Primaries to Test Whether GOP Has Room for Politicians Who Cross Trump

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0:33Oil prices are slipping as President Trump says serious peace talks to end the war with Iran are taking place. Plus, the public rebellion against AI gathers steam. And it's Massey versus Trump in Kentucky amidst a host of primaries across the country today. This is a showdown. This is very personal for President Trump. He really dislikes Thomas Massey. This is a district in the corner of Kentucky that doesn't get a lot of attention, if not for a really loud contrarian congressman. And so we're going to know a lot more about both President Trump's power and the Republican Party where it stands after results come in.

1:06It's Tuesday, May 19th. I'm Daniel Bach for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. Oil prices are sliding today on the prospect of a potential peace deal between Iran and the U.S. That's after President Trump said he would hold off on a planned U.S. attack on Iran at the request of Gulf leaders, with serious talks with Tehran to end the war now taking place. In a social media post, Trump added that he asked military officials to stop strikes that were set for today. But he said a full-scale attack could go ahead on a moment's notice if an acceptable deal isn't reached.

1:48Police in San Diego say they are investigating the murders of three men at a mosque yesterday as a hate crime. The 17 - and 18-year-old suspects were found in a vehicle after killing themselves a few blocks from the site of the shootings. San Diego police say they had been rushing to find the two teenagers in the hours before the attack at the Islamic Center of San Diego, after the mother of one of the suspects told police she believed her son was suicidal and that was missing, along with her vehicle and several of her weapons. In New York, unions representing Long Island railroad workers have reached a deal with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, ending the three-day strike that brought the country's busiest commuter railroad to a halt.

2:27Kevin Sexton is a spokesman for a coalition representing the unions. We're pleased to announce that the parties have reached an agreement. Due to the nature of the negotiations, we cannot discuss the specifics. What I can say is we are looking forward to our members getting back to work and doing what they do best, which is serving the region. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said phased train service will resume today at noon, calling the agreement between the MTA and five unions a fair deal. Neither side announced details, but Hochul says the deals include raises for workers while protecting riders and taxpayers.

3:02The MTA is advising people to work from home again today if possible, while train service is being fully restored.

3:12We're exclusively reporting that Google and investment firm Blackstone are planning to launch an AI cloud company using Google's specialized chips. Blackstone will be the majority owner of the unnamed company and is providing$5 billion in equity capital. The company will mark Google's biggest attempt yet to take on rival NVIDIA by selling its own chips. Google and Blackstone said the aim is to bring 500 megawatts of capacity online next year, roughly the same amount of electricity needed to power a mid-sized city. Meanwhile, public anxiety over artificial intelligence is growing at an unprecedented speed, as former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt learned at the University of Arizona, where he was met by a chorus of boos while giving a commencement address.

3:54There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics is fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create. While industry executives claim the technology will improve lives, recent polling shows that consumers are increasingly pushing back over rising energy prices, job fears, and risks to children. Opposition to new data centers has also exploded onto ballots across the country. Case in point for voters in Festus, Missouri, who recently ousted four city council members over an approved$6 billion project.

4:37And a handful of big-box retailer earnings this week will be an important gauge into consumer spending and the K-shaped economy. Speaking to WSJ's Take on the Week podcast, Adam Josephson from consumer insights firm Sakonit Research said there is a massive disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street, as recent rallies in the stock market mask a deeper consumer weakness. Data center spending and AI spending broadly is accounting for a disproportionate share of GDP growth. Consumer spending, by contrast, is growing at an increasingly slowing rate. Over the past three quarters, it's gone from growing at 3.5 % to most recently just 1.6%.

5:15So you can see it in the GDP data. You can see it in what all the retailers, consumer staples companies, restaurant chains, hotel chains, apartment rates. You can see it in what all of them are reporting. and what the CEOs of these companies are saying, whether it's McDonald's, Kraft Heinz, Shake Shack, up and down the list, CEOs of consumer companies saying, yeah, the bottom 90 % has a problem. Josephson said that weak consumer sentiment can be put down to a lack of growth in people's wages. So if you look at the BLS's real average weekly earnings data that comes out every month, you'd see that there has been basically no growth in real average weekly earnings from February 2020 to now, in six years, there has been no growth in inflation-adjusted incomes, zero.

