TruePerson

@pmddomingos I can’t defend all of NYT’s coverage (and agree a lot of their stories have a progressive slant), but they DO still publish legit stories, well-sourced/hard-hitting. If you’re looking for some bullshit MAGA mouthpiece (like a print version of Fox) then you’re part of the problem.

The NY Times is not an American newspaper. It’s an anti-American one.

@BillAckman Agree.

I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest. By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person. The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster. While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family. Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on. Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job. When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned. My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful. Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership. Now here is where I need your advice. All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion). The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years. When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm. In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to: “unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.” The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE: “In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.” The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so. When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended. Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful. Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office. Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop. The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims. The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males. The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes. So what happened here? Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer. Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss. When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case. The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim. Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO. Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months. She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly. So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew. Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move. All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior. Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community. I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it. Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?

@StephenM QUIET, PIGGY.

Look at the rate of civilizational advancement from 1st flight to moon landing and consider where we’d be now had we not subsequently reoriented society around the idea that the entire world has a right to live here, vote here & receive legal, political and financial preference.

@DHSgov WTF ???! KEEP CHURCH & STATE SEPARATED !!!!

John 1:5 Through all darkness our Lord’s light shines.

@DSPetolicchio Same.

I don't hate the Chinese people, I hate communism and I oppose the Chinese communist party.

@therealrayra Are you for real? Trump is literally THE MOST CORRUPT motherfucker ever to occupy the White House. ….. and and his bullshit sons (along with Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner and shadey-ass Witkoff) are cit from the same cloth.

@TruePerson802 He's an asshole. What of it? 'Stability' means nothing changes, when the status quo is so broken and corrupt it MUST be changed, he's the very person who SHOULD be the President. He was hired to destroy the status quo. He's doing the job he was hired for.

I agree with some of this directionally, but my God the refusal to acknowledge that Trump has worked assiduously to poison the alliance and heap all the blame on Europe is just water-carrying hackery. Saying "NATO will never be the same, and Western European weakness and acquiescence is the cause" is like writing a movie review when you missed the first half of the movie.

@Jkylebass @SecRubio @sunchartist Kyle the sycophant… Ugh.. please dude…. Spare us… When Rubio joined Trump’s ill-advised verbal denigration of NATO, it showed us that he’s slippery and can scarcely be trusted….. and yet you’re singing his praises?? How the heck does that square up?

@SecRubio @sunchartist Secretary Rubio, we Americans appreciate your firm, principled, and steadfast leadership in standing up to those who seek to denigrate our culture, our values, and our way of life. I sincerely hope you will be our next President. 🇺🇸

Until recently, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter were green card holders living lavishly in the United States. Afshar is the niece of deceased Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. She is also an outspoken supporter of the Iranian regime who celebrated attacks on Americans and referred to our country as the "Great Satan." This week, I terminated both Afshar and her daughter's legal status and they are now in ICE custody, pending removal from the United States. The Trump Administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes.

@michnscenic You miss the point, ace. I think Biden was a turd. Border closures makes all the sense in the world. Inflation? Lemme break it to ya, POTUS doesn’t control inflation!Fetanyl? Massive crisis. Driven by CHINA (which Trump has gone soft on). Solving wars? False. Class dismissed.

What a pathetic post. Are you seriously suggesting that Trump went about closing the southern border wrong? Or cutting Biden’s inflation rate roughly in half? Or pressuring North American Treaty Organization countries to end their half-century of welfare queen practices? Or dramatically reducing the flow of fentanyl into the country? Or helping end multiple wars around the world? And on and on and on. And then cap the above off with a contrast of Trump and his senile predecessor.

@GeorgeHump56980 @JonahDispatch You may be right, but Trump is still a huge douche,… he’s directionally right, but goes about things wrong…. Needlessly making an ass out of himself (and us)…… he’s a slippery, corrupt, grifter. And he creates chaos where stability would be better & cheaper.

@JonahDispatch NATO is a hollow shell of what it was 40 years ago let alone 10 years ago. This collapse predates Trump and Obama. They have abandoned their military to the point they have gutted their war fighting capability. Relying exclusively on US deterence.

