Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Number of dead rises after devastating tornadoes, Kentucky governor announces

12/13/21 7:52 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden approves Kentucky disaster declaration after devastating tornado

12/12/21 8:43 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Blue Origin successfully sends 6-person crew, including Michael Strahan, to space and back

12/11/21 7:13 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Kentucky tornado death toll likely to exceed 50, governor warns

12/11/21 2:58 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Supreme Court lets Texas abortion law stand for now, allows lawsuit from abortion providers to proceed

12/10/21 7:15 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

UK court ruling opens door to Wikileaks' Assange being extradited to US

12/10/21 3:07 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Al Unser, four-time Indy 500 winner, dead at 82

12/10/21 12:52 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

BREAKING NEWS: Demaryius Thomas, former NFL receiver, dead at 33

12/09/21 11:11 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Jury announces verdict in Jussie Smollett’s trial on allegations of faked hate crime

12/09/21 3:21 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

SMOLLETT VERDICT REACHED

12/09/21 2:23 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News' All-American Christmas Tree shines bright again

12/09/21 2:17 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden administration makes big move ahead of 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing

12/06/21 11:24 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Jussie Smollett takes the stand in Chicago

12/06/21 10:14 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Big-city mayor announces vaccine mandate for private sector workers

12/06/21 6:26 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi gets 4 years in prison on first charges against her

12/05/21 11:07 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Jennifer, James Crumbley plead not guilty to involuntary manslaughter charges after school shooting

12/04/21 6:46 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Parents of Michigan school shooting suspect make first court appearance after overnight apprehension

12/04/21 6:32 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Parents of Michigan shooting suspect nabbed in Detroit after frantic search

12/03/21 11:11 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Charges filed against Michigan school shooting suspect's parents

12/03/21 9:09 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

WATCH LIVE: Biden reacts to November jobs report that missed expectations

12/03/21 7:46 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

November jobs report misses expectations big-time

12/03/21 5:40 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Lawmakers react to Mississippi abortion case before Supreme Court

12/02/21 8:27 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

EXCLUSIVE: Waukesha parade suspect breaks silence in jailhouse interview

12/01/21 1:33 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

First case of COVID-19 omicron variant found in US, official says

12/01/21 10:53 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

LISTEN LIVE: Supreme Court hears oral arguments in potentially landmark abortion case

12/01/21 7:02 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

What to know about pivotal abortion case going before Supreme Court today

12/01/21 4:15 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

CNN suspends Chris Cuomo indefinitely

11/30/21 3:40 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

WATCH LIVE: Biden speaks on COVID-19 omicron variant as criticism builds over WH response

11/29/21 9:03 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Twitter co-founder steps down as CEO; trading of shares halted after surge

11/29/21 7:57 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

WHO skips Greek letters 'nu' and 'xi' to name new variant, a move critics say bows to China

11/27/21 9:01 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden administration to limit travel from 8 southern Africa countries amid omicron variant spread

11/26/21 11:03 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

WHO identifies new COVID-19 'variant of concern,' reveals its name

11/26/21 10:21 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

EU, UK, Israel to halt air travel to southern Africa over B.1.1.529 COVID-19 variant

11/26/21 6:07 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Jury delivers its verdict in case of 3 men charged in murder of Ahmaud Arbery

11/24/21 10:46 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Verdict reached in Ahmaud Arbery case

11/24/21 10:28 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Turkey farmers explain why prices are so high as Thanksgiving favorites' costs soar

11/24/21 7:41 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Black Lives Matter activists: If Arbery’s family doesn’t have peace, community won’t have peace

11/24/21 4:09 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Court sets bail at $5 million for parade horror suspect as new death of child is revealed

11/23/21 2:32 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Brian Laundrie died of self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, according to family attorney

11/23/21 10:26 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Jury deliberations beginning in trial of 3 men charged with murder in death of Ahmaud Arbery

11/23/21 8:48 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Waukesha locals outraged over Christmas parade crash suspect's $1,000 cash bail

11/23/21 4:49 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden to release 50M barrels of oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve amid gas price spike

11/23/21 4:14 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

DA announces internal review of bail recommendation for person of interest in Christmas parade horror

11/22/21 10:45 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden taps Jerome Powell for second term as Fed chair amid soaring inflation

11/22/21 6:21 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Wisconsin police union official reveals what's next in Waukesha parade incident probe

11/22/21 3:56 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Olympic committee says it spoke with missing Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai but won't release video

11/21/21 11:56 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Jury has just announced its verdict in Kyle Rittenhouse trial

11/19/21 10:18 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Rittenhouse trial verdict reached

11/19/21 10:10 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Jen Psaki takes questions from White House hours after Dems sign off on Biden spending bill

11/19/21 9:39 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

WATCH LIVE: Pelosi, House Dems hold news conference after Biden spending spree approved

11/19/21 7:12 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

LIVE COVERAGE: Rittenhouse jury begins fourth day of deliberations

11/19/21 7:07 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

House approves Biden's mammoth spending package; bill heads to Senate

11/19/21 6:47 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden to transfer power to Harris while under anesthesia for colonoscopy at Walter Reed

11/19/21 6:42 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

FDA authorizes Moderna, Pfizer COVID-19 boosters for all US adults

11/19/21 5:48 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

WATCH LIVE: House reconvenes, vote on Biden's mega-spending bill expected soon

11/19/21 5:02 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Vote expected on Biden's massive social spending bill today, after McCarthy's record-length House speech

