China Squashes Meta's $2B AI Deal & MAHA Moms Rage Against Pesticides

0:01Good morning, Bird Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Maha and Trump clash at the Supreme Court over pesticides.

0:09Neal Freyman:Then how GLP-1 drugs are shaking up the wedding dress industry. It's Tuesday, April 28th. Let's ride.

0:21Good morning. Okay, here's a wild story about how a missed field goal kick may have saved a man's life. Yesterday, the AP revealed the remarkable tale of Mark Toothaker, a thoroughbred trainer in Kentucky. Last December, he was watching a New York Giants game on TV when kicker Youngway Koo whiffed on a field goal kick, causing him to laugh really hard. And I mean really hard. That laugh triggered a seizure that sent him to the hospital where doctors discovered a tennis ball-sized tumor in his brain. It was removed, and he was home by the end of the week. Toothaker credits this hilariously botched kick with saving his life considering he had no clue this tumor was even there.

0:59Toby, this may be the Giants' most positive contribution to society in the last decade.

1:03Neal Freyman:So Toothaker works with Thoroughbred Horses and his most successful one is Further Adieu, which is running in the Kentucky Derby this weekend. And I feel like you gotta back it. It has spades of good luck attached to it at this point. Toothaker also invited Koo to be his guest at the Kentucky Derby. He hasn't responded yet and is currently without an NFL team, actually. So maybe he's not seeing the bright side of this story like the rest of the people are. But now, without further ado, honestly, a word from our sponsor, Windmill. Hey, Neil, how often do you sneeze at home? Not that often. Why?

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2:10Neal Freyman:That's windmillair.com slash MBD for 10 % off. China just poked the guy who invented poking. In a surprise move yesterday, the Chinese government ordered Mark Zuckerberg's Meta to unwind its$2 billion acquisition of Manus, an AI startup that makes agents. The breakup order, which cited national security, seems designed to keep Beijing's homegrown technologies out of the hands of American companies as the U.S.-China AI race heats up. Not that I will say that explicitly. In a one-sentence notice, China's powerful National Development and Reform Commission ordered the deal to be unwound, saying the decision was made in accordance with laws and regulations.

2:47If Meta were to follow through, it'd be a more daunting operation than organizing all the stuff accumulating in your parents' basement. This deal closed four months ago. The capital has been transferred. Manus' employees have started working for Meta. Investors have been paid out. It's an absolute nightmare. In a statement, Meta was vague about its plan, saying that its transaction complied with applicable laws and that it expected a resolution to Beijing's inquiry. That China stuck it to the Manus now is probably not a coincidence. President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are holding an IRL summit next month, and each side is jockeying for leverage ahead of the meeting.

3:21Neal Freyman:I think that's the big question. Can this deal actually be reversed or is it more symbolic in nature? Because a lot has already been exchanged. As you mentioned, there's been a human exchange with workers moving to Singapore and becoming integrated in the meta teams. There's been a technology exchange already. It's very integrated into Meta's product suite at this point. So if you force Manus' founders to return the money, to return to China, you're basically handing over a lot of that technology for free in the process. So some industry watchers are saying this is probably more symbolic than actually practical because of just how deeply these companies have already integrated.

3:58But the Wall Street Journal reported overnight that Meta is preparing to unwind its acquisition. That is the heft of Chinese regulators. Let's do a little background on Manus. What is it? Well, it started as a separate company in 2022, and they launched Manus in March 2025. It's an AI agent that went viral on X and other social platforms because it kind of just takes over your computer and accomplishes all these tasks that you would have to do on your own. And what they did was try to create a break with China. It is comprised many of Chinese nationals, especially at the executive level. But they actually moved to Singapore to try to establish a break from China because they wanted to court outside investors like Benchmark, which is a Silicon Valley firm.

4:40And they wanted to get, you know, American capital. And like many Chinese companies or many overseas companies, they want that Silicon Valley money. And then Meta, in this big race for AI agents with Anthropic and Google and Chachi and OpenAI, bought it earlier this year for$2 billion. Now it looks like they may have to unwind it.

4:57Neal Freyman:China, though, does have immense regulatory power because you just think back to some of the other crackdowns that have happened in Beijing. Jack Ma, which was the co-founder of Alibaba, he wanted to bring Ant Group to IPO, and it was going to be one of the biggest IPOs of all time. This was back in 2020. Regulators stepped in at the last moment. Jack Ma kind of disappeared from the public eye for a long time. That IPO never happened. So this is something that they do from time to time, exert their regulatory might over big financial transactions. So it's not out of the ordinary for China to do something like this.

