(HONOLULU) — Bail was denied Monday for the wife of a U.S. defense contractor accused of stealing the identity of a dead child, as well as conspiracy, according to her attorney.
Walter Glenn Primrose, 66, and Gwynn Morrison, 66, were indicted for conspiracy against the U.S. government, aggravated identity theft and making false statements in the application and use of a passport, federal court documents show.
The Hawaii couple pleaded not guilty in federal court on Aug. 2. They both will be held behind bars without bail, a judge ruled. Primrose was denied bail last month.
In court documents, prosecutors allege that Primrose and Morrison stole the identities of two Texas infants, Bobby Edward Fort and Julie Lyn Montague, both born in the late 1960s.
Primrose, aka Bobby, and Morrison, aka Julie, “assumed the identities of deceased American-born infants and have been fully living in these fraudulently assumed identities since 1987,” an affidavit in the complaint shows.
During a hearing last month, U.S. attorneys accused Primrose of abruptly leaving Texas in 1987 after assuming Bobby’s identity. The couple reportedly told a family member that they were entering the Witness Protection Program.
The real Bobby Edward Fort died in 1967 from asphyxia, while the real Julie Lyn Montague died in 1968, according to the complaint.
Unlike Primrose — who identified himself as Walter Primrose and accepted that identity at last week’s bail hearing — Morrison insisted that her name was Julie Lyn Montague.
According to an affidavit, Primrose told a family member that he worked for a government agency and wasn’t allowed to share photos of himself.
Prosecutors argued Primrose should be denied bail because they said the defendants might have “troubling foreign connections,” ABC News learned.
U.S. attorneys said witness interviews in Texas and Hawaii revealed that the couple “had a longstanding interest in espionage issues.”
Prosecutors also say searches of their home revealed maps of military bases, coded messages, sets of invisible ink and photos of them dressed up in KGB military outfits.
The U.S. attorneys said forensic experts believe the photos were taken in the 1980s. Defense attorneys claimed the outfits were a costume.
Prosecutors said that after their arrest, while left in a room alone, Primrose and Morrison allegedly referenced things related to espionage.
Primrose enrolled in the U.S. Coast Guard using fake documents in 1994 and served until 2016, court documents allege. Since then, he has been a Department of Defense contractor with access to military installations, according to court documents.
Defense attorneys pointed out that their clients have not been charged with anything related to espionage but only “white collar” crimes related to identity fraud.
Morrison’s attorney, Megan Kau, and Primrose’s attorney, Maximilian Mizono, did not have a comment when reached, respectively, by ABC News.
Both will go to trial on Sept. 26.
ABC News’ Matthew Fuhrman contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — On a given morning, a conservative might grab an espresso from Black Rifle Coffee, which describes itself as “anti-hipster”; open up the soon-to-launch dating app, “Right Stuff,” founded by former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s sister; and buy a cryptocurrency called “Let’s Go Brandon,” a slogan critical of President Joe Biden.
A liberal, meanwhile, could snag a pick-me-up at Blue State Coffee; look for romance on OKCupid, which appeals to “every single tree hugger,” according to one ad; and shop for apparel at Patagonia, which in Fall 2020 sold shorts with tags that said, “Vote the a**holes out, an apparent reference to then-president Donald Trump.
These products exemplify a growing trend among some businesses that take public stances on political issues not only through formal statements and social media posts but in overt marketing, experts told ABC News.
As partisan polarization deepens, companies see an opportunity to draw in consumers on the basis of strongly held political identities, the experts said. While such messaging cultivates loyalty among a devoted set of customers with matching beliefs, businesses risk damaging their bottom lines and further exacerbating polarization, since such ads alienate consumers with opposing views and freight everyday purchases with political overtones, they added.
“The idea in the mind of managers — especially investors and their boards — had always been to stay away from politics because it’s going to be a mess,” Nooshin Warren, a marketing professor at the University of Arizona Eller College of Management, who specializes in the use of political messaging, told ABC News.
“As consumers moved to the side of pushing for one political ideology, naturally firms had to respond to the market,” she added.
Seventy percent of consumers believe it’s important for brands to take a public stand on social and political issues, according to a survey of 1,500 people released by data firm Sprout Social in 2019. That figure jumped 4 percentage points higher than a survey two years earlier.
Along those lines, a survey from public relations firm Edelman, in 2018, found that nearly two thirds of consumers around the world will buy or boycott a brand solely because of its position on a social or political issue. The result marked a jump of seven percentage points from the same survey question one year prior.