11/19/21 3:13 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

BREAKING NEWS: No vote on Biden’s social spending bill during overnight hours

11/18/21 10:36 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

India’s Modi repeals controversial farm laws that sparked fierce protests

11/18/21 8:37 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

See NBC's response after Rittenhouse judge bars reporter from court for allegedly following jury van

11/18/21 12:16 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Republicans set to grill controversial Biden nominee Saule Omarova at Senate committee

11/18/21 6:40 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

WATCH LIVE: Ahmaud Arbery murder suspect Travis McMichael takes the stand

11/17/21 10:48 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Controversial Biden nominee arrested for 'retail theft' in 1995 - see the White House response

11/17/21 7:28 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Rittenhouse jury done for the day, deliberations to resume tomorrow

11/16/21 3:52 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Email suggests FBI created 'threat tag' to track alleged harassment of school officials

11/16/21 2:00 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

EXCLUSIVE: As leaked docs contradict Mayorkas migrant testimony, GOP senator demands clarity

11/16/21 5:08 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Kyle Rittenhouse murder case goes to jury

11/15/21 4:00 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Powerful Dem Sen. Patrick Leahy announces he won't seek reelection, after almost 50 years in office

11/15/21 7:40 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Texas Dem Beto O'Rourke announces run for governor after bids for Senate, White House came up short

11/15/21 7:28 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

WATCH LIVE: Closing arguments in Kyle Rittenhouse trial

11/15/21 7:18 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Britney Spears’ conservatorship officially ends after 13 years

11/12/21 2:14 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

BREAKING NEWS: Steve Bannon indicted on contempt of Congress charges

11/12/21 1:28 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Jen Psaki holds White House briefing as anger builds over inflation, rising gas prices

11/12/21 10:34 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

The Durham indictments: What you need to know

11/12/21 7:27 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden expected to announce Obama-era official to lead FDA, nearly 10 months into term

11/12/21 6:37 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

BREAKING NEWS: SpaceX crew successfully docks at International Space Station

11/11/21 3:56 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

BREAKING NEWS: Ninth victim dead in Astroworld tragedy

11/11/21 11:48 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden policies 'key factor' in surging energy prices, top industry exec tells Fox News

11/11/21 7:41 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Luke Combs takes home top prize at CMA Awards

11/10/21 8:17 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Kyle Rittenhouse testifies in his own defense

11/10/21 7:57 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Russian analyst accused of feeding controversial Steele dossier enters plea days after arrest

11/10/21 6:32 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Consumer prices surge at highest rate in over 3 decades as supply-chain crisis hits Americans' wallets

11/10/21 5:52 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Aaron Rodgers takes 'responsibility for 'misleading' comments, stops short of apology

11/09/21 12:19 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is 'foreign policy advisor' in former Clinton lawyer indictment: sources

11/09/21 11:22 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

BREAKING NEWS: Astroworld performers Drake and Travis Scott slapped with lawsuit over deadly festival horror

11/07/21 2:17 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

FELT A 'PRICK': Cops reveal victims may have been injected with drugs during deadly festival horror

11/06/21 2:20 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

CANCELED: Aaron Rodgers out as spokesman for health company after COVID vaccine controversy

11/06/21 12:26 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

BREAKING NEWS: Biden's COVID vaccine mandate for private employers was just dealt a major blow

11/06/21 11:52 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden doubles down on costly agenda despite GOP victory in Virginia

11/06/21 8:09 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden speaks after Dems pass giant $1,200,000,000,000 infrastructure package

11/06/21 6:59 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Crowd crush, panic at Houston event leaves at least 8 dead

11/06/21 2:58 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

BREAKING NEWS: House approves $1.2 trillion infrastructure package in late Friday night vote

11/05/21 8:27 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Dems’ social spending bill could massively increase fines against employers violating vaccine mandate

11/05/21 11:14 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Colin Powell's funeral underway at Washington National Cathedral

11/05/21 9:03 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden speaks on better-than-expected jobs report, as Pelosi tries to jam through spending bill

11/05/21 7:53 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

LIVE UPDATES: House may vote today on mega-spending bills with final costs unclear

11/05/21 6:14 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

American tourists 'hiding' at Mexico resort after reported shooting

11/04/21 3:11 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

FBI arrests Steele dossier sub-source as part of Durham investigation

11/04/21 8:41 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fauci, Walensky testify amid OSHA vaccine mandate rollout, Wuhan lab funding controversy

11/04/21 7:06 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

OSHA vaccine mandate to hit large employers Jan. 4, with hefty fines for noncompliance

11/04/21 5:47 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

China's nuclear stockpile growing at 'accelerating pace,' will have 1,000 warheads by 2030: Pentagon

11/03/21 9:44 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

McAuliffe concedes in Virginia governor's race, congratulates Youngkin

11/03/21 6:51 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News projects winner in Virginia governor's race

11/02/21 9:40 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Braves beat Astros in Game 6 to win World Series, first since 1995

11/02/21 8:39 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

New Jersey governor's race, once seen as easy Dem win, may be a cliffhanger

11/02/21 8:12 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

See the results as Minneapolis votes on whether to scrap and replace its police

11/02/21 7:05 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

One candidate emerges with a slight advantage in the Virginia governor's race

11/02/21 5:30 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

CDC Director gives final sign off to COVID-19 vaccines for kids

11/02/21 4:53 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Polls are closing in the Virginia governor’s race, seen as the most pivotal Election Day contest.

