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Stephen A. Smith deals with firestorm over Rihanna Super Bowl remarks
Stephen A. Smith officially pissed off “The Navy.”
The “First Take” host posted a three-minute apology video after he said that Rihanna “ain’t no Beyonce” while discussing RiRi’s upcoming Super Bowl halftime performance on the “Sherri” show Wednesday.
“I’m gonna own it,” Smith said in a video posted to Twitter and Instagram later that day. “I know what y’all trying to do, but I’m gonna own it because I get paid to speak for a living, so I need to be more careful.
“I want Rihanna to know, you’re a superstar, you’re sensational, you’re spectacular, you’re no joke and you are a worthy person to be doing the Super Bowl halftime show.”
Smith said he noticed he made headlines for his comments about Rihanna after he finished taping Wednesday’s installment of ESPN’s “First Take.”
“… I’m a Beyonce fan,” Smith said in his apology video. “I think that Beyoncé is not only a phenomenal performer, but the phenomenal performer. The only reason any kind of comparison came into play is because Beyonce performed at halftime at the Super Bowl, not just by herself [in 2013], but one separate performance with Bruno Mars and Coldplay [in 2016] — and I thought those were two of the greatest shows that I’ve ever seen.
“… I meant it as no disrespect to Rihanna. I know she is phenomenal and she is my sister. Nothing but love for her, but Beyonce is my sister too. I got love for the both of them. I just think that Beyonce is the greatest performer out there today. That’s me, that doesn’t mean I’m hating on anybody else and that doesn’t mean I’m damn well wishing for Rihanna to fail. I think she’s going to be great.”
Smith then apologized to Rihanna and wished her luck before she takes the Super Bowl halftime stage next month in Arizona.
“Rihanna, go do your thing,” Smith said. “I apologize for creating whatever brouhaha comes of this. I gotta be more careful, where people twist it and turn it into something it ain’t. My bad on that.”
The sports personality made his initial comments when Sherri Shepherd asked if he’s excited about Rihanna’s upcoming Super Bowl gig — and “The Navy” [Rihanna’s fanbase] wasn’t happy about what he had to say.
“I don’t want to say I’m not excited,” Smith said. “She’s fantastic. That’s not where I’m going with this. Ladies and gentleman, she’s a lot of things, she’s spectacular and congratulations on new [motherhood].
“There’s one thing she’s not, she ain’t Beyonce,” Smith said as the audience let out a collective gasp. “The only reason I brought up Beyonce is because Beyonce recently performed at the Super Bowl… there’s levels, you know.
“Rihanna’s music is fantastic, she’s great, she’s a sister. I love her dearly, I listen to her music, I’m gonna support her ’til the cows come home. I’m just telling you for me, there is Beyonce and then there’s everybody else… She’s going to be good. She can’t be bad, she’s too great not to be good.”
Rihanna will take the stage to perform the Super Bowl halftime show on Feb. 12.
A ‘firestorm’ of hawkish Fed speculation erupts following strong U.S. inflation reading
How hawkish will the Federal Reserve be this year?
At the moment, Wall Street economists seem to be telling their clients “more hawkish than we thought five minutes ago.”
The strong U.S. consumer inflation data reported Thursday has set off what looks like a chain reaction of upward revisions to projected interest rates rises and where the Fed is headed with monetary policy.
Fed watchers are talking seriously about an “emergency” interest rate hike before the Fed’s next formal meeting on March 16.
The consumer price index rose 0.6% in January, with broad based gains. The year-over-year rate rose to 7.5%, the highest level in 40 years.
Read: Consumer price inflation increases sharply in January
In the wake of the data, Goldman Sachs said it now sees seven consecutive 25 basis point rate hikes at each of the remaining Fed policy meeting this year. The investment bank’s earlier prediction was five hikes.
Economists at Citi said that their base case is a now for a 50 basis point hike in March followed by quarter point hikes in May, June, September and December.
Marc Cabana, head of U.S. rates strategy at BofA Securities, told Bloomberg Radio that it is very likely the Fed is going to raise rates by 50 basis points in March and “who knows, maybe even 50 in May.”
The talk about an inter-meeting rate hike before March 16 erupted late Thursday after St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said was open to having that discussion.
Market analyst Mohamed Ed-Erian said the frenzy of speculation is a sign the Fed has lost control of the policy narrative. He said he didn’t want to see the Fed take aggressive moves because the market will price in aggressive moves again and again.
