Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp. DWAC, -2.05%,
the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) looking to take Donald Trump’s Truth Social media company public, soared 20% in premarket trading Friday, after the SPAC reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over fraud charges. The rally put the stock on track to open around the highest-price seen during regular-session hours since Feb. 6. The agreed upon settlement was a $18 million civil penalty fee in the event that it completes its planned merger with the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) and takes it public. The SPAC, which went public in September 2021, and entered into an agreement in October 2021 to buy TMTG. The SPAC’s stock has tumbled 59% over the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 SPX, -0.68%
has gained 13.4%.
WASHINGTON — Whistleblowers claiming the Justice Department improperly interfered with a yearslong investigation into Hunter Biden will testify before Congress on Wednesday as House Republicans accelerate their probes into the president and his family.
Leaders of the House Judiciary, Oversight and Accountability, and Ways and Means committees will lead a hearing with two Internal Revenue Service employees — Greg Shapley and an as-yet-unnamed “whistleblower x” — who claim there was a pattern of “slow-walking investigative steps” into Hunter Biden, including delayed enforcement actions in the months before the 2020 election won by Joe Biden.
It will be the first public testimony from the two IRS agents assigned to the federal case into President Joe Biden’s youngest son, Hunter, which was focused on tax and gun charges. The second agent, whose name was withheld in interview transcripts released by Republicans, is expected to have his identity revealed at the hearing.
The congressional inquiry into the Justice Department’s case against Hunter Biden was launched last month, days after it was announced that the younger Biden will plead guilty to the misdemeanor tax offenses as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors.
The House Ways and Means Committee voted to publicly disclose hundreds of pages of testimony from the IRS employees in which they described several roadblocks agents on the case faced when trying to interview individuals relevant to the case or issue search warrants.
One of Shapley’s most explosive claims was that U.S. Attorney David Weiss in Delaware, the federal prosecutor who led the investigation, asked to be provided special counsel status in order to bring the tax cases against Hunter Biden in jurisdictions outside Delaware, including Washington, D.C., and California, but was denied.
Both Weiss and the Justice Department have vehemently denied such claims, saying that he had “full authority” of the case and never sought to bring charges in other states.
The second IRS whistleblower described his persistent frustrations with the way the case was handled, dating back to the Trump administration under Attorney General William Barr. He said he started the investigation into Hunter Biden in 2015 and began to delve deeply into his life and finances. Republicans have also sought testimony from other agents involved in the case but have been mostly unsuccessful thus far.
Republicans, including the three chairmen —Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, James Comer of Kentucky and Jason Smith of Missouri — have sought to paint the Justice Department’s case as rife with political interference and bias.
They have also called the plea agreement Hunter Biden made with prosecutors to likely avoid jail time a “sweetheart deal.”
Ahead of the hearing, Comer acknowledged it has been difficult for Republicans to succinctly outline Hunter Biden’s tangled financial affairs or to provide convincing evidence of any specific wrongdoing by the president or his family.
“It’s so hard to explain,” Comer told reporters at the Capitol.
“Hopefully these IRS agents can do a better job explaining than I can,” he said.
High-ranking officials at the Justice Department have countered these claims by pointing to the extraordinary set of circumstances surrounding a criminal case into a subject who at the time was the son of a leading presidential candidate.
And it remains unclear how much of the conflict the whistleblowers describe amounts to internal disagreement about how to pursue the wide-ranging probe or a pattern of interference and preferential treatment. Department policy has long warned prosecutors to take care in charging cases with potential political overtones around the time of an election, to avoid any possible influence on the outcome.
In one specific case, Shapley described IRS agents’ efforts to execute a search warrant of a storage facility in Virginia where the younger Biden’s documents were being stored. He said that the assistant U.S. attorney involved in the case reached out to Hunter Biden’s lawyers, in a move that is seen as customary in cases involving high-profile individuals, but it ruined “our chance to get to evidence before being destroyed, manipulated, or concealed.”
A similar occurrence happened when the FBI officials notified Hunter Biden’s Secret Service detail ahead of an effort to interview him and several of his business associates in order to avoid a potential shoot-off between two law enforcement bodies.
Democrats in the House have also pointed out that Weiss was appointed to his post by former President Donald Trump and the federal investigation into Hunter Biden was initiated by Trump’s Justice Department. Biden kept Weiss on the case when he won the election.
Nonetheless. Republicans have moved full steam ahead, issuing a series of requests for voluntary testimony from senior officials at the Justice Department, FBI and Internal Revenue Service, including Weiss. They have also requested a special counsel review of supposed retaliation against the whistleblowers who came forward with the claims.
Weiss wrote in a letter to Jordan earlier this month that he would be happy to testify before the committee when he is legally able to share information with Congress without violating the longstanding department policy of discussing an ongoing investigation.
