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Sports Business Journal ranked its 50 Best Sports Business Cities. Here's where St. Louis landed on the list.

Missouri's attorney general announced on Monday a plan to use a law governing deceptive business practices to add restrictions on gender transition interventions for transgender children. In a statement, Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey said his office would use "existing Missouri law governing unfair, deceptive, and unconscionable business practices" to add strict requirements on gender transition interventions, which the statement called experimental. Bailey called gender transition…

by Andy Kroll, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has frequently railed against “Big Tech.” He has accused Google, Facebook and Twitter of silencing conservative voices.

But in private, DeSantis has gone even further.

In previously unreported comments made in 2021, DeSantis said technology companies like Google “should be broken up” by the U.S. government.

DeSantis, widely considered a presidential hopeful, made the remarks at an invite-only retreat for the Teneo Network, a “private and confidential” group for elite conservatives. ProPublica and Documented obtained video of the event.

“They’re just too big, they have too much power,” DeSantis said. “I think they’re exercising a more negative influence on our society than the trusts that got broken up at the early 20th century.” He added that large tech companies “are ruining our country. They’re a very negative influence. And so I think you need to be strong about it.”

DeSantis’ call to break up large tech companies occurred at the Teneo Network’s annual retreat in 2021. As ProPublica and Documented recently reported, the Teneo Network aims to “crush liberal dominance” across many areas of American society, according to its chairman Leonard Leo, the influential legal activist and longtime leader of the Federalist Society.

DeSantis’ office did not respond to requests seeking comment. Teneo declined to comment.

In recent years, “Big Tech” has emerged as a favored target for Republican lawmakers and activists, even as prominent conservatives have amassed huge followings on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms. Pointing to such high-profile examples as Donald Trump’s suspension from Facebook and Twitter’s decision to briefly block a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Republicans claim that U.S. tech companies have systematically suppressed conservative viewpoints and interfered with elections in ways that have helped Democrats.

A 2021 study issued by New York University researchers concluded those assertions were baseless. “The claim of anti-conservative animus on the part of social media companies is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it," the researchers for the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights wrote.

Liberal lawmakers and policy experts have also called for stronger antitrust enforcement of major tech companies. During the 2020 presidential race, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., campaigned on a platform of breaking up Amazon, Facebook and Google, saying they had “too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy.” In 2021, Democrats in Congress introduced legislation to split up tech firms, but the bills never became law.

Matt Stoller, an antitrust expert who works at the American Economic Liberties Project, said it’s hard to tell if DeSantis’ private comments indicate genuine concern about corporate concentration of power or just anger at large firms perceived to be hostile to conservatives.

“There’s a war on the right about antitrust,” Stoller said. “I’m skeptical but open-minded that DeSantis wants to do something serious about economic power.”

Stoller added that he was more intrigued by DeSantis’ decision to call for breaking up tech at an event so closely associated with Leonard Leo. “If Leo buys that argument,” Stoller said, “then it means that a lot of federal judges might tip in that direction, too.”

A spokesperson for Leo declined to comment.

Teneo’s retreats are invite-only affairs limited to its members, their spouses and special guests. ProPublica and Documented obtained a video of DeSantis’ remarks about big tech, which took place during a longer conversation between DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who is now running for president as a Republican.

Watch Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Talk About Breaking Up Big Tech (Teneo)

Watch video ➜

As governor, DeSantis has repeatedly singled out tech and social-media companies, saying their actions “may be one of the most pervasive threats to American self-government in the 21st century.” Legislation he signed in May 2021 not only seeks to give Floridians the ability to sue tech companies and win monetary damages, it also empowers the state’s attorney general to bring cases against tech companies under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. (Tech companies are challenging the law, and its fate remains unclear.)

In February of this year, DeSantis introduced a plan to create what he called a Digital Bill of Rights for Florida citizens. The proposal, billed as a way to protect privacy and eliminate “unfair censorship,” would ban TikTok on state government devices and block local and state employees “from coordinating with Big Tech companies to censor protected speech.”

But unlike some of his fellow conservatives, DeSantis’ barbed public remarks about big tech have stopped short of urging the U.S. government to break up those tech companies. In his new book, “The Courage to Be Free,” he makes only a passing reference to “enforcing antitrust laws” against “large corporations that are wielding what is effectively public power.”

In his remarks at the Teneo Network retreat, DeSantis described tech companies as “monopolies” that “have more power over our lives than the monopolies of the early 20th century ever had. And it’s not even close.” He listed tech companies’ extensive data collection practices and their ability to shape “core political speech” as evidence of big tech’s monopolistic powers.

