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Fox News
24-04-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Multiple federal agencies end LinkedIn contracts over DEI
FIRST ON FOX - Multiple federal agencies told Fox News Digital they have dropped millions of dollars in contracts for LinkedIn services over the business social network's embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). LinkedIn, which boasts of being the world's largest professional network with over 1 billion users worldwide, has been dropped by the Departments of Treasury, Interior and Veterans Affairs after the Trump administration issued executive orders banning federal agencies from contracting with companies that embrace DEI policies. "Every American taxpayer should be angry that the Biden administration wasted so much money on contracts like these. Under the leadership of President Trump, we have been combing through hundreds of thousands of contracts here at the Department alone and are canceling wasteful, woke, and downright ridiculous contracts that do not align with the will of the American people. This contract is being terminated as we speak," an Interior Department spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News Digital about a $1 million contract for LinkedIn services. The Treasury Department has ceased doing business with the networking site to be in compliance with Trump's executive orders, a senior Treasury official told Fox News Digital. According to Treasury had over $1.5 million in contracts for LinkedIn services during Trump's second term, with two that ended in Jan. and Feb., and another two set to end next week and in Sept. "The VA is not doing any business with LinkedIn. In February, the department terminated two contracts with LinkedIn in order to comply with the White House's executive orders on Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, and Implementing the President's 'Department of Government Efficiency' Cost Efficiency Initiative," a spokesperson for the VA told Fox News Digital. Veterans Affairs had nearly $2 million in contracts for LinkedIn services on one of which was terminated on February 20 and the other is set to end in 2026. Federal agencies often contract with middlemen known as "value-added resellers" who purchase technology products, such as LinkedIn, instead of going directly to each company. LinkedIn hosts a "DEI Hub" that provides companies with tools and products that promote DEI in their organizations. Among the services offered is a page devoted to getting "organizational buy-in" for DEI, a recruiting page which offers employers tips on signaling their commitment to DEI in job postings, resources for more equitable hiring and tips on achieving gender equity in the workplace. LinkedIn also provides products to achieve DEI objectives on their job boards. One such product is "LinkedIn Talent Insights," which allows employers to "leverage real-time insights to inform hiring goals, make a business case for diversity-focused initiatives, and identify and compare binary gender balance in talent pools." Companies can also use "LinkedIn Recruiter" to achieve DEI objectives. The program allows companies to modify their settings in order to achieve diversity outcomes in hiring. The program can allow an employer to "fix gender imbalances with 'diversity nudges'" and hide applicants' pictures and names to reduce bias. A diversity nudge appears when "less than 45% of a talent pool is male or female" and provides recommendations to achieve gender parity in applicants. The federal agencies said they were no longer using LinkedIn products in order to be in compliance with Trump's executive order not to do business with companies that engage in DEI, but made clear that they were not using LinkedIn's DEI products. Representatives for the agencies said they had no knowledge of whether the Biden administration used LinkedIn's DEI products or not. LinkedIn, however, said this wasn't accurate. When pressed for specifics about factual inaccuracies, LinkedIn provided only the following comment. "Like every business, the organizations that use our products change, often driven by shifts in their budgets and priorities. We're keeping our focus on helping our customers achieve the objectives they've set," a LinkedIn spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
America's largest egg producer saw profits triple last quarter after raking in millions in government assistance
The bird flu epidemic has proved tremendously profitable for Cal-Maine, the largest egg producer in the U.S. Its profits for the first three months of 2025 skyrocketed to $508 million, more than three times the level from a year before—even as it killed off flocks infected with avian flu and collected tens of millions in USDA payments for the culled birds. Even though the White House says egg prices are coming back down to earth, the nation's largest egg producer is still raking in profits. Cal-Maine, America's largest egg producer in both revenue and flock size, saw its profits triple in the first three months of the year, according to the company's quarterly financial report. The company sold $1.4 billion worth of eggs and took in $508 million in profit, three-and-a-half times more than the $146 million in profit it reported during the same period in 2024. 'The higher net sales were primarily driven by an increase in the net average selling price of shell eggs,' Cal-Maine said, calling the prices 'a direct result of the reduced supply of shell eggs across the industry due to [avian flu] during a period of peak seasonal demand for eggs and egg products.' Higher sales also played a role, the company said, as did lower production costs. The cost of chicken feed, for example, dropped nearly 10% for the quarter. Cal-Maine, which produces roughly one-fifth of the nation's eggs, lost about 4% of its flock in recent years to bird flu outbreaks. But the company's coffers have swelled since the bird flu epidemic began. In the first three months of 2021, it made $359 million in sales. Four years later, its revenue has quadrupled—even though Cal-Maine only sold about 20% more eggs. Nationwide, the price of eggs hit a record in February, and is expected to rise as much as 40% more this year, according to the USDA. 'It's crazy,' Thomas Gremillion, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, told Fortune. 