11/02/21 4:00 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

CDC makes decision on COVID-19 vaccines for kids

11/02/21 2:16 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden takes questions on his final day at UN climate conference, hours before polls close stateside

11/02/21 12:14 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Polls are open in Virginia, where voters will decide a closely watched governor's race. Full coverage all day on our live blog.

11/02/21 4:52 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden apologizes for Trump pulling out of Paris climate agreement

11/01/21 9:42 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

WATCH: Alec Baldwin breaks his silence on Halyna Hutchins' death on 'Rust' movie set

10/30/21 1:17 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

FIRST ON FOX: Alec Baldwin speaks in public for first time since deadly 'Rust' incident

10/30/21 11:41 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

NY AG Letitia James, who oversaw Cuomo sex-harassment investigation, announces bid for governor

10/29/21 10:58 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Queen Elizabeth II advised by doctors to rest for at least 2 weeks

10/29/21 10:26 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden pitches $1.75M reconciliation bill framework as 'historic' with progressives still not on board

10/28/21 9:23 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden speaks out on $1.75T reconciliation bill framework with agenda in the balance

10/28/21 8:43 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

New Mexico sheriff to Fox News on Baldwin ‘Rust’ shooting: 'This is a criminal investigation'

10/28/21 6:25 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden to announce reconciliation bill framework before jetting to Europe: sources

10/28/21 3:36 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Baldwin movie's assistant director admits to gun-safety mistakes, search warrant reveals

10/27/21 10:49 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

'Too early' to comment on potential charges in Alec Baldwin prop gun shooting, investigators say

10/27/21 9:13 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

New Mexico sheriff, DA investigating Alec Baldwin 'Rust' shooting hold press conference

10/27/21 9:01 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

AG Garland faces questions about Justice Department politicization in Senate hearing

10/27/21 7:07 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden's job performance hammered in Nashville as he jets off to G20

10/27/21 6:17 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

McAuliffe buys 'fake news' ads in effort to sway voters, Fox News investigation finds

10/27/21 4:36 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Crew member who handed Alec Baldwin firearm fired from previous job after prop gun accident

10/25/21 2:56 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Boise police respond to ‘shots fired’ at mall, 5 people and a cop injured

10/25/21 2:29 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

WATCH: Failed escapes at Kabul airport led to living nightmares for Afghans in hiding

10/25/21 5:16 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

US ‘deeply alarmed’ over reports of military coup in Sudan

10/25/21 12:23 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Supreme Court agrees to hear 2 challenges to Texas abortion law

10/22/21 9:52 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Alec Baldwin breaks silence after killing crew member in disastrous gun mishap on movie set

10/22/21 8:56 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Robert Durst charged with murdering his first wife

10/22/21 7:24 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Alec Baldwin fired prop gun that led to death on movie set

10/21/21 7:32 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Remains found in Florida swamp identified as Brian Laundrie

10/21/21 2:45 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News has learned bones were discovered near Brian Laundrie's belongings in Florida swamp

10/21/21 1:43 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

WATCH LIVE: Police, sheriff hold news conference after remains discovered in Laundrie search

10/21/21 8:13 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Garland testifies at House hearing with DOJ under fire for targeting parents

10/21/21 7:13 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Voters extremely concerned about a growing problem facing the US

10/20/21 3:01 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

FBI confirms backpack, notebook belonging to Brian Laundrie found along with human remains

10/20/21 1:39 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

New poll shows how tight Virginia governor's race is less than two weeks from Election Day

10/20/21 10:06 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Coroner arrives at Florida park after items belonging to Brian Laundrie found

10/20/21 9:44 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Laundrie family lawyer confirms 'articles' belonging to Brian found in Florida park

10/20/21 9:20 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Laundrie parents inside Florida park as law enforcement suggests 'we might have found something'

10/20/21 8:35 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Missing California woman's husband arrested for murder after dramatic raid

10/19/21 1:12 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Colin Powell, former secretary of state, dead at 84 from COVID-19 complications

10/18/21 5:13 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Biden speaks at event at US Capitol honoring law enforcement killed in line of duty

10/16/21 9:38 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

FDA panel endorses Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine booster with 2-month gap for ages 18 and up

10/15/21 10:33 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Scheller, Marine who criticized Afghanistan withdrawal, sentenced to reprimand, forfeiture of $5K in pay

10/15/21 7:31 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Loudoun County, Virginia parents speak out amid uproar over dad's accusations

10/14/21 10:34 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Scheller, Marine who criticized Afghanistan withdrawal, pleads guilty to all charges in court-martial hearing

10/14/21 7:21 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

High-rise fire in Taiwan kills at least 46

10/14/21 2:08 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Leaked Border Patrol docs show mass release of illegal immigrants into US by Biden administration

10/13/21 8:39 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

'Star Trek' actor Shatner lands safely after launching into space with Blue Origin

10/13/21 8:12 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

William Shatner to blast into space on Blue Origin rocket at age 90

10/13/21 7:36 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

US to reopen land borders next month for fully vaccinated: report

10/12/21 8:41 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

WATCH LIVE: Biden speaks after September jobs report badly misses expectations

10/08/21 9:52 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

US jobs added in September fall far short of expectations

10/08/21 5:45 AM

New story in Technology from Time: Inside the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Tomorrow’s Business Leaders

Tima Bansal begins every new course with a cautionary statistic for her business school students. A 2008 study found that MBA candidates enter business school with more community-oriented values, but graduate with more selfish ones. “They come in caring about the world, and they leave caring more about themselves. Why?” she says.

