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As buzz around womens sports continues to grow, the largest dedicated female sports fund just got larger. Monarch Collective, the first and largest investment platform that exclusively invests in womens sports, announced Thursday that it has expanded its fund size from $150 million to $250 million. The increased capital will allow the fund to capitalize on what it calls a rapidly accelerating market: womens professional sports teams that have been increasingly filling seats. Since launching our fund last year, womens sports has experienced a cultural transcendence and the ecosystem has evolved dramatically, making the need for operational, value-added capital even more important than it once was, said Kara Nortman, managing partner of Monarch Collective, in a statement. Now is the time to build the right community around the table and deploy new playbooks that will win. Big-name investors on board The fund touts high-profile investors, who contributed to the majority of the new infusion of capital. According to a press release, they include Melinda French Gatess Pivotal Ventures; Hello Sunshine CEO Sarah Harden; and Beth Brooke, former global vice chairman of public policy at EY. The growth of Monarch Collective aligns with an increased interest in womens sports more broadly. Over the last few years, viewership of games has soared alongside merchandise sales and tickets sold. Last year, the National Womens Soccer League (NWSL) reached 2 million total attendance. Monarchs current profile includes three NWSL teams: Angel City Football Club, BOS Nation FC, and the San Diego Wave FC. But the main driver of this womens sports boom is basketball at both the collegiate and professional level. Last year, Caitlin Clark mania drove record-shattering viewership and revenue toward the Womens March Madness tournament last year. The womens championship game was the most-watched basketball game on ESPN since 2019among all mens, womens, collegiate, and professional games. And ever since Clark joined the WNBA for the 2024 season, that league has more than tripled its number of sell-outs. ‘Meaningful change’ This year, get ready for the hype around women’s sports to continue. Womens March Madness begins next Wednesday, and sports-centric X accounts have already begun to share their excitement about seeing stars like Paige Bueckers and JuJu Watkins playing on national television. Some may say were at a pivotal moment in womens sports, but to us, its much bigger than that, said Jasmine Robinson, managing partner of Monarch Collective, in a statement. Along with our investors, we believe we have the power to drive meaningful change that is representative of todays diverse ownership groups, management teams, and fan bases.
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E-Commerce
Mia Francis, a 22-year-old barista from Boston, filed her taxes on her own this year for the first time, using a free government tax filing program that made it easy because it did most of the work for her.Francis said it took 45 minutes to finish her taxes with the IRS Direct File program, an electronic tax return filing system that the IRS made permanent last year and that has rolled out to 25 states.Francis is expecting a $530 refund. And because she saved cash by not using a commercial tax preparation company to file her taxes, “that money will go a long way,” she said. She plans to use it for a trip to Amsterdam this year.Despite its popularity with Francis and other members of the American public, the IRS Direct File’s fate remains unclear as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency cleave their way through the federal bureaucracy. So far, the program is still available for use ahead of the April 15 tax filing deadline, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent committed during his January confirmation hearing to maintaining it, at least for this tax season.Representatives from the Internal Revenue Service and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment from the Associated Press on their plans for Direct File. But one Republican tax expert says the IRS never got congressional authorization to create Direct File. And Republican lawmakers and commercial tax preparation firms complain the program is a waste of money because free filing programs already exist, although they are hard to use.Direct File was rolled out as a pilot program in 2024 after the IRS was tasked with looking into how to create a “direct file” system as part of the money it received from the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. Last May, the agency announced that the program would be made permanent.The IRS accepted 140,803 returns filed by taxpayers using Direct File in the 12 states where it was available last tax season. It’s been expanded to include half the country this year. It is unclear how many taxpayers have used Direct File this year.Merici Vinton, an original architect of Direct File from the U.S. Digital Service, noted the ease and accessibility of the program and called it “a great example of how people should interact with the government in the 21st century.”“We effectively launched a startup in the IRS,” she said. “It was built by an in-house product team, in an iterative manner, and we ship updates to the software to improve user experience in real time based on feedback. If we continue to invest in it, both taxpayers and the IRS can benefit.”Musk posted last month on his social media site that he had “deleted” 18F, a government agency that worked on technology projects such as the IRS’ Direct File program. This led to some confusion about whether Direct File is still available to taxpayers. However, conversations inside the IRS indicate that no decision has been made on whether to cut the program, two people familiar with these conversations tell the AP.Former IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, who oversaw the rollout of the program, said Treasury officials considering the future of the program should take into account “the voice of the taxpayers.”“My reflection is that taxpayers are in very different situations and have very different preferences for how they want to file,” he said. “Those whose preference is to file electronically direct with the IRS for free, it’s a good option to have on the menu. But it should not replace other options.”Derrick Plummer, a spokesperson for Intuit, one of the country’s largest commercial tax preparation firms, said free tax preparation had been available for years before Direct File came along.“IRS Direct File is a solution in search of a problem, a waste of taxpayer dollars and a drain on critical IRS resources,” he said. A June 2024 Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report estimates that the annual costs of Direct File may range from $64 million to $249 million.