Testimony from Justice Department officials could come after Hunter Biden appears for his plea hearing next week.
___
Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — Israel’s figurehead president Isaac Herzog sought to assure President Joe Biden that Israel remains committed to democracy amid deepening U.S. concerns over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial plans to overhaul his country’s judicial system and ongoing settlement construction in the West Bank.
Sitting by Biden’s side at the start of their Oval Office meeting on Tuesday, Herzog told Biden that Israel’s democracy remains “sound, strong” and “resilient” while acknowledging the country is going through a fractious moment.
Herzog’s visit comes a day after Biden spoke with Netanyahu by phone and invited him to meet in the U.S. this fall, although the president expressed reservations about several of the Netanyahu hard-right coalition’s policies. Netanyahu’s government is pushing forward with judicial changes that have sparked widespread protest in Israel and he has authorized the construction of thousands of new housing units in the West Bank.
“We are going through pains. We are going through heated debates,” Herzog said. “We have gone through challenging moments. But I truly, truly believe and I say to you Mr. President, as I’ve said it as head of state to the people of Israel, we should always seek to find amicable consensus, and I agree with you on that as well. ”
Netanyahu and his allies, a collection of ultra-Orthodox and ultranationalist parties, say the plan is needed to rein in the powers of unelected judges. Opponents say the plan will destroy Israel’s fragile system of checks and balances and move the country toward authoritarian rule.
Herzog has appealed for a compromise that has thus far proven elusive. Many American Jewish groups and Democratic lawmakers have expressed concerns about the plan.
With differences in plain view, Biden sought to stress the importance of the U.S.-Israeli relationship in his brief remarks before reporters.
“This is a friendship I believe is just simply unbreakable,” Biden said.
During his U.S. visit, Herzog is also to meet Vice President Kamala Harris and congressional leaders. On Wednesday he will become the second Israeli president, after his father Chaim Herzog, to address Congress. His speech will mark Israel’s celebration of its 75th year of independence.
Herzog’s visit comes weeks after Israeli forces carried out one of their most intensive operations in the West Bank in two decades, with a two-day air and ground offensive in Jenin, a militant stronghold in the occupied West Bank. Senior members of Netanyahu’s government have been pushing for increased construction and other measures to cement Israel’s control over the West Bank in response to a more than yearlong wave of violence with the Palestinians.
U.S. officials have broadly supported Israel’s right to defend itself from militant attacks but have also urged restraint to minimize harm to civilians and have lobbied against additional settlements that would further diminish the chances of securing a two-state solution between Israel and Palestinians.
The Biden administration declined to say whether Biden would host Netanyahu at the White House — as the Israeli leader has hoped — or in New York on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly.
White House visits are typically standard protocol for Israeli prime ministers, and the delay in Netanyahu receiving one has become an issue in Israel, with opponents citing it as a reflection of deteriorating relations with the U.S.
Herzog said the Biden-Netanyahu conversation sent an important message to the region.
“I was pleased to hear about your conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu in which you focused on our ironclad military and security cooperation because there are some enemies of ours that sometimes mistake the fact that we may have some differences as impacting our unbreakable bond,” Herzog said.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Biden again on Monday expressed concern to Netanyahu over the judicial plan — as he did when they last spoke earlier this year — and urged the “broadest possible consensus” over the legislation that has been pushed by Netanyahu and his hard-line coalition.
Kirby said during the call Biden also expressed his “ironclad, unwavering commitment” to Israel’s security and that the two leaders discussed Iran’s nuclear program and regional security issues. Biden also “expressed concern” over Israel’s continued settlement growth in the West Bank and urged Israel to take steps to preserve the viability of a two-state solution with Palestinians.
Biden, Kirby said, also welcomed steps by the Palestinian Authority to reassert security control in Jenin and other areas of the West Bank and moves by Israel and Palestinians to move toward another round of direct talks.
Progressive lawmakers, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush and Ilhan Omar have pledged to boycott Herzog’s address in protest of Israel’s policies.
Herzog’s visit comes days after Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the influential 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, sparked outrage for calling Israel a “racist state,” including criticism from House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. Jayapal later said she was criticizing Israel’s government, not its existence as a country.
Kirby said Biden was glad she apologized. “We think an apology was the right thing to do,” he told reporters Monday.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians claim all three territories for a future independent state.
Israel has annexed east Jerusalem and claims it as part of its capital — a claim that is not internationally recognized. It says the West Bank is disputed territory whose fate should be determined through negotiations, while Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Two years later, the Hamas militant group overran the territory.
BEIJING — U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told China’s top diplomat on Tuesday that President Joe Biden’s administration is “very committed” to stabilizing relations between the world’s two biggest economies, as the countries seek to restart high-level contacts.
On his second day of talks in Beijing, Kerry met with the ruling Communist Party’s head of foreign relations Wang Yi, telling him Biden hoped the two countries could “achieve efforts together that can make a significant difference to the world.”
