her title to "global chief content and creative officer" at Essence Communications in September 2020, according to her LinkedIn and Instagram bio.)
"It's a place that [made] you feel gaslit at times, a place that creates confusion," one former employee said. "When I lost my job in 2020, I was relieved, like, I don't have to feel like I'm in the 'Twilight Zone' every day."
Leadership never discovered who wrote the letter. Black Females Anonymous did not respond to Insider's requests for interviews.
An uncertain legacy
After the letter was published, nothing much changed, 10 sources who still worked at Essence in 2020 and onwards told Insider. In September 2020, mere months after the fallout around the letter, 80% of the company was furloughed, according to estimates from sources with knowledge of the matter. The company went from a staff of around 70 to around nine, according to source estimates.
The journalists who remained at the magazine were asked to cover beats outside the areas they'd been hired to report on. Some had to handle social media — outside their purview as reporters and editors — since the entire social media team had been furloughed, according to former employees. Essence staffers who survived the furloughs had to reach out to their ex-colleagues to ask for a crash course in social media distribution, a former employee said. The small staff was burdened with keeping the legacy publication afloat.
While the company has since restaffed a portion of its workforce, a current employee and four employees who left within the past year told Insider that issues with work culture still remain. Staff who left recently said reporters and editors are still asked to take on additional responsibilities outside their job descriptions. A current employee described an environment that felt siloed and drained of any sense of community, leaving some staff feeling "unappreciated and left out."
Dennis' ambitions in media, as illustrated through his recent bids to buy Vice Media and BET, make some former Essence employees uneasy.
"It's a terrifying prospect," a former employee said.
Travis Montaque and Richelieu Dennis, cofounders of Group Black, speak during the Embracing the Influence: Black Culture, Media and Democracy panel in Cannes, France on June 22, 2023.
Lionel Hahn/Getty Images for Inkwell
Through Group Black, a media collective he co-founded with entrepreneur Travis Montaque, Dennis aims to build an empire.
"I like building big businesses. I think that this is an opportunity to build what will become a top-five, if not bigger, media company," Dennis said in an interview last year about Group Black's vision. He added that engaging with Black and brown consumers and monetizing the culture they bring to the marketplace is a way to "invest deeper" into the culture.
Despite some employees reporting ongoing issues with the publication's work culture, women and other members of the Black community have continued to come back to Essence.
"Those are the nuances of being Black in this industry. Not everybody has the luxury of staying away. These are the terrors of this empire," another employee who recently quit the magazine said.
Essence is not an anomaly. Work environments across different companies and industries often have unhealthy elements. But, as Yesha Callahan, a former news and politics editor at Essence, put it, "it's bad when it's supposed to be 'for the people, by the people,' and you're being screwed over by the people who are supposed to help."
Others have tried to separate the magazine and its legacy from the people who run it. Some former employees said they're hopeful changes at the magazine can be made to support the women it was meant to uplift from the beginning.
"90% of the people who have come through the doors have really been there for the love of Essence, no matter what people may feel about Rich [Dennis] and how he runs his business," one longtime editor said. "That's what's helped maintain the legacy of the magazine, and allows it to remain a beacon for this audience."
The bad news just keeps coming for China's ailing economy.
Exports tanked 12% in June, according to data released Thursday.
Slumping growth and deflationary risks are also sparking concern.
China's plan for a swift post-pandemic revival looks likely to be scuppered by a growing number of red flags, including deflation and sputtering growth.
Beijing finally curtailed three years of harsh zero-COVID lockdowns late last year, but its economy has subsequently run into significant turbulence that's sparking alarm across the world.
Taken alone, headline figures still suggest robust growth, with the country's Gross Domestic Product likely to rise 7.3% in the second quarter, according to a Reuters poll.
But because that's a year-on-year comparison, the bar for expansion is still low. In July 2022, the government was still taking a zero-tolerance approach to COVID-19, limiting the country's economic output.
There are other signs that China's economic reboot is faltering, too:
Factory activity is shrinking, according to the manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index, which has shown output contracting three months in a row.
Data released Thursday also showed exports falling 12.4% from a year ago, badly underperforming economists' expectations. Making goods and then sending them abroad is a huge engine for Chinese growth.
Earlier this week, China also announced that its inflation rate was 0% – meaning it's now teetering on the edge of deflation. That could mean people start to spend less, holding off on buying things with the expectation that they'll soon become cheaper.
Foreign direct investment in China has also dried up, with spending from outside China dropping by $20 billion, or a sixth, year-on-year, per data from the Wall Street Journal.
It's a growing list of concerns that makes grim reading for Beijing, whose dreams of a smooth revival have quickly turned nightmarish.
And now, another mainstay business is shutting shop, driven out by the COVID-19 pandemic, rising inflation, and depressed sales.
