UNBIASED - Week in Review: November 21-27, 2022

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

1. Black Friday 2022 Breaks Record Spending Numbers Raking in $9.12 Billion from Online Shoppers (0:54)2. Loan Repayment Pause Extended Through 2023 While Debt Cancellation Program Gets Held Up in Court (2:37)3.  Supreme Court Paves the Way for Trump's Tax Returns to be Released to House Committee (4:15)4. More than 50 of Twitter's Top 100 Advertisers Have Seemingly Stopped Advertising on the Platform per Report (6:26)5. Balenciaga Files Lawsuit Against Set Designer Following Backlash for Controversial Ad Campaign (9:40)All sources can be found at www.jordanismylawyer.com.Follow Jordan on TikTok and Instagram @jordanismylawyer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You are listening to the Jordan is My Law podcast. This is your host Jordan and I give

you the legal analysis you've been waiting for. Here's the deal. I don't care about your political views, but I do ask that you listen to the facts, have an open mind and think for yourselves. Deal? Oh, and one last thing. I'm not actually a change. And I felt like I got some good deals too. So it was a win-win. But if you didn't shop Black Friday deals, you obviously still have some time because Cyber Monday deals are going on. So make sure you get on that. And did you know, so I came across this fact while I was doing my research for this podcast. Did you know that this year's Black Friday sales raked in a record $9.12 billion from online shoppers? That's up from $8.92 billion in 2021 and $9.03 billion in 2020.

And this is all according to Adobe Analytics. Inflation does factor into that increase because obviously right now some people are paying more to buy less, but the inflation and higher prices were also the reason that a lot of people were concerned that this year's spending would be down, um, for obvious reasons. So I just thought that was an interesting fact, despite the state of the economy, we still broke a record. So that was interesting. But today's story is I'm going to be pretty frank with you. There really was not much going on compared to what's usually taking place just over the course of the last week. I mean, which was honestly kind of nice for a change. We got to slow down a little bit. It was,

it was the holidays. There wasn't as much going on. So this will be a shorter episode, but because of that, I'm thinking of doing an extra episode this week, maybe on Wednesday or Thursday, where I recap all of the recent executions this week, because in total, there were four or five this month that I haven't even discussed. So I think that could be a good episode because a lot of you guys are interested in that. So stay tuned for that. But without further ado, let's get into today's stories. The Biden administration has extended the student loan repayment pause due to the holdup of the debt cancellation program. You guys have

heard me talk about this a few times now. They keep running into hurdles as far as getting the debt cancellation program up and running. And in one of my, I think it was the last, maybe two episodes ago that I covered the most recent lawsuit and why that debt cancellation program was actually on pause now. You can't even apply for it right now. But because of that, the Biden administration is now extending the student loan repayment pause. Now keep in mind, student loan repayments have been paused since the pandemic started in early 2020, and it's been extended multiple times since then. So if not extended again, like if this is the last extension, then student loan repayments

will have been paused for just over three years. Now, in regards to this extension, President Biden tweeted on Tuesday, quote, I'm confident that our student debt relief plan is legal, but it's on hold because Republican officials want to block it. That is why Secretary Cardona is extending the payment pause to no later than June 30th, 2023, giving the Supreme Court time to hear the case in its current form. So basically payments will now resume either 60 days after the debt cancellation program is implemented, 60 days after the lawsuits are resolved, or 60 days after June 30th, 2023, if litigation fails. So according to the president, June 30th, 2023 is the absolute last extension date. That takes us into story number two. The Supreme court says that Trump must release his tax returns to the house committee. This decision likely ends the three-year battle over former President Trump's tax returns. So on Tuesday, the Supreme Court refused to block a request by the House Ways

and Means Committee for former President Trump's tax returns. So basically the Ways and Means Committee requested former President Trump's tax returns. And on October 31st of this year, Trump filed an emergency application at the Supreme Court to block the release, at least until the court could consider whether or not it wanted to hear a full argument on the issue. But the court said, no, we are not going to block it. This isn't the first time that former President Trump has lost this type of case. Most recently in the D.C. Court of Appeals, the court ruled unanimously that the House Committee's request for the returns was in fact constitutional. Now the arguments basically break down to the House Committee arguing that they need the information in Trump's tax returns to meaningfully evaluate

the IRS's presidential audit program, which the IRS is required to do by its own rules. They have to conduct an audit of each sitting president's tax returns. So basically what they're saying is they need this information in Trump's tax returns to evaluate this presidential audit program. The house committee is considering implementing greater legislative oversight over financial activities conducted by presidents. And this includes investigating whether the current IRS audit program is able to adequately enforce the nation's tax laws against a president who has complex business holdings like former President Trump. Now, on the other side of that, former President Trump's lawyers are arguing that turning over

these tax returns would be an unconstitutional breach of the separation of powers and that the request is politically motivated and overbroad. Obviously, the Supreme Court did not buy Trump's lawyer's arguments and instead ruled in favor of the House Committee. And so this decision likely means that the returns will be released by the Treasury Department to the House Committee immediately. So that is what's happening with that. Like I said, that'll kind of conclude a three year long battle. So we'll see what comes of this, if anything. And that brings us to story number three, which is the fact that Twitter has lost a lot of its advertisers recently. So according to a report from Media Matters for America,