“This is what typically happens in a developing country when a central bank loses control of the policy narrative,” he said.
March Chandler, forex analyst for Bannockburn Global Forex, said it will be difficult for Fed officials to get ahead of the curve of expectations.
It is a strange time for the Fed. The central bank has been slowly “tapering” or reducing the amount of securities is is buying under its quantitative easing program started in the depth of the pandemic. The buying of Treasurys and mortgage backed securities is scheduled to end in mid-March.
Some Fed watchers think the Fed may decide to end these purchases “cold turkey,” with the announcement coming Friday.
Under the Fed’s QE program, the Fed is scheduled to release its schedule for the last month of asset purchases.
“If the Fed releases that calendar at 3 p.m, it is pretty strong forward guidance they’re not going to do an intermeeting hike,” Cabana said.
Cabana said he didn’t expect a rate hike before the March 16 meeting. He suggested that investors who want to bet on an intermeeting hike would be better positioned to play for a 75 basis point hike in March.
However, Robert Perli, head of global policy at Piper Sandler, said the firestorm among Fed watchers felt like “much ado about little.”
“We are first to recognize that inflation is too high for comfort. But what we learned yesterday from both the CPI report and FOMC members doesn’t seem enough to change the policy outlook nearly as much as the market did,” Perli said, in a note to clients.
Three Fed officials were not as hawkish as Bullard in their comments the wake of the CPI report.
Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin told the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research on Thursday evening that he would have to be convinced of a need for a 50 basis point rate hike, Reuters said.
In an interview with Market News International, San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly downplayed the chances of a half-a-percentage point hike in March.
And Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic told CNBC after the CPI data that he was sticking with his call for four rate hikes this year, including a 25 basis point hike in March.
Tim Duy, chief U.S. economist at SGH Macro Advisors, called these dovish Fed comments “nonsensical.”
“It is just getting to the point where the distance between the Fed’s current position and reality is too wide to ignore any longer,” Duy said, in a note to clients.
U.S. stocks
DJIA,
-0.17%
SPX,
-0.45%
were mixed late morning Friday after a wild week on Wall Street. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
2.024%
stayed above 2%, the highest level since 2019.
13,000 Years Ago, a Firestorm Covered 10% of Earth’s Surface, Triggering an Ice Age
At a point some 12,800 years ago, a tenth of Earth’s surface suddenly became covered in roaring fires.
The firestorm rivalled the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, and it was likely caused by fragments of a comet that would have measured around 100 kilometers (62 miles) across.
As dust clouds smothered Earth, they kicked off a mini ice age that kept the planet cool for another thousand years, just as it was emerging from 100,000 years of being covered in glaciers. Once the fires burned out, life could start again.
“The hypothesis is that a large comet fragmented and the chunks impacted the Earth, causing this disaster,” said Adrian Melott from the University of Kansas, who co-authored a 2018 study detailing this catastrophic event.
“A number of different chemical signatures – carbon dioxide, nitrate, ammonia and others – all seem to indicate that an astonishing 10 percent of the Earth’s land surface, or about 10 million square kilometers [3.86 million square miles], was consumed by fires.”
To peer back into the burning fires and shock waves of this major event, a large number of geochemical and isotopic markers were measured from more than 170 sites across the world, involving a team of 24 scientists.
One of the pieces of analysis carried out was on patterns in pollen levels, which suggested pine forests were suddenly burned off to be replaced by poplar trees – a species specializing in covering barren ground, as you might get when your planet has been hit by a series of massive fireballs.
In fact, parts of the comet that disintegrated in space are still likely to be floating around our Solar System 13,000 years later.
High concentrations of platinum – often found in asteroids and comets – and high levels of dust were also noted in the samples analyzed by the researchers, alongside increased concentrations of combustion aerosols you would expect to see if a lot of biomass was burning: ammonium, nitrate, and others.
Plants died off, food sources would have been scarce, and the previously retreating glaciers began to advance again, the team noted. Human culture would have had to adapt to the harsher conditions, with populations declining as a result.
“Computations suggest that the impact would have depleted the ozone layer, causing increases in skin cancer and other negative health effects,” said Melott.
The team hypothesized that such a widespread impact of comet fragments, and the ensuing firestorm, is responsible for that extra bit of cooling known as the Younger Dryas period. This relatively brief blip in the planet’s temperature has sometimes been put down to changing ocean currents.