“The IRS should focus on its core mission including data privacy and customer service while policymakers in Washington focus on simplifying the tax code,” Plummer said.However, other taxpayers, like 31 year-old Aquiel Warner in Austin, Texas, say they want to avoid using commercial tax preparation software.Warner filed her taxes with Direct File in 10 minutes using her phone and a chatbot that the IRS provides. She likes the program’s convenience, that it prepopulated her tax forms and that it allowed for free filing. Although she has some concerns about data privacy in the governmentDOGE is reported to have access to some of the IRS’s internal systemsshe feels more secure going through the IRS than commercial tax preparation services.“I don’t want to be a product. I don’t want my information sold when I file my taxes,” she said. “I have to file my taxes, and I don’t want to be put in a situation where, in order to file my taxes, I have to pay to get the help I need because I’m not a professional tax preparer.”Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said the IRS never got explicit permission from Congress to create the Direct File system.“It really doesn’t matter if it’s a good idea. It was done illegally,” he said, calling on Congress and the Justice Department to look into what he says is unauthorized spending that went into the creation of Direct File.Democratic lawmakers in January asked Bessent and IRS commissioner nominee Billy Long to preserve the program. They wrote in a letter that “ending Direct File would hurt everyday Americans.” Long has not yet received a nomination hearing.In the meantime, Musk and his cadre of computer programmers could decide to wield their tech skills to boost the programor use the very same digital savvy to delete it.For his part, Werfel hopes that the agency will keep the program. “It’s a big country with a lot of taxpayers with a lot of different preferences,” he said.Francis, the Boston barista, hopes so, too.“There are a lot of young people like me who are working and figuring out how to file their taxes this just makes it faster and easier,” she said. Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Vaccines could be a key means of suppressing bird flu and avoiding the slaughter of millions of chickens, which is blamed for egg prices averaging nearly $6 a dozen. But the move has been delayed in part because of concerns it could jeopardize chicken exports worth billions of dollars a year.The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced plans to spend $100 million to study bird flu vaccines to fight the disease in concert with meat chicken, egg and turkey groups. That’s part of a larger $1 billion effort to invest in more protections to keep the virus off farms that President Donald Trump believes will help lower egg prices.Chicken meat producers remain the most resistant to vaccines because of concerns they could harm meat exports, which totaled nearly $4.7 billion last year. Egg and turkey producers sell most of their products in the U.S. and have been hit hardest by the virus. Why is a vaccine needed? Without a new policy including vaccines, the government will continue to slaughter every flock with a bird flu infection to limit the spread of the disease. Those deaths have totaled over 166 million birds in the U.S. since 2022.Most birds killed are egg-laying chickens, and the death of so many hens is the main reason egg prices keep rising. The average price per dozen has hit $5.90, and in some part of the country, it is far higher.Poultry veterinarian Simon Shane, who runs www.Egg-News.com, said the government is hesitant to use vaccines and change its policy of killing birds largely because of the meat chicken industry’s opposition.“Basically this is a political issue, and this only came to a head because eggs are at $8 to $9 a dozen, and it’s embarrassing the government embarrassing the present administration,” Shane said. Why doesn’t the US use a bird flu vaccine? Before using vaccinations, the government must decide how to devise an effective system and monitor for outbreaks within vaccinated flocks that might not show any symptoms, said John Clifford, the USDA’s former longtime chief veterinary officer, who now works with a poultry industry export group. Once that is figured out, the industry can negotiate with countries to minimize trade problems.“What the industry wants is the ability to develop the strategic plan to share that with the trading partners and then find out what kind of impact that that will have on trade,” Clifford said.There are fears that vaccinating could allow the virus to linger undetected in flocks and mutate in ways that could make it more of a threat to humans and allow sick birds to get into the food supply. Like with other diseases, properly cooking chicken to 165 degrees Fahrenheit (74 degrees Celsius) will kill bird flu, but the industry and chicken buyers don’t want it there at all.For meat chicken, known as broilers, the virus isn’t as significant because those birds are slaughtered at 6 to 8 weeks old and thus have less chance of being infected compared with egg-laying hens, which live to 2 years or older. Also most broilers are raised in the Southeast, which hasn’t had as many outbreaks as the Midwest and West.Another delay to vaccinating concerns distribution. Egg farmers want to administer it through chicken feed or water, saying it’s not practical to give shots to millions of birds in a single barn.It can also be difficult to tell the difference between a vaccinated bird and one that has been sick with the virus. That would make other countries nervous about importing meat.“People have talked about how expensive it would be to monitor vaccinated populations. And it would be. But where do we want to spend our money?” said Dr. Carol Cardona, a bird flu expert at the University of Minnesota. “We’re spending our money hand over fist right now in depopulation and to buy eggs for breakfast.” What does the experience in other countries show? China and Mexico have been vaccinating their poultry for years, but they take different approaches.In Mexico chicken are vaccinated, but Clifford said the country doesn’t slaughter flocks when infections are found. That basically ensures the virus is present in poultry.China still slaughters vaccinated flocks when infections are found, which has proven more effective at limiting the spread of the virus and reigning in outbreaks.Clifford said the U.S. would need to continue culling flocks with outbreaks even after vaccinating, and it might make sense to give shots only to egg layers and turkeys, not broilers. Will it help egg prices? Don’t expect big relief anytime soon.The USDA, which did not respond to a request for comment for this article sent last week, clearly isn’t moving to vaccinate immediately. And, regardless, it will take time to raise new hens.“We’re going to have to wait to replace those with new hatched chicks, and it takes 20 weeks before they even start laying,” Shane said. “So I don’t know where they’re going to get the eggs from.”Prices may ease somewhat later this year after peak demand, which happens around Easter, if massive egg farms in Iowa, Ohio, California and elsewhere can avoid more outbreaks.The USDA has predicted that average egg prices will be 41% higher than the 2024 average of $3.17 per dozen. That would mean $4.47 per dozen, slightly below the current average. Josh Funk, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
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