Political appeals for consumers trace back in part to the gay rights movement in the 1980s and later the fight for marriage equality in the 2010s — moments when sexual orientation became a prominent political issue, Warren, of the University of Arizona, said.
The phenomenon of politics in advertising reached an inflection point in 2012 when shares in J.C. Penney plummeted more than 25% amid backlash to an ad featuring a lesbian couple and their daughter as well as the hiring of gay comedian Ellen DeGeneres as a spokesperson. Ultimately, the company fired then-CEO Ron Johnson, who defended the moves.
Six years later, Nike launched an ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick, a former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who knelt during the national anthem in a protest for racial justice. In response, some angry customers posted videos on social media of them burning their Nike shoes. “This started more polarization between consumers,” Warren said.
In recent years, brands became associated with conservative or liberal views as companies or their CEOs increasingly took stands on prominent political issues, Vikas Mittal, a professor of marketing at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, who has studied the issue, told ABC News. The chief executives at companies like MyPillow and Goya, for instance, drew applause from some and scrutiny from others after comments in support of Trump.
More recently, Disney sparked ire earlier this year from prominent national voices and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis when the company publicly opposed the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which is now law, prohibiting public school teachers from providing instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity for some of the youngest students and what opponents say is age-inappropriate material.
In April, the state moved to dissolve a special tax district enjoyed by Disney. The special district is a private government run by Disney World that allows it to offer services such as zoning and fire protection. Disney is the parent company of ABC News.
Perry Lowder, a brand manager with consultancy firm Joe Smith, which works with a range of clients that includes Fortune 100 companies and startups, said businesses have felt heightened expectations from customers that they take public positions on political topics.
“Brands and leaders of brands are feeling pressure to take a stand on social issues,” he told ABC News. “We’re seeing that in conversations every single day.”
“We have seen, culturally, just an increased desire from the average consumer to know more about the brands that they are choosing to support — not only how they’re making their products but how they are donating their money and profits,” he added. “So the C-suite has to keep that in mind.”
For the most part, such public stances from clients have not taken the form of overt political messages in advertising, Lowder said. “I haven’t seen as much a deliberate attempt to go after consumers based on how liberal or conservative they are,” he added. “It’s far more subtle.”
Large companies understand that direct political messages risk driving away half of their customers, many of whom are otherwise “politically inert,” said Mittal, of Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business. He added: “If a brand takes a specific position, it ends up creating a lot of acrimony.”
However, Katharine Howie, a professor of marketing at The University of Southern Mississippi, said she has noticed a rise in marketing that invokes explicit political appeals, in part because such advertisements draw eyeballs, a key goal of any marketing campaign.
“It can be a way to get customers’ attention and break through the clutter,” Howie said. “That’s the first step in advertising: Getting people to put their phones down and pay freaking attention.”
On the whole, political messaging in social media posts negatively affects the reach of companies, according to a study released in May by researchers at Temple University. After examining 435 major brands and 396,988 social media posts, the study found a negative impact of expressions of Black Lives Matter support on consumer responses such as followers and likes.
Lately, chief executives have become less willing to speak out on political topics, as they’ve seen the negative effects of alienating some customers, Mittal said. “We’re seeing the backlash,” he said. “I think a lot of CEOs are dialing back that whole idea.”
But other experts said they expect a continued rise of political messaging from companies. Howie, of the University of Southern Mississippi, said such communication on the part of companies exacerbates polarization, which in turn incentivizes companies to make further political appeals.
“It’s a feedback loop,” she said. “We live in our little silos and echo chambers, where we’re all getting pulled further and further to the ends of the political spectrum, and companies are now engaging in more political conversation and political action, and that’s pushing us even further apart.”
Warren, of University of Arizona Eller College of Management, agreed.
“These days, I haven’t seen any topic that is not politicized,” she said. “That’s the nature of what our country is becoming.”
(WASHINGTON) –The U.S. government on Monday strongly discouraged former NBA player Dennis Rodman from traveling to Russia to help secure the release of detained WNBA star Brittney Griner — a trip that Rodman himself separately clarified isn’t in the works, reversing an earlier comment.
The back-and-forth stems from Rodman, a five-time NBA champion, initially announcing last weekend that he planned to travel to Russia according to comments he made to NBC News while dining at a restaurant in Washington, D.C.
“I got permission to go to Russia to help that girl,” Rodman told NBC News on Saturday. “I’m trying to go this week.”
