Welcome to Maxis ProRata, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

Sponsored by Bridge Bank. Be safe. Venture wisely. I'm Dan Pramack. On today's show, Democrats slam Uber's

attempts to buy Grubhub, and Facebook gets a pass on its deal for Giffy.

But first, misery at the mall.

So last Friday night, 118-year-old retailer J.C. Penny filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

This made it the third major retailer to do so this month, following J. Kruh and Neiman Marcus,

and came just hours after a report that U.S. retail

sales fell more than 16% between April of last year and April of this year, with a big part

of that loss coming in apparel. Now, to be sure, all three of these companies were already

struggling before the pandemic. Just look at JCPenney. It launched a turnaround plan nearly a decade

ago, hiring Ron Johnson, the guy who created Apple's retail stores.

But Johnson's tenure was a consensus disaster, and he didn't even last two years.

Subsequent fixes didn't work either, and the coronavirus pandemic seems to have been the final nail in the company's solvency coffin.

The question now, though, is how or if retail can even come back, particularly retailers

that either rely entirely or in large part on physical stores.

Remember, even a lot of the hottest internet-based direct-to-consumer brands have opened

brick-and-mortar shops in recent years, with consumers seeming more and more interested

in the touch and feel experience.

But right now, we're all being told, don't touch, don't feel.

And it would seem that could put the entire shopping mall at risk,

with them all staring at JCPenney as the ghost of Christmas future.

In 20 seconds, we will go deeper with Fortune magazine's Phil Waba.

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