Happy Monday! First, a correction: At the top of Friday's newsletter, I misspelled Barry Ritholtz's name. My apologies. Over the weekend, I finished his new book "How NOT To Invest," and it was a genuinely great investment.
It's a busy morning. Here's the latest on Blue Origin, Politico, "60 Minutes," CBS, "Minecraft," and much more...
|
Kenny Holston/Pool/AFP via Getty Images |
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is going on trial today. If the judge sides with the FTC in the blockbuster antitrust case, Meta could be forced to break itself up by selling Instagram and WhatsApp, and other tech giants could be put on notice. But there is another if: whether President Trump will intervene.
On the one hand, Trump has been harshly critical of Zuckerberg and Meta for years. On the other hand, Zuckerberg has bent over backwards to forge an alliance with the president in recent months. Zuckerberg was most recently spotted at the White House on April 2; that same day, the NYT and the WSJ reported that he was lobbying Trump to resolve the FTC case.
Under normal circumstances a president's personal relationships and opinions would have no bearing on a federal trial. But these are not normal times. The FTC's historic independence has been thrown into doubt during Trump's second term. So "even if Trump allows the trial to proceed, it’s possible that the president could intervene down the line," Politico's Brendan Bordelon wrote yesterday.
But if Trump is inclined to give Meta a reprieve, he has not said so publicly. He has recently praised moguls like Jeff Bezos but hasn't expressed any warm and fuzzy feelings about Zuckerberg. Here's my trial curtain-raiser story for CNN.com...
|
>> In another twist of sorts, the US district judge assigned to the case is Judge James Boasberg, who has attracted Trump's ire by ruling against his use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.
>> Zuckerberg is expected to be the "marquee witness" in the trial, the NYT notes. NPR says it will take seven to eight weeks.
>> On Friday Meta added Dina Powell McCormick to its board. "Her appointment represents another sign of Meta's alignment with Republicans," CNBC's Jordan Novet wrote.
|
|
|
Palin/NYT retrial starts today |
Starting today Sarah Palin "has the rare opportunity to retry her defamation case" against The New York Times "even though she lost it twice in a 24-hour period in early 2022," NPR's David Folkenflik writes. Jury selection is slated to begin today in federal court in Manhattan "after a judge's misstep in the initial suit opened the door to a retrial." Read on...
>> Much of the trial will be a repeat, but "what has changed is the country," the NYT's David Enrich and Katie Robertson write...
|
|
|
☝️ That's how CBS is promoting today's launch. Blue Origin "is taking a star-studded crew of six female passengers to the edge of space" this morning "in one of the most closely watched suborbital space tourism missions in years," CNN's Jackie Wattles writes.
Since Gayle King is one of the passengers, her morning show "CBS Mornings" will have special live coverage of the journey. The launch window will open at 9:30am ET. Blue Origin is streaming anchored coverage, led by Charissa Thompson, Kristin Fisher, and Ariane Cornell, right now...
|
|
|
|