Ties between the countries have hit a historic low amid disputes over tariffs, access to technology, human rights and China’s threats against self-governing Taiwan.
In his opening remarks, Wang said the sides had suffered from a lack of communication, but that China believes through renewed dialogue “we can find a proper solution to any problems.”
“Sometimes, small problems can become big problems,” Wang said, adding that dialogue must be conducted on an “equal basis.”
That was an apparent reference to U.S. criticism of China’s aggressive foreign policy, rights abuses against Muslim and Buddhist minorities and travel sanctions against officials ranging from the Beijing-appointed leader of Hong Kong to the country’s defense minister.
China broke off some mid- and high-level contacts with the Biden administration last August, including over climate issues, to show its anger with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. China claims the island as its own territory to be brought under its control by force if necessary, threatening to draw the U.S. into a major conflict in a region crucial to the global economy.
Kerry is the third senior Biden administration official in recent weeks to travel to China for meetings with their counterparts following Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Kerry said he appreciated the opportunity to “change our relationship for the better” and that Biden is “very committed to stability within this relationship and also to achieve efforts together that can make a significant difference to the world.”
Biden “values his relationship with President Xi (Jinping), and I think President Xi values his relationship with President Biden, and I know he looks forward to being able to move forward and change the dynamic,” Kerry said.
Kerry later paid a courtesy call on newly appointed Premier Li Qiang, the party’s second-ranking official, who told him China and the U.S. should cooperate more closely on the “extremely large challenge” posed by global warming. No meeting has been set with Xi, and China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang has been absent from public sight for three weeks.
There was no immediate comment on Kerry’s Monday meeting with his counterpart Xie Zhenhua in the first extensive face-to-face climate discussions between representatives of the world’s two worst climate polluters after a nearly yearlong hiatus.
China leads the world in producing and consuming coal, and has proceeded with building new plants that add tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere annually, while also expanding the use of renewables such as solar and wind power.
China has pledged to level off carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060. The U.S. and the European Union have urged China to adopt more ambitious reduction targets.
As with the U.S. and Europe, China has seen record stretches of high temperatures that have threatened crops and prompted cities to open Cold War-era bomb shelters to help residents escape the heat.
U.S. lawmakers have faulted China for refusing to make bigger cuts in climate-damaging fossil fuel emissions, along with the country’s insistence that it is still a developing economy that produces far less pollution per capita and should be exempted from the climate standards adopted by developed Western economies.
Biden and Xi spent days together when both were their countries’ vice presidents and met in November at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia. However, no state visits have been held following the COVID-19 outbreak and no plans have been announced for their next face-to-face meeting.
A federal appeals court late Friday denied the Federal Trade Commission’s bid to temporarily block Microsoft Corp.’s MSFT, +0.75%
$68.7 billion acquisition of videogame publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. ATVI, +0.59%,
clearing the path for the biggest gaming deal in the U.S. The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling means only U.K. regulators can stop the closing of the deal before a July 18 deadline. On Tuesday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled against the FTC, which sued to block the deal in December, prompting the FTC’s appeal on Wednesday. “We appreciate the Ninth Circuit’s swift response denying the FTC’s motion to further delay the deal. This brings us another step closer to the finish line in this marathon of global regulatory reviews,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement. The FTC was not immediately available for comment.
A leading global health body has declared that the artificial sweetener aspartame, commonly used as an ingredient in diet soda, chewing gum and vitamins, may cause cancer.
But the World Health Organization’s report late Thursday also noted that people would have to be exposed to extreme amounts of aspartame — whether through diet, occupational exposure or other means — to be at risk.
So how much aspartame is too much?
It’s safe to consume up to 40 milligrams of aspartame per kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of body weight per day, a WHO and Food and Agriculture Organizations joint committee of experts on food additives said. So, a person who weighs 154 pounds would need to drink nine to 14 cans of, say, Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke per day to exceed that level, assuming there are 200 to 300 milligrams of aspartame in each can.
“We’re not advising consumers to stop consuming [aspartame] altogether,” said WHO’s nutrition director, Dr. Francesco Branca. “We’re just advising a bit of moderation.”
The Food and Drug Administration has an even higher daily aspartame-exposure limit: 50 milligrams per kilo of body weight.
Even heavy aspartame users — Donald Trump, the former U.S. president, for example, drank a reported 12 cans of Diet Coke a day in his White House years — would struggle to consume that much of the sweetener in an average day.
But consumers should also note that a food being labeled “safe” is not equivalent to its being healthy. There has been plenty of research to suggest that sipping too many sweetened beverages, including diet drinks with artificial sweeteners, may be linked to health problems and elevated risk of death.
Aspartame is used in products that millions of people use every day, including Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, Pepsi Zero Sugar and Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, the Mars Wrigley chewing gum Extra and some Snapple drinks, as well as some protein drinks, among thousands of others, by the Calorie Control Council’s count.