However, the comet hit isn’t a completely new idea, even though this recent research goes into a great deal of depth to try and find evidence for it. Scientists have been debating whether a comet impact kicked off the Younger Dryas event for several years now.
Not everyone agrees that the data points to a comet strike, but this comprehensive work offers up more support for the hypothesis, as do the ancient carvings found in Turkey in 2017 – carvings which depict a devastating impact from an interstellar object.
“The impact hypothesis is still a hypothesis, but this study provides a massive amount of evidence, which we argue can only be all explained by a major cosmic impact,” says Melott.
The research has been published here and here in the Journal of Geology.
A version of this article was first published in 2018.
California rooftop solar proposal sparks firestorm
A proposed decision that would upend California’s rooftop solar industry is pitting economic justice advocates against solar buildout supporters and fracturing its environmental movement.
The controversial proposal — which has now been postponed “until further notice” — would lower the incentives that homeowners receive for generating their own solar power and charge them to connect to the electric grid.
The fight illustrates that battles within the energy transition don’t always conform to typical ideological lines, and pose hard questions for advocates of both expanded clean energy and fighting economic inequality.
The proposal, first unveiled in December by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), would alter its rooftop solar program by revising current “Net Energy Metering” (NEM) rules in such a way that “balances the needs of the electric grid, the environment and consumers,” a statement from the commission said.
The plans have been met with wide ranging backlash — including from celebrities like Elon MuskElon Reeve MuskEntrepreneurs protect the economy; governments should invest in them Canadian premier calls truckers protesting COVID-19 vaccine mandate an ‘occupation’ Why is Putin so confident these days? MORE and Mark Ruffalo — who raise concerns it will stunt the state’s transition to clean energy.
Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) penned a recent New York Times op-ed warning that “California is about to take a big step backward.” Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom
“I don’t think the commission appreciated the firestorm that their proposal was going to ignite,” Ken Cook, president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group, told The Hill.
That firestorm, he explained, resulted from “the convergence of the public’s deep frustration with the big utilities” and what they felt would be a disruption to “one of the most successful elements of energy policy in the state.”
The plans are so contentious, the CPUC removed a scheduled vote on the decision from its Jan. 27 meeting agenda. And on Thursday, the commission’s administrative law judge sent an email to a designated service list indicating that the proposed decision “will not appear on the Commission’s voting meeting agenda until further notice.”
A commissioner recently reassigned to the rulemaking “has requested additional time to analyze the record and consider revisions to the proposed decision based on party comments,” the email said, noting that the oral argument hearing will be rescheduled.
The proposal in question, dubbed NEM 3.0, would decrease the payments that solar customers receive when they send the excess power they generate back to the grid. NEM 3.0’s predecessors — introduced in 2013 and revised in 2016 — enabled customers to get credit on their electricity bills at retail rates, meaning they could essentially offset their monthly energy expenses.
Changes to this approach are necessary, the proposal argued, because the money provided to home solar producers is set at a fixed retail rate and not tied to how much the electricity is actually worth. Transitions to lower rates for existing customers would occur 15 years from their initial grid connection date.
NEM 3.0 would also require solar customers to pay a “grid participation charge” of $8 per kilowatt — a fee that the CPUC said would serve to “capture residential adopters’ fair share of costs to maintain the grid.” Low-income and tribal households would be exempt from these fees, while a $600-million Equity Fund would facilitate clean energy adoption in low-income communities, according to the proposal.
If the average San Diego rooftop system is about 5 to 6 kilowatts, most customers in that region would pay between $40 to $48 per month, The San Diego Tribune estimated.
The move could sharply curtail solar in the state. An analysis from Wood Mackenzie found that by 2024, it could cut the state’s residential solar market in half.
Laura Deehan, state director of the group Environment California, referred to a similar cutback in Nevada as a cautionary tale.
“We saw, very quickly, solar adoption just plummeted,” Deehan said. “And I am very concerned that the same thing will happen if the California Public Utilities Commission adopts anything close to what has been proposed.”
Whatever proposal ends up being adopted, Deehan said that there must be “no solar penalty fees,” as such charges would penalize people for fulfilling state energy goals.
In response to a query from The Hill, Newsom’s office said only that “the governor is deeply committed to moving forward our clean energy goals, including helping Californians access a diverse range of renewable energy sources.”
