kimgeiger

Welcome @jamesoliphant to The Capitol Forum as Deputy Managing Editor on our Antitrust team! He joins us from Reuters, with leadership roles at National Journal and Legal Times, plus reporting experience at the Chicago Tribune and LA Times. 👉 Meet the TCF team: thecapitolforum.com/team/?utm_sour…

Xponential Fitness: $22.75 Million Settlement in Mass Mediation with Franchisees; Fresh Lawsuit Alleges Reliance on Class Pass Revenues Obscured Studio Performance Metrics; Struggles Continue at StretchLab library.thecapitolforum.com/docs/94tj71ub1… h/t @kimgeiger $XPOF

If you care who becomes president in 2028, make time to read @AshleyRParker 's wild ride profile of Rahm Emanuel, the "pile-driver" candidate in waiting. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

Kalshi: Cracks in Legal Theory Beginning to Emerge After Early Court Victory Recent rulings in Massachusetts and Nevada challenge the company’s claim that its sports betting contracts fall solely under federal CFTC jurisdiction. Our deep dive into the case: library.thecapitolforum.com/docs/90ux4huw4… h/t @kimgeiger $DKNG $FLUT $GENI $HOOD $SRAD

Anthony Geisler is running it back and has gotten the band back together for it.... sequelbrands.com/press. Some good reporting by my colleague, @kimgeiger, on this today. $XPOF

Equitable Financial Life Insurance Company: Shrinking Surplus Raises Questions about Regulatory Arbitrage Tactics, Company Solvency $EQH library.thecapitolforum.com/docs/8kzbxtwt7… h/t @kimgeiger & @LisaEpst

Hi Antonio, you made several outrageous claims last night that I believe warrant more evidence: 1. You claim that "[SS] defaults have been set to max inclusion, max pay" for "these people" - heavily implying that asylum seekers are receiving benefits. However, only those granted asylum are eligible for benefits. As you said yourself, there is a huge backlog of asylum claims, and while there was an influx of asylum seekers in 2023-24, the number of new asylees remained constant. In particular, you claim 1.3 million people "from this cohort" are on Medicaid. Well, given there were only 165,000 new asylees over those 4 years, that seems unlikely. So perhaps you're sneakily referring to other classes of immigrant you didn't spend 5 minutes ranting about. I made a chart with data from USCIS and OHSS reports showing annual approvals for each of the common legal statuses eligible for benefits. We can see a dip during COVID followed by a return to normal levels in 2022 and an increase in 2023-24 to ~1.45x 2017 levels. Not as dramatic as your chart, though, is it? The increase is almost entirely explained by Biden's parolee program - around 1M total in 2023-24. Not asylum seekers who trekked to the border and entered unlawfully. People who were invited here to escape humanitarian crises with temporary legal status. Which leads me to... 2. You said what you really care about here is the human trafficking, that "the human tragedy this created is extraordinary". You said that handing out benefits to people who entered the country unlawfully enticed more to make the dangerous trip, which resulted in children being trafficked by cartels. But wait - that's exactly what the parole program was designed to address. Parolees were sponsored and completed paperwork in advance and flew to ports of entry. The same number of people who entered unlawfully from countries in the program would be deported to Mexico each month. Only the parolees were eligible for benefits. How exactly did this incentivize asylum seeking and trafficking? 3. Finally, you agreed with Elon's insane, incoherent conspiracy theory - that Democrats were enticing immigrants to come so they can vote and make America permanently blue. However, having an SSN doesn't allow any noncitizen to vote, and no past investigation has uncovered any real evidence of noncitizen voting at scale. You claimed you found evidence. How? Using what records? How many people, 5? Why would you make this claim without sharing a single number? An alternate version of the conspiracy Elon offers is that these "imported immigrants" will quickly be given green cards, after which they have a clear path to citizenship. However, the number of green cards granted each year has been essentially constant for decades, and the vast majority are granted to family of citizens or for work-based preferences. Legal immigration pathways have huge backlogs, and the rate at which green cards are granted is not correlated to other immigration flows. Entering unlawfully is a disadvantage; asylees and refugees are approved at miniscule rates; and parolees are only here for up to 2 years. Nothing will increase the rate of naturalization besides process reform by Congress. So tell me again, Antonio, where is the fraud here?

The current meltdown in California insurance market — which is one of the major factors behind the number of homes built in extreme high fire hazard zones — dates to 1988. That’s the year California voters passed Prop 103. A political 🧵

Xponential Fitness: UnitedHealthcare Removal of XPOF Brands from Gym Membership Perk for Medicare Plan Members Could Affect Studio Revenues $UNH $XPOF library.thecapitolforum.com/docs/85anurqb3… h/t @kimgeiger & @vikasxkumarbk

Ah, Yuval Levin makes this point more eloquently: “This is the trap that our 21st-century presidents have tended to fall into. They win elections because their opponents were unpopular, and then—imagining the public has endorsed their party activists’ agenda—they use the power of their office to make themselves unpopular. This is why the public moved left on key issues during Trump’s first term and right during Biden’s.” thedispatch.com/article/what-t…

@charles_gaba Thank you for this!

I can't speak for the rest of the country, but whoever is controlling the weather in Chicago is doing a terrific job.

Meanwhile in Chicago.

Respectfully, attacking the moderators for pointing out that it’s illegal to kill babies and that people are not eating pets in Springfield is a losing position.

I don’t aspire to be a media watchdog, the glass houses of my 29 years in daily journalism, etc. But when I woke up to *this* as the lead online article for America’s most powerful news organization, I winced. And it’s bothered me all day, because of its sweeping assertions. 🧵

Xponential Fitness: Franchisees of Growth Brand StretchLab Sounding Alarm to Management, Warn Studios Can't Deliver on Profitability Promise $XPOF library.thecapitolforum.com/docs/7yd9y7nxu… h/t @kimgeiger

You think I just fell out of a coconut tree?

There's a really glaring surface-level contradiction between Vance-loving tech rightists saying he is the antidote to Lina Khan, and Vance saying Lina Khan is the only good Democrat and I'd like someone to try to address it.

Evolv Technologies: Content Continues to Disappear From Company Website; School District Attempts to Deflect Liability For Stabbing Incident as Other Schools Seek Exit From Evolv Contracts $EVLV h/t @kimgeiger & @KristaKBrown library.thecapitolforum.com/docs/7mg7b6nmk…

Xponential Fitness: Department of Justice, FBI Investigating Boutique Studio Franchisor $XPOF H/t @kimgeiger & @vikasxkumarbk library.thecapitolforum.com/docs/7kpypv2ez…