Griner, who has been detained in Russia since Feb. 17, was found guilty on drug charges earlier this month and was sentenced to nine years in prison after vape cartridges containing hashish oil — an illegal substance in Russia — were discovered in her luggage at the airport.
A State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, told ABC News during a press briefing on Monday that if Rodman did travel to Russia, “He would not be traveling on behalf of the U.S. government.”
“We believe that anything other than negotiating further through the established channel is likely to complicate and hinder those release efforts,” Price added.
Amid the scrutiny over his comments, Rodman told ABC News on Monday that he doesn’t currently have plans to travel to Russia.
Rodman previously sought to make an impact on U.S. foreign policy as an informal diplomat of sorts amid heated U.S. relations with North Korea.
Rodman traveled to Singapore in June 2018 ahead of then-President Donald Trump’s historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who is a big Chicago Bulls fan.
Although Rodman did not meet with the dictator, whom he said he considers a “friend,” he was one of a few westerners who had met with him in Pyongyang in the past.
Rodman doesn’t need permission from the U.S. to travel to Russia but requires a visa from Moscow to travel to the country.
However, the State Department is strongly discouraging American citizens from traveling to Russia amid the war in Ukraine, issuing a “Level 4-Do Not Travel” advisory that was most recently updated on Aug. 15.
“We’ve also provided very clear guidance to American citizens — owing to a number of threats, not the least of which is the threat of wrongful detention — that Americans should not travel to Russia,” Price said on Monday. “That has been our message to private Americans across the board.”
Price’s warning came after a senior Biden administration official discouraged Rodman from traveling to Russia in a statement provided to ABC News on Sunday, referencing the U.S. travel advisory.
At her trial, which began in July, Griner said she was guilty of drug charges and said that she didn’t intend to break Russian law, but that the cartridges were left in her bag by accident.
The U.S. classified Griner’s case as “wrongfully detained” in Russia on May and the Biden administration has been working to negotiate the WNBA star’s release, as well as the release of U.S. citizen Paul Whelan, who has been detained in Russia since 2019.
On July 29, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that he had a “frank and direct conversation” with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about a U.S. proposal to exchange convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout in return for Griner and Whelan.
Earlier this month, Russian officials confirmed that those talks have taken place.
Asked about the status of the negotiations, Price said that U.S. interests are “best served if these discussions take place in private,” but stressed that this “something we continue to work with the utmost urgency.”
“I said last week that we had engaged in discussions with Russian counterparts on this. Those discussions are ongoing,” Price added. “We’ve made very clear, as we have publicly, that we proposed a substantial proposal, we called it, for the release of Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner.”
ABC News’ Katie Conway and Tanya Stukalova contributed to this report.
(MOSCOW) — Russian President Vladimir Putin recently reinstated a Soviet-era award, giving women who have ten or more children a single payment of a million rubles (worth $16,747 USD, as of publishing).
The honorary title and certification of “Mother Heroine” are given to the mother once their tenth living child turns 1 year old.
According to Putin’s decree, mothers will still be eligible for the award if their child dies as a result of war or from an act of terrorism, or in an emergency situation.
The Mother Heroine award was initially established by Josef Stalin in 1944 to encourage repopulation in wake of the country’s high casualty count from World War II. At the time, the award was described as a “badge of special distinction” but was stopped in 1991 alongside the fall of the Soviet Union.
With an average household size of 3.2 people, Russia’s population has been declining at a rapid rate over the past 30 years, as reported by Statistica.
Recent estimates state that between January and May of 2022, the population of the Russian Federation fell by over 430,000 people, 20% being those who have left the country, according to the Russian statistics agency Rosstat.
Though Russian authorities do not provide an official toll for the number of citizens who have been killed in the war in Ukraine, 5,256 deaths are estimated, according to independent news outlet, istories.
According to the data department of the Russian Database on Fertility and Mortality, the death rate of young people in Russia has increased by 18% due to war.
(NEW YORK) — Wendy’s is removing the romaine lettuce it uses in some of its sandwiches as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigates an E. coli outbreak that has sickened dozens of people.
While a specific food has not been confirmed as the source of the outbreak, the CDC reported that multiple people reported getting sick after eating sandwiches with romaine lettuce from Wendy’s restaurants in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
“Based on this information, Wendy’s is taking the precautionary measure of removing the romaine lettuce being used in sandwiches from restaurants in that region,” the CDC said in a statement Friday.