For proponents of the proposal, however, the current system comes with inherent disadvantages for low-income electricity users, who end up paying higher rates to offset the solar subsidy.
These proponents, which include consumer groups and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental group, note that low-income residents often can’t afford solar’s upfront costs and may not own their homes, so they can’t install panels.
They also point to the ephemeral nature of solar energy: while solar panels provide energy while the sun is shining during the day, in the evenings, these consumers may be using whichever electrons are on the grid, including those from fossil fuels.
“If you charge 30 cents a kilowatt hour, you’re not going to get the climate benefits, and you’re going to screw poor people,” said Severin Borenstein, a professor of business administration and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
“As the sun sets, the need for other generation ramps up really fast…That’s why we really need the gas capacity still…because we need to be able to meet demand at those times,” Borenstein said.
He explained that rooftop solar is “particularly ineffective” at the end of the day “because the production from it drops off earliest, so we’re not getting the benefits from rooftop solar that are going to shut down those gas plants.”
Deehan argued that rooftop solar has the potential to save money for everyone because when people produce their own electricity, they may not need what’s already on the grid, cutting demand.
“I’m instead creating my own electricity, sharing it with my neighbors,” she said. “The utility isn’t profiting from that but it’s essentially canceling out that demand.”
This situation, she conceded, could pose a problem “if there was suddenly no use for that extra energy” and therefore everyone ended up paying more.
But Deehan explained that this is “just not a problem we’re seeing,” as the “demand for electricity is surging” in California — particularly as people purchase electric vehicles that require charging.
“In fact, it’s projected that we’re going to need somewhere between 150 percent and 200 percent of our current electricity needs,” she said.
The controversy is dividing the state’s environmental advocates, as the NRDC supports the proposal while other groups like the Sierra Club and the Environmental Working Group oppose it.
In an explainer page on its website, the NRDC argues that the rates the program pays have not kept up with changes as solar became more widely adopted.
“Today’s rates for net metering were established when solar power was just beginning to take off, at a time when solar needed to be incentivized because of its high installation cost,” the page said.
While the grid initially required more power at midday, that need has decreased, and retail rates have since “doubled or tripled,” according to the group.
“So today, utilities effectively pay rooftop solar users five times what that energy is worth in California,” it added.
The Sierra Club has taken issue with the extra charge for solar producers to hook up to the grid, but is more sympathetic to the argument about how solar producers are overcompensated.
The group has put forward something of a compromise proposal that would slowly decrease the payments for rooftop solar.
Katherine Ramsey, a senior Sierra Club attorney said that the key difference is that its proposal would tie the rate reductions to whether or not rooftop solar is actually being built out.
“We’re not really fighting over the long-term vision for this program,” Ramsey said, noting that it’s critical for step-downs to be linked to capacity.
This way, she explained, if the commission ends up cutting compensation too much and rooftop solar stalls, the export credit wouldn’t “decrease until they’ve caught up and are actually deploying new rooftop solar systems.”
Cook, from the Environmental Working Group, emphasized the importance of democratizing clean electricity generation through policy that puts lower-income or working-class families “at the front of the line” for solar adoption.
“Let’s ask the Public Utility Commission to start there — not with the approach they’ve taken, which is to basically make solar more expensive for everybody,” Cook said.
Cook stressed that the CPUC needs “to start from scratch and ask the question, how do we deal with the fact that low-income families are paying too much for power, and they don’t have access to solar?”
“I don’t think it’s by crushing the rooftop solar industry,” he added. “That’s exactly backwards. And I think that’s a better starting point.”
Hubble Spots a Black Hole Igniting a Firestorm of Star Formation in a Dwarf Galaxy
Dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 sparkles with young stars in this Hubble visible-light image. The bright region at the center, surrounded by pink clouds and dark dust lanes, indicates the location of the galaxy’s massive black hole and active stellar nurseries. Credit: NASA, ESA, Zachary Schutte (XGI), Amy Reines (XGI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10 continues to make a big impact, defying astronomers’ expectations.