Aspartame was developed beginning in the mid-1960s by Skokie, Ill.–based G.D. Searle & Co., now a Pfizer PFE, +0.72%
subsidiary, which branded the sweetener NutraSweet. It secured ultimate FDA approval, after initial hiccups, for use in dry goods and then in carbonated soft drinks in 1981 and 1983, according to the Calorie Control Council.
The organization that this week labeled aspartame possibly carcinogenic was the World Health Organization’s cancer-research arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The IARC said its aspartame declaration is based on “limited evidence” of cancer in humans, specifically a type of liver cancer called hepatocellular carcinoma.
What should consumers do with this aspartame news? “At least when it comes to beverages, our message is your best choice is to drink water or an unsweetened beverage,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which previously nominated aspartame for IARC review.
A leading global health body has declared that the artificial sweetener aspartame, commonly used as an ingredient in diet soda, chewing gum and vitamins, may cause cancer.
But the World Health Organization’s report late Thursday also noted that people would have to be exposed to extreme amounts of aspartame — whether through diet, occupational exposure or other means — to be at risk.
So how much aspartame is too much?
It’s safe to consume up to 40 milligrams of aspartame per kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of body weight per day, a WHO and Food and Agriculture Organizations joint committee of experts on food additives said. So, a person who weighs 154 pounds would need to drink nine to 14 cans of, say, Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke per day to exceed that level, assuming there are 200 to 300 milligrams of aspartame in each can.
“We’re not advising consumers to stop consuming [aspartame] altogether,” said WHO’s nutrition director, Dr. Francesco Branca. “We’re just advising a bit of moderation.”
The Food and Drug Administration has an even higher daily aspartame-exposure limit: 50 milligrams per kilo of body weight.
Even heavy aspartame users — Donald Trump, the former U.S. president, for example, drank a reported 12 cans of Diet Coke a day in his White House years — would struggle to consume that much of the sweetener in an average day.
But consumers should also note that a food being labeled “safe” is not equivalent to its being healthy. There has been plenty of research to suggest that sipping too many sweetened beverages, including diet drinks with artificial sweeteners, may be linked to health problems and elevated risk of death.
Aspartame is used in products that millions of people use every day, including Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, Pepsi Zero Sugar and Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, the Mars Wrigley chewing gum Extra and some Snapple drinks, as well as some protein drinks, among thousands of others, by the Calorie Control Council’s count.
Aspartame was developed beginning in the mid-1960s by Skokie, Ill.–based G.D. Searle & Co., now a Pfizer PFE, +0.72%
subsidiary, which branded the sweetener NutraSweet. It secured ultimate FDA approval, after initial hiccups, for use in dry goods and then in carbonated soft drinks in 1981 and 1983, according to the Calorie Control Council.
The organization that this week labeled aspartame possibly carcinogenic was the World Health Organization’s cancer-research arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The IARC said its aspartame declaration is based on “limited evidence” of cancer in humans, specifically a type of liver cancer called hepatocellular carcinoma.
What should consumers do with this aspartame news? “At least when it comes to beverages, our message is your best choice is to drink water or an unsweetened beverage,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which previously nominated aspartame for IARC review.
The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday asked an appeals court to temporarily block Microsoft Corp.’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc. while it challenges a ruling earlier this week green-lighting the deal.
The FTC on Thursday asked U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley to postpone her ruling — which she promptly denied — and also appealed to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to pause the acquisition “to preserve the status quo” while the case is reviewed, claiming it is likely to succeed in its appeal.
According to the filing, the FTC claims the judge applied the wrong legal standard to its request for a preliminary injunction, and erred in a number of other matters.
The deal is set to close in the coming days, and letting it happen will “irreparably harm the public interest and the FTC,” regulators said.
In a response filed with the court, Microsoft said the FTC “failed to carry its burden on independent, fact-based grounds” and “dragged its heels” before appealing.
“The court has already found that it would be inequitable” to order an injunction that could lead to “the potential scuttling of the merger,” Microsoft said, in asking for the FTC’s request to be denied.
The FTC has claimed the tie-up of a major videogame platform — Microsoft’s MSFT, +1.62%
Xbox — with a major videogame publisher — Activision ATVI, -0.51%
makes the wildly popular “Call of Duty,” among other titles — would be harmful to the videogame industry and consumers.
Microsoft has pledged to keep “Call of Duty” available to Sony’s SONY, +2.82%
PlayStation console for 10 years, and will make it available for Nintendo’s 7974, -0.36%
Switch and some cloud-gaming platforms.
In her ruling clearing the deal Tuesday, Corley said the FTC did not show “this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition.”