While there are hundreds of varieties of E. coli, most people infected with Shiga toxin-producing E. coli can experience severe stomach cramps, diarrhea (often bloody), and vomiting, according to the CDC.
Symptoms usually present within four days after consuming the bacteria and most will recover without treatment within five to seven days. In severe cases, some people can develop a type of kidney failure and require hospitalization.
The CDC advised people to contact their health care provider immediately if they have any severe E. coli symptoms. Officials also instructed anyone experiencing symptoms to assist public health officials by recording what they ate in the week before they got sick and reporting their illness to a local or state health department.
Wendy’s confirmed it uses a different type of romaine lettuce for salads and has not yet pulled those menu items.
“Investigators are working to confirm whether romaine lettuce is the source of this outbreak, and whether romaine lettuce used in Wendy’s sandwiches was served or sold at other businesses,” the CDC continued, adding that the restaurant chain “is fully cooperating with the investigation.”
In a statement on its website Friday, Wendy’s confirmed that it was “fully cooperating with public health authorities on their ongoing investigation of the regional E. coli outbreak reported in certain midwestern states,” adding that it was “taking the precaution of discarding and replacing the sandwich lettuce at some restaurants in that region.”
“The lettuce that we use in our salads is different, and is not affected by this action. As a company, we are committed to upholding our high standards of food safety and quality,” the statement read.
Dr. Darin Detwiler, a professor of food policy and corporate social responsibility at Northeastern University, told “Good Morning America” that “lettuce has a long history of being a ‘culprit food’ with E.coli.”
“Foodborne pathogens do not discriminate. Even the mightiest and the most well-meaning and food safety-focused brands are susceptible to the challenges and failures that are found every year in food safety,” Detwiler explained. “Nobody cooks a salad. Lettuce of any kind is not cooked, thus it has no ‘Kill Step’ to eliminate any harm from pathogens.”
Detwiler, who lost his own 16-month-old son Riley to E. coli in 1993 after a multi-state outbreak “resulting from consumption of hamburgers” according to the CDC, has a doctorate in law and policy and a master’s in education, and has also served on the Department of Agriculture’s National Advisory Board. He currently chairs the National Environmental Health Association’s Food Safety Program.
The food policy expert and author explained that “much of lettuce is still in transition in terms of regulatory compliance with the [Food and Drug Administration’s] Food Safety Modernization Act’s produce safety rule,” which former President Barack Obama signed into law in 2011 and aims to prevent foodborne illness rather than respond to it.
“Many illnesses and those infamous recalls — think Thanksgiving 2017, 2018, 2019 — have been tied to lettuce production’s seasonal transition from Yuma, Arizona to the California central coast region,” he said. “Importers of romaine lettuce and/or salad mixes containing romaine lettuce from the U.S. must declare that the product does not originate from counties of Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Benito and Monterey in the Salinas Valley, California, U.S., or prove — through testing results — that the romaine lettuce does not contain detectable levels of E. coli O157:H7.”
He also noted that “Wendy’s leadership has seen outbreaks like this before” and “provided a presence at food safety industry events.”
At the time of publication the CDC said it had not advised any businesses, including Wendy’s, to stop selling or serving food.
Additionally, the CDC said there was “no evidence to indicate that romaine lettuce sold in grocery stores, served in other restaurants, or in people’s homes is linked to this outbreak.”
(ATLANTA) — One person was killed and two were injured in shootings at two locations in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood on Monday afternoon, Atlanta police said.
Police said a suspect is in custody.
This comes after police said they were searching for an unknown woman in connection with the shootings. Police shared photos of the individual with a suitcase.
Police said she was taken into custody at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Authorities said it’s not clear what led to the shootings and that they’re investigating the connection between the two locations.
The first two victims, including the person who died, were found at 1280 W. Peachtree Street. The third victim was at 1100 Peachtree Street, police said.
Police also said they’re investigating whether the shootings were targeted or random.
(ATLANTA) — Two people have been killed and one was injured in shootings at two locations in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood on Monday afternoon, Atlanta police said.
Police said a suspect is in custody.
This comes after police said they were searching for an unknown woman in connection with the shootings. Police shared photos of the individual with a suitcase.
Police said she was taken into custody at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Authorities said it’s not clear what led to the shootings and that they’re investigating the connection between the two locations.
The first two victims, including the person who died, were found at 1280 W. Peachtree Street. The third victim was at 1100 Peachtree Street, police said. The third victim later died at the hospital, according to police.
Police also said they’re investigating whether the shootings were targeted or random.
