Buyout giant Apollo tells NYC workers to stay home as it braces for major protest at HQ

 Giant buyout firm Apollo Global Management is telling workers to stay home on Friday as it braces for a nasty protest at its New York City headquarters – and the beef is over CEO Marc Rowan’s support of President Trump’s clampdown on woke politics at university campuses, On the Money has learned.

In recent days, about 1,000 employees at Apollo’s offices at 9 West 57th St. were sent letters advising them to work from home on Friday to avoid being targeted by the demonstration, which has been planned for weeks, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

It’s an omen of what’s in store for New York City now that we have a mayor-elect who can’t bring himself to condemn rabble rousers who in recent weeks have chanted slogans like “from the river to the sea” and “Israel does not exist.” 

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Apollo CEO Marc Rowan’s support of President Trump’s clampdown on woke politics at university campuses has sparked an uproar and protests at the provate-equity giant are planned.Jack Forbes / NY Post Design

Downtown businesses were already ramping up security measures after a mass shooting at the headquarters of another private equity shop, Blackstone. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s association with radical groups like the Democratic Socialists of America and attacks against big business is expected to spark even more protests at the offices of some of the city’s largest employers, business leaders say.

A spokeswoman for Apollo declined to comment. A rep for The Professional Staff Congress, which is planning the rally, couldn’t be reached for comment. 

People close to Apollo say security at the building is bracing for a possible large turnout out of an excess of caution; it has significantly ramped up its security and has alerted the NYPD. One problem they face is a new city law effective last month that mandates uniformed police to “accommodate” protests as a First Amendment right as long as the event doesn’t turn violent.

“To be honest (Apollo has) no idea if there will be two people, 20 people or 200 people showing up to this thing,” this person said. Other businesses operate out of the same building and have been advising their employees to take similar precautions.

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Apollo’s headquarters at 9 West 57th St.Christopher Sadowski

The activist group, called “The Professional Staff Congress,” has been touting its plans on X to “protest Marc Rowan.”

Their big gripe: Rowan recently has become an adviser for the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” a reform effort that hands out “preferential” federal funds to colleges that move away from left-wing dogma across their curricula and administrations.

Rowan, writing last month in the New York Times, said the university system “is broken” and that “talented domestic students and scholars have been crowded out of enrollment and employment opportunities by international students.” 

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Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s association with radical groups and attacks against big business is expected to spark even more protests at the offices of some of the city’s largest employers, business leaders say.ZUMAPRESS.com

The buyout baron likewise ripped the “high degree of uniformity of thought among faculty members and administrators” across many campuses today, which he said “can result in a hostile environment for students with different ideas.”

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Rowan’s campaign included attacks against his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. Shutterstock

The compact would address this by “prohibiting discrimination, harassment and intimidation of students; neutrally enforcing ‘time, place and manner’ guidelines for protest activities,” and force colleges who want aid to refrain “from taking institutional positions on political controversies unrelated to a school’s core mission, while encouraging all members of the community to speak out and debate in their personal capacities,” he wrote.

The White House has only recently begun to engage universities on the compact, but top colleges claim the effort stifles academic freedom. The Professional Staff Congress says it represents 30,000 faculty and staff at the City University of New York and the CUNY Research Foundation.

According to its website, it goals include “advancing the professional lives of our members, enhancing their terms and conditions of employment, and maintaining the strength and educational excellence of the nation’s largest urban public university”

Rowan, who is worth approximately $6 billion, has lately emerged as one of Wall Street’s most prominent critics of left-wing politics in academia, including what he believed was the caving of administrators to antisemitic campus protests after the Oct. 7 massacres.

His campaign included attacks against his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, that led to the resignation of its president Liz Magill and Chairman Scott Bok. Rowan, a graduate of the university’s prestigious Wharton School, alleged that the school condoned protests that celebrated violence and threatened Jewish students.

https://nypost.com/2025/11/06/business/apollo-tells-nyc-workers-to-stay-home-as-it-braces-for-protest-over-marc-rowans-trump-support/

Mitsubishi Estate said to build US data centers worth $15B

 Mitsubishi Estate Company is planning to build 14 data centers in the United States over the next five years, Nikkei reported.

According to the outlet, the total cost of the real estate company's project is expected to reach about 2.3 trillion yen ($15 billion). The company is reportedly planning to cover at least a part of the costs through investments by institutional investors and external companies.