6:02And over the past 10 years, the growth has been roughly 5%. Over a decade, that's not much. Home Depot will report earnings before the market opened today, Lowe's and Target tomorrow, and Walmart on Thursday. And on the AI boom, NVIDIA will report earnings on Wednesday. Investors are also expecting SpaceX to file a prospectus for an initial public offering sometime this week in what could be one of the largest ever IPOs. Coming up, voters in a number of states will cast ballots in primaries today that will test whether there's a pathway for Republicans who cross President Trump. That story after the break.

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7:00Voters in Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon, and Pennsylvania will cast ballots in primaries today. And in a handful of votes, the outcomes could signal whether Republicans are willing to adopt a form of mega-politics that embraces leaders who break with the president. And for Trump, the focus may be on Kentucky, where seven-term Congressman Thomas Massey is facing a primary. He's been in Trump's crosshairs for opposing the war in Iran and for trying to get colleagues to vote for the release of the Epstein files. The crucial vote comes after several Indiana state senators who opposed Trump's redistricting plan lost in their primaries, while Trump critic Bill Cassidy lost his Senate re-election bid in a Louisiana GOP primary over the weekend.

7:43Damian Paletta is the Journal's Washington coverage chief. Damian, given those recent results, how important is tonight's primary in Kentucky? Hugely important. This is a big test for President Trump and for President Trump's critics within the Republican Party. The question is, is Thomas Massey going to be the firewall? Is he going to be the one who can stop President Trump as he tries to have this purity test to clean out the Republican Party? or is he just going to be another domino that's knocked over as President Trump really tries to flex his muscle here? And we're going to find the results out soon.

8:15This is a showdown. This is very personal for President Trump. He really dislikes Thomas Massey. This is a district in the corner of Kentucky that doesn't get a lot of attention, if not for a really loud contrarian congressman. And so we're going to know a lot more about both President Trump's power and the Republican Party where it stands after results come in. We've got a handful of other primaries today, as I mentioned off the top. How important have these races become with the president and his deep-pocketed allies targeting these GOP politicians that have enraged him? Well, incredibly important, in part because President Trump is effectively a lame duck.

8:49This is his second term in office. He said he's not going to run again. Normally, presidents like this are becoming weaker and have less political influence as the party in the country looks to who's going to be next. But President Trump is trying to prove that he still has a tight grip on the future of the party. And we've seen that in the past few weeks with Indiana and with the results in Louisiana. And the question is, is Thomas Massey just going to be another one who President Trump can pick off? Or does Thomas Massey show that there is a way to stand up to the president and politically survive to tell about it?

9:19And so I think this will be a test to see whether he still has the power that he seems to think he has, or whether it's starting to slip. He's had a couple international trips now that haven't gone really well in terms of the results that he was able to bring back. He's really obviously preoccupied with the White House ballroom and some other things that don't share the domestic concerns of a lot of Americans. So if President Trump stays in that direction and voters turning on him, like some polls might suggest, it might show a Republican party that's getting antsy about their own future in November and beyond.

9:52And if Thomas Massey is successful, what does that mean for the party and for the president? Well, it's really important for the White House, this race in particular, because there's such a slim Republican majority in the House. And if you have Thomas Massey, who's opposing you on some key things, he might as well, in their eyes, be a Democrat because they're not going to be able to get him on board with things like the tax bill, some things that might grow the deficit, even some foreign policy stuff. So they feel like this seat, even though it's just one out of 435, it's very important for them to be able to govern.

10:23And so, yes, they take this one really seriously. Obviously, President Trump takes it very personally that Massey was in the middle of a lot of the Epstein fighting on the Hill and was opposed to the White House on that too. He's weeding out a lot of the members who broke with him on key difficult votes, like things like impeachment, even tax policy, and creating a party that's much more aligned with his vision of the conservative movement. And so if he's able to continue doing that, even if he's no longer president or his final days as president, he's really going to have a lasting impact on the Republican Party.

10:51Damian Paletta in Washington. Damian, thanks for this. My pleasure. Thank you. And that's it for What's News for this Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer. Our supervising producer is Sondra Kilhoff. And I'm Daniel Bach for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.

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