(Teneo)

Watch video ➜

He went on to say that tech platforms “enforce their terms unevenly,” adding that “if you have a conservative viewpoint, you’re much more likely to get censored, you’re much more likely to get deplatformed.”

And in response to critics who might say it’s not the role of government at any level to insert itself into the workings of a private business, DeSantis offered a sharp rebuttal. “Protecting the rights of folks to participate in political speech, I think, is an absolutely appropriate role of government,” he said. “And I think that we should do all that we can.”

When pressed by Ramaswamy onstage about using government power to shrink big tech companies, DeSantis stood by his position. “Those big companies are basically an arm of the ruling regime,” he said. “Yeah, that should be something that should be done.” And when asked if he feared that breaking up U.S. companies would strengthen China’s position in global markets, DeSantis appeared unbothered, saying that he believed antitrust action was still the correct course.

“These tech companies are ruining our country,” he said. “They’re a very negative influence. You need to be strong about it. And so that would not be the biggest concern I would have. My concern would be not having massive concentrations of power that are capable of silencing dissent, enforcing an orthodoxy and obviously interfering in elections, which we saw they did in 2020.”

Do you have information about Leonard Leo or the Teneo Network that we should know? Reporter Andy Kroll can be reached via email at andy.kroll@propublica.org or via Signal at 202-215-6203.

The one-mile trek to QT was an endless hell that I’d wish on no one.  It’s not like anyone pressured me to roam through The Hill after consuming 60 mg of THC.

With March Madness in full swing, many Missourians are forced to drive across state lines to place a bet on their favorite team, but after the House gave first-round approval to a bill Monday evening, sports wagering is one step closer to becoming legal

Will you use taxpayer money to prosecute a woman for getting an abortion? That’s the question attorneys general candidates across the United States, and especially in Missouri, will have to answer in the lead up to 2024. Missouri is a unique case study for the role a state’s top prosecutor can play in the abortion […]

The post Missouri Attorney General: Anti-abortion activist? appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Another Fields foods location is opening. It replaces the old Save-A-Lot on Page Avenue that closed in 2021.

A new Raising Cane's is opening in Wentzville Tuesday.

There's a candidate forum in East St. Louis Tuesday.

New information Tuesday morning on an overnight crash.

St. Louis priests can make one last plea to keep their parish doors open. The deadline to make that request is Tuesday.

by Heather Vogell

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

After a ProPublica investigation last year, a group of senators demanded answers from a real estate tech company that helps landlords set rents across the country.

The investigation revealed how some of the nation’s biggest landlords share proprietary information with RealPage, a Texas company whose software uses the data to recommend rent prices for available units. Legal experts say the arrangement may facilitate cartel-like behavior among landlords, who could use the software to coordinate pricing.

Now, RealPage has responded to questions from Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Tina Smith and Ed Markey. The company’s answers, the lawmakers said, revealed “alarming” new details.

In a letter to the Department of Justice, the senators said RealPage did not provide all the information they had asked for last November, but the answers the company did give raise concerns that its YieldStar software may play a role in driving rent inflation in some of the country’s biggest markets.

“YieldStar has been most prevalent in some of the regions most heavily targeted by corporate buyers and with the highest rent increases,” the senators wrote.

The legislators said that publicly available information shows the software is used in pricing more than 4 million units, representing about 8% of all rental units nationwide. RealPage has so many clients it has access to “transactional apartment data from the rent rolls of 13+ million units,” according to the company’s website.

“Given YieldStar’s market share, even the widespread use of its anonymized and aggregated proprietary rental data by the country’s largest landlords could result in de-facto price-setting by those companies, driving up prices and hurting renters,” the senators’ letter said.

The senators wrote that “the DOJ should act to protect American families and closely review rent-setting algorithms like YieldStar to determine if they are having anti-competitive effects on local housing markets that have seen increased institutional investor activity.”

In a response to questions from ProPublica about the lawmakers’ letter, a RealPage spokesperson said that the firm “appreciates the opportunity to work with the senators’ offices.” The company is “always willing to engage policy stakeholders to ensure an informed and comprehensive understanding of the benefits we contribute to the rental ecosystem,” the spokesperson said.

After ProPublica’s story ran, more than two dozen federal lawsuits were filed by renters alleging antitrust violations by RealPage and more than 40 landlords in multiple states. When the first complaint was filed, a RealPage representative told ProPublica that the company “strongly denies the allegations and will vigorously defend against the lawsuit.” She declined to comment further, saying the company does not comment on pending litigation.

In November, sources confirmed that the DOJ’s antitrust division had opened an investigation. At the time, RealPage did not respond to a request for comment .

