Good morning. The White House opposes a plan from Anthropic to expand access to its powerful artificial-intelligence model Mythos, complicating the rollout of an AI tool capable of carrying out cyberattacks and sowing widespread disruptions online.

• Expansion proposed: Anthropic recently proposed letting roughly 70 additional companies and organizations use Mythos, which would have brought the total number of entities with access to about 120, people familiar with the matter said. Administration officials told the company they oppose the move because of concerns about security, the people said. Some White House officials also worried that Anthropic wouldn’t have access to enough computing power to serve that many more entities without hampering the government’s ability to use it effectively, one of the people said.
   
• Why is the White House putting in its two cents? The White House is involved in the rollout of Mythos because of the national-security risks posed by the model. Its ability to find and exploit software vulnerabilities has rattled government agencies and companies in recent weeks. The discussions between Anthropic and the White House are meant to address the risks and have served as an attempt to repair the relationship between Anthropic and the government.
   
• Relationship still needs work: The move by the White House to rebuff the request of Anthropic to let more organizations use Mythos shows that their relationship is still complicated despite efforts from both sides to ease tensions. The administration tried to cut ties with the company because of a spat with the Pentagon over how its AI tools are used by the military, a fight that is working its way through the legal system in two different court cases.

U.S. senators vote to ban themselves from trading on prediction markets.

The U.S. Senate has passed a resolution prohibiting senators from trading on prediction markets, following concerns about the possibility of insider trading on the platforms.

The ban, which passed on Thursday with unanimous consent, will be effective immediately. A representative for Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio), who introduced the resolution, said the rules apply to senators, officers and staff.

Kroger settles with Justice Department to reel in refrigerator coolant leaks.

Grocery store chain Kroger agreed to a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly releasing ozone-damaging chemicals from its refrigerators, Clara Hudson reports for Risk Journal (free link). 

Settlement terms: Kroger as part of the settlement will spend about $100 million over the next three years to reduce coolant leaks from its refrigerators, and will pay a $2.5 million civil penalty. The settlement alleges the company violated the Clean Air Act at its grocery stores across the country. The Justice Department said Kroger failed to promptly repair refrigerant equipment leaks of “a powerful ozone-depleting hydrochlorofluorocarbon” between 2014 and 2023.

• Prediction markets operator Kalshi and cryptocurrency trading platform Robinhood are facing a class-action lawsuit from a problem gambler in Massachusetts accusing the companies of having lackluster protections in place for compulsive bettors, Risk Journal reports (free link). 
   
• Elon Musk took the stand for a third day in his lawsuit against OpenAI and its co-founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, offering extended testimony Thursday as he seeks to halt its conversion to a for-profit company.
   
• Jerome Powell held his last press conference as Federal Reserve chair on Wednesday afternoon, but he said he would stay on as a Fed governor pending the conclusion of an investigation into the renovation of the Fed’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.
   
• FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on Thursday said the decision to order an early license review for Disney’s ABC television stations isn’t related to President Trump’s skirmish with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
   
• The Justice Department is launching a West Coast healthcare-fraud strike force to target schemes against Medicare and Medicaid.
   
• The U.S. and five other countries jointly condemned Chinese economic pressure on Panama, accusing Beijing of attempting to politicize maritime trade in retaliation for a Panama Supreme Court ruling that stripped Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison of its concessions to operate terminals on both ends of the Panama Canal (free link).
   
• The U.S. will remove tariffs on whisky from the United Kingdom, the Trump administration announced.
   
• Four recent California lawsuits accuse financial services firms and a cosmetics company of secretly collecting user online activity.

AI investment boosted economic growth, while consumers tapped the brakes.

U.S. economic growth picked up in the first quarter as businesses invested heavily in artificial intelligence, rebounding from a fourth quarter dented by a government shutdown. At the same time, the economy didn’t expand as fast as economists expected, weighed down by softer consumer spending growth.

The numbers: The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product—the value of all goods and services produced across the economy—rose at a seasonally and inflation adjusted 2% annual rate in the first quarter. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected GDP growth of 2.2% for the January-to-March period.

• U.S. Leading Indicators Forecasts Further Slowdown
• Europe’s Economy Stutters as War Drives Up Inflation
• Big Tech’s $700 billion spending on AI this year is called the ‘greatest capital misallocation in history’

The U.A.E.’s OPEC bombshell signals a new Middle East order.

The United Arab Emirates’ decision to withdraw from OPEC did more than deliver a shock to the cartel that has long ruled the global oil market. It also rang the opening bell for the new geopolitical order that the war with Iran is ushering in across the Middle East.

The new alignment is redrawing political fault lines between the Arab world and Israel that defined the region for decades. Instead, the U.A.E.—the financial nerve center of the Gulf and a potent military power—is strengthening security cooperation with Israel as both states work to change the region’s strategic balance through force of arms if necessary.

• The Big OPEC Breakup Could Mean Lower Oil Prices, More Volatility and New Regional Alliances
• Five Takeaways From the Journal’s Analysis of the U.A.E.’s Exit From OPEC

• The Trump administration is on course to blow past an initial deadline for congressional approval for the Iran war on the grounds that the ongoing cease-fire stopped the clock on a 60-day deadline—an assertion met with outrage from Democrats and skepticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill.
   
• Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, has increasingly used first-person-view, or FPV, drones to attack Israeli troops, posing a major threat to the Israeli military that it hasn’t encountered in earlier rounds of fighting in Gaza and Lebanon, according to military officials and soldiers.
   
• Engineers, lawyers and other emissaries of the U.S. oil industry have flocked to the heavily guarded J.W. Marriott in Caracas to pitch their Venezuelan counterparts on plans to revive the country’s rundown oil fields.
   
• Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum questioned the evidence provided by U.S. authorities charging the governor of Mexico’s Sinaloa state and other officials with drug trafficking, setting the stage for a rocky period in relations between the two nations.
   
• President Trump says he is weighing whether to reduce the number of U.S. troops stationed in Germany. If he goes ahead, it would reshape the military presence that has allowed America to project power in Europe, the Middle East and beyond.
   
• Yet another new job duty has skyrocketed in importance for chief marketing officers: optimizing how their companies appear in conversations with large language models like ChatGPT or Google Gemini.
   
• Increasing drought levels across the U.S. Plains lifted U.S. wheat prices near two-year highs, while potential for an El Niño could make things even drier this summer.
   
• Al-Qaeda-led militants bent on building an African caliphate are closing in on Mali’s capital and forcing a retreat of the Russian mercenaries who were meant to stanch the spread of the Islamist group across the country.

The Dow Jones Risk Journal Summit London on May 7 will convene senior business professionals for discussions on a range of corporate risks including supply chains, artificial intelligence, geopolitics and financial crime. Speakers include: Kathy Wengel, EVP, Chief Technical Operations and Risk Officer, Johnson & Johnson; Nish Imthiyaz, Global Privacy and Responsible AI Counsel, Vodafone; and Will Mayes, Chief Executive, Cyber Monitoring Centre.

Request a complimentary invitation here using the code COMPLIMENTARY. Attendance is limited, and all requests are subject to approval.

• Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg offered fresh details on the company’s aggressive AI plans and addressed the market’s negative reaction to its first-quarter results in a companywide meeting Thursday, according to a recording reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
   
• The House approved a long-delayed measure to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security and end a 76-day shutdown, after the Trump administration warned it had run out of emergency funds to pay workers next week.
   
• President Trump is withdrawing his nomination of healthy-food advocate Dr. Casey Means to serve as U.S. surgeon general, after it became clear that the champion of his administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda was unable to secure support in the Senate for confirmation.