Anchor Brewing, the oldest craft brewery in the United States, which had been in business for 127 years, will shut shop due to "a combination of challenging economic factors and declining sales since 2016," the company said in a Wednesday announcement seen by Insider.
"Unfortunately, today's economic pressures have made the business no longer sustainable, and we had to make the heartbreaking decision to cease operations," the company said in the statement.
It is "possible that a buyer will step forward for the brewery as part of the liquidation process," Anchor said, per the statement.
The brewery has stopped producing beer and will phase out its existing stock by the end of the month, per the statement. The brewery employs 61 people, CNN reported Wednesday.
The company had already been in a cost-cutting mode and had pared down its beer distribution to just the state of California, per its statement.
On top of the macroeconomic headwinds, the brewery was also facing internal challenges.
Staffers at Anchor Brewing complained of a cultural mishmash at the company, according to a June report in Vinepair. One unnamed employee told the publication that "upper management ran this company not understanding how craft brewing works in America."
"Sapporo has made rookie mistakes left and right, they have destroyed what this brand was," the staffer told the outlet, per the report.
Anchor Brewing's production dropped every year since 2017, save one
But after its acquisition by Sapporo in 2017, the brewery's production declined every year except for 2021, CNN reported, citing data from the Brewer's Association.
In 2021, the company attempted to rebrand its logo to celebrate its 125th anniversary — but the move sparked so much online backlash that the brewery released a statement defending its decision, saying: "Our history is our foundation, but it will be lost if no one sees us."
Soon after the brewery announced it was shutting, people on Twitter and Reddit began posting their "final reviews" and started saying their goodbyes.
Twitter user @Grant_Marek wrote: "after i heard they were ceasing all operations this morning, rode my bike by anchor brewing on the way to work. the flag is flying upside down. dark, dark day for san francisco beer drinkers."
Peter Hartlaub, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, tweeted his final review of Anchor's beer on Wednesday, writing: "I drank maybe my final Anchor steam, and reviewed it through my tears."
Sapporo did not respond to a request for comment from Insider.
Lac de Maison is a 17th century hamlet in the Poitou-Charentes region of France.
Liz Murphy
Liz and Dave Murphy left their 9-to-5 jobs and traded their city home for a 17th-century hamlet.
They split the cost of the site with Liz Murphy's mother and her husband, paying 215,000 euros each.
Now the family lives in the hamlet and runs other properties on the site as vacation rentals.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Liz Murphy, a 45-year-old owner of Lac de Maison, a 17th-century French hamlet and holiday rental. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
My husband, Dave, and I traded our detached house in Manchester for a 17th-century village in the French countryside in pursuit of a better quality of life.
We both had 9-to-5 jobs in copywriting and marketing, and life had become a mad rush of food, baths, and bedtime.
When COVID hit, we were both furloughed. It allowed us to reflect on our lives, and we realized how much time we'd missed with our kids, Charlotte and Tom, then 6 and 9.
On a whim in August 2020, we began looking at gîte businesses — vacation-rental homes in France — that were available to purchase. We dreamed about escaping to the French countryside.
The hamlet now has three operational gîtes.
Liz Murphy
We'd need a property with at least two gîtes to rent and two additional houses: one for our family and one for my mom, Helen, and her husband, Terry.
By September we'd found 10 locations that met our requirements. Luckily, COVID-19 travel restrictions had lifted that month, so we flew to France and visited several sites.
As soon as we pulled up the drive of Lac de Maison, a three-acre farmstead in the peaceful countryside of the Poitou-Charentes region, we knew it was the one.
The hamlet sprawls three acres of land.
Liz Murphy
The 500-year-old hamlet comprised an owner's home and three operational gîtes, with other derelict buildings on the site that could be renovated into additional gîtes. It also had a beautiful garden with chickens and goats.
We canceled the rest of our viewings and made an offer that day. We split the cost of the hamlet with my mom and her husband, who were joining us. The hamlet cost 430,000 euros in total. We paid 215,000 euros.
We financed the purchase by selling our house in England. Any profits beyond the price of the property went toward renovations.
The couple renovated old buildings into vacation rentals.
Liz Murphy
Though we finalized the property purchase on December 15, 2020, we didn't begin physically moving to France until January 2021.
During that time, Brexit happened, changing all the rules and turning our move into a flurry of passports and spreadsheets.
The move cost us around 6,000 euros. But by the beginning of 2021, all six of us were in France.
We renovated 2 buildings while running the business
Our family moved into the biggest gîte, while Mom and Terry took the old owner's home.
Two weeks in, Mom and Terry realized that space wasn't suited to their purposes. And though we hadn't budgeted for it initially, they decided to pay for a renovation.
One of the gîtes on the property.
Liz Murphy
What started as a new bathroom became a complete overhaul, down to the bricks. Mom and Terry returned to the UK for about eight months while we completed the work.
