United States of America eSeries: Bad blood 🩸

Bad blood 🩸

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It's the eve of the Elizabeth Holmes trial, aka the start of me having Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" stuck in my head indefinitely. Let's get into it.

By Allison Morrow

🩸 HOLMES ON TRIAL

Elizabeth Holmes in 2015.

The trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes begins Tuesday, and it's hard to overstate the buzz around it. The saga of Holmes' rise and fall reads like a morality play about the perils of chasing the Silicon Valley dream at all costs.

Holmes — alternatively portrayed as villain, hero and victim, depending on your perspective — was indicted three years ago on federal fraud and conspiracy charges over allegations she knowingly misrepresented the capabilities of her company's proprietary blood testing technology.

KEY BACKGROUND

Prior to a damning 2015 investigation by the Wall Street Journal, Holmes was widely hailed as a visionary. You rarely saw her name printed without a comparison to Apple's Steve Jobs. And that's partly by Holmes' design — she dressed the part, favoring a uniform of black turtlenecks that she rarely strayed from.

It's easy to see why the world bought into the Holmes hype: She founded Theranos in 2003 at the age of 19, after dropping out of Stanford (the classic tech phenom origin story, only this time, for the first time, it was a woman doing the disrupting).

Theranos promised a medical miracle: It would revolutionize blood testing by allowing patients to be tested for a wide variety of conditions with just a few drops of blood.The company's valuation soared, hitting $9 billion at one point.

Then it all came crashing down.

The WSJ investigation, which was later chronicled in the bestselling book "Bad Blood," called into question the capabilities of the company's blood testing device and overall testing methods. In the end, the machine simply didn't work.

Holmes was once hailed by Forbes as America's richest self-made woman, with a net worth of $4.5 billion. By 2016, the magazine had revised that figure to essentially zero.

THE CHARGES

Holmes and former Theranos COO Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, who dated while working together, are accused of engaging in a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud investors, doctors and patients.

Both have pleaded not guilty, and the cases will be tried separately.

Legal experts say questions about what Holmes knew, when she knew it, and whether she intended to deceive investors and clients will be central to the trial, my colleague Sara Ashley O'Brien reports.

Holmes' attorneys have paved the way for her to potentially point the finger at Balwani, whom Holmes plans to accuse of psychological, emotional and sexual abuse (Balwani denies those claims).

After months of delay — first because of the pandemic, and then because of the birth of Holmes' first child — the trial begins with jury selection Tuesday, and is expected to last several months.

☕ NUMBER OF THE DAY

$2,024

Prices of goods including lumber, corn and soybeans have come back down to Earth after soaring this past spring. But coffee — clearly the most important commodity on this or any list — is headed in the opposite direction. Futures for robusta coffee recently jumped as high as $2,024 per metric ton, their highest level in four years. The reason? Bad weather in Brazil and Covid restrictions in Vietnam.

⛽ IDA'S FALLOUT

Speaking of prices going up: Gas may be getting more expensive, just in time for Labor Day weekend.

THE NEWS

Hurricane Ida, which struck Louisiana and the Gulf Coast on Sunday, took a direct hit on the nation's oil and gasoline industry. It is still too early to say how much prices will be affected, but any increase will add to the inflation that's already squeezing consumers.

The price of a gallon of regular gas stood at $3.15 Monday, according AAA, up only a fraction of a penny from the previous day's average, and down 1 cent from a week ago. But wholesale gasoline futures were about 5 cents higher in early trading Monday. They were up as much as 10 cents a gallon in Sunday night trading, suggesting retail prices could soon follow suit.

That's a small increase, but consider where we were last year: Gas prices have shot up nearly 80% from their low point in April 2020, when driving (and just about everything else) ground to a halt. But since then, Americans have been hitting the road in droves, sending demand for gas up sharply. Prices are up 41% since last August.

IDA'S IMPACT

More than 95% of US oil production at offshore US platforms and rigs in the Gulf of Mexico were shut down ahead of Hurricane Ida. And although the flow of oil was expected to return to normal within a few days, flooding or prolonged power outages could keep the refineries and pipelines offline, which could also push gasoline prices up.

Another potential disruption could come from consumers themselves. In May, when a hack took the Colonial Pipeline out for days, panic-buying took hold in parts of the South and Southeast, which exacerbated shortages. CNN Business' Chris Isidore has more.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

I will slack off at work ... I am a blunt sword to boycott consumerism.

^ My next tattoo or a quote from a Chinese manifesto? Or both?

Across East Asia, young people are fed up with a culture of overwork and are embracing a philosophy they call tang ping, or "lying flat." One user on the Chinese social platform Douban posted a manifesto describing the tang ping ethos: "I will not marry, buy a house or have children, I will not buy a bag or wear a watch." My colleague Sophie Jeong has a fascinating look at the young workers in revolt in China, South Korea and Japan.

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

📺 Jon Stewart is returning to TV — or streaming, anyway — with a new show on Apple TV+ on September 30.

🚨 A Tesla reportedly using Autopilot plowed into a parked police car in Florida over the weekend. It's not the first time this has happened.

💰 Shares of fintech company Affirm soared more than 45% Monday following news that it is partnering with Amazon to roll out a buy-now-pay-later function on some purchases.

🏡 If Congress doesn't implement a new eviction ban, some 750,000 American households could be evicted later this year, according to Goldman Sachs.

🚀 GIF OF THE DAY

Over the weekend, a 43-foot-tall rocket from startup Astra launched in a decidedly, um, non-vertical trajectory. Feels very much like me on a Monday morning, telling myself I'm going to eat right and not shop online for an entire week...