In its 14-page response to the senators, RealPage said recent news stories, including ProPublica’s, “do not accurately describe how these products work, in particular with regard to the role that data about other properties plays in generating rent price recommendations for RealPage’s customers and the effect that the use of these products has had on rents and apartment occupancy rates.” The company said a shortage of supply in rental housing is responsible for driving rents higher, not its software. The letter was redacted in places to protect confidential business information.

The company said that the purpose of YieldStar is not to raise rents at every opportunity, but to “manage revenues” so they are in line with the owner’s needs and management strategy. Data “does not support the assertion that YieldStar uniformly pushes rents higher,” the company said, and the software will often recommend reducing rents to minimize vacancies.

ProPublica’s story did not assert that the software always pushes rents higher. But our data analysis found that five of RealPage’s largest clients controlled more apartments in cities where rents rose rapidly and fewer apartments in metro areas where rents increased more slowly. All five property managers used RealPage’s pricing software in at least some of their buildings, and together they control thousands of apartments in metro areas where rents for a typical two-bedroom apartment rose 30% or more between 2014 and 2019.

RealPage clients may gravitate toward high-rent-growth markets simply because the companies expect those areas to offer more opportunities to make money. But RealPage says pricing suggested by its software helps landlords beat their market.

In its letter to senators, RealPage said the software itself “never” recommends removing apartments from a landlord’s inventory — a move that reduces the supply of housing and could make it easier to command higher rents — though property managers can do so if a unit needs repairs or renovations, for example.

The company said that increased use of its software has not reduced the number of apartments available for rent overall. The company said the metro areas where YieldStar has the highest penetration “have not seen inflated vacancy rates.”

“While it is difficult to differentiate the impact of revenue management tools like YieldStar from other market forces that affect occupancy rates, the fact that apartment providers now have commercial revenue management products available to them has not resulted in a national increase in vacancy rates,” the company said. RealPage said vacancy rates have dropped over the decade — a trend that housing experts say is part of a crisis in housing availability and cost.

But we found examples where company officials had urged property managers to consider whether they could make more money from rentals by raising prices and not rushing to fill all vacant units.

RealPage’s former CEO, Steve Winn, boasted on an earnings call in 2017 that one large property company found it could make greater profits by operating at a lower occupancy rate that “would have made management uncomfortable before.”

“Initially, it was very hard for executives to accept that they could operate at 94% or 96% and achieve a higher NOI by increasing rents,” Winn said on the call, referring to net operating income. The company “began utilizing RealPage to operate at 95%, while seeing revenue increases of 3% to 4%.”

A RealPage blog in 2018 also warned student housing landlords that if they weren’t using revenue management software, they could be “leaving money on the table” by being too quick to decrease rents.

“Many of the beds renting earlier in the season were arbitrarily set at a lower tier price — and may have been rentable at a higher price,” the blog said. “Worse, in fear of empty beds, some properties offer concessions or discounts for early rental decisions when they might have been able to fill all the beds at a top tier price.”

Another page on RealPage’s website said: “By focusing on the right information — not just occupancy — capabilities like revenue management empower operators to assure that pricing is right and there’s no money left on the table.”

The company also told the senators that the final decision on what to charge rests with the property manager. “YieldStar customers are under no obligation — contractually or otherwise — to follow the pricing recommendations generated by YieldStar software,” the company said.

But former RealPage employees told ProPublica that landlords follow as much as 90% of the software’s suggestions.

The letter said that news reports “badly distort and overstate the role that non-public data about other properties plays.” RealPage said its software prioritizes a landlord’s internal rent data over external factors such as what competitors charge.

But it acknowledged that it draws information from “executed leases,” which are typically not public.

Even with RealPage’s explanation, Warren and the other senators expressed concerns about the use of such data.

“Notably, RealPage provided important information about the extent to which the company facilitates information sharing by and among large institutional landlords — a particular concern given the market share of the product,” the senators’ letter to the DOJ said.

The company said its software helps landlords offer prospective renters more options for the length and cost of a lease. It said that the algorithm removes human biases that can result in violations of laws barring discrimination in housing.

The letter said revenue management software is not unique to RealPage, or even to the housing market.

But ProPublica found that the company became the dominant provider of such services for apartment rentals in 2017, when it bought its biggest competitor.

Haru Coryne of ProPublica and Ryan Little contributed data analysis.

Visit the countries of Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, and Zanzibar during screenings at Washington University, March 24–26.

Since the Standing Rock protests in 2017, 19 states have passed so-called critical infrastructure laws.

Red-state Democrats like Missouri’s Claire McCaskill facing grim reelection prospects joined forces in 2018 with Republicans to slash bank regulations.

As coal declines, miners’ unions are struggling to bargain for better conditions.