Bansal, a professor at Ivey Business School in London, Ontario, thinks she knows the answer. “At the heart of every single course that we teach is this orientation toward profit or leadership or themselves,” says Bansal, one of a growing number of academics who want to change that. MBA programs, they say, can no longer justify teaching future business leaders to maximize profits at the expense of the planet. The way Bansal and others see it, the world would be a better place if more businesses played an active role in tackling social and environmental challenges, from climate change to global poverty. And if the leadership ranks of major companies don’t adjust the way they do business, they warn, their fixation on making money and rewarding shareholders will exacerbate inequality and climate disasters.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“We have a crisis on our hands, and business schools need to act,” Bansal says.

<strong>“We have a crisis on our hands, and business schools need to act.”</strong>The world’s major corporations stand at a crossroads. Many Boomer and Generation X executives have grudgingly come to the realization in recent years that they can no longer straddle the fence or remain silent on thorny social and political issues. To attract and retain the best and brightest Millennial and Gen Z employees, companies are facing pressure to express their opinions and take action on critical matters, including racial injustice, climate change and income inequality. A majority of college students (68%) say companies should take public stances on social issues. Another 16% said they wouldn’t work for a company that did not, according to a recent Axios/Generation Lab poll. Another survey, by Washington State University’s Carson College of Business, found that 70% of Gen Z employees want to work for a company whose values align with their own, and 83% want to work for a company that has a positive impact on the world.

Courtesy Tima BansalTima Bansal, a professor at the Ivey Business School in London, Ontario.

That demand is reflected in the young people seeking business graduate degrees. At Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, the number of students in the Social Impact MBA program has nearly doubled in the last decade, growing from 79 in 2011 to 155 in 2021. Since leaders at the University of Vermont ripped up the 1970s-era MBA format and redesigned it around sustainability—the term used to describe businesses that are environmentally and socially conscious—the program has grown from 20 students in 2014 to 47 in 2021. They’re considering expanding the program to 70 or 80 students after receiving a record number of applications last year.

Companies are also facing pressure from consumers who increasingly want to buy eco-friendly, ethical products from businesses that share their values. Nearly 80% of consumers say it’s important that brands are sustainable and environmentally responsible, according to a 2020 study by IBM and the National Retail Federation, which polled consumers in 28 countries. A majority (57%) of those consumers say they’re willing to change their shopping habits in order to reduce the negative impact on the environment.

For the first time this semester, Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco offered MBA students an eight-week elective course on promoting anti-racism in the workforce, adding to courses on leading inclusive organizations, prioritizing social justice in supply chains and exploring renewable energy systems. Liz Leiba—an adjunct professor teaching the course, which covers the advantages and challenges of building a diverse workplace and how to identify discrimination and bias—thinks it should be required for all students. “Diversity sometimes has been an afterthought,” she says. “Marketing is not an afterthought. Sales is not an afterthought.”

Read more: What Happened When Facebook Shut Down the Team That Put People Ahead of Profits

The movement amounts to a fight for the hearts and minds of tomorrow’s business leaders by changing how MBA students are educated. “Can we possibly justify teaching students to go out and profit their investors by depleting society and the rest of the planet?’ It’s just not a viable ethical position,” says Tom Lyon, faculty director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

But change has been slow. Universities are large, traditional institutions that tend to stick with what they know, and many major business schools have not overhauled tried-and-true programs, instead offering one-off courses on sustainability or ethics.

<strong>“We can’t do business as usual. We have to do new business.”</strong>Maggie Winslow, the academic dean at Presidio, which aims to include sustainability and social justice in every business course, says when she offered to help the dean of another business school start a sustainability curriculum, she was told “that’s just a fad.”

Lyon has struggled to get concepts such as sustainability and corporate political responsibility fully integrated into the core curriculum and notes that there hasn’t been a critical mass of students or donors demanding that change. “It’s like the MBA core is the inner sanctum of the religion of business schools. And every area feels like, ‘I have my sacred concepts I must teach, and I cannot make room for these sort of nice, but superfluous ideas,’” Lyon says.

And many of the business schools that have been leading the charge on this front are not among the country’s top-ranked MBA programs, suggesting that the most competitive business schools are hesitant to disrupt a time-tested curriculum.

But as the world experiences the devastating effects of climate change and the country confronts centuries of racial injustice, many professors argue that change has never been more urgent. “It’s an all-hands-on-deck kind of moment,” Lyon says. “We’re close to a point of turning the planet into a place that is much less inhabitable than it’s been for the last millennium.”

‘A 50-year-old paradigm’

Dartmouth founded the first graduate school of management in 1900 with the Tuck School of Business, and Harvard launched the world’s first MBA program in 1908. The MBA has since grown to be the most popular postgraduate degree in the country, making up 24% of all master’s degrees earned in the 2018-19 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

But the world has changed dramatically since the MBA first became a rite of passage for business leaders, raising questions about whether courses in marketing, microeconomics and finance are a sufficient foundation for business leadership. MBA applications surged as the pandemic caused economic challenges and mass unemployment, but business schools had been contending with several years of declining applications before that.