We saved money by doing any labor we could — plaster, floor, roofs — an experience with a learning curve.
We'd purchased the property knowing the previous owners had a couple of bookings for spring and five or six for the summer, including the gîte we were living in. So when Mom and Terry left, we moved into their house.
We stayed in that house until the construction was so extensive that we had to move into a camper on the property that spring.
The traditional French buildings date back 500 years.
Liz Murphy
At the same time, we began hosting guests — the first experience either Dave or I had in hospitality.
The learning curve was steep, but since we both love people and had been on holiday before, we knew the kind of experience we wanted to deliver.
By advertising where French people look for their holidays, we generated enough bookings to stay afloat. We also decided to remain open in the winter, when the property had previously not been open.
All this was in preparation for renovating an old ruined barn into a four-bedroom gîte and taking over one of the existing gîtes as our home.
The view from inside on of the gîtes.
Liz Murphy
In January 2022, we braced ourselves for a loss of income as we took the large gîte off the market, moved into it, and began construction on the ruin.
This shell of a building had been empty for over 100 years — no rooms, no electricity, and no water.
The interior of one of the gîtes available to rent.
Liz Murphy
Like with Mom and Terry's house, we did as much of the work as possible. We kept the original floors, and over nearly 10 months we turned everything around them into a new third gîte.
While we exceeded our 80,000 euro budget, it's been worth the investment. Today all three gîtes are fully occupied seven days a week from May through the beginning of September and every weekend the rest of the year.
The interior of one of the gîtes available to rent.
Liz Murphy
We're done renovating for now, but we continue to make minor tweaks to our residence, transforming it from a rental cottage into our home.
Life in the countryside is wonderful
This old farmstead is so different from our neighborhood in the UK. Our nearest neighbors are a quarter-mile, not a doorstep, away.
A bigger village is just a bit down the road where the kids go to school. There's also a movie theater, a library, and a café.
The kids have been in a French school since day one. For the first six months they despised us, the school — the whole enterprise. Two and a half years later, they're both thriving and fluent.
The hamlet has lots of outdoor space and amenities.
Liz Murphy
Dave and I were lucky to meet the wife of our builder, a lovely English-French lady who helped us navigate the French bureaucracy — what I found to be the most challenging part of this entire process.
For example, you must fill out forms to reregister your child for the same school, with the same teacher, every year, even if nothing changes. I think it's just because the French like paperwork.
The children's play area on the property.
Liz Murphy
The B-and-B business allows us to live comfortably
We didn't move to France to make money. We know we'll never be able to make as much here as we did with our big jobs in the city.
But life is just better here. We can be there as our kids and my mom and Terry grow older. This business allows us to put family first.
We essentially traded the value of our house in Manchester for Lac de Maison, and in the countryside your money goes so much further. We don't have to buy eggs — we've got them on-site.
We knew that for the first two years we'd break even. This year we can save the money we're making in the summer to keep our income steady during the slower but still occupied winter months.
An outdoor seating area for one of the gîtes.
Liz Murphy
With no more construction planned, we'll hopefully start to reap the rewards of the money we've plowed into the business next year.
We've had our ups and downs, but it's been 100% worth it. Moving to France is the best decision we've ever made.
That's a big miss, according to the economists Reuters polled. They expected exports to fall by 9.5% and imports to decline by 4%.
In fact, the slump in China's exports was the worst since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic over three years ago, according to Reuters' records.
"A weak global economic recovery, slowing global trade and investment, and rising unilateralism, protectionism and geopolitics" contributed to the poor showing in exports, said Lu Daliang, a General Administration of Customs spokesperson, at a news conference, per Reuters.
After an initial spurt, China's economy has struggled to recover from three years of on-off COVID-19 lockdowns, pointing to a disappointing showing for the world's second-largest economy this year.
Other recent data out of China has been disappointing, with manufacturing activity contracting for a third straight month in June, according to official statistics.
In May, China's industrial output grew 3.5% from a year ago — slowing from a 5.6% growth in April. Meanwhile, retail sales growth also slowed from 18.4% in April to 12.7% in May.
"The post-Covid recovery appears to have run its course, an economic double dip is nearly confirmed," economists at Nomura wrote in a June 16 note seen by Insider.
China's flagging economy is hitting young people especially hard. The youth unemployment rate hit a record high of 20.8% in May, according to official statistics. This means one out of five of those between 16 to 24 years old are out of work.
Some economists expect China to introduce a raft of stimulus measures to boost its flagging economy, but Beijing may take a more conservative stance, according to one analyst.
"We expect we will see more of a shot-gun approach to stimulus, with many smaller and more targeted measures adopted," Robert Carnell, ING's head of research for Asia Pacific wrote in a July 6 note. This means Beijing is likely to implement a mix of monetary policy easings, extended subsidies, and tax breaks, "but no wall of money," he added.