'You would think that increasing the cost of production for any good would eat into the producer's profits, and instead we're seeing the profits increase by orders of magnitude… That is very surprising that they'd be able to take advantage of the situation the way they have.' Cal-Maine did not respond to Fortune's request for comment. The profits have caught the eye of the Department of Justice, which opened a probe into sky-high egg prices back in March. Cal-Maine is cooperating with the DOJ's request for information, the company said. At the same time profits were rising, Cal-Maine was taking in tens of millions from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The company received $42 million in compensation for avian flu, according to Federal regulations require farmers to kill all birds in a flock if avian flu is discovered. The USDA's indemnity program pays a set price per bird killed, with some added compensation for cleaning and disinfecting. Cal-Maine temporarily shuttered a Texas facility last year, killing nearly 2 million hens. The year before, it closed a Kansas facility with 684,000 hens for avian flu. 'The bird flu detections have clearly not devastated Cal-Maine,' Gremillion told Fortune. 'At this point we're paying a lot of money on [the USDA payment program], and we're seeing these really big, really powerful companies are getting bigger and more powerful.' The USDA's indemnity program "does not come close to covering the financial toll when an egg farm must depopulate its flocks and rebuild its business, in cases it means the difference between recovering or going out of business," president of the American Egg Board, said in a statement. 'It's important to remember that eggs are sold on markets like other agriculture commodities, and wholesale prices are driven by supply and demand," the statement said. "We've lost more than 125 million egg laying hens to bird flu, and more than 30 million of those birds this year, alone." Taxpayers have given $1.25 billion in bird flu compensation payments through November of last year, according to the Federal Register. In February, the Trump administration announced an additional $1 billion to combatting bird flu, including ramping up biosecurity measures and increasing the money paid out when infected flocks are killed. This story was originally featured on
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
No evidence for Musk's $1 billion National Parks survey claim
"DOGE just revealed that the government spent $1 billion on a survey asking if people liked National Parks," says a March 27, 2025, X post. The same post has circulated elsewhere on X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, YouTube and Gettr following a March 27 interview of Musk by Bret Baier on the Fox News Channel (archived here). In it, Musk purported that his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative aimed at slashing federal spending, had uncovered a $1 billion contract with a company to conduct a single 10-question survey for the National Parks Service. "We routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more. Casually. You know, for example, the simple survey that was literally a 10-question survey you can do with SurveyMonkey and cost you about $10,000, the government was being charged almost $1 billion for that," Musk said after Baier asked him what was "the most astonishing thing" he had encountered at the helm of DOGE. In the same interview, one of Musk's top aides, Steve Davis, said that the parks survey was part of an $830 million contract proposed by the Department of the Interior that DOGE had halted. Musk and Davis appear to be referring to a March 19 X post from DOGE, which pointed out an $830 million contract approved by the Federal Consulting Group, a division of the Interior Department. The post said the contract was never signed and that DOGE was shutting down the Federal Consulting Group (archived here). Interior Secretary Doug Burgum also highlighted the cancellation of the purported survey contract during a March 24 cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump, calling the expense "pure fraud" (archived here). However, data from a government website that tracks federal spending, has no records of the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, awarding a contract valued at over $800 million for such services (archived here). The largest contract awarded by the agency for which the site has records was a 2022 agreement to provide legal aid to unaccompanied refugee children through the Health and Human Services Department. It had a potential value of $896.1 million (archived here). The same database shows that the Federal Consulting Group has awarded $87 million in contracts since 2010. AFP searched past expenses made by the Federal Consulting Group and found the largest tender it awarded was for about $3 million, around 270 times smaller than the supposed $830 million contract (archived here and here). CBS News and The New York Times previously reported on the same data. The DOGE website, which lists contracts the group has terminated, has been criticized for sharing inaccurate or duplicate information and does not show any saved expense for either $1 billion or $830 million relating to the Department of the Interior and a customer survey (archived here). In a document submitted as part of the 2023 federal approval process outlining how the National Parks Service would create and gather data from public surveys, the agency estimated that research aimed at improving park services would cost just over $2 million annually. This estimate included about $28,000 to employ a program manager, $600,000 to support contracted researchers and investigators and another $1.4 million for other expenses such as survey design and administration (archived here). Although the document does not include the names of contractors for National Parks surveys, the agency appears to have historically worked with faculty at various universities, such as the University of Idaho and the University of Washington (archived here and here). The 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) requires federal agencies to regularly assess their performance and services and form strategic plans to make improvements (archived here). The National Parks Service says its Visitor Survey Card program (archived here), which solicits responses from visitors across the park system, is how it complies with this part of the GPRA. AFP has debunked other claims about US politics here.