5:34Neal Freyman:But also it's kind of like a Spider-Man pointing meme. The U.S. would do something likely very similar if one of the buzziest AI companies in the world sold to a Chinese entity. They would not let that happen. Yeah, it absolutely would not fly here. So it's kind of going both ways in this geopolitical AI world. But here's the thing. Meta doesn't have any operations in China because they're blocked. There's no Instagram or Facebook in China. And then Manus is in Singapore. So it is a little unusual in the sense that they're probably going to a level that they haven't gone before. I'm talking about Chinese regulators to unwind this deal between a company that doesn't even operate in China and a company that also doesn't even have its headquarters in China.

6:12And it shows the depths of concern about China and the United States also about giving AI technology to their geopolitical rival. And it's really a message that's being sent to a bunch of other Chinese AI startups that, like, don't give your technology to the Americans because we are in this heated race and especially ahead of this big meeting coming up next month. We need all the leverage we can get to talk about trade and talk about technology transfers and things like that. So really, this is a big message sent.

6:40Neal Freyman:The Supreme Court heard a case yesterday about tech companies getting all up in your business. The practice of geofencing was the topic of debate, a technique that lets law enforcement see where your phone has been, which can be used to determine who was near a crime scene. A lot of tech companies have settings that, when enabled, track your location every few minutes if you have an active cell phone. When Google rolled out the feature in 2019, around 500 million people voluntarily opted in. But as technology has evolved, the Fourth Amendment, which bans unreasonable searches of people and their property, has struggled to keep up.

7:14Neal Freyman:It's a central question of yesterday's case, which deals with a bank robbery in a tiny Virginia town. When the case went cold, police applied for a geofence warrant. Google complied, amassing three potential users, leading to the eventual confession and arrest of Okello Chattree. The defense is arguing that the warrant to search geofencing data was unconstitutional because it allowed law enforcement to cast too wide a net and search too many people's cell records. Meanwhile, the government is saying that, hey, Chattrity opted into location tracking and in doing so waived any right to privacy in the process.

7:48Neal Freyman:Neil, a very relevant question right now. Is the power tech companies possess to snoop on your cell phone constitutional or not? Yeah, so here's how a geofence works. Or actually, let's start with a traditional warrant. A traditional warrant is there's an identified suspect based on probable cause that they committed a crime and you can go search their things. Well, a geofence basically operates in reverse. You start with the area and not the suspect. You basically geofence. It's kind of what it seems like. You draw a virtual fence or a boundary around a geographic area, say this bank, and then you ask Google to give all of the device information that it has on everyone who is in that particular geographic area, say, during a given time, say, before or after the crime was committed.

8:32So you can imagine that while, yes, you can probably get the suspect, but at the same time you're getting tens of thousands millions of other information on people who have nothing to do in it with anything and that's what really raises privacy concerns yeah chattari's team is saying

8:45Neal Freyman:it's like trawling where you bring a giant net behind a fishing boat and you just catch everything behind you and that is unconstitutional because you're searching too many's data but the government's argument is like this isn't even a search under fourth amendment purposes because when you allow a tech company to collect your data, you are doing so voluntarily too. So U.S. Solicitor General told the Supreme Court that Chattrity took no steps to protect his location from disclosure, such as pausing the location history feature he had enabled or adjusting, deactivating, or foregoing his cell phone during the crime.

9:20Neal Freyman:Basically he's saying he could have left his cell phone at home if he didn't want to be targeted in this way. He could have not opted into this location tracking feature. He did none of those things. So he has foregone his right to privacy. So what is the tech company's position here? Because they are kind of central to this case. Well, Google has not taken a position one way or the other, offered this vague statement saying it advocates for robust Fourth Amendment protections for sensitive data like location history, and that it has objected to thousands of geofence warrants in the past that it thought were too broad or overboard.

9:52And in fact, it doesn't even keep your location data in its cloud anymore. So it doesn't even do this. Other tech companies do, but Google has now started storing its data on your device itself. So it says like, we don't even have anything to do with this anymore, but Snapchat, Lyft, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, every tech company collects your data these days. So it's remains very relevant.

10:13Neal Freyman:I think the big issue too, is that the fourth amendment is old. I mean, it was ratified in 1791 and technology has changed a lot in that time. What do you do with GPS trackers? What do you do with chats with artificial intelligence bots, with ring door cameras. These are new frontiers that the amendment was not necessarily built for, which is why we keep bounding up against the upper bounds of what a search is, what a warrant is, and it just changes in this area of rapid technological advancement. Right, very interesting to see the difference between physical records, like the papers you have in your house, which was probably very relevant in 1791, but is not as relevant today when all of our stuff is stored in tech.

