In Wisconsin, Michigan and other states, abortion bans that were long considered dormant could determine if access to the procedure survives the overturning of Roe.
Tag Archives: Michigan
With Swag and Swagger, State Democrats Vie for Front of Presidential Primary Line
After Iowa’s disastrous 2020 caucuses, Democratic officials are weighing drastic changes to the 2024 calendar. States, angling for early attention, are waxing poetic. Behold, the New Jersey Turnpike!
Avian Influenza Is Affecting Wild Mammals
As a new version of bird flu spread through North America this spring, scientists began finding the virus in red foxes, bobcats and other mammals.
Michigan Governor Candidate Ryan Kelley, Who Was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Is Arrested
Mr. Kelley faces several misdemeanor charges, including disorderly conduct, in connection with the attack on the Capitol.
F.D.A. Chief Details ‘Shocking’ Conditions at Baby Formula Plant
Agency inspectors found a leaking roof, standing water and cracked production equipment before a facility shutdown that led to major shortages.
Jocelyn Benson: Protests at Judges’ Homes Must Be Legal, but They Aren’t Effective
Despite the terrifying experience of armed protesters picketing Jocelyn Benson’s house, she supports the right to protest outside public officials’ homes.
The Michigan Mink Mystery: How Did an Interspecies Outbreak Unfold?
The puzzling coronavirus cases highlight ongoing surveillance challenges and blind spots.
Two Killed, Dozens Injured in Rare Northern Michigan Tornado
The deaths were reported in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Gaylord, where crews continued to search the wreckage on Saturday.
Tornado in Northern Michigan Kills One and Damages Homes and Businesses
Nearly two dozen people were injured, officials said. Trees and power lines were blocking roads in Gaylord, a city of about 4,000.
Michigan Judge Suspends an Abortion Ban From 1931
The law is obsolete because of Roe v. Wade but still on the books. Abortion rights advocates are worried that a potential Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe will revive it.
After Elevation of Trump Allies, Revolt Brews in Michigan G.O.P.
The Republican old guard is protesting the direction of the party after it put forward two champions of Donald Trump’s election falsehoods for attorney general and secretary of state.
Democrats, You Can’t Ignore the Culture Wars Any Longer
The only alternative to fighting is losing.
Four Americans Were Infected With a Virus Variant Seen in Mink
The cluster is the first known instance of likely animal-to-human transmission in the United States.
Trump’s Focus on 2020 Election Splits Michigan Republicans
The former president is trying to reshape the battleground state in his image. But his false claims about the 2020 election are driving a wedge between loyalists and those who are eager to move on.
Is Trump the Democrats’ Secret Weapon?
There are days when it certainly seems that way.
In a Michigan County, Stimulus Funds Are Remaking Public Health Programs
Many cities and counties say that shoring up local public health systems is crucial to recovering from the pandemic and addressing entrenched health disparities.
Jury Reaches Partial Verdict in Trial of Men Accused of Plot to Kidnap Michigan Governor
The judge told jurors to continue trying to reach agreement on other charges where they have deadlocked.
Fred Upton, House Republican Who Supported Impeachment, Will Retire
Mr. Upton is the fourth House Republican who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump to decline to run for re-election.
Trial in Alleged Plot to Kidnap Michigan’s Governor Nears End
Closing arguments are expected Friday in the federal case against four men with militia ties who are accused of conspiring to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Group Wanted to Kidnap Michigan Governor and Block Biden’s Election, Plotter Says
By abducting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, one man who pleaded guilty said, he hoped to disrupt the 2020 election and perhaps start a civil war.
Michigan Brothers 1995 Murder Conviction Is Overturned
Prosecutors said that Melvin and George DeJesus were falsely accused of killing a woman in 1995 in what the Michigan attorney general called “a total miscarriage of justice.”
In Whitmer Kidnapping Trial, Lawyers Debate Over Defendants’ Words
The proceedings that began last week test the government’s ability to root out violent extremism at home.
Shipwreck From 1891 is Found in Lake Superior
The Atlanta was carrying coal across Lake Superior when it sank in a storm in the 19th century. Its discovery has revived the story of the crew’s struggle to reach shore.
What Rashida Tlaib Represents
She changed the Israeli-Palestinian debate in Congress by reminding her colleagues of the human stakes. It’s a burden she would rather not carry.
New Coronavirus Lineage Discovered in Ontario Deer
Scientists also found signs of possible deer-to-human transmission, but there is no evidence that the new lineage poses an elevated risk to people.
How The Trucker Protests Are Snarling the Auto Industry
Blockades of U.S.-Canada border crossings could hurt the auto industry, factory workers and the economy, which are still recovering from pandemic disruptions.
The Case for Prosecuting Ethan Crumbley’s Parents in the Michigan School Shooting
A conviction would set an outer limit on how permissive they can be with firearms.