“Business schools are still operating out of a 50-year-old paradigm. And I think that’s the fundamental problem,” Lyon says. “All the businessman had to do was just maximize profits, play within the rules, and everything was fine. And the problem is, our rules need to be changed. The system isn’t really working anymore.”

Climate change is expected to cost the global economy as much as $23 trillion by 2050, according to a 2021 report by the insurance company Swiss Re. And a reckoning over racial injustice has intensified calls for corporations to do more to promote equity and and diversity.

Courtesy Alyssa Gutner-DavisAlyssa Gutner-Davis, a student at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.

</span><strong style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">“My impression was if you go to business school, you’re only focused on the economics.”</strong><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Alyssa Gutner-Davis, a second-year student at Questrom, says if you had told her in college that she’d one day go to business school, she would have laughed. “My impression was if you go to business school, you’re only focused on the economics and do the economics pencil out, and there’s no room for thinking through any other considerations,” says Gutner-Davis, 31. But she enrolled in Questrom’s Social Impact MBA program—which includes courses on impact investing, discrimination in the workplace and environmentally sustainable supply chains— because she wanted to understand business basics in order to pursue her interests in environmental justice and clean energy.

The demand is coming from corporations too. In June, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers announced it would invest $12 billion over five years to create 100,000 new jobs, many with an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) focus.

Read more: Wildfires Are Getting Worse, So Why Is the U.S. Still Using Wood to Build Homes?

“Student demand is increasing. You can see employers are seeking graduates with these skills and knowledge. There’s demand from society for business schools to positively contribute to tackling some of these grand societal challenges,” says Caroline Flammer, co-faculty director of Questrom’s social impact program. She teaches a course called Social Impact: Business, Society, and the Natural Environment, which she thinks should be required for any MBA student. “In my view, the Social Impact MBA program should be the MBA program.”

<strong>“Student demand is increasing. You can see employers are seeking graduates with these skills and knowledge.”</strong> At Michigan, Lyon teaches a course on the economics of sustainability to undergraduates and a course on energy markets and energy politics to graduate students. He’s working on building a task force on corporate political responsibility, aiming to confront the way companies too often “focus on their own short term profits at the expense of the larger society.” He would like to see the concepts of ethics, sustainability and political responsibility fully integrated throughout all MBA courses, not just tacked on as a single course.

Dan WatkinsCaroline Flammer of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.

That’s how Sanjay Sharma, dean of the University of Vermont’s Grossman School of Business, redesigned the school’s MBA program, with sustainability embedded in every subject. Students learn about impact investing, carbon pricing and analyzing social and environmental risks. They explore all case studies through a lens of environmental and social justice impacts.

Sustainability has been part of the core curriculum at Ivey, in Ontario, since 2003. When Bansal first began integrating business sustainability into strategy, finance and marketing courses—teaching students to take a long-term view and to consider social and environmental impacts in business decisions—she confronted the perception that environmental issues didn’t belong in business education. Now, she hears from students who say they “desperately need more” of these classes.

She thinks MBA programs need to do a better job of preparing students to solve today’s global challenges. “You have to have corporations that build products that solve not just their own profits, but products that actually make the world better,” she says. “That requires a different type of thinking.”

‘Business moves faster than academia’

Sharma knows that MBA programs like his, built entirely around sustainability, are still niche. Top-ranked business schools with powerful brands don’t seem eager to upend successful programs that are still attracting thousands of applicants willing to spend as much as $200,000 for their degrees and producing highly employable graduates.

“Business moves faster than academia,” Sharma says. but he thinks all business schools will be forced to adapt eventually. “If organizations demand it and if society demands it, then it’ll start happening faster.”

He and his peers are confronting a lingering stigma that courses on sustainability or social justice are nice, but not essential. “I wish I could say the vast majority of Ross students were beating down the doors for ethics and sustainability. And, you know, they’re not,” Lyon says. “The real drivers are student demand and donors. So if students start saying, ‘We have to have this material,’ schools will change.”

For university leaders, there’s nothing simple about revamping decades-old curricula or persuading tenured faculty to change their courses. But the global realities of climate instability and resource shortages could force their hand.

“If you only plan to be in business for five years, maybe you don’t want to think about it. But if you want to be in business for 50 years, then we all have to think about this,” says Winslow, the Presidio dean. “We can’t do business as usual. We have to do new business.”

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Hurricane nightmare: Louisiana mayor says government levee system was disastrous for his town

10/07/21 11:57 AM

New story in Technology from Time: How Facebook Forced a Reckoning by Shutting Down the Team That Put People Ahead of Profits

Facebook’s civic-integrity team was always different from all the other teams that the social media company employed to combat misinformation and hate speech. For starters, every team member subscribed to an informal oath, vowing to “serve the people’s interest first, not Facebook’s.”

The “civic oath,” according to five former employees, charged team members to understand Facebook’s impact on the world, keep people safe and defuse angry polarization. Samidh Chakrabarti, the team’s leader, regularly referred to this oath—which has not been previously reported—as a set of guiding principles behind the team’s work, according to the sources.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Chakrabarti’s team was effective in fixing some of the problems endemic to the platform, former employees and Facebook itself have said.

