Happy Monday !

Joan “Who Else?” Benson won last week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ with this beauty about JP Morgan keeping track of its bankers’ working hours:

Congratulations, Joan! Here’s your celebratory gif:

And here’s how Joan’s entry stacked up against the competition:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 We are not spying on you! Your wellbeing is our goal. Big Brother will help. ~Joan Benson (144)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ “The Man” counts your “clicks”, To ensure work-life balance. Now pack up your things. ~Thomas Slawik (92)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ I wrote this haiku, while being paid to do work. (No AI was used.) ~Thomas Davidson (66)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ What the hell, Wall Street! To not work yourself to death, you must be spied on?~Margaret Lea (57)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ First step is keystrokes, Next step will be brain implants. We're always watching. ~Sam Sigelakis-Minski (103)
462 Votes via @beehiiv polls

This week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ is about how the oil market chaos might accelerate the shift to electric cars. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

And now for some news you really N2K!

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

• Judge overturns Pentagon's "arbitrary and capricio …

• Oil market chaos might accelerate the shift to ele …

• The new Disney CEO’s horrible first week

• Investors lose patience with the Iran war

• Powerful house Republican joins retirement wave

What’s the stock market up to, eh?*

$SPX ( ▼ 1.67% ) $DJI ( ▼ 1.73% ) $NDX ( ▼ 2.15% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$ANTHROPIC ( 0.0% )  $DIS ( ▼ 2.46% )  $LI ( ▼ 0.68% )  $BYD ( ▼ 3.35% )  $NIO ( ▼ 4.5% )  $CALB ( ▲ 0.89% )  $EVEP ( 0.0% )  $SINX ( ▼ 0.48% )  $GELYY ( ▲ 2.31% )  $STLA ( ▼ 0.59% )  $TM ( ▼ 1.52% )  $RNLSY ( ▼ 0.77% )  $VLKAY ( ▼ 0.99% )  $NSANY ( ▼ 2.34% )  $F ( ▼ 1.98% )  $HMC ( ▼ 0.98% )  $GM ( ▼ 3.47% )  $HYMTF ( ▼ 7.44% )  $BMWYY ( 0.0% )  

Judge overturns Pentagon's "arbitrary and capricious" treatment of Anthropic

In what must be the least surprising legal finding of the decade, a federal judge has ruled that the Pentagon's treatment of AI company Anthropic was "likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious."

Judge Rita Lin of the Northern District of California blocked the administration's attempt to designate Anthropic — an American company — as a "supply-chain risk," a label previously reserved for actual foreign adversaries.

"Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government," Lin wrote.

Defense Under Secretary Emil Michael called the decision "a disgrace," posting on X about the ruling's "dozens of factual errors."

The administration has seven days to appeal, which it’s likely to. Anthropic, meanwhile, remains grateful the courts "moved swiftly." 

Song of the Day: Joshua Burnside, ‘It’s Not Going to Be Okay’

"It's Not Going to Be Okay" is a raw, stripped-back meditation on grief, specifically written in response to the death of Mr. Burnside’s close friend and fellow musician, Dean Jendoubi. He’s certainly turned lemons into lemonade with this song, though…

Oil market chaos might accelerate the shift to electric cars

There's a certain poetic irony unfolding in the global car market right now. President Donald Trump has spent considerable energy — executive orders, eliminated tax credits, pro-fossil fuel rhetoric — trying to resuscitate America's love affair with the combustion engine. For a moment, it seemed to be working. U.S. EV sales dropped to just 5.8% last month, down from 7.7% a year ago.

Then came the Middle East war and its accompanying oil price surge.

As Simon Mundy at the Financial Times astutely observes, the very conflict the administration helped ignite may now accelerate the global transition to electric vehicles. Auto dealers and online platforms are already reporting "signs of spiking consumer interest in EVs as fuel prices surge,” he writes.

Meanwhile, the electric revolution marches on. EU electric car sales hit 17.4% last year, China's sales at 28%. At current growth rates, combustion engines could virtually disappear from new car sales in major markets within a decade.

The real winners? Chinese EV and battery makers, whose share prices have surged since the war began while traditional automakers hemorrhage value. The average upside for Chinese EV and battery makers: +15.63%. The average downside for fossil-fuel carmakers: -10.36% (see the chart above).