University Mistakenly Tells 5,500 Students They Won Huge Scholarships
Oakland University in Michigan said “human error” was to blame for the incorrect emails. It was the second university in the state this month to make such a mistake.
What Does ‘a Desk for Working Parents’ Mean?
Baby steps.
Central Michigan University to Pay Tuition After Scholarship Error
Central Michigan University said the error was made by school staff members who were testing new messaging technology.
Roles of F.B.I. and Informants Muddle the Michigan Governor Kidnapping Case
Before five men stand trial in March, prosecutors and defense lawyers are examining more than 1,000 hours of secretly recorded conversations.
Professor Who Called Students ‘Vectors of Disease’ Is Suspended
Barry Mehler of Ferris State University was put on paid leave after uploading the bizarre welcome video, but some of his peers said his rights of free expression were being curtailed.
Michigan’s New Congressional Maps Undo Years of Gerrymandering
A citizen ballot initiative took redistricting out of the hands of partisan legislators. The result: competitive political districts — and an example of how to push back against hyperpartisanship.
Doctors and Nurses Are ‘Living in a Constant Crisis’ as Covid Fills Hospitals and Omicron Looms
Hospitalizations across the country have increased 20 percent in two weeks, taxing already exhausted health care workers as the United States confronts a new variant.
After a School Shooting, Should Parents Be Prosecuted?
A Michigan prosecutor hopes the strategy can prevent more school shootings. But some on both sides of the gun control debate are wary.
America’s Anti-Democratic Movement
It’s making progress.
What Can Schools Do About Disturbed Students?
“There is no profile of a school shooter that is reliable.”
I’m an E.R. Doctor in Michigan, Where Unvaccinated People Are Filling Hospital Beds
With every shift, I see the strain people sick with Covid-19 put on my hospital.
Kellogg Workers Prolong Strike by Rejecting Contract Proposal
About 1,400 workers have been on strike since Oct. 5 at four Kellogg cereal plants in the United States over a dispute that has revolved around the company’s two-tier compensation structure.
We Are Not Going to Run Out of Hypocrisy Anytime Soon
Yet another school shooting, the Supreme Court argument over Roe and much else in American life gives us pause.
Omicron Is Another Waiting Game for Parents
A worrisome week in news.
What We Know About the Michigan School Shooting Victims
Authorities late Tuesday released the names of the victims in the Michigan high school shooting.
How Higher Prices This Holiday Season Could Cost Democrats, Too
Rising prices for gas and a holiday meal could come back to bite Democrats, who fear that inflation may upend their electoral prospects in the 2022 midterms.
Dying Satellite, Not U.F.O. or Meteor, Likely Caused Midwest Fireball
The fiery trail astonished viewers in Ohio, Michigan and Indiana, but a Russian military spacecraft was the probable source.
A Blackface ‘Othello’ Shocks, and a Professor Steps Back From Class
Students objected after the composer Bright Sheng showed the 1965 film of Laurence Olivier’s “Othello” to his class at the University of Michigan.
Why Democrats See 3 Governor’s Races as a Sea Wall for Fair Elections
Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania all have Democratic governors and G.O.P.-led legislatures. And in all three battlegrounds, Republicans are pushing hard to rewrite election laws.
Voters Wanted Fair Redistricting. They May Get Gerrymandering Instead.
The independent commissions set up against gerrymandering might be hopeless.
GrubMarket gobbles up $120M at a $1B+ pre-money valuation to take on the grocery supply chain
When people talk about “online food delivery” services, chances are that they’ll think of the Uber Eats, Instacarts and Getirs of this world. But today a startup that’s tackling a different aspect of the market — addressing the supply chain that subsequently turns the wheels of the bigger food distribution machine — is announcing a big round of funding as it continues to grow.
GrubMarket, which provides software and services that help link up and manage relationships between food suppliers and their customers — which can include wholesalers and other distributors, markets and supermarkets, delivery startups, restaurants, and consumers — has picked up $120 million in a Series E round of funding.
The funding is coming from a wide mix of investors. Liberty Street Funds, Walleye Capital, Japan Post Capital, Joseph Stone Capital, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Tech Pioneers Fund are among the new backers, who are being joined by existing investors Celtic House Asia Partners, INP Capital, Reimagined Ventures, Moringa Capital Management, and others, along with other unnamed participants
Mike Xu, GrubMarket’s founder and CEO (pictured, above), tells me that the company is currently profitable in a big way. It’s now at a $1 billion annualized run-rate, having grown revenues 300% over last year, with some markets like New York growing even more (it went from less than $10 million ARR to $100 million+).
With operations currently in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Missouri, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington, and some 40 warehouses nationwide. GrubMarket had a pre-money valuation of over $1 billion, and now it will be looking to grow even more, both in terms of territory and in terms of tech, moving ahead in a market that is largely absent from competitors.