But, just a month after the 2020 U.S. election, Facebook dissolved the civic-integrity team, and Chakrabarti took a leave of absence. Facebook said employees were assigned to other teams to help share the group’s experience across the company. But for many of the Facebook employees who had worked on the team, including a veteran product manager from Iowa named Frances Haugen, the message was clear: Facebook no longer wanted to concentrate power in a team whose priority was to put people ahead of profits.

Five weeks later, supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol—after some of them organized on Facebook and used the platform to spread the lie that the election had been stolen. The civic-integrity team’s dissolution made it harder for the platform to respond effectively to Jan. 6, one former team member, who left Facebook this year, told TIME. “A lot of people left the company. The teams that did remain had significantly less power to implement change, and that loss of focus was a pretty big deal,” said the person. “Facebook did take its eye off the ball in dissolving the team, in terms of being able to actually respond to what happened on Jan. 6.” The former employee, along with several others TIME interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear that being named would ruin their career.

Paul Morris—Bloomberg/Getty ImagesSamidh Chakrabarti, head of civic engagement for Facebook Inc., from left, Katie Harbath, head of global politics for Facebook Inc., Nathaniel Bleacher, head of cyber security policy for Facebook Inc., and Tom Reynolds, a member of the civic and community standards team at Facebook Inc., work inside the “War Room” ahead of Brazil’s runoff elction at Facebook Inc. headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Oct. 17, 2018.

 

Enter Frances Haugen

Haugen revealed her identity on Oct. 3 as the whistle-blower behind the most significant leak of internal research in the company’s 17-year history. In a bombshell testimony to the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security two days later, Haugen said the civic-integrity team’s dissolution was the final event in a long series that convinced her of the need to blow the whistle. “I think the moment which I realized we needed to get help from the outside—that the only way these problems would be solved is by solving them together, not solving them alone—was when civic-integrity was dissolved following the 2020 election,” she said. “It really felt like a betrayal of the promises Facebook had made to people who had sacrificed a great deal to keep the election safe, by basically dissolving our community.”

Read more: The Facebook Whistleblower Revealed Herself on 60 Minutes. Here’s What You Need to Know

In a statement provided to TIME, Facebook’s vice president for integrity Guy Rosen denied the civic-integrity team had been disbanded. “We did not disband Civic Integrity,” Rosen said. “We integrated it into a larger Central Integrity team so that the incredible work pioneered for elections could be applied even further, for example, across health-related issues. Their work continues to this day.” (Facebook did not make Rosen available for an interview for this story.)

Impacts of Civic Technology Conference 2016The defining values of the civic-integrity team, as described in a 2016 presentation given by Samidh Chakrabarti and Winter Mason. Civic-integrity team members were expected to adhere to this list of values, which was referred to internally as the “civic oath”.

Haugen left the company in May. Before she departed, she trawled Facebook’s internal employee forum for documents posted by integrity researchers about their work. Much of the research was not related to her job, but was accessible to all Facebook employees. What she found surprised her.

Some of the documents detailed an internal study that found that Instagram, its photo-sharing app, made 32% of teen girls feel worse about their bodies. Others showed how a change to Facebook’s algorithm in 2018, touted as a way to increase “meaningful social interactions” on the platform, actually incentivized divisive posts and misinformation. They also revealed that Facebook spends almost all of its budget for keeping the platform safe only on English-language content. In September, the Wall Street Journal published a damning series of articles based on some of the documents that Haugen had leaked to the paper. Haugen also gave copies of the documents to Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The documents, Haugen testified Oct. 5, “prove that Facebook has repeatedly misled the public about what its own research reveals about the safety of children, the efficacy of its artificial intelligence systems, and its role in spreading divisive and extreme messages.” She told Senators that the failings revealed by the documents were all linked by one deep, underlying truth about how the company operates. “This is not simply a matter of certain social media users being angry or unstable, or about one side being radicalized against the other; it is about Facebook choosing to grow at all costs, becoming an almost trillion-dollar company by buying its profits with our safety,” she said.

Facebook’s focus on increasing user engagement, which ultimately drives ad revenue and staves off competition, she argued, may keep users coming back to the site day after day—but also systematically boosts content that is polarizing, misinformative and angry, and which can send users down dark rabbit holes of political extremism or, in the case of teen girls, body dysmorphia and eating disorders. “The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer, but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people,” Haugen said. (In 2020, the company reported $29 billion in net income—up 58% from a year earlier. This year, it briefly surpassed $1 trillion in total market value, though Haugen’s leaks have since knocked the company down to around $940 billion.)

Asked if executives adhered to the same set of values as the civic-integrity team, including putting the public’s interests before Facebook’s, a company spokesperson told TIME it was “safe to say everyone at Facebook is committed to understanding our impact, keeping people safe and reducing polarization.”

In the same week that an unrelated systems outage took Facebook’s services offline for hours and revealed just how much the world relies on the company’s suite of products—including WhatsApp and Instagram—the revelations sparked a new round of national soul-searching. It led some to question how one company can have such a profound impact on both democracy and the mental health of hundreds of millions of people. Haugen’s documents are the basis for at least eight new SEC investigations into the company for potentially misleading its investors. And they have prompted senior lawmakers from both parties to call for stringent new regulations.