@WKortepeter You may be right, but Trump is still a huge douche,… he’s directionally right, but goes about things wrong…. Needlessly making an ass out of himself (and us)…… he’s a slippery, corrupt, grifter. And he creates chaos where stability would be better & cheaper.

@JonahDispatch Asking them to pay their fair share and help defend the country that has defended them for decades, is not water carrying hackery! There is, and never was an alliance-we covered their ass so they could support their social welfare programs.

@SJMac8546 You may be right, but Trump is still a huge douche,… he’s directionally right, but goes about things wrong…. Needlessly making an ass out of himself (and us)…… he’s a slippery, corrupt, grifter. And he creates chaos where stability would be better & cheaper.

@JonahDispatch How original, it's Trump's fault. You are a one trick pony lacking any original thought. Everything was going so smoothly before Trump. Western Europe is lost because they chose to lose. They are now run by leftist lunatics and if not for Trump we would be too

@2019wasbetter You may be right, but Trump is still a huge douche,… he’s directionally right, but goes about things wring…. Needlessly making an ass out of himself (and us)…… he’s a slippery, corrupt, grifter. And he creates chaos where stability would be better & cheaper.

@JonahDispatch President Trump exposed what was already there and wrong with NATO and Western Europe. You may not like how he did it, but all he did was shine a light on the truth of the situation.

@varn_brian @JonahDispatch You may be right, but Trump is still a huge douche,… he’s directionally right, but goes about things wrong…. Needlessly making an ass out of himself (and us)…… he’s a slippery, corrupt, grifter. And he creates chaos where stability would be better & cheaper.

@JonahDispatch Right! Because demanding that Europe pull their weight in their mutual protection was just plain “mean”, right comrade?

@therealrayra You may be right, but Trump is still a huge douche,… he’s directionally right, but goes about things wrong…. Needlessly making an ass out of himself (and us)…… he’s a slippery, corrupt, grifter. And he creates chaos where stability would be better & cheaper.

@JonahDispatch You're such a relentless TDS shitbird that you can't even grasp how he's maneuvering Europe into arming up and standing on their own two feet. Have you even bothered to read 'Art of the Deal' yet? It's been published for 40yrs and it's been 11 since he came down the escalator.

@michnscenic You may be right, but Trump is still a huge douche,… he’s directionally right, but goes about things wrong…. Needlessly making an ass out of himself (and us)…… he’s a slippery, corrupt, grifter. And he creates chaos where stability would be better & cheaper.

@JonahDispatch About goddamn time European members of NATO are called out for what they have been for most of my three quarters of a century on the planet — a bunch of welfare queens.

@IdeaRat55 @JonahDispatch You may be right, but Trump is still a huge douche,… he’s directionally right, but goes about things wring…. Needlessly making an ass out of himself (and us)…… he’s a slippery, corrupt, grifter. And he creates chaos where stability would be better & cheaper.

@JonahDispatch Poison like chemotherapy. How many years and how much of America’s resources have we spent carrying the unfair burden of their protection. Nothings forever. Nor should it be in this case. Let them drown in their own caliphates. America has more pressing priorities right now .

@DSPetolicchio One reason is…… that the Clown Show Trump Administration (due to its crazy, 6th-grade petulant behavior across multiple fronts) literally sucks all the oxygen away from other legit/pressing issues including the major China one you mention.

China is a global threat that pulls strings on every continent. Why is no one talking about this?

@isaacstonefish It’s BIZARRE

I wish all who observe a blessed Good Friday -- but as a proud and patriotic American Jew I do not think it is appropriate at all for Homeland Security to post Bible quotes.

@Denver4VA Totally agree - it’s bizarre

This is inappropriate. Government accounts should not be posting religious content. This isn’t Iran.

@PressSec SHUT UP, YOU LIAR

"This Easter Sunday, the First Lady and I join with Christians all across our Nation and around the world in rejoicing in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, whose triumph over sin and victory over death secured the promise of redemption and the hope of eternal life for all who believe in Him as Lord and Savior." - @POTUS