Bloomberg News reported late Thursday that Microsoft and Activision are considering giving up some control of their cloud-gaming business in the U.K. to win approval of British regulators, who — if the U.S. appeals court does not act — are the final hurdle to the deal closing on time.
Federal Reserve Board Gov. Christopher Waller said Thursday he was not swayed by June’s benign consumer inflation data, and said he wants the central bank to go ahead with two more 25-basis-point rate hikes this year.
“I see two more 25-basis-point hikes in the target range over the four remaining meetings this year as necessary to keep inflation moving toward our target,” Waller said in a speech to bond-market experts, known as The Money Marketeers of New York University.
That would bring the Fed’s benchmark rate to a range of 5.5%-5.75%.
Waller said that, while the cooling of CPI data for June was welcome news, “one data points does not make a trend.”
“The report warmed my heart, but I have got to think with my head,” Waller said.
He noted that inflation slowed in the summer of 2021 before rocketing higher.
In his remarks, Waller said he is now more confident that the contagion from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March will not create a significant problem for the economy.
“I see no reason why the first of those two hikes should not occur at our meeting later this month,” he said.
Traders in derivative markets have priced in high odds of a rate hike after the Fed’s meeting in two weeks. But traders have been skeptical the Fed will follow through with a second hike, even before the soft CPI data.
Waller said the timing of the second hike depends on the data.
“If inflation does not continue to show progress and there are no suggestions of a significant slowdown in economic activity, then a second 25-basis-point hike should come sooner rather than later, but that decision is for the future,” he said.
During a question-and-answer session, Waller stressed that September was a “live meeting,” meaning the Fed could hike rates at that time.
Some economists had thought the Fed was moving to an “every-other-meeting” pace of hikes, but Waller said he did not favor such mechanical moves, and that data should be the deciding factor.
Some Fed officials want the central bank to hold rates steady in July, and perhaps through the end of the year, thinking the economy is going to be hit by “lagged” effects from past rate hikes.
Waller said he believes the bulk of the effects from last year’s tightening have passed through the economy already.
“Pausing rates now, because you are waiting for long and variable lags to arrive, may leave you standing on the platform waiting for a train that has already left the station,” he said.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, 3.786%
has fallen to 3.77% this week after a lower-than-expected gain in jobs in the June report and the cooling of inflation. The yield had hit a recent high of 4.07% ahead of those softer reports.
The Federal Trade Commission late Wednesday filed notice that it will appeal a judge’s ruling this week that gave Microsoft Corp. the green light to proceed with its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc.
“The District Court’s ruling makes crystal clear that this acquisition is good for both competition and consumers,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, said in a statement.” We’re disappointed that the FTC is continuing to pursue what has become a demonstrably weak case, and we will oppose further efforts to delay the ability to move forward.”
The FTC has claimed the tie-up of a major videogame platform — Microsoft’s MSFT, +1.42%
Xbox — with a major videogame publisher — Activision ATVI, -1.09%
makes the wildly popular “Call of Duty,” among other titles — would be harmful to the videogame industry and consumers.
“The facts haven’t changed,” an Activision spokesperson said Wednesday. “We’re confident the U.S. will remain among the 39 countries where the merger can close. We look forward to reinforcing the strength of our case in court, again.”
Microsoft has pledged to keep “Call of Duty” available to Sony’s SONY, +1.78%
PlayStation console for 10 years, and will make it available for Nintendo’s 7974, +1.63%
Switch and some cloud-gaming platforms.
The deal faces a July 18 deadline, and still must gain regulatory approval in the U.K.
Tuesday’s ruling was yet another antitrust setback for the FTC, which has failed to do much to rein in Big Tech, and one analyst told MarketWatch on Tuesday that the regulators need to do ” a much better job of picking their battles,”
The European Commission has approved Broadcom Inc.’s AVGO, +0.49%
acquisition of VMware Inc. VMW, +5.19%,
sending VMware’s stock up 2.3% premarket. Broadcom, which makes chip and infrastructure software, announced the $61 billion deal to buy VMware in May 2022, but the deal has been the subject of regulatory scrutiny ever since. It has now been granted legal merger clearance in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and Taiwan, and foreign investment control clearance in all necessary jurisdictions, the company said Wednesday. Broadcom “looks forward to continuing to work constructively with regulators around the world. Broadcom is confident that when regulators conclude their review, they too will see that the combination of Broadcom and VMware will enhance competition in the cloud and benefit enterprise customers by giving them more choice and control over where they locate their workloads,” said the company. It still expects to close the deal in fiscal 2023. Broadcom’s stock was up 0.6% premarket.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s defeat as it sought to block Microsoft Corp.’s acquisition of videogame maker Activision Blizzard is yet another setback for an increasingly toothless regulator that needs to pick better battles with Big Tech.