10:53Moving on, that wasn't the only high-profile Supreme Court case kicking off yesterday. Arguments began on a pesticides trial that's causing a schism between the Make America Healthy Again movement and the Trump administration it once embraced. The case centers on glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the United States, and the active ingredient in Roundup, developed by Monsanto and now owned by German chemicals giant Bayer. Bayer has spent the last many years defending itself against hundreds of thousands of lawsuits over Roundup, which has been linked to cancer, and it's asking the Supreme Court to toss out most of that litigation.

11:25Enter the Maha Moms. These acolytes of RFK Jr. hate glyphosate for infiltrating the food system. They hate that the Trump administration is backing Bayer in this case, and they hate that Trump has promoted American production of glyphosate. They staged a protest outside of the Supreme Court building yesterday dubbed People vs. Poison, chanting slogans like Roundup the Guilty and Make Monsanto Pay. Protest organizer Vanny Hari said the Trump administration should know that siding with Bayer over American families is a losing position. People expect leadership that puts their health first, not policies that protect corporations from being held responsible.

11:58Bayer has maintained throughout its legal ordeal that Roundup does not cause cancer and says it's backed up by the U.S. EPA and European regulators who've said it's unlikely to be carcinogenic. Toby, the lesson here, do not get on the Maha Moms bad side.

12:12Neal Freyman:Yeah, they are a force to be reckoned with, and that is what they are counting on, that they can exert pressure on the Trump administration to kind of walk back some of its support of glyphosate. Crucially, though, this case that is before the Supreme Court is not about whether glyphosate causes cancer. is actually dealing with a federal law that was passed in 1972 and whether that supersedes the ability of individual states to set their own rules when it comes to product labeling. So Bayer's argument is like, hey, we need this federal law because if not, we're dealing with a patchwork environment that makes it very difficult to actually figure out how to label stuff from state to state.

12:50Neal Freyman:So that is what they are arguing, while the subtext is that glyphosate is a very hot-button issue that is becoming more relevant, especially as we enter midterm elections. Don't gatekeep the name of this act because it's a very interestingly named law. It's the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, or FIFRA. I didn't learn about that in Schoolhouse Rock, but it's a thing and that's central to this Supreme Court case. So pressure has been building around this issue for months. Last year, a big landmark paper saying that glyphosate did not cause cancer, was not carcinogenic, was retracted over alleged Monsanto's involvement in it.

13:28And then the other big thing that happened was that the Trump administration came out and actually wanted to promote glyphosate production in the United States, citing national security. Meanwhile, RFK Jr. is here trying to defend glyphosate, where he has been an environmental lawyer, helped someone win a$290 million case around glyphosate a couple of years ago. So he's stuck in the middle with the Maha people and the Trump administration. So, yeah, the Trump administration all in on glyphosate and its Maha base all in against it.

13:59Neal Freyman:Yeah, just doubling down on why the Trump administration would be for glyphosate at all. You mentioned national security because they're saying that we could destabilize the American food supply if you leave crops vulnerable to weeds, to vermin, to the things that glyphosate protects against. So they're taking a very, you know, rational approach to it versus the health approach. And you are right. RFK Jr. found himself caught in the middle trying to speak out of both sides of the mouth, defend, you know, his previous stances on glyphosate, but also align with the current administration talking points.

14:31Neal Freyman:It is a very interesting subtext heading into midterm elections. All right. We're going to take a quick break and come back with Toby's trends right after this. Neil, it feels like everyone's trying to get more protein these days. Yeah, I've seen protein popcorn, protein cookies, and even a protein martini recently. I think I'll stick to Flav City's All-in-One Protein Smoothies. They've got delicious flavors like mint chocolate, banana bread, brownie batter, and more that are as good as any dessert. No martini flavor yet. They're made with real whole food ingredients, 25 grams of protein, 10 grams of collagen, and functional mushrooms.

15:08Neal Freyman:Head to shopflavcity.com to get your protein fix. That's shopflavcity.com. Neil, I'm ready to make an announcement. Toby, we all know it's okay that you're afraid of horses. No, and I am not afraid. I just don't trust them. I'm announcing my personal endorsement for Spectrum Business. I've seen firsthand how they keep businesses of all sizes connected seamlessly with fast, reliable internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, and mobile services, all backed by 100 % US-based support. Spectrum Business offers tailored connectivity solutions with packages built for your business budget. In fact, millions of business owners rely on Spectrum Business to keep them connected.