AFP
09-04-2025
- Business
- AFP
No evidence for Musk's $1 billion National Parks survey claim
"DOGE just revealed that the government spent $1 billion on a survey asking if people liked National Parks," says a March 27, 2025, X post. Image Screenshot from X taken April 7, 2025 The same post has circulated elsewhere on X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, YouTube and Gettr following a March 27 interview of Musk by Bret Baier on the Fox News Channel (archived here). In it, Musk purported that his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative aimed at slashing federal spending, had uncovered a $1 billion contract with a company to conduct a single 10-question survey for the National Parks Service. "We routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more. Casually. You know, for example, the simple survey that was literally a 10-question survey you can do with SurveyMonkey and cost you about $10,000, the government was being charged almost $1 billion for that," Musk said after Baier asked him what was "the most astonishing thing" he had encountered at the helm of DOGE. In the same interview, one of Musk's top aides, Steve Davis, said that the parks survey was part of an $830 million contract proposed by the Department of the Interior that DOGE had halted. Musk and Davis appear to be referring to a March 19 X post from DOGE, which pointed out an $830 million contract approved by the Federal Consulting Group, a division of the Interior Department. The post said the contract was never signed and that DOGE was shutting down the Federal Consulting Group (archived here). Interior Secretary Doug Burgum also highlighted the cancellation of the purported survey contract during a March 24 cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump, calling the expense "pure fraud" (archived here). However, data from a government website that tracks federal spending, has no records of the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, awarding a contract valued at over $800 million for such services (archived here). The largest contract awarded by the agency for which the site has records was a 2022 agreement to provide legal aid to unaccompanied refugee children through the Health and Human Services Department. It had a potential value of $896.1 million (archived here). The same database shows that the Federal Consulting Group has awarded $87 million in contracts since 2010. AFP searched past expenses made by the Federal Consulting Group and found the largest tender it awarded was for about $3 million, around 270 times smaller than the supposed $830 million contract (archived here and here). CBS News and The New York Times previously reported on the same data. The DOGE website, which lists contracts the group has terminated, has been criticized for sharing inaccurate or duplicate information and does not show any saved expense for either $1 billion or $830 million relating to the Department of the Interior and a customer survey (archived here). In a document submitted as part of the 2023 federal approval process outlining how the National Parks Service would create and gather data from public surveys, the agency estimated that research aimed at improving park services would cost just over $2 million annually. This estimate included about $28,000 to employ a program manager, $600,000 to support contracted researchers and investigators and another $1.4 million for other expenses such as survey design and administration (archived here). Although the document does not include the names of contractors for National Parks surveys, the agency appears to have historically worked with faculty at various universities, such as the University of Idaho and the University of Washington (archived here and here). The 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) requires federal agencies to regularly assess their performance and services and form strategic plans to make improvements (archived here). The National Parks Service says its Visitor Survey Card program (archived here), which solicits responses from visitors across the park system, is how it complies with this part of the GPRA. AFP has debunked other claims about US politics here.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
No evidence for Musk's $1 billion National Parks survey claim
"DOGE just revealed that the government spent $1 billion on a survey asking if people liked National Parks," says a March 27, 2025, X post. The same post has circulated elsewhere on X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, YouTube and Gettr following a March 27 interview of Musk by Bret Baier on the Fox News Channel (archived here). In it, Musk purported that his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative aimed at slashing federal spending, had uncovered a $1 billion contract with a company to conduct a single 10-question survey for the National Parks Service. "We routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more. Casually. You know, for example, the simple survey that was literally a 10-question survey you can do with SurveyMonkey and cost you about $10,000, the government was being charged almost $1 billion for that," Musk said after Baier asked him what was "the most astonishing thing" he had encountered at the helm of DOGE. In the same interview, one of Musk's top aides, Steve Davis, said that the parks survey was part of an $830 million contract proposed by the Department of the Interior that DOGE had halted. Musk and Davis appear to be referring to a March 19 X post from DOGE, which pointed out an $830 million contract approved by the Federal Consulting Group, a division of the Interior Department. The post said the contract was never signed and that DOGE was shutting down the Federal Consulting Group (archived here). Interior Secretary Doug Burgum also highlighted the cancellation of the purported survey contract during a March 24 cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump, calling the expense "pure fraud" (archived here). However, data from a government website that tracks federal spending, has no records of the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, awarding a contract valued at over $800 million for such services (archived here). The largest contract awarded by the agency for which the site has records was a 2022 agreement to provide legal aid to unaccompanied refugee children through the Health and Human Services Department. It had a potential value of $896.1 million (archived here). The same database shows that the Federal Consulting Group has awarded $87 million in contracts since 2010. AFP searched past expenses made by the Federal Consulting Group and found the largest tender it awarded was for about $3 million, around 270 times smaller than the supposed $830 million contract (archived here and here). CBS News and The New York Times previously reported on the same data. The DOGE website, which lists contracts the group has terminated, has been criticized for sharing inaccurate or duplicate information and does not show any saved expense for either $1 billion or $830 million relating to the Department of the Interior and a customer survey (archived here). In a document submitted as part of the 2023 federal approval process outlining how the National Parks Service would create and gather data from public surveys, the agency estimated that research aimed at improving park services would cost just over $2 million annually. This estimate included about $28,000 to employ a program manager, $600,000 to support contracted researchers and investigators and another $1.4 million for other expenses such as survey design and administration (archived here). Although the document does not include the names of contractors for National Parks surveys, the agency appears to have historically worked with faculty at various universities, such as the University of Idaho and the University of Washington (archived here and here). The 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) requires federal agencies to regularly assess their performance and services and form strategic plans to make improvements (archived here). The National Parks Service says its Visitor Survey Card program (archived here), which solicits responses from visitors across the park system, is how it complies with this part of the GPRA. AFP has debunked other claims about US politics here.
