--:-- Caitlin McCabe: TrueStage helps make annuities simple. Our flexible products and personalized support help you build stronger relationships and grow your business with confidence. Discover how at TrueStage.com slash grow. TrueStage is the marketing name for TrueStage Financial Grouping, get subsidiaries and affiliates. Corporate Headquarters is located in Madison, Wisconsin.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: President Trump targets higher ed again, asking colleges to sign a sweeping agreement to get funding advantages. Plus, the U.S. will for the first time provide Ukraine with intelligence for missile strikes deep inside Russia. President Trump seems to have shifted from the strategy of carrot to the strategy of stick. And that's obviously going to be very important for Europe because they need American cover for whatever they decide to do with regards to Russia. And why tech bosses say they can't find the right workers despite a sea of tech talent. It's Thursday, October 2nd. I'm Caitlin McCabe for The Wall Street Journal. and here's the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: We start today with exclusive news out of the White House, where the Trump administration is zeroing in on colleges once again. Yesterday, the administration sent letters to nine universities, including Vanderbilt, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania, asking them to sign a compact that, among other things, would ban the use of race or sex in admissions, freeze tuition costs for five years, and cap the number of international students. In exchange for signing, universities will be granted preferential federal funding and, quote, multiple positive benefits.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: It's the latest move by Trump to crack down on what he considers anti-Semitism and progressive ideas within American colleges. Just this week, his administration tangled again with Harvard University, only to say a day later that it was nearing a deal with the school. The new compact asks colleges to bar employees from expressing political views on behalf of their employer and to make governance changes or abolish departments that punish or belittle conservative ideas.
--:-- [Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, speaks]
--:-- Ted Mitchell: I found the compact troubling and called the implications for free speech horrifying.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Meanwhile, the U.S. government is a little more than 24 hours into its shutdown, and the Trump administration is ramping up pressure on Democrats and their priorities and projects. Russell Vogt, Trump's budget chief, is using the shutdown as an opportunity to implement funding cuts he has long advocated for. Yesterday, he announced on social media that a hold had been put on $18 billion in federal funds for New York City infrastructure projects, citing concerns about diversity, equity and inclusion.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: That includes funds for a Hudson River tunnel project and subway extension. Democrats, including New York Governor Kathy Hochul, were quick to call the decision politically motivated. I want to be very clear. This shutdown is a choice, a deliberate decision by Donald Trump and the Republicans to abandon the very people they were sent to Washington to represent.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Votes move especially affects Democratic congressional leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer both of whom represent New York They held firm in saying they won support any government funding bill that doesn include restoring billions of dollars in health care spending In another move, Vogt posted that $8 billion in energy department funds for climate projects would be canceled in more than a dozen Democratic-leading states.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: We are exclusively reporting that the U.S. will provide Ukraine with intelligence for long-range missile strikes on Russia's energy infrastructure. Boyan Penchevsky is our chief European political correspondent and says it's a first for the Trump administration.
--:-- [Boyan Penchevsky speaks]
--:-- Boyan Penchevsky: For the first time, the president has directed the special services as well as the military to help and support Ukraine in the so-called deep strikes inside Russia. The goal is to hit energy infrastructure, which is technically a civilian target, but in reality, it helps the war effort. So the idea is to damage the Russian economy, to put economic pressure on Vladimir Putin, and to cut off the supply of oil, which is extremely relevant for running the kind of invasion, the war machine.
--:-- Boyan Penchevsky: The U.S. change in strategy comes as efforts to advance peace talks with Russia have stalled. It would appear that the president has now soured a little bit on his Russian counterpart. And now he's basically told his security apparatus to boost the help for Ukraine. And American officials are trying to select which missiles to send to Ukraine.