(NEW YORK) — Low-calorie sugar alternatives, which had previously been thought to be relatively harmless, may actually have a negative effect on human gut health, according to a new study.
All four substances tested in the study – saccharin, sucralose, aspartame and stevia – were found to change the gut microbiome, the collection of microbes in the gut that help protect humans against disease and enable us to digest food.
“It’s about more than just the number of calories in these ingredients,” ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton said Monday on “Good Morning America,” describing the study’s findings.
The study, published this month in the medical journal Cell, included 120 healthy adults, who were given the different low-calorie sugar alternatives at levels lower than the acceptable daily intake. The participants who participated in the study did not eat low-calorie sugar alternatives as a part of their diet prior to the study.
Study participants logged all of their food and physical activity using a smartphone app, and researchers took microbiome samples from the gut and mouth.
“Basically what they did is they looked at all of these sugar substitutes, things like aspartame, saccharin, sucralose, stevia,” said Ashton, who was not involved in the study. “Then they did some blood tests, they look at indicators of gut microbiome, and what they found was that saccharine and sucralose in particular increased the blood glucose, or ‘blood sugar’ level, [and] stevia increased our insulin level.”
She continued, “So bottom line here, these are not harmless or so-called ‘inert substances.’ And, again, it’s about more than whether or not they have calories like regular sugar.”
The researchers noted that previous research has shown that sugar consumption is strongly associated with weight gain, and replacing sugar in the diet with low-calorie sugar alternatives is one of the most common strategies people use to combat obesity and hyperglycemia, citing a study that showed 25.1% of kids and 41.4% of adults in the United States consumed low-calorie sugar alternatives from 2009 to 2021.
The prior study noted that more women than men consumed them as well.
The prevalence of obesity in adults in the United States was 41.9% in 2017-2020, and has increased 11.4% from 1999-2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In kids and teens, the prevalence of obesity is 19.7% in 2017-2020.
Obesity prevalence can be higher depending on the location, with the Midwest and South having the highest rates of obesity, according to CDC data.
People who are overweight or obese are at an increased risk for many serious health conditions, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, gall bladder disease, osteoarthritis, mental illness and other health problems.
For people whose diet is currently high in sugar substitutes, Ashton said she recommends minimizing their use, while acknowledging it can take time to do so.
“Right now we need more research to conclusively know what the impact it has on our health is, but the results of this study suggest that there is an impact on our metabolic health, and our overall health, and our gut — all important,” she said. “So, I think my recommendation would be minimize their use, don’t rely on them as a harmless, completely free-for-all when it comes to what we are putting in our foods, and take some time to re-train your taste buds.”
She continued, “That does take time but it is possible, and you can wean yourself away from that sweet tooth.”
Dr. Alexandria C. Wellman, a resident in the combined Anatomical and Clinical Pathology program at the University of California, Los Angeles, is a part of the ABC News Medical Unit.
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — Prompted by the racially motivated mass shooting in May that left 10 Black people dead and three other people injured, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission held a listening session in Buffalo on Monday to hear from loved ones of the victims who pointed out in emotional statements that systemic racism played a major role in the massacre.
It was the first time since 2015 that the EEOC panel has held a meeting outside of Buffalo. The panel’s chair, Charlotte A. Burrows, vowed to incorporate what the commission learned into its multi-year strategic enforcement plan.
“Like most of America, I mourned the tragedy and condemned that vicious attack in Buffalo in May. And it claimed the lives of 10 innocent people,” Burrows said in an opening statement. “But to illuminate the underlying injustice and racism that helps create the conditions for racially motivated violence and discrimination, we also need sustained, thoughtful and persistent action. Grief and anger are not enough.”
Garnell Whitfield, a retired Buffalo fire commissioner whose 86-year-old mother, Ruth Whitfield, was among those killed in the rampage at the Tops supermarket in the predominantly Black neighborhood of East Buffalo, told the commission that racism just didn’t suddenly rear its ugly head on May 14.
“I brought only my lived experiences to share with you because I want you to know what it feels like to be traumatized in this manner, not just on May 14, but every day of your life just because of the color of your skin,” Whitfield said.
He said that as a teenager, he was wrongfully accused of robbery and abused by white police officers. He said that a fire department company officer attempted to sabotage his ability to join the fire department in the 1980s.
Whitfield said that while he might appear to be successful on the surface, his reality is a different story.