“We are still the first mover in this space,” Xu said when I asked him in an interview about rivals. “No one else is doing consolidation on the supply chain side as we are. We are trying to consolidate the American food supply chain through software technologies, while also trying to find the best solutions in this space.”
(And for some context, the $1 billion+ valuation is more than double GrubMarket’s valuation in October 2020, when it raised $60 million at a $500 million post-money valuation.)
Longer term, the plan will be to look at an IPO provisionally filing the paperwork by summer 2022, Xu added.
GrubMarket got its start several years ago as one of many companies looking to provide a more efficient farm-to-table service. Tapping into a growing consumer interest in higher quality, and more traceable food, it saw an opportunity to build a platform to link up producers to the consumers, restaurants and grocery stores that were buying their products. (Grocery stores, incidentally, might be independent operations, or something much bigger: one of GrubMarket’s biggest customers is Whole Foods, which uses GrubMarket for produce supply in certain regions of the U.S. It is currently is the company’s biggest customer.)
As we wrote last year, GrubMarket — like many other grocery delivery services — found that the pandemic initially provided a big fillip, and a big rush of demand, from that consumer side of the business, as more people turned to internet-based ordering and delivery services to offset the fact that many stores were closed, or they simply wanted to curtail the amount of shopping they were doing in-person to slow the spread of Covid-19.
But fast forward to today, while the startup still serves consumers, this is currently not the primary part of its business. Instead, it’s B2B2C, serving companies that in turn serve consumers. Xu says that overall, demand from consumers has dropped off considerably compared to a year ago.
“We think that restaurant re-openings have meant more people are dining out again and spending less time at home,” Xu said, ” and also they can go back to physical grocery stores, so they are not as interested as they were before in buying raw ingredients online. I don’t want to offend other food tech companies, but I think many of them will be seeing the same. I think B2C is really going to slow down going forward.”
The opening for GrubMarket has been not just positioning itself as a middleman between producers and buyers, but to do so by way of technology and consolidating what has been a very regionalized and fragmented market up to now.
GrubMarket has snapped up no less than 40 companies in the last three years. While some of these have been to help it expand geographically (it made 10 acquisitions in the Los Angeles area alone), many have also been made to double down on technology.
These have included the likes of Farmigo, once a Disrupt Battlefield contender that pivoted into becoming a software provider to CSAs (an area that GrubMarket sees a lot of opportunity), as well as software to help farms manage their business staffing, insurance and more: Pacific Farm Management is an example of the latter.
GrubMarket’s own in-house software, WholesaleWare, a cloud-based service for farmers and other food producers, saw its sales grow 3,500% over the last year, and it is now managing more than $4 billion in wholesale and retail activity across the U.S. and Canada.
There will be obvious ways to extend what GrubHub does deeper into the needs of its customers on the purchasing end, but this is in many ways also a very crowded market. (And not just crowded, but crowded with big companies. Just today, Toast, the company that builds software for restaurants, filed for a $717 million IPO at potentially a $16.5 billion valuation.) So instead, GrubHub will continue to focus on what has been a more overlooked aspect, that of the suppliers.
“I am focused on the food supply chain,” Xu said. “Operators in the food supply chain business most of the time don’t have any access to software and e-commerce technology. But we are not just a lightweight online ordering system. We do a lot of heavyweight lifting around inventory management, pricing and customer relations, and even HR management for wholesales and distributors.” That will also mean, longer term, that GrubMarket will likely also start to explore connected hardware to help those customers, too: robotics for picking and moving items are on that agenda, Xu said.
“GrubMarket has built a profitable, high-growth business underpinned by its best-in-class technology platform that’s reinventing how businesses access healthy, fresh foods,” said Jack Litowitz, director of strategic investments at Reimagined Ventures, in a statement. “We’re proud to support GrubMarket as it continues to expand into new regions and grow its WholesaleWare 2.0 software platform. At Reimagined Ventures, we always seek to invest in businesses that are disrupting inefficient industries in innovative ways. Mike Xu and the GrubMarket team have built one of these businesses. We’re excited to back their vision and work in making the food supply chain more efficient.”
“GrubMarket is transforming the trillion-dollar food distribution industry with unprecedented speed by implementing advanced digital solutions and operational discipline. The company’s scale, growth, and profitability are extraordinarily impressive. Pegasus is delighted and honored to be part of GrubMarket’s exciting journey ahead,” added Bill Reichert, partner at Pegasus Tech Ventures.
The Trump Coup Is Still Raging
One thing should be clear to conservatives estranged from the Republican Party: We can’t go home again.
Judge Orders Sanctions Against Pro-Trump Lawyers Over Election Lawsuit
Sidney Powell, L. Lin Wood and seven other lawyers deceived federal courts and debased the judicial process, a federal judge wrote.