Conservative activist’s $1bn crusade to ‘crush’ liberal America

[ad_1]

This article is an on-site version of our FirstFT newsletter. Subscribers can sign up to our Asia, Europe/Africa or Americas edition to receive the newsletter every weekday. Explore all of our newsletters here

Good morning. In today’s news:

Google’s $20bn ad tech business is at stake in international antitrust campaign

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s rival flees to Spain

Kamala Harris is under pressure to put on a strong performance during her debate against Donald Trump

But first, Leonard Leo — the conservative activist who led the crusade to overhaul the US legal system — is making a $1bn push to “crush liberal dominance” across corporate America and in the country’s news and entertainment sectors.

In a rare interview, Leo, who was the architect of efforts to secure a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, said his non-profit advocacy group, the Marble Freedom Trust, was ready to confront the private sector in addition to the government.

“We need to crush liberal dominance where it’s most insidious, so we’ll direct resources to build talent and capital formation pipelines in the areas of news and entertainment, where leftwing extremism is most evident,” Leo told the Financial Times.

Leo has spent more than two decades at the influential Federalist Society, guiding conservative judges into the federal courts and the Supreme Court itself. Read more about his plans in the full story.

Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:

Apple: The iPhone 16 is expected to launch with a next-generation chip based on Arm’s newest design architecture, people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times.

Companies: Oracle has first-quarter results, while Brian Niccol starts his tenure as Starbucks’ CEO.

Five more top stories 1. Kamala Harris is under pressure to put on a strong performance during her debate against Donald Trump tomorrow after polling suggested her momentum in the presidential contest could be fading. Surveys show the race is neck-and-neck, with voters unsure of where the Democrat stands on election issues.

2. Exclusive: Volkswagen’s $5bn tie-up with US electric vehicle start-up Rivian has sparked dismay within Cariad, the German carmaker’s software division, whose top executives were sidelined in the sudden change in strategy. Patricia Nilsson has more from Frankfurt.

3. Google’s $20bn ad tech business is at stake in a concerted international antitrust campaign to break the tech giant’s decades-long dominance of the digital advertising market. The US Department of Justice will again face its parent company Alphabet in court next week over allegations it exerts monopolistic control over digital advertising.

4. Apple pins hopes on AI to boost flagging iPhone sales with Wall Street, betting that generative AI features will convince millions of consumers to buy the latest version of the best-selling device. The tech giant unveils the iPhone 16 at its headquarters in Cupertino, California, today.

5. Nicolás Maduro’s rival in Venezuela’s presidential election fled to Spain to seek political asylum, after Maduro’s government ordered his arrest. Edmundo González, the opposition candidate recognised by the US as the winner of the disputed presidential poll, arrived in Spain on Sunday afternoon.

Join Swamp Notes writer Rana Foroohar and other FT experts for a live webinar on Thursday as they assess both presidential candidates after the first Harris-Trump debate. Register for free.

FT Series© FT montage/Alamy/Reuters A surge in innovative medicines along with a global push to increase early diagnosis and expand access to treatment raised global spending on oncology drugs to $223bn last year, according to research from the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. It expects the figure to balloon to $409bn by 2028. This is the cost of cracking cancer.

We’re also reading . . . Bermuda: Premier David Burt has defended the robustness of Bermuda’s life insurance sector following a crisis at a Hamilton-based reinsurer linked to private equity group 777 Partners.

Artificial intelligence: Enthusiasm about AI masks weakness across most of the technology sector, with many companies “still in a recession” following a slowdown that started in 2022. Read the full story.

Free speech: Repelled by the characters of those who decry censorship, we have failed to value rights that are fundamental to liberal democracy, writes Jemima Kelly.

Chart of the day Since the global financial crisis of 2008, home prices adjusted for inflation are up about 2 per cent in Europe and 25 per cent in Japan — but more than 50 per cent in the US.

Take a break from the news The voice of a Black woman at a Democratic party convention can bring back powerful memories. Sixty years ago, in late August 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer from Ruleville, Mississippi, tried to persuade the credentials committee of the Democratic National Convention to replace her state’s all-white, unrepentantly segregationist delegation with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party slate.

[ad_1]

Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=66e186957ba64be0a58820e41fd1e31f&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2F0f0cfefe-6816-4933-8b7a-495a50b7e2a9&c=13207222796214068005&mkt=en-us Author : Publish date : 2024-09-08 23:22:00 Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source .