--:-- Boyan Penchevsky: We've been told that they are looking into a missile that will have a range over 500 miles. That's really a lot. And so it's a significant change and it will boost the morale and certainly the firepower of the Ukrainian defenders. And I say it signals a larger shift in how NATO members are approaching Russia as Moscow continues to test the bloc's defense capabilities.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Incidents along the NATO eastern flank are multiplying by the day. We've got drone intrusions. We've got airplanes and jet fighters flying into NATO airspace. There's also the issue with the so-called shadow fleet of Russia, ancient tankers that are flying under a so-called flag of convenience, essentially from turret countries in Africa, South America or wherever else. But they are carrying Russian oil to circumvent all the sanctions. And so we've seen an incident like that off the coast of France now where a tanker like that seems to be accused of having hosted drones that were buzzing the airport of Copenhagen in Denmark.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: We'll see what comes out of it. But there's definitely a sense that Europe and America are increasing the pressure on Russian assets as Russia seems to be increasing the pressure on the borders of NATO and definitely on Ukraine. Looking to the Middle East now, Israeli forces have cut off a flotilla of around 40 boats carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists trying to sail to the Gaza Strip. Among them were Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, Nelson Mandela's grandson, as well as European lawmakers.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Their aim was to deliver aid to the war enclave and break an Israeli naval blockade that has been in place since 2009 There were no initial reports of injuries However activists reported communication disruptions and harassment before the interception by Israeli forces. Israel says the flotilla's clear intention is to breach what it says is a lawful blockade.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Coming up, a high-flying crypto strategy shows signs of cooling off. Plus, there's a sea of tech talent out there, but companies still say they can't find the right workers despite a sea of tech talent. Those stories after the break.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: With leading networking and connectivity, advanced cybersecurity and expert partnership, Comcast Business helps turn today's enterprises into engines of modern business. Powering the engine of modern business. Powering possibilities. Restrictions apply.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Cryptocurrency prices have soared to new heights this year and so have a range of ideas to capitalize on the boom. One of the biggest trends, a so-called crypto treasury strategy, which is basically just a fancy name for what happens when companies use corporate cash to load up on Bitcoin and other tokens. More than 200 companies have rushed into stockpiling digital currencies this year. But now, markets reporter Vicky Guh-Huang says the trend is showing signs of cooling.
--:-- [Vicky Guh-Huang speaks]
--:-- Vicky Guh-Huang: The cool down came about because there's so many companies doing this. It's just sort of overwhelmed the market because when they decide to switch gears to becoming a so-called crypto treasury company, One of the first steps that they need to take is to raise cash from investors to fund their crypto acquisitions. By raising cash, they have to do something called a private stock offering. These companies often issue a lot of shares to institutional investors or wealthy investors at a discount so that they can raise the money in a really fast and efficient way and use them to immediately go buy crypto.
--:-- Vicky Guh-Huang: Because there have been so many shares issued to institutional investors. It caused an oversupply of shares in the market. And at the same time, a lot of these institutional investors have the option to sell their shares. So that also creates a kind of selling pressure on these stocks.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And so, Vicky, where are we seeing this slowdown showing up? Is it in the share prices of these companies? A lot of the stocks have really enjoyed sort of just stunning stock surges when they announced their adoption of a crypto treasury strategy. A lot of the stock prices of these companies have really plunged as much as 90%. And another way this slowdown has manifested is when the market cap of your company trades at a discount to the tokens that you hold. It kind of shows that investors are losing confidence.
--:-- Vicky Guh-Huang: And what's happening now is that a lot of these companies, about 25 percent of them, are trading at a discount of the total values of the Bitcoins they hold. So that kind of illustrates how maybe there's not enough room for all of them to do well.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And so Vicky one thing that seems like it not an issue here is the price of Bitcoin and other tokens themselves right Bitcoin has done pretty well this quarter What happens for these companies if that changes Yeah, so Bitcoin has risen about 6% this quarter. However, when Bitcoin starts to fall sharply, which it has done many times before, it could really weigh on these Bitcoin treasury companies.
--:-- Vicky Guh-Huang: And it's the same case with other cryptocurrencies and other crypto treasury companies that buy these cryptocurrencies. If the price goes down sharply, it could really weigh on the stock performance of these crypto treasury stocks. That could mean that the companies themselves will potentially have to sell some of their holdings just to cover operational costs or make payroll just to sort of survive in a downturn. And that could potentially even impact the prices of the tokens.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Vicky, this is all super interesting. Really appreciate you joining us today. Thank you for having me.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And finally, there has rarely been more tech talent available in the job market. And yet, many companies say good help is hard to find. U.S. colleges more than doubled the number of computer science degrees awarded from 2013 to 2022. And then came layoffs from the likes of Meta, Google, and Amazon. But despite such a huge supply of capable and eager computer programmers looking for work, Callum Borcher says that companies' feverish pursuit of AI supremacy is meaning roles are being left unfulfilled.
--:-- [Callum Borcher speaks]
--:-- Callum Borcher: A lot of businesses, they often hold out for a dream candidate who has a deep background in machine learning. We're talking about people with uncanny intuition, genius-level smarts. And so businesses are paying through the nose, sometimes multi-million dollar pay packages for folks like that, whereas folks who have more general tech skills are viewed as a dime a dozen.
--:-- Callum Borcher: The trouble for a lot of tech workers is that unless they have a lot of experience in artificial intelligence, they're often seen as commodities. And so you have this dynamic where because companies can automate a lot of low-level tasks and even replace some entry-level engineering roles, it frees up more money that they can throw at the really high-end talent.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And so what we have now is a few handsomely paid haves and a whole lot of have-nots in the tech job market.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And that's it for What's News for this Thursday morning. Today's show is produced by Kate Bollivant and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Caitlin McCabe for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening. For the sharpest analysis on finance, business, and the economy, count on exchanges between leading minds at Goldman Sachs. New episodes every week. Listen now.