The development and operation of the data centers are set to be led by TA Realty, an American company in which Mitsubishi Estate has held a stake since 2015.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Mitsubishi-Estate-said-to-build-US-data-centers-worth-dollar15B/65139151

US, Central Asian countries strike deals worth over $5B

 The United States struck various deals with a number of Central Asian countries on Thursday, worth more than $5 billion, in what seems to be an initiative to counter Chinese and Russian influence, as journalist Alex Raufoglu reported. They are expected to be signed later today as US President Donald Trump hosts the leaders of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

Among the agreements are: Air Astana, Somon Air, Uzbekistan Airways, all partnering with the Boeing Company to acquire jets; Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) between Nvidia Corporation, MDIDO, and Freedom Holding Corporation on advanced AI semiconductors; agricultural machinery deal with Kazakhstan; rail construction and engineering deal with Kyrgyzstan; cotton harvesting equipment deal with Uzbekistan; and others.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/US-Central-Asian-countries-strike-deals-worth-over-dollar5B/65138798

Not For Sale: How Physicians Are Keeping Private Practice Alive

 With the rapid rise in consolidation from hospitals and private equity firms, the old-fashioned private medical practice, run and managed by one or two physicians, is no longer the norm.

Only 42% of doctors were in private practice in 2024. This contrasts with the 60% who ran their own offices in 2012, according to a recent report. That same study found that corporate entities, including health insurers and private equity-backed companies, employ 23% of physicians, up from 15% in 2019.

So what does it take to hang up your own shingle — and keep it affixed — during these challenging times? Staying laser focused on patients helps, Sonali Majmudar, MD, an allergist with two offices in the Chicago suburbs, told Medscape Medical News.

“As someone who plans to stay in solo practice, I’m intent on tailoring patient care to their individual needs,” said Majmudar, who employs eight staffers. “I’m probably making less money working on my own, but I believe you’ve got to do what your heart tells you.”

For Ryan Sultan, MD, a psychiatrist in New York City, who is the medical director of Integrative Psych, with three healthcare providers working in offices located in three states, it comes down to a matter of personal values.“When you choose between running a private practice and taking a corporate job, remember what shaped you,” he said. “Physicians train for a decade or more to think critically, act ethically, and put patients first — even before ourselves. Medicine is a calling built on trust, not quarterly returns.”

By contrast, private equity, venture capital, and corporate healthcare, by design, serve shareholders, Sultan said.

“Its duty is financial,” Sultan adds. “Ours is ethical. When those priorities clash, which they regularly do in healthcare, ask yourself: Who do you want to answer to?”

Reach Out To Regional Practitioners

When you’re running your own practice, it can help to network with other practitioners in your area and create strategic partnerships with local labs, urgent care centers, and clinics.

“Let’s say you’re a two-person pediatric group, and down the street there’s a 20-physician multispecialty group,” advised Susan Bankston, MD, a pediatrician in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who leads a multispecialty physician-owned-and-run clinic with 200 physicians and a board member of The Physicians Foundation, a nonprofit that helps support medical practice sustainability. “If you reach out, you may find that they need more pediatricians to lend a hand.”

Offering to give a short talk at a local school or senior center in your town can also help bolster business.

“During your presentation, you’ll be teaching people about your field and explaining what you do,” said Sultan. “Doing this sort of grassroots work is really important when you’re running your own solo practice. It can also lead to referrals because more people in your area will have met you and will spread the word that you’re available to care for them.”

Lean Into Technology

The key to remaining in private practice includes tapping into technological tools and leaning into innovation, said Jordan Weiner, MD, president of Valley ENT, an otolaryngology practice run by physicians.

“Since many of the reasons physician practices are acquired include the increasing challenges of information technology and negotiating with third-party payers, we have the size and scope and professional management to do these well,” said Weiner of the practice, which, since its inception in 2007, has grown from 13 physicians to nearly 40-plus mid-level providers serving much of the state of Arizona — which has driven interest by private equity firms.

Some of these tools include automating human resources, patient outreach systems, and patient records.

“Having all of this in place helps reduce the need to rely on being acquired by a hospital system,” Weiner said.

Advocate for Better Reimbursement

Issues of equity in reimbursement remain one of the biggest threats to physicians in private practice, said Mara Holton, MD, a urologist in Annapolis, Maryland, and health policy committee chair of the Large Urology Group Practice Association, which represents more than 1800 independent urologists across the US.

“There’s a tremendous disparity in the marketplace such that reimbursement is lower in independent settings even though costs are higher,” said Holton, who has been in practice for 20 years.

For change to occur, it’s critical for doctors in private practice to speak up — and fight for fairness.

“We need physicians to advocate for policy and regulatory support,” she said. “By engaging with local and national legislators and regulators, we can work towards favorable reimbursement reform that promotes independent practices.”