“With these 10-year contracts that Microsoft made across the board with so many vendors, Nvidia NVDA, +0.53%,
Nintendo and others, 10 years is a really long time, in my opinion,” said Sarah Hindlian-Bowler, an analyst at Macquarie Equity Research, in an interview Tuesday. “It is long enough to cover the arrival and maturity of the cloud gaming market….She understands that 10 years is a very long long time to make a guarantee of this kind.”
Hindlian-Bowler said that she had been in the minority of Wall Street analysts in not believing the U.S. government would be able to block this deal.
“The assumption that this somehow decreases the market is going to prove to be wildly incorrect,” she said, adding that she does not believe that the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority will be able to block the deal either.
The latest upset at the FTC was also not too surprising to other Capitol Hill watchers, especially in the light of other high-profile setbacks by the agency and its once-heralded commissioner, Lina Khan. When she was sworn in as chair of the FTC in mid-2021, Khan was hailed as the sheriff who would rein in Big Tech.
“It’s hard to say I am surprised by the ruling because Khan has had a fairly unsuccessful track record,” said Owen Tedford, a senior research analyst at Beacon Policy Advisors. “The regulators are pushing the boundaries, deals that previously would have gone unchallenged have now gone challenged. And they are breaking precedent because Khan and company have expressed a dislike of settlements.”
“I think that the FTC is in need of some change, in need of some refreshing and in need of doing a much better job of picking their battles,” said Hindlian-Bowler. “This does feel toothless, a lot of the fights they are picking are toothless. And unfortunately, they are missing the real battle. They are missing TikTok, they are missing the real fights where we actually have national security at risk.”
In February, one of the Republican commissioners on the FTC resigned, and wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal accusing Khan of disregarding the rule of law and due process.
Compared to the European Union, which has had far more success implementing regulation to rein in Big Tech, the U.S. is still much weaker. “The EU seems to be having somewhat more success, levying big fines, getting these companies to change,” said Beacon’s Tedford. “The EU has passed these bills, but the U.S., despite these efforts, has not gotten there and is not going to get there for the next two years.”
Money spent by Big Tech to lobby Congress in a huge part of the problem, whereas in Europe, “those lawmakers feel less beholden,” he added.
More than a century ago, President Teddy Roosevelt, known for his “speak softly and carry a big stick” foreign policy, also used his bully pulpit to bust industrial monopolies.
If Khan and her staff want to follow his lead and rein in Big Tech, they need to start picking their future battles more carefully — and carry bigger sticks.
NEW ORLEANS — A federal judge in Louisiana refused Monday to put a temporary hold on his own order limiting Biden administration officials contacts with social media companies.
Biden administration attorneys had asked U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in Monroe to stay his own order, which was issued last Tuesday, while they pursue an appeal. That order came in a lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, as well as a conservative website owner and four individual critics of government COVID-19 policies.
The lawsuit claimed the administration, in effect, censored free speech by using threats of regulatory action or protection while pressuring companies to remove what it deemed misinformation. COVID-19 vaccines, legal issues involving President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and election fraud allegations were among the topics spotlighted in the lawsuit.
Doughty was nominated to the federal bench by former President Donald Trump. His injunction blocked the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI and multiple other government agencies and administration officials from meeting with or contacting social media companies for the purpose of “encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
“Defendants do not identify any specific conduct that they claim is lawful but prevented by the injunction,” Doughty said in Monday’s ruling. He refused to block is own order while it is appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The administration can also ask the appeals court for a stay.
Government lawyers have argued that the companies control their own policies regarding misinformation and that the lawsuit casts officials’ comments on issues and policy as threats. The administration said Doughty’s July 4 order was unclear about who in the executive branch it covers and what they can or cannot say about important topics discussed on social media platforms.
The order could cause “grave harm” by preventing the government from “engaging in a vast range of lawful and responsible conduct,” government lawyers said in requesting the stay Thursday night.
Doughty order said the administration “seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’” The order, which was to remain in effect pending further arguments in Doughty’s court, was hailed by conservatives as a victory for free speech and a blow to censorship. But critics said the order and accompanying reasons, covering more than 160 pages, were broad, unclear and could chill government efforts to fight misinformation on important topics.
The criticisms were echoed in the government’s Thursday night request for a stay. “The potential breadth of the entities and employees covered by the injunction combined with the injunction’s sweeping substantive scope will chill a wide range of lawful government conduct relating to Defendants’ law enforcement responsibilities, obligations to protect the national security, and prerogative to speak on matters of public concern,” the government’s motion said.
The lawsuit’s plaintiffs countered with a weekend filing opposing a stay. Among the arguments are that the July 4 injunction carves out exemptions allowing officials to contact social media companies about postings involving criminal activity or public safety threats; national security threats; election-related issues including voter suppression attempts, voting infrastructure threats and illegal campaign contributions; and saying officials can continue “exercising permissible public government speech promoting government policies or views on matters of public concern.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday granted full approval to the Biogen BIIB and Eisai Co. Ltd. ESALF Alzheimer’s treatment Leqembi, a step that secures Medicare reimbursement for the first drug shown to slow the progress of the disease, rather than just treating its symptoms.