Black holes are often described as the monsters of the universe—tearing apart stars, consuming anything that comes too close, and holding light captive. Detailed evidence from 
Hubble imaging and spectroscopy of the dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 clearly show a gas outflow stretching from the black hole to a bright star birth region like an umbilical cord, triggering the already dense cloud into forming clusters of stars. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; Lead Producer: Paul Morris
Often portrayed as destructive monsters that hold light captive, black holes take on a less villainous role in the latest research from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. A black hole at the heart of the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10 is creating stars rather than gobbling them up. The black hole is apparently contributing to the firestorm of new star formation taking place in the galaxy. The dwarf galaxy lies 30 million light-years away, in the southern constellation Pyxis.
A decade ago this small galaxy set off debate among astronomers as to whether dwarf galaxies were home to black holes proportional to the supermassive behemoths found in the hearts of larger galaxies. This new discovery has little Henize 2-10, containing only one-tenth the number of stars found in our 
A pullout of the central region of dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 traces an outflow, or bridge of hot gas 230 light-years long, connecting the galaxy’s massive black hole and a star-forming region. Hubble data on the velocity of the outflow from the black hole, as well as the age of the young stars, indicates a causal relationship between the two. A few million years ago, the outflow of hot gas slammed into the dense cloud of a stellar nursery and spread out, like water from a hose impacting a mound of dirt. Now clusters of young stars are aligned perpendicular to the outflow, revealing the path of its spread. Credit: NASA, ESA, Zachary Schutte (XGI), Amy Reines (XGI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
“From the beginning, I knew something unusual and special was happening in Henize 2-10, and now Hubble has provided a very clear picture of the connection between the black hole and a neighboring star forming region located 230 light-years from the black hole,” Reines said.
That connection is an outflow of gas stretching across space like an umbilical cord to a bright stellar nursery. The region was already home to a dense cocoon of gas when the low-velocity outflow arrived. Hubble spectroscopy shows the outflow was moving about 1 million miles per hour, slamming into the dense gas like a garden hose hitting a pile of dirt and spreading out. Newborn star clusters dot the path of the outflow’s spread, their ages also calculated by Hubble.
This is the opposite effect of what’s seen in larger galaxies, where material falling toward the black hole is whisked away by surrounding magnetic fields, forming blazing jets of
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NFL has 1 Black head coach after Texans fire David Culley, league faces social media firestorm
The Houston Texans came under fire Thursday when the team fired head coach David Culley after one season, leaving only one Black head coach in the NFL.
The Texans went 4-13 in Culley’s lone year but the head coach had to deal with a lot for a first-year head coach. The team had all the legal drama surrounding Deshaun Watson coupled with his trade request and the circus he brought to training camp and the will they or won’t they in regard to a trade in the middle of the season.
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Houston Texans head coach David Culley watches from the sideline during the first half of his team’s NFL football game against the San Francisco 49ers in Santa Clara, California, Sunday, Jan. 2, 2022.
(AP Photo/Jed Jacobsohn)
Houston had the same number of wins as they did in 2020 with Romeo Crennel and Bill O’Brien. Houston’s offensive coordinator Tim Kelly was also fired.
“Earlier today, I met with David Culley and Tim Kelly to inform them we will be moving in a different direction at the head coach and offensive coordinator positions. I came to this difficult but necessary decision after reviewing our football operation,” Texans general manager Nick Caserio said in a statement. “While a change after one season is unusual, we had philosophical differences over the long-term direction and vision for our program moving forward. We appreciate Coach Culley for helping us navigate through a difficult season, but it is my responsibility to make decisions that I feel are best for our organization. The search for the next coach of the Houston Texans will begin immediately.”
Texans chairman Cal McNair added: “We are grateful for the energy and passion David brought to our organization throughout last season. We wish him, his wife Carolyn and their entire family nothing but the best moving forward. I have entrusted Nick Caserio to lead football performance and I have complete confidence he will find the best leader for our team. These decisions are difficult, but Nick believed it was necessary for the future of our organization. We look forward to continuing to build our roster and finding the right coach to lead us forward.”
TEXANS FIRE DAVID CULLEY AFTER HIS ONE SEASON AS HEAD COACH
The dismissal created a firestorm on social media. Many decried the Texans for letting go Culley, who is Black, after one season.
At the start of Monday, the NFL didn’t have many Black head coaches to begin with. The Pittsburgh Steelers have Mike Tomlin, Brian Flores was with the Miami Dolphins and Culley with the Texans. The Dolphins fired Flores on Monday.
Washington’s Ron Rivera and the New York Jets’ Robert Saleh are the other minority head coaches outside of Culley.
Houston Texans head coach David Culley questions a call during the first half of an NFL football game against the Tennessee Titans, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022, in Houston.