Read more: Here’s How to Fix Facebook, According to Former Employees and Leading Critics

Haugen urged Congress to pass laws that would make Facebook and other social media platforms legally liable for decisions about how they choose to rank content in users’ feeds, and force companies to make their internal data available to independent researchers. She also urged lawmakers to find ways to loosen CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s iron grip on Facebook; he controls more than half of voting shares on its board, meaning he can veto any proposals for change from within. “I came forward at great personal risk because I believe we still have time to act,” Haugen told lawmakers. “But we must act now.”

Potentially even more worryingly for Facebook, other experts it hired to keep the platform safe, now alienated by the company’s actions, are growing increasingly critical of their former employer. They experienced first hand Facebook’s unwillingness to change, and they know where the bodies are buried. Now, on the outside, some of them are still honoring their pledge to put the public’s interests ahead of Facebook’s.

Inside Facebook’s civic-integrity team

Chakrabarti, the head of the civic-integrity team, was hired by Facebook in 2015 from Google, where he had worked on improving how the search engine communicated information about lawmakers and elections to its users. A polymath described by one person who worked under him as a “Renaissance man,” Chakrabarti holds master’s degrees from MIT, Oxford and Cambridge, in artificial intelligence engineering, modern history and public policy, respectively, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Although he was not in charge of Facebook’s company-wide “integrity” efforts (led by Rosen), Chakrabarti, who did not respond to requests to comment for this article, was widely seen by employees as the spiritual leader of the push to make sure the platform had a positive influence on democracy and user safety, according to multiple former employees. “He was a very inspirational figure to us, and he really embodied those values [enshrined in the civic oath] and took them quite seriously,” a former member of the team told TIME. “The team prioritized societal good over Facebook good. It was a team that really cared about the ways to address societal problems first and foremost. It was not a team that was dedicated to contributing to Facebook’s bottom line.”

Chakrabarti began work on the team by questioning how Facebook could encourage people to be more engaged with their elected representatives on the platform, several of his former team members said. An early move was to suggest tweaks to Facebook’s “more pages you may like” feature that the team hoped might make users feel more like they could have an impact on politics.

After the chaos of the 2016 election, which prompted Zuckerberg himself to admit that Facebook didn’t do enough to stop misinformation, the team evolved. It moved into Facebook’s wider “integrity” product group, which employs thousands of researchers and engineers to focus on fixing Facebook’s problems of misinformation, hate speech, foreign interference and harassment. It changed its name from “civic engagement” to “civic integrity,” and began tackling the platform’s most difficult problems head-on.

Shortly before the midterm elections in 2018, Chakrabarti gave a talk at a conference in which he said he had “never been told to sacrifice people’s safety in order to chase a profit.” His team was hard at work making sure the midterm elections did not suffer the same failures as in 2016, in an effort that was generally seen as a success, both inside the company and externally. “To see the way that the company has mobilized to make this happen has made me feel very good about what we’re doing here,” Chakrabarti told reporters at the time. But behind closed doors, integrity employees on Chakrabarti’s team and others were increasingly getting into disagreements with Facebook leadership, former employees said. It was the beginning of the process that would eventually motivate Haugen to blow the whistle.

Drew Angerer—Getty ImagesFormer Facebook employee Frances Haugen testifies during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing entitled ‘Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower’ in Washington, D.C., Oct. 5, 2021.

In 2019, the year Haugen joined the company, researchers on the civic-integrity team proposed ending the use of an approved list of thousands of political accounts that were exempt from Facebook’s fact-checking program, according to tech news site The Information. Their research had found that the exemptions worsened the site’s misinformation problem because users were more likely to believe false information if it were shared by a politician. But Facebook executives rejected the proposal.

The pattern repeated time and time again, as proposals to tweak the platform to down-rank misinformation or abuse were rejected or watered down by executives concerned with engagement or worried that changes might disproportionately impact one political party more than another, according to multiple reports in the press and several former employees. One cynical joke among members of the civic-integrity team was that they spent 10% of their time coding and the other 90% arguing that the code they wrote should be allowed to run, one former employee told TIME. “You write code that does exactly what it’s supposed to do, and then you had to argue with execs who didn’t want to think about integrity, had no training in it and were mad that you were hurting their product, so they shut you down,” the person said.

Sometimes the civic-integrity team would also come into conflict with Facebook’s policy teams, which share the dual role of setting the rules of the platform while also lobbying politicians on Facebook’s behalf. “I found many times that there were tensions [in meetings] because the civic-integrity team was like, ‘We’re operating off this oath; this is our mission and our goal,’” says Katie Harbath, a long-serving public-policy director at the company’s Washington, D.C., office who quit in March 2021. “And then you get into decisionmaking meetings, and all of a sudden things are going another way, because the rest of the company and leadership are not basing their decisions off those principles.”

Harbath admitted not always seeing eye to eye with Chakrabarti on matters of company policy, but praised his character. “Samidh is a man of integrity, to use the word,” she told TIME. “I personally saw times when he was like, ‘How can I run an integrity team if I’m not upholding integrity as a person?’”