“The truth is, I, like every other Black American, is a victim and survivor of racism, treated differently and put under constant pressure to be quiet and ignore the incessant barrage of biases, implicit and otherwise, just to get along, just to fit in — and just maybe get a piece of that so-called dream that you’ve been taught to believe in,” Whitfield said. “The problem is, reality keeps waking you up.”
He went on, “I felt it was important for you to know what we go through. No matter what opportunity you provide for us, we come to that opportunity with baggage, with trauma. Our communities have been traumatized. All of the statistics, all of the things that you hear, this didn’t just start on May 14. We’ve been living with this our entire lives.”
Zaneta Everhart, whose 20-year-old son Zaire Goodman was wounded in the attack, also addressed the commission, saying, “It boggles my mind that I sit here before you today saying the same things that Black people have been saying for centuries.”
“What is happening in my community and communities just like the East Side of Buffalo all across the country is violence,” Everhart said. “The starvation of resources, the lack of education, the poor health system, the dilapidated housing, few employment opportunities, food insecurity, limited transportation, redlining, not having enough green space. Not having sidewalks. This is violence.”
She said her son is now living with the results of decades of inequality and unchecked racism.
“The world we live in is by design. Systemic racism is a calculated construct. That is why it was so easy for the terrorist to find the Black people here in Buffalo and cause terror,” Everhart said.
She said her son, who was working at Tops the day of the attack, was shot in the neck and will have to live with shrapnel in his body for the rest of his life.
“He is left with the memory of feeling his flesh being torn open by a bullet from an AR-15,” she said. “He is also left with the memory of seeing an elder from his community, who he says was a wonderful woman, being shot and killed right in front of him as well as the memory of bodies lying dead in the parking lot of the grocery store where he was employed. So, therapy will now be a normal part of his healing journey.”
But she also told the commission that her ability to stay strong comes from the resilience of her son.
“Seeing the way that Zaire has handled all of this has given me the strength to advocate for change,” Goodman said. “The first thing Zaire said to me after he was shot while lying in the hospital bed was, ‘Mom, I knew I’d be fine.'”
She added, “He is resilient. Besides going to doctors, his first time really getting out of the house was 15 days after the massacre and he wanted to go to the memorial in front of Tops to put flowers down.”
She said her son is also pleased that the Tops store, the only large grocery market in East Buffalo, has reopened.
“While he realizes that the scene there is a source of pain for so many in the community, he feels that the reopening of the store shows the terrorist that he cannot destroy our community,” Goodman said.
(DETROIT) — Ford plans to cut 3,000 jobs across the U.S., Canada and India, the automaker said in a letter to employees on Monday, describing the reductions as part of a “reshaping” to get more competitive in the electric vehicle (EV) market.
Those affected include 2,000 salaried and 1,000 agency positions, Ford said in a statement. A spokesperson told ABC News the cuts affect about 6% of salaried workers in the U.S. and Canada.
Ford’s CEO, Jim Farley, delivered news of the layoffs in a letter to employees, which was first reported by Auto News on Monday.
Affected employees will be notified later this week, according to Auto News.
The workforce reduction comes as the company is trying “to address all aspects of costs to improve our competitiveness and ensure we can fully invest in growth,” according to the statement.
Ford sales have recently, generally outpaced overall auto industry sales. In July, the company saw a 36.6% increase in vehicle sales compared to the previous year, which Ford attributed to “improved inventory flow.”
Farley and Executive Chairman Bill Ford said in the letter that staying competitive and adapting for the future means “redeploying resources and addressing our cost structure, which is uncompetitive versus traditional and new competitors.”
The executives specifically pointed to connected vehicles and EVs as business areas where the company has “an opportunity to lead.”
During a quarterly earnings call in July, Farley said that Ford “absolutely [has] too many people in certain places, no doubt about it.”
“Traditionally, the auto industry has cut costs often indiscriminately as an effect, of course, from lower auto demands through economic softness and shifts for customer preferences,” he said then. “What we’re undertaking forward is totally different than that. We’re reshaping virtually every aspect of the way we’ve done business for a century. And we’re doing that for a new industry based on new technology, new skills and a new promise for customer value.”
Ford has separately expanded hiring — especially in EV manufacturing. In early June, the company announced a $3.7 billion investment into factories across the Midwest, including in Michigan, Ohio and Missouri.
That spending will create 6,200 union manufacturing jobs and 74,000 indirect jobs by the end of 2026, the company said in a news release at the time.
Those positions are all geared toward the EV market. Ford plans to release an electric Mustang, Ranger pickup truck and professional commercial vehicle.