(AP Photo/Eric Christian Smith)
Culley discussed the challenges he faced in his first season with the Associated Press last month.
“There’s a manual that they give you, like here’s all the things that will happen to you. Listen, there’s been many, many things that ain’t in that manual that I’ve had to go through here that you just learn, you learn on the run,” Culley said.
“But the big thing is, do what you feel like is right for your team. And be honest with everybody. And that’s what I’m trying to do.”
Culley also talked about the long road he took to get to where he was and the lack of minority head coaches in the league.
Head coach Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers looks on during the second half against the Baltimore Ravens at Heinz Field on Dec. 5, 2021, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
(Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)
“It’s just very disappointing. And very disappointing for this reason, there are so many minority coaches in this profession from all ethnicities that deserve to have that opportunity.”
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It’s the first time Houston had fired a head coach after one season.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ben & Jerry’s in middle of firestorm following boycott of Israel’s “occupied Palestinian territory”
A boycott campaign propelled by GOP officials in several states sprung up this week against ice cream maker Ben & Jerrys, after an earlier decision by the company to stop selling its products in Israeli occupied territory.
The Vermont-based brand, which has a long history of taking socially conscious stances, put out a statement saying it was “inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” which included the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
According to the Associated Press, “Israel annexed east Jerusalem after the 1967 war and considers the entire city its undivided capital, though the annexation is not internationally recognized. It says the West Bank is disputed territory and says its final status should be resolved in negotiations. The international community, however, widely considers both areas to be occupied territory.”
Both of the company’s founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, are Jewish.
Ben & Jerry’s has a rather unique agreement with its parent company, the international behemoth Unilever, which allows for the board to take controversial stances. To date, the decision is one of the strongest stances an American company has taken against Israel, traditionally one of America’s closest allies.
The backlash was swift, and harsh.
In response to the move, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett issued a threatening statement, vowing to “act aggressively” against the company — even going so far as to call the targeted boycott “a new form of terrorism.”
The decision to stop selling ice cream in what Israel calls “disputed territory” also incensed elected officials in both parties — Biden’s White House lamented that Ben & Jerry’s was “unfairly” targeting Israel — but especially conservative lawmakers and pundits, who have aggressively aligned themselves with Israel in recent years.
Texas and Florida, run by two of the GOP’s most well-known governors, said they are currently exploring harsh actions like a coordinated divestment campaign or even an outright ban.
Both leaders wasted no time decrying the company’s original statement.
“Ben and Jerry’s decision to boycott parts of Israel is disgraceful and an insult to America’s closest ally in the Middle East,” a statement from the office of Texas Gov. Greg Abbot Tuesday night read. “Unilever, Ben and Jerry’s parent company, must reverse this ill-conceived decision.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis placed Unilever under state review, saying “Florida has long had a strong relationship with the State of Israel,” adding that, “As a matter of law and principle, the State of Florida does not tolerate discrimination against the State of Israel or the Israeli people, including boycotts and divestments targeting Israel.”
More than 30 U.S. states have laws on the books prohibiting pension funds from investing in companies that refuse to do business with Israel — though it’s unclear if Ben & Jerry’s action this week qualifies, legally speaking. In its original statement, the company said it would not renew its local license with a longtime Israeli partner — but agreed to continue selling its products in the rest of the country “through a different arrangement.”
Nevertheless, Republican officials in both Florida and Texas both said they were discussing what recourse to pursue against the ice cream maker, including a potential divestment of state resources. Texas State Comptroller Glenn Hegar even went so far as to suggest a statewide ban of the company’s products.
Fox News also repeatedly railed on Ben & Jerry’s for the action, with many hosts calling for viewers to stop purchasing the brand.
“I wish we could return to the days where companies sold products instead of virtue signals,” Fox host Tomi Lahren lamented. “I don’t believe in cancel culture, but it is time to look at these companies and say, ‘what exactly are you standing for?'”
It wasn’t the first time the network has railed against the staunchly progressive company, with another recent controversy igniting over Ben & Jerry’s Colin Kaepernick-named ice cream, which sought to celebrate the former NFL player’s protest against police brutality.
AirBnB also found itself in a similar situation just a few years ago when the online home rental company announced in 2018 that it would no longer list properties in the occupied West Bank. The company reversed its decision just a few months later in the face of harsh criticism.