Years before the 2020 election, research by integrity teams had shown Facebook’s group recommendations feature was radicalizing users by driving them toward polarizing political groups, according to the Journal. The company declined integrity teams’ requests to turn off the feature, BuzzFeed News reported. Then, just weeks before the vote, Facebook executives changed their minds and agreed to freeze political group recommendations. The company also tweaked its News Feed to make it less likely that users would see content that algorithms flagged as potential misinformation, part of temporary emergency “break glass” measures designed by integrity teams in the run-up to the vote. “Facebook changed those safety defaults in the run-up to the election because they knew they were dangerous,” Haugen testified to Senators on Tuesday. But they didn’t keep those safety measures in place long, she added. “Because they wanted that growth back, they wanted the acceleration on the platform back after the election, they returned to their original defaults. And the fact that they had to break the glass on Jan. 6, and turn them back on, I think that’s deeply problematic.”

In a statement, Facebook spokesperson Tom Reynolds rejected the idea that the company’s actions contributed to the events of Jan. 6. “In phasing in and then adjusting additional measures before, during and after the election, we took into account specific on-platforms signals and information from our ongoing, regular engagement with law enforcement,” he said. “When those signals changed, so did the measures. It is wrong to claim that these steps were the reason for Jan. 6—the measures we did need remained in place through February, and some like not recommending new, civic or political groups remain in place to this day. These were all part of a much longer and larger strategy to protect the election on our platform—and we are proud of that work.”

Read more: 4 Big Takeaways From the Facebook Whistleblower Congressional Hearing

Soon after the civic-integrity team was dissolved in December 2020, Chakrabarti took a leave of absence from Facebook. In August, he announced he was leaving for good. Other employees who had spent years working on platform-safety issues had begun leaving, too. In her testimony, Haugen said that several of her colleagues from civic integrity left Facebook in the same six-week period as her, after losing faith in the company’s pledge to spread their influence around the company. “Six months after the reorganization, we had clearly lost faith that those changes were coming,” she said.

After Haugen’s Senate testimony, Facebook’s director of policy communications Lena Pietsch suggested that Haugen’s criticisms were invalid because she “worked at the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives—and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question.” On Twitter, Chakrabarti said he was not supportive of company leaks but spoke out in support of the points Haugen raised at the hearing. “I was there for over 6 years, had numerous direct reports, and led many decision meetings with C-level execs, and I find the perspectives shared on the need for algorithmic regulation, research transparency, and independent oversight to be entirely valid for debate,” he wrote. “The public deserves better.”

Can Facebook’s latest moves protect the company?

Two months after disbanding the civic-integrity team, Facebook announced a sharp directional shift: it would begin testing ways to reduce the amount of political content in users’ News Feeds altogether. In August, the company said early testing of such a change among a small percentage of U.S. users was successful, and that it would expand the tests to several other countries. Facebook declined to provide TIME with further information about how its proposed down-ranking system for political content would work.

Many former employees who worked on integrity issues at the company are skeptical of the idea. “You’re saying that you’re going to define for people what political content is, and what it isn’t,” James Barnes, a former product manager on the civic-integrity team, said in an interview. “I cannot even begin to imagine all of the downstream consequences that nobody understands from doing that.”

Another former civic-integrity team member said that the amount of work required to design algorithms that could detect any political content in all the languages and countries in the world—and keeping those algorithms updated to accurately map the shifting tides of political debate—would be a task that even Facebook does not have the resources to achieve fairly and equitably. Attempting to do so would almost certainly result in some content deemed political being demoted while other posts thrived, the former employee cautioned. It could also incentivize certain groups to try to game those algorithms by talking about politics in nonpolitical language, creating an arms race for engagement that would privilege the actors with enough resources to work out how to win, the same person added.

Graeme Jennings—Bloomberg/Getty ImagesMark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer and founder of Facebook Inc., speaks via video conference during a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., on, July 29, 2020.

When Zuckerberg was hauled to testify in front of lawmakers after the Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018, Senators were roundly mocked on social media for asking basic questions such as how Facebook makes money if its services are free to users. (“Senator, we run ads” was Zuckerberg’s reply.) In 2021, that dynamic has changed. “The questions asked are a lot more informed,” says Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook employee who was fired in 2020 after she criticized Facebook for turning a blind eye to platform manipulation by political actors around the world.

“The sentiment is increasingly bipartisan” in Congress, Zhang adds. In the past, Facebook hearings have been used by lawmakers to grandstand on polarizing subjects like whether social media platforms are censoring conservatives, but this week they were united in their condemnation of the company. “Facebook has to stop covering up what it knows, and must change its practices, but there has to be government accountability because Facebook can no longer be trusted,” Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, chair of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, told TIME ahead of the hearing. His Republican counterpart Marsha Blackburn agreed, saying during the hearing that regulation was coming “sooner rather than later” and that lawmakers were “close to bipartisan agreement.”

As Facebook reels from the revelations of the past few days, it already appears to be reassessing product decisions. It has begun conducting reputational reviews of new products to assess whether the company could be criticized or its features could negatively affect children, the Journal reported Wednesday. It last week paused its Instagram Kids product amid the furor.

Whatever the future direction of Facebook, it is clear that discontent has been brewing internally. Haugen’s document leak and testimony have already sparked calls for stricter regulation and improved the quality of public debate about social media’s influence. In a post addressing Facebook staff on Wednesday, Zuckerberg put the onus on lawmakers to update Internet regulations, particularly relating to “elections, harmful content, privacy and competition.” But the real drivers of change may be current and former employees, who have a better understanding of the inner workings of the company than anyone—and the most potential to damage the business. —With reporting by Eloise Barry/London and Chad de Guzman/Hong Kong