Be a Savvy Business Owner

One of the most feasible ways for private practices to stay private is to manage their spreadsheets and balance their expenses and earnings, especially if they’re experiencing a downturn in overall revenue.

“If that’s the case, you need to look at ways to cost save,” said Brian Santin, MD, a vascular surgeon who has been in private practice in Wilmington, Ohio, for over 12 years. “Start by looking at your expenses. For example, if you’re paying too much for your surgical packs, go to your vendor and ask if you can bulk purchase them, just like a hospital system would.”

And, as a good employer, it’s really important to make sure to prioritize your employees since staff turnover can often become one of the biggest costs you will face as the owner of a solo practice.

“We treat our employees really well and profit share with them,” said Santin, who majored in economics as an undergrad and currently has six staffers working for him. “I look at all the variables and then think of all the time it will take to train a new employee. That’s costly, so I want to do what I can to prevent that — and keep my team in place in the process.”

Taking time to apply even some of the tactics these doctors do may help you keep the doors open and be able to keep private equity at bay.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/not-sale-how-physicians-are-keeping-private-practice-alive-2025a1000une

'Inside Epic’s Rapid-Fire Research Machine'

 Physicians at the University of Florida noticed an uptick in sinus infections after hurricanes and turned to Epic Research for answers. The resulting analysis — drawing on millions of patient records from Epic’s massive Cosmos database — found little connection, instead attributing infections to the usual respiratory illness season.

The study, like most of Epic Research’s work, was published directly on the company’s website, not in a peer-reviewed journal. Epic Research, a subsidiary of the electronic health records giant, has built a reputation for producing rapid, accessible studies using data from more than 300 health systems.

Proponents say the scale of the Cosmos dataset allows for faster, broader analyses than traditional academic research. But some experts question whether speed comes at the expense of rigor and oversight. Without independent peer review, findings rely on Epic’s internal vetting process — a concern for researchers who see peer review as an essential safeguard.

Many in the academic research community remain distrustful of studies published outside the journal system. A recent survey of 294 corresponding authors across 28 countries who published studies in a peer-reviewed medical journal found that only about one third said they trust non-peer-reviewed research.

Arch Mainous III, PhD, vice chair for research in the Department of Community Health and Family Medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville, Florida, said the peer-review system provides guardrails to make sure studies are trustworthy.“If we say we don’t need peer review because we really want speed, you may be getting stuff out there that could be quite harmful to people,” Mainous said.

However, numerous studies have highlighted the flaws in peer review, including that it is slow, expensive, and time-consuming, fails to catch flawed and fraudulent papers, and can contain bias by geography, race, and sex.

Despite the lack of peer review, Epic’s studies, such as one showing patients with drug overdose were not being tested for fentanyl, are frequently cited in state legislation and are leading to changes in state laws in some cases, said Caleb Cox, the lead data scientist at Epic Research.

Brian Lobo, MD, professor and associate chief medical informatics officer at the University of Florida Health, who worked with Epic on the hurricane study, said investigators benefit from the scale of the dataset. The study population included residents of affected zip codes in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina who had a healthcare encounter during the relevant study period. Lobo said that while Epic evaluated up to more than 40 million patient healthcare encounters per hurricane, he and his colleagues at the university could evaluate only about 10,000 patient encounters by themselves.

“Where I see Epic Research, and Cosmos in general, being a huge shifter in the landscape is with meta-analyses because instead of indirectly analyzing numerous studies that may have flaws or incongruent methodologies, you can now directly analyze the primary data and make more appropriate and comprehensive solutions,” Lobo told Medscape Medical News.

Epic’s Model

The research outfit created the Cosmos dataset in collaboration with health systems that use Epic software. MetroHealth in Ohio was the first to join the collaborative in 2019. Other participants include the Duke University Health System, the Yale School of Medicine, and the Baylor College of Medicine. It now includes data from 1800 hospitals and 41,000 clinics across all 50 states, as well as Canada, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia.

Members must use Epic software so the data come into Cosmos in the same format. Health systems also must agree to contribute all their data to the Cosmos community and not sell access to it. Epic’s first study was published in April 2020. The studies are published on its website and distributed through newsletters.

Each study is conducted by two teams of in-house researchers consisting of at least one data scientist and one clinician. Epic Research employs six full-time data scientists, eight data scientists that also work on Epic software, and 23 clinicians, including physicians, nurses, and pharmacists.

The findings are vetted by researchers and clinicians who are not involved in the study in question. Cox said one of the benefits of operating outside the peer-reviewed journal system is the ability to publish findings quickly and in a highly accessible format. He said Epic researchers have accountability because they are paid to do this work as opposed to relying on volunteers for peer review.