Leqembi, also known as lecanemab, is a monoclonal antibody designed to reduce the buildup of amyloid beta plaque in the brain, a marker of Alzheimer’s disease.
As the 2024 race for the White House gathers steam, one topic that just won’t go away is President Joe Biden’s age.
It comes up whenever the 80-year-old president makes a mistake such as saying “Iraq” when he means to say “Ukraine,” as occurred twice last week, or when he takes a tumble, such as his trip over a sandbag at the Air Force Academy’s commencement on June 1. Biden later joked that he “got sandbagged.”
BEIJING — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen plans to tell Chinese officials Washington wants healthy economic competition but will defend U.S. trade curbs imposed on security grounds and express concern about Beijing’s export controls on metals used in semiconductors and solar panels, a senior Treasury official said Thursday.
Yellen was due to meet Friday with China‘s No. 2 leader, Premier Li Qiang, as part of efforts to revive relations that are at their lowest level in decades due to disputes over security, technology and other irritants. Treasury officials have said she wouldn’t meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Washington doesn’t support decoupling, or disconnecting U.S. and Chinese industries and markets and Yellen will reiterate that message, the Treasury official said. Businesspeople have warned that might harm innovation and growth as both governments tighten controls on trade in technology and other goods deemed sensitive.
Yellen planned to discuss “targeted action” by Washington on trade due to national security or human rights concerns, according to the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.
Her visit follows one by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met Xi last month in the highest-level U.S. visit to Beijing in five years. The two agreed to stabilize relations but failed to agree on improving communications between their militaries.
China’s government has been frustrated by U.S. curbs on Chinese access to advanced processor chips on security grounds. That threatens to delay or derail the ruling Communist Party’s efforts to develop telecoms, artificial intelligence and other technologies.
Xi accused Washington in March of trying to hamper China’s development.
Washington doesn’t use security-related restrictions for economic benefit and considers national security “non-negotiable,” the Treasury official said.
The United States wants “healthy economic competition” with China but considers some of Beijing’s trade practices unfair, the official said. They said Yellen would detail those concerns in meetings with Chinese officials.
The official cited this week’s announcement of Chinese export controls on gallium and germanium as an example of policies about which Washington wants more information. The announcement jolted South Korea and other countries whose industries use Chinese supplies of the metals.
Washington wants to “promote resilient supply chains” and guard against excessive reliance on suppliers in critical areas but doesn’t consider that to be decoupling, the Treasury official said.
Yellen said earlier the two governments “can and need to find a way to live together” in spite of their strained relations over geopolitics and economic development.
Treasury officials told reporters earlier in Washington the secretary wanted to focus on stabilizing the global economy and challenging Chinese support of Russia during its invasion of Ukraine.
The latest flareup came after President Joe Biden referred to Xi as dictator. The Chinese government protested, but Biden said his blunt statements are “just not something I’m going to change very much.”
Ties became especially testy after a Chinese surveillance balloon flew over the United States in February and was shot down.
President Joe Biden will be hosting Sweden’s prime minister at the White House on Wednesday in a show of solidarity as the United States presses for the Nordic nation’s entry into NATO
FILE – Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson arrives for a speech at the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany, March 15, 2023. President Joe Biden will is hosting Sweden’s prime minister at the White House Wednesday in a show of solidarity as the United States presses for the Nordic nation’s entry into NATO, just days before the summit. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden plans to host Sweden’s prime minister at the White House on Wednesday in a show of solidarity as the United States presses for the Nordic nation’s entry into NATO, a week before the alliance’s summit.
Biden and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson will “review our growing security cooperation and reaffirm their view that Sweden should join NATO as soon as possible,” the White House said a statement announcing the meeting. The leaders also will discuss the war in Ukraine and matters involving China.
Sweden and neighbor Finland ended their longstanding policy of military nonalignment after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Both applied for NATO membership, seeking protection under the organization’s security umbrella.
Finland, which shares a more than 800-mile or 1,300-kilometer border with Russia, joined NATO in April. But Sweden, which has avoided military alliances for more than 200 years, has seen its ascension delayed by Turkey and Hungary; NATO requires the unanimous approval of all members to expand.
NATO had hoped the road to Sweden’s membership would be smoothed out before the alliance’s summit July 11-12 in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Sweden’s entry would be a symbolically powerful moment and the latest indication of how Russia’s war is driving countries to join the alliance. Those hopes have dimmed.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has resisted, with his government accusing Sweden of being too lenient toward groups that it says pose a security threat, including militant Kurdish organizations and people associated with a 2016 coup attempt in Turkey.
