Journal newsletter also covers IRS GRATs case, subsea-cable risks, Emanuel memoir
Meta’s new artificial intelligence agent, Muse, jumped to the top of Apple’s App Store on Monday, sending shares of the Facebook parent company up 11% — its largest one-day percentage gain in more than a year, The Wall Street Journal reported. Investors noticed the rapid ascent of the AI agent and piled into the stock in a session that marked Meta’s strongest single-day percentage move in more than 12 months.
The Muse launch was among the items in the Journal’s daily What’s News newsletter, which surfaced a wide slate of other reporting on Monday. The same edition covered Republican candidates’ positioning on fuel prices ahead of the midterm elections. The Journal reported that GOP strategists and lawmakers fear voters could blame their candidates for record-high gas prices, and that some candidates are backing ideas such as a federal gas-tax holiday or a ban on diesel exports. Congress has no plans to vote on fuel-price relief before the election, the Journal reported, leaving any decision on the matter with President Trump.
The newsletter also reported that an artificial-intelligence company published a proposal calling on countries worldwide to set common measures for evaluating forthcoming self-improving AI systems and share emerging threats. The call to action comes as global leaders convene in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly and ahead of Trump’s planned meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping later this week, according to the Journal.
In tax news, the Internal Revenue Service sent a tax bill to an heiress and her husband challenging their use of Grantor-Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs) to pass wealth to their children. The couple is contesting the IRS’s claims in tax court, arguing their financial moves align with standard industry practices, the Journal reported. The newspaper explained how the ultrarich use GRATs to transfer wealth tax-free and why the IRS is scrutinizing the arrangements.
On the national-security front, the newsletter reported that around 75% of all transatlantic subsea cables pass through or near Irish waters, where suspected Russian shadow-fleet vessels are now present nearly every day. The cables carry data crucial for internet services and banking transfers, and some Western officials and experts fear that critical infrastructure is exposed to Russian interference and sabotage, according to the Journal.
The edition also featured an interview with Ari Emanuel about his new memoir, “Roll the Calls,” his punishing approach to “disloyalists,” and the deliberate rage he said he inherited from his civil-rights-activist mother. A decade ago, Emanuel placed $4.1 billion “chips on the table” to buy the Ultimate Fighting Championship, believing it was an undervalued property and that all live sports would eventually migrate from networks to streaming giants. The insight was prescient: today TKO Group Holdings — which consolidated UFC with World Wrestling Entertainment in 2023 — has a market cap north of $35 billion. Emanuel called the initial wager “the scariest moment of my career,” according to the Journal.
The newsletter also reported, in separate items, a Trump administration proposal for a Partnership for Allied Trust and Construction fund to help Middle Eastern countries rebuild energy infrastructure battered in the Iran war — covered in prior Main Street Independent reporting on the date — and a Paramount settlement with state attorneys general in an antitrust suit in which the company agreed to invest $1.5 billion in domestic productions over five years, guarantee 30 film releases annually, and create an editorial-independence board to oversee CNN and CBS News, also covered in prior MSI reporting.