“The disadvantage is that we don’t have someone external who is reviewing it who should be able to vouch for the work,” Cox said. “I think in this case, the trade-off is worth it for what we’re trying to accomplish, but I can understand why, for many researchers, the traditional process is more supportive of what they’re trying to accomplish.”

In choosing research topics, Epic considers whether the question can be answered with the Cosmos dataset and if the research will lead to new knowledge and has the potential to drive change in healthcare policy or clinical practice, Cox said.

For instance, an Epic Research study from 2022 in collaboration with the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, found just 5% of patients visiting an emergency department for an overdose were tested for fentanyl, although the drug is the primary cause of recent overdose deaths.

In 2023, Pennsylvania and Florida enacted laws requiring acute care hospitals to include fentanyl in urine drug screening. Both legislative packages referenced the Epic study, Cox said.

Rates of toxicology testing for fentanyl increased to 14% as of the end of June 2023 and to 26% for patients aged 13-17 years by the end of 2023. Epic provides updated metrics related to previously published research studies on its Epic Research Data Tracker.

Epic Research is not the only research outfit that operates outside of the peer-review world. Many nonprofit organizations, such as KFF and the Urban Institute, publish their own research.

Epic Research has teamed up with KFF on a few studies, including a 2020 analysis that showed people of color experienced higher rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection, hospitalization, and death than White patients. In another study, the two groups looked at the role telehealth played in providing mental health care during the pandemic.

Epic also partners with government organizations. It conducted a study in 2023 on the effectiveness of the vaccine JYNNEOS against mpox disease in collaboration with the CDC.

Epic’s most referenced study sought to determine if patients taking semaglutide or liraglutide would have to stay on the drugs long-term to maintain weight loss.

More than half of patients either remained around the same weight or continued to lose additional weight after discontinuing medication, while 17.7% regained all the weight they had lost or exceeded their initial weight.

At the time of the study, there wasn’t much information about weight changes a year after stopping the newer weight-loss medications, and “we weren’t sure what the real-world data would show us, but we knew it was something we had access to, would be timely, and relevant to a lot of the population,” said Kersten Bartelt, RN, researcher at the company.

Advantages and Limitations

Conducting studies from a large dataset such as Cosmos may help avoid many biases — regional, sex-based, racial — because analyzing a massive population reduces the chance that any one group will be left out, Lobo said. Analysis of subgroups could also be more reliable because the number of subjects required to measure significant outcomes in a population is often higher than most studies.

Researchers can also collaborate with Epic on studies.

“The one thing that’s exciting about Epic Research is that I think it’s opening up the ability to do big-scale data analyses to people who may not necessarily have the skills to do so by allowing partnerships and collaborations between those with data analysis skills and those who have questions or ideas,” Lobo said.

Cox said the average time for a study to be conducted and published at Epic Research is about 1 month. And the research is not behind a paywall.

“It is also in language that someone can pick up and read and understand, whether that’s a busy primary care doc who doesn’t have time to sit down and spend 15 minutes reading a journal article or a patient who is just not going to have either access to those articles that are behind a paywall or the expertise to be able to read and understand them,” Cox said.

The journal process is notoriously slow, in part because the pool of qualified reviewers is limited. Mainous said his study comparing BMI to body fat percentage took a full year to publish after submission.

Some structural limitations exist based on the de-identified nature of the Cosmos dataset. For example, in the hurricane study, researchers aggregated affected zip codes to avoid the potential of including a sample size of less than 10 people.

“I think that what we’re able to do is a great complement to what exists in peer-reviewed research and other clinical trial research going on,” Bartelt said.

Lobo, who reviews manuscripts for several journals, said although the review process reduces the chance of publishing systematically poor research or nepotism, that risk still exists.

“Moreover, with pay-for-play journals playing a larger role in scientific research, it’s becoming more challenging to differentiate between true ‘peer-reviewed’ and true ‘non-peer-reviewed’ research,” Lobo said. Under this model, authors pay an article processing charge to have their articles published.

“I think what really separates Epic Research from the rest of the non-peer-reviewed world is its commitment to methodology and its commitment to demonstrate what the data is showing, not necessarily the narrative that a particular author is trying to demonstrate. This really elevates the quality of research and insights provided by their big data analyses,” Lobo said.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/inside-epics-rapid-fire-research-machine-2025a1000um9

BillionToOne Shares Surge 67% After Upsized $273 Million IPO

 

BillionToOne Inc. shares jumped 67% in their debut after the molecular diagnostics company raised $273.1 million in an upsized initial public offering.