Last week, he condemned Sweden over a Quran-burning protest. Swedish police allowed the protest outside a mosque in central Stockholm, citing freedom of speech after a court overturned a ban on a similar Quran-burning.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he would gather senior officials from Turkey, Sweden and Finland on Thursday to try to overcome Turkey’s objections.
Hungary also has yet to ratify Sweden’s bid. Hungarian lawmakers said a long-delayed parliamentary vote on that would not happen until the autumn legislative session.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government has alleged that Swedish politicians have told “blatant lies” about the condition of Hungary’s democracy. High-ranking Hungarian officials have said they support Sweden’s membership bid while also making vague demands from Stockholm as conditions for approval.
BEIJING (AP) — The U.S. recommended Americans reconsider traveling to China because of arbitrary law enforcement and exit bans and the risk of wrongful detentions.
No specific cases were cited, but the advisory came after a 78-year-old U.S. citizen was sentenced to life in prison on spying charges in May.
It also followed the passage last week of a sweeping Foreign Relations Law that threatens countermeasures against those seen as harming China’s interests.
China also recently passed a broadly written counterespionage law that has sent a chill through the foreign business community, with offices being raided, as well as a law to sanction foreign critics.
“The People’s Republic of China (PRC) government arbitrarily enforces local laws, including issuing exit bans on U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries, without fair and transparent process under the law,” the U.S. advisory said.
“U.S. citizens traveling or residing in the PRC may be detained without access to U.S. consular services or information about their alleged crime,” it warned.
“ Similar U.S. advisories issued for the semiautonomous Chinese regions of Hong Kong and Macao.”
The advisory also said that Chinese authorities “appear to have broad discretion to deem a wide range of documents, data, statistics, or materials as state secrets and to detain and prosecute foreign nationals for alleged espionage.”
It listed a wide range of potential offenses from taking part in demonstrations to sending electronic messages critical of Chinese policies or even simply conducting research into areas deemed sensitive.
Exit bans could be used to compel individuals to participate in Chinese government investigations, pressure family members to return from abroad, resolve civil disputes in favor of Chinese citizens and “gain bargaining leverage over foreign governments,” the advisory said.
Similar advisories were issued for the semiautonomous Chinese regions of Hong Kong and Macao. They were dated Friday and emailed to journalists on Monday.
The U.S. had issued similar advisories to its citizens in the past, but those in recent years had mainly warned of the dangers of being caught in strict and lengthy lockdowns while China closed its borders for three years under its draconian “zero-COVID” policy.
China generally responds angrily to what it considers U.S. efforts to impugn its authoritarian Communist Party–led system. It has issued its own travel advisories concerning the U.S., warning of the dangers of crime, anti-Asian discrimination and the high cost of emergency medical assistance.
China had no immediate response to the travel advisory on Monday.
Details of the accusations against the accused spy John Shing-Wan Leung are not available, given China’s authoritarian political system and the ruling Communist Party’s absolute control over legal matters. Leung, who also holds permanent residency in Hong Kong, was detained in the southeastern city of Suzhou on April 15, 2021 — a time when China had closed its borders and tightly restricted movement of people domestically to control the spread of COVID-19.
The warnings come as U.S.-China relations are at their lowest in years, over trade, technology, Taiwan and human rights, although the sides are taking some steps to improve the situation. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a long-delayed visit to Beijing last week and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is making a much-anticipated trip to Beijing this week. China also recently appointed a new ambassador to Washington, who presented his credentials in a meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House.
Other incidents, however, have also pointed to the testiness in the relationship. China formally protested last month after Biden called Chinese leader Xi Jinping a “dictator,” days after Blinken’s visit.
Biden brushed off the protest, saying his words would have no negative impact on U.S.-China relations and that he still expects to meet with Xi sometime soon. Biden has also drawn rebukes from Beijing by explicitly saying the U.S. would defend self-governing Taiwan if China, which claims the island as its own territory, were to attack it.
The White House’s John Kirby discusses President Joe Biden’s priorities when it comes to Ukraine, China and other national-security matters. Kirby, who will be interviewed by MarketWatch’s Victor Reklaitis, is the strategic-communications coordinator for Biden’s National Security Council.
Biden said his blunt statements regarding China are “just not something I’m going to change very much.”
The administration is also under pressure from both parties to take a tough line on China, making it one of the few issues on which most Democrats and Republicans agree.
Along with several detained Americans, two Chinese-Australians, Cheng Lei, who formerly worked for China’s state broadcaster, and writer Yang Jun, have been held since 2020 and 2019, respectively, without word on their sentencing.
Perhaps the most notorious case of arbitrary detention involved two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were detained in China in 2018, shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ chief financial officer and the daughter of the tech powerhouse’s founder, on a U.S. extradition request.
They were charged with national-security crimes that were never explained and released three years later after the U.S. settled fraud charges against Meng. Many countries labeled China’s action “hostage politics.”