It’s like rai-ee-aiiiiiiin on your wedd-ing day. It’s a free riiiiiiiiide, when you’ve already paid. 🎶

The new Disney CEO’s horrible first week

If you ever feel like you're having a bad week at work, spare a thought for Josh D'Amaro, Disney's brand-new CEO.

Day One: Wednesday. The corner office probably still smelled like fresh paint.

Day Two: A video surfaces of your Bachelorette star hurling metal chairs at her partner. There goes $60 million and an entire season. Welcome to showbiz, Josh!

Day Six: OpenAI casually announces it's killing Sora and that landmark $1-billion AI deal everyone celebrated three months ago. "We know this news is disappointing," the company posted on X, with all the warmth of a parking ticket.

Same day: Epic Games axes 1,000 employees because Fortnite, the platform Disney bet $1.5 billion on for its interactive character universe, is losing its magic.

A former Disney executive offered this cheerful assessment: "They were just chasing trends. I don't think anyone in that company has a clear understanding of how to use Disney's strengths in an AI world."

The Sora deal? No money even changed hands. Some Hollywood insiders compared it to "negotiating with terrorists."

As analyst Rich Greenfield told the Financial Times, AI threatens Disney's entire value proposition: "As content creation becomes cheaper, faster, and more abundant, scarcity of IP gives way to a flood."

Here’s the share price since Josh took over:

So, Josh, are you ready for week two?

Quote of the Day

Investors lose patience with the Iran war

Four weeks into an actual shooting war in Iran, and Wall Street has finally started to suspect this might not blow over by earnings season. For most of the conflict, investors maintained their trademark optimism, the same sunny disposition that treats every global catastrophe as a buying opportunity. Sure, a major oil chokepoint is blocked, but have you considered the fundamentals?

But something's…shifted. The S&P 500 is heading for its worst weekly losing streak in four years. The Nasdaq has tumbled into correction territory. Oil is at $110 a barrel. Mortgage rates are spiking. Treasury yields are making moves not seen since 2022.

And yet — and yet — the market is only 6% off its January highs because this is still, in the words of one investment manager, "a FOMO market." Can't let a little regional conflagration make you miss the recovery!

Trading desks are calling it "death by a thousand cuts." Markets whip around 1.3% daily on every headline, only to end up basically flat.

Iran turned back three container ships? Sell! Trump extended a deadline? Buy!

Repeat forever.

As one analyst told the New York Times: "It's very difficult to predict where markets will—"

Ah, enough already. I made a delicious cheesecake this weekend. Wanna hear about it?

Free yourself from advertising forever!

Powerful house Republican joins retirement wave

Sam Graves, 13-term congressman from Missouri, has decided that now is the perfect time to pursue his dream of becoming a lobbyist. The 62-year-old Transportation Committee chairman insists his departure has absolutely nothing to do with the "rough and tumble state of Congress" or any electoral concerns. He just happened to wake up this week — 18 months before the midterms — and realize he'd rather "help business steer its way through the legislative process."

K Street also pays a lot better than getting elected, and you don't have to knock on quite so many doors. Graves joins more than 50 House members heading for the exits, officially setting a record for midterm retirements.

Graves won his district with 70% last cycle. So why leave? Republicans will tell you it's about term limits on committee chairs, or "new chapters," or the siren call of private-sector compensation.

However, President Trump suffered a stinging political setback last week as Democrat Emily Gregory captured the Florida State House seat that includes his Mar-a-Lago resort, in a 21% swing from 2024. If the rest of the country flips by a similar margin in November, Republicans could face the worst mid-term results in a century, pollsters say.

Should you check your 401(k) today?

👎️ 

NO FREAKING WAY.

Poll of the day: Consider switching to electric?

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P.S. So, you remember the cheese puns that used to open this newsletter? Suffice to say, they were divisive. Now, thanks to a thing called “dynamic content options,” I can offer you the option to see cheese puns again, if you’re one of the thousands who got in touch bemoaning their departure six months ago. All you need to do is answer “true” on this survey, and submit it. If you never want to see cheese puns in this newsletter again, don’t click that link, don’t fill out the survey, don’t submit it. Just keep reading and pretend this conversation never happened. Mmmkay? Thank you.