Shares of the Menlo Park, California-based firm opened at $100 each on Thursday in New York, versus an IPO price of $60 apiece. The offering of 4.55 million shares was increased from the 3.85 million shares marketed in a range of $49 to $55 each.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-06/billiontoone-shares-surge-67-after-upsized-273-million-ipo

Does the Democrats’ Chaos Strategy Work?

 by Victor Davis Hanson

We can draw a few conclusions from an off-year election, when iconic races in blue states went, as expected, overwhelmingly Democratic.

Nevertheless, there is only a year left before the midterms. So Republicans must react to even these paltry results.

1) Democrats’ chaotic nihilism still works. The chaos strategy causes so much turmoil, noise, and negative media coverage that the confused voting public simply cannot sort it all out. The public wishes the upheaval would just go away and often blames those with the most current authority—logically, the incumbent Trump and his administration.

2) Every day of Trump’s first year, there were either campus eruptions, Tesla firebombings, street violence against ICE, or crazy district judges’ injunctions.

The bedlam becomes force multiplied by unhinged outbursts from Democrats like AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Eric Swalwell, and the proverbial Squad.

The latest firecracker was thrown by a now Biden-like, faltering Nancy Pelosi, who recently screamed on CNN that President Trump “is just a vile creature, the worst thing on the face of the Earth.”

The public has no time to sort out all the actual causes for such mad hattery. It knows only from Democrats that the commotion is roughly correlated with “Trump.”

Note that there is never a positive Democrat “Contract with America,” since it is impossible to advance anything popular or moderate past its now firmly socialist base.

3) Democrats also use the chaos strategy to target key electoral groups.

In this week’s election, Republicans finally grasped the purpose of the pre-election shutdown.

It was designed to galvanize key constituencies to get out the vote in a low-turnout year. The lockdown was especially aimed at two groups: laid-off and unpaid government workers and entitlement recipients terrified that their checks would dry up.

Both turned out disproportionately in Virginia and New Jersey.

The Democrats are likely to resolve the shutdown soon, as the initial momentum gained by paralyzing the government is now diminishing.

The same strategy applies to the Hispanic vote that had defected in large numbers to Trump in 2024. However, this week, in many counties, the Hispanic vote shifted back toward the Democratic Party.

The truth does not get out enough that 70-80 percent of deportations are targeted at those with either criminal records or prior deportation orders.

Instead, the nonstop violent protests, the dangerous nullification threats from blue-city officials, and the slanted media coverage worked like proverbial propaganda to reduce ICE to “the Gestapo.”

Too many of the public believed that “Nazis” were hounding only law-abiding housekeepers and landscapers, who have been here for decades and only by accident forgot to make their de facto Americanness official.

Or so the successful Big Lie went—and went unchallenged.

The administration and MAGA do not talk enough about positive news of GDP growth, tolerable inflation, massive foreign investment, a calmer Middle East, or numerous miraculous ceasefires around the globe.

Instead, when there is a vacuum in self-praise, it is more easily replaced by the sensationalism of Trump’s “revenge tour” in hounding the boy scout James Comey and poor Letitia James, of taking a wrecking ball to the revered White House, or of insulting for no reason our blameless, “nice,” and gentle Canadian neighbors. The economy not culs-de-sac win elections.

4) Much of the Trump agenda, other than spectacular military recruitment and a secure border, is more long-term than instantly gratifying.

The multitrillion-dollar foreign investments may take a year or two to create jobs and spark the economy.

The deportations will take time to switch more jobs to U.S. citizens.

New gas, oil, and nuclear energy production, trimming the federal workforce, deregulating, and greenlighting AI and other new technologies will not be felt immediately.

After the summer 1984 convention, even Ronald Reagan trailed the anemic Walter Mondale in a few polls. Then the first three quarters of GDP—cumulatively over 7% growth—were digested, as the economy took off and buried Mondale by the November elections.

5) There is no longer a Democrat Party. It is now an unapologetically neo-socialist Jacobin movement. So traditional negative advertising designed to incur scandal and shame simply does not always work. All that matters is the hard-leftist fides of a candidate—period!

Threaten a political opponent with assassination? Brag about killing his kids?

Tattoo the 3rd Panzer SS Division death’s-head insignia on your chest?

Promise to arrest a foreign head of state when he visits your city?

Boast about grabbing the “means of production.”

So what?

To the new left, this is just proof that their new candidates and voters “mean business.” They cannot be shamed—not even by mocking Charlie Kirk’s wound or hoping Trump is not so lucky a third time.

There is plenty of time for Republicans to digest these results, especially the strategy and dangerous nature of the new left, along with the mercurial moods of the swing voters—and the need to stick to the economy.

But the clock is ticking.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/11/06/does-the-democrats-chaos-strategy-work/