50 of the top 100 advertisers on Twitter have either announced or seemingly stopped advertising on Twitter. We obviously know that Twitter has been making headlines recently ever since Elon Musk took over. If you've listened to my previous episodes, you know kind of how I feel about the situation, just that the media is not going to let this go. Elon Musk is kind of going to become one of those figures that's just picked apart and every move he makes makes its way into the media, which is going to negatively affect him in the long run in the sense of advertisers wanting to advertise on a platform because advertisers don't want to advertise on a controversial platform,

right? They don't want to be a part of that. So I've said before, I'll say it again, it'll be interesting to see where it goes, That being Twitter, depending on how much money they lose from advertisers, not advertising with them. But according to this report, companies that either made a statement about not advertising on Twitter, or it was publicly reported that these companies stopped advertising on Twitter. And then the company subsequently confirmed were the following Chevrolet, Chipotle, Ford, Jeep, Kindrel, Merck & Co, and Novartis AG. And then the companies named Quiet Quitters, which are essentially companies that previously advertised on Twitter but stopped for a significant period of time, include AT&T, Chanel, Allstate, Amex, Dell, DirecTV, Fidelity, Kellogg, LinkedIn, Marriott, Nestle, Meta, Whole Foods, Wells Fargo, and many others.

So it's important to point out though that this report says that these advertisers have seemingly stopped advertising on the platform as of November 21st. But then it also says there's an additional seven companies that appear to have slowed down their rate of advertising to almost nothing. But in support of that, the report says that since 2020, these seven advertisers have accounted for over $225 million in spending on Twitter, but that number dropped to $118 million in 2022. Now, given the fact that Elon only took over at the end of October, I would just cast a little bit of doubt on whether or not these

advertisers stopped because of his takeover and the controversies that have followed, or if this, you know, slowdown in spending is due to inflation and other factors. So that's kind of unclear according to the report, but nonetheless, the report does say that as of November 21st is when a lot of these advertisers have seemingly stopped advertising on Twitter. So again, it will be interesting to see what kind of path Twitter takes from here. Obviously ad revenue is the biggest source of revenue for these social media companies. So who knows where it will go? If Twitter can manage to stay out of the news,

then potentially they'll keep a lot of their advertisers. But if they keep making headlines like they are now, I don't see this working in Twitter's favor. So this takes us to the last story of the day. I told you this was going to be a short episode, but on Friday, Balenciaga, the company submitted papers to the Supreme Court of the state of New York initiating a lawsuit against the set designer of the shoot behind its recent controversy. So if you weren't aware, Balenciaga has been called out as of just a couple of weeks ago. There was a Balenciaga ad campaign that was released a few weeks ago that features children holding teddy bears wearing BDSM gear or bondage. In one of the pictures on the table, there were a bunch of things kind of scattered

around. And one of the piles of paper on that table was actually an excerpt from a Supreme Court decision that upheld a law against child pornography. Very weird excerpt to have laying there, especially given the fact that in the campaign, there's children holding teddy bears in bondage gear. It was just weird. And a lot of people called for a boycott of Balenciaga, but Balenciaga now says that this is not their fault. They issued an apology on Instagram and they are now seeking $25 million for what they call extensive damages to its reputation. So after these photos went viral, the brand removed the pictures. They issued an apology on Instagram. They said, quote, we apologize for displaying unsettling documents and are taking legal action

against the parties responsible for creating the set and including unapproved items for our spring 23 campaign photo shoot. We strongly condemn abuse of children in any form. We stand for children's safety and wellbeing. We sincerely apologize for any offense our holiday campaign may have caused. Our plush bear bags should not have been featured with children in this campaign. We have immediately removed the campaign from all platforms, end quote. Now I do have these summons linked on my website, jordanismylawyer.com. That's always where you can find all of my sources and all of the relevant documents that are publicly available. And on this summons, it reads, so this is basically, it's not going to be a synopsis of the lawsuit, but it's a very, very brief statement about the lawsuit. So what it says is quote upon information and belief defendants without Balenciaga's

knowledge or authorization included documents in the campaign photographs, including an excerpt from a court decision, upholding a criminal prohibition against child pornography. Balenciaga believes that defendants inexplicable acts and omissions were malevolent or at the very least extraordinarily reckless as a result of defendants misconduct members of the public, including the news media have falsely and horrifically associated Balenciaga with the repulsive and deeply disturbing subject of the court decision. Defendants are liable to Balenciaga for all harm resulting from this false association. End quote. And again, that summons is on my website.

If you want to see it, just go to today's episode at the very bottom. You'll see sources and it is linked below this story. So that concludes today's episode. Again, it was very short. It's just a combination of the fact that there was really not much happening this week. Also, I was very busy this week with family stuff. Thanksgiving obviously took a lot of time away. I hope you guys also had a great Thanksgiving, whether you were with family or friends or you had to work, whatever it might

have been. So next week's episode, just as a kind of FYI, next week's episode will be live on Tuesday, not Monday. I'll actually be flying on Monday, so I won't be able to record and get it uploaded. So be on the lookout for that on Tuesday. And then I'm also going to be uploading an extra episode this week, either Wednesday or Thursday that will feature all of the executions that have happened in the United States just this month. I don't remember the last time there was a month with more than three executions. And like I said, this month there's been four or five. So stay tuned for that. I will obviously post it on TikTok as well. And just as your reminder, please leave me a review on whichever platform you listen.

I did see a couple of submissions come through on my website where people were writing in their reviews that actually it doesn't work that way. You have to go to where you're listening. So whether it be Spotify or Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, whatever it is, there should be a button there to leave an actual review. So that's where you can do that just as a friendly reminder. And I will talk to you later this week when I recap the executions.