15:47Neal Freyman:So whether your business is big or small, visit spectrum.com slash business to learn more. That's spectrum.com slash business. Restrictions apply. Service is not available in all areas. Neil, spring is here and I've totally refreshed my wardrobe. That's great. Have you thought about taking a fresh look at your finances as well? Will that make me more dapper? Can't hurt. Northwestern Mutual can match you with a financial professional who will work with you to build a plan based on what's important to you. That helps you grow your wealth and protect what you've worked so hard for. Make the most of your finances this season with the right financial partner by visiting nm.com.

16:26Neal Freyman:That's nm.com. The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company. Of all the stressful things that come along with planning a wedding, making sure the bride's wedding dress fits is top of the list. The make or break moment is becoming even more high stakes today thanks to the rise of GLP-1 drugs, a trend I want to talk about on today's edition of Toby's Trends. The Wall Street Journal's Jennifer Williams documented some of the chaos rapid weight loss is causing in the wedding industry. One bride ordered a dress with a waistline roughly three inches smaller than her current frame since she had been shedding pounds while on weight loss drugs.

17:05Neal Freyman:The boutique she ordered the dress from was happy to make the dress, but required her to sign a legal waiver acknowledging in writing that the gown didn't fit yet. The issue is, when you order a dress and when you wear a dress are two very different dates. The standard timeline is six months from first meeting to final fitting, and considering one in ten brides are now using GLP-1s, according to a Zola survey, it's difficult even for seasoned fitters to guess how a fit might change over time. As such, dress sellers have been getting creative. Natalie Harris, who owns Renegade Bridal in Houston, told the Wall Street Journal that she's been steering brides towards more forgiving silhouettes with adjustable lace-up backs instead of zippers.

17:44Neal Freyman:And as a whole, the industry has shifted toward keeping more dresses on hand to accommodate last-minute shoppers who need a dress in a pinch. Neil, I am stressed out just thinking about a dress not fitting correctly or signing a legal waiver to buy one in the first place. This is causing chaos. Let's look at David's Bridal, which is the U.S.'s largest wedding dress retailer. Typically, people come in five to six months to shop for their wedding dresses. Now it says brides are coming in like 45 days before their wedding. Rush orders, which have a turnaround within four weeks of a wedding, are up 50 percent in the last two years.

18:18It's paying overtime for its alteration specialists as 3 ,000 of them. So David's Bridal is just kind of symbolic of many of the – and then there's plenty of smaller businesses that probably this is even a bigger inventory challenge the way GLP-1s are just totally shaking up the way people shop for wedding dresses.

18:35Neal Freyman:And the issue is that you face with an unwinnable situation because either you don't take the dress back or you don't alter the dress and you risk running into negative reviews or you do refund the dress. And that means you lost out on a lot of money right there. So it's a cash-22 situation. I also just feel bad as a groom to be because altering a tuxedo is a lot easier to do. I mean, if push comes to shove, you can even have a rental come in with your size. It's not that hard to alter. But these dresses are up to$10 ,000 where every stitch matters and you can't just make it three inches smaller if necessary.

19:14Neal Freyman:I also, when I got fitted for a tuxedo for my upcoming wedding, they said the only measurement that you can't really change very easily is the measurement across your chest. So lay off the bench. And that's what I said. I was like, oh man, I was trying to actually beef that up a little bit. So very different struggles. It's much more difficult to alter a wedding dress than a tuxedo. And I kind of have an adjacent trend to tack on, which is the booming demand for tailoring. And tailoring, you know, you can be with a dress and your tuxedo is, you know, those are far more in demand now because of GLP-1s, but also the rise of resale.

19:48Nordstrom has this new program with New York's Fashion Institute of Technology. There's 15 spots for a sort of an apprenticeship for alterations in tailoring. Well, they had 190 applications. So tailoring is booming from GLP-1s and from resale and a host of other factors because a lot of tailors are retiring right now. They're boomers and there's not really a new class of younger tailors. So this is a big occupation in demand right now. And if you know your way around a needle, it could be something interesting to look into.

20:19Neal Freyman:It's also seen as a very anti-AI job at this point. Like you're always going to need someone who can hem some pants, who can, you know, adjust the waistline here and there. So if you're looking for a job that won't be replaced anytime soon, maybe look at tailoring. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. The King and Queen are coming to town. King Charles and Queen Camilla landed in Washington yesterday afternoon for a four-day state visit to try and smooth over a relationship damaged by tensions in the Middle East. The timing is, in a word, delicate. It's week eight of Trump's war with Iran, a war Britain has refused to join, prompting Trump to spend months calling PM Keir Starmer a coward and trash-talking the Royal Navy.