Andrew here. Over the last three decades, I’ve interviewed dozens of commissioners from major U.S. agencies, including the F.T.C., the F.C.C. and the S.E.C. Historically, these bodies promoted robust internal debates, anchored by independent commissioners who served as vital checks and balances. That era effectively ended on Monday.
The Supreme Court has declared that executive power gives the president the authority to reshape these agencies at will. Many are framing this as a short-term political win for President Trump, viewing it through a narrow, partisan lens. That misses the bigger picture: This will persist long after his administration.
The real casualty here is economic growth. Without internal pushback or regulatory continuity between administrations, businesses face an era of unpredictable policy whiplash — making long-term strategic planning much more complicated.
What the presidency won
Many defenders of the Fed breathed a sigh of relief when the Supreme Court rejected President Trump’s bid to immediately fire Lisa Cook as a governor of the central bank.
But in a related ruling, the high court expanded presidential control over nominally independent federal agencies. And Cook may enjoy only a short respite from Trump’s legal attacks.
The Supreme Court did affirm the Fed’s political independence. From the 5-4 majority decision:
What matters is that the Federal Reserve remains consistent with the principles that underpin the First and Second Banks — namely, that monetary policy should not be subject to political interference.
The majority said that Trump’s efforts to fire Cook — which he based on unsubstantiated allegations of mortgage fraud that haven’t led to legal charges — denied her any ability to formally challenge the accusations.
On the surface, that’s good news for Kevin Warsh, the new Fed chair. In his first news conference as the institution’s leader, Warsh sounded hawkish on rates, despite being nominated by a president who has explicitly called for lowering them.
More secure political independence for the Fed would mean that Warsh has a freer hand in rates policy.
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The odds of Fed policymakers’ raising rates at their meeting in September are at about 63 percent, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch.
But Trump can still go after Cook, The Times notes:
The justices did not clearly articulate the full legal criteria that would allow Mr. Trump to fire Ms. Cook, who denies any wrongdoing and has never been charged with a crime. Nor did they wager an opinion on the exact allegations against her. And the court majority did not even prescribe the exact venue in which Ms. Cook should be allowed to respond to the allegations.
“It’s an invitation for more meddling,” Peter Conti-Brown, an expert on Fed governance, told The Times. He added, “This saga is not over.”
That raises the question of how much cover Warsh really has. Indeed, Trump, in a social media post on Monday, called the decision “strictly procedural” and warned that “we will take appropriate action immediately.”
Presidential power over federal agencies grew significantly on Monday. Legal experts pointed to the Supreme Court’s affirming of the president’s ability to fire independent government regulators — despite laws and a previous high court decision that protected those officials.
While the case specifically addressed the dismissal of Rebecca Kelly Slaughter as a commissioner at the F.T.C., the ruling was widely interpreted as giving carte blanche to the president to oust officials at more than two dozen agencies that have long operated with political insulation.
For companies, navigating federal regulators will probably get more unpredictable. Political independence was meant to give regulatory agencies more stability across administrations.
The emerging system, experts say, means that those overseers will be more closely aligned to a president’s agenda.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
The billionaire Warren Buffett is said to pause his donations to the Gates Foundation. He will skip his regular midyear donation while the foundation’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein are reviewed by the law firm WilmerHale, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous sources. (The inquiry is expected to finish this summer.) Bill Gates has faced harsh criticism for his long relationship with the sex offender since the release of the Epstein files in January.
A Chinese businessman linked to Steve Bannon is sentenced for fraud. Guo Wengui, who became an anti-Communist crusader after fleeing to the U.S., was sentenced to 30 years in prison for defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars that he used to buy a Bugatti supercar, a Connecticut mansion and more. Elsewhere, Carl Rinsch, a Hollywood director who was convicted of defrauding Netflix of $11 million, was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
Strategy, the big Bitcoin investment vehicle, makes a U-turn on crypto. The onetime software company — whose leader, Michael Saylor, once advised, “Never sell your Bitcoin” — said that it would raise $1.25 billion by selling Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency has lost half its value since October, putting pressure on the company after it sold stock, convertible bonds and preferred shares to buy Bitcoin. Its shares are down 80 percent from their peak in November 2024.
An Anthropic-backed super PAC makes a huge cash haul. Public First Action said on Tuesday that it has raised $80 million to date, including $20 million over the last 10 days. That’s despite the organization’s taking a black eye from the defeat of Alex Bores, a Democratic congressional candidate who helped pass artificial-intelligence safety regulations in New York, in the state’s primaries last week.
A big half-year for deals
For deal-making, 2026 is proving to be a banner year — and it’s only halfway through.
There were obvious blockbusters, notably SpaceX’s record-shattering mega-I.P.O. and NextEra Energy’s announced $119.7 billion takeover of Dominion Energy.
The boom is a sign that, despite geopolitical upheaval this year, Wall Street has been able to land big transactions. Here’s what to know about the flurry of deals that have defined 2026.
Mergers
The value of deals announced worldwide so far this year hit $2.77 trillion as of June 29, according to LSEG, up 48 percent year-on-year and the highest amount of M.&A. during the first half of a year since 2002.
That’s thanks to a surge in giant transactions: Forty-seven deals, collectively worth about $1.3 trillion, were valued at $10 billion or more, up an astounding 62 percent year-on-year. (The actual number of deals, however, was 23,975, down 9 percent year-on-year and a third consecutive drop.)
Contributing to the mega-M.&A. numbers:
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Deal makers say that ebullient stock markets have fortified companies’ war chests, while their underlying businesses are performing strongly.
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Regulators’ greater acceptance of M.&A. has also encouraged boardrooms to make riskier bets, like NextEra’s bid for Dominion. “Many corporates perceive they have a window in which to attempt to affect something transformational,” Matt McClure, a global co-head of investment banking at Goldman Sachs, told DealBook.
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Investors are still pushing companies to focus on corporate clarity, as shown by Comcast’s announced breakup. “Boards are thinking as hard about what they shouldn’t own as what they should, with investors increasingly rewarding businesses that have a more focused strategic story,” Charlie Bouckaert, the global head of M.&A. at JPMorgan Chase, told DealBook.
I.P.O.s
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About $169 billion worth of initial offerings have been carried out worldwide so far this year, up an eye-popping 246 percent year-on-year, and the second-best first-half performance since 2021.
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As with M.&A., the actual number of I.P.O.s fell year-on-year to 514 offerings, down for a fourth year in a row.
This year may have more gigantic I.P.O.s in store, including the possible market debut of Anthropic. (The Times reported that OpenAI now appears likely to stage its I.P.O. next year rather than in 2026 — the prospect of which was enough to dent the stocks of its planned lead underwriters, Goldman and Morgan Stanley.)
A.I. could actually be creating more jobs
What if artificial intelligence leads to more, not fewer, jobs for human employees? A paper released on Tuesday by Ramp, a financial start-up, and Revelio Labs, a work force data firm, provides evidence that the technology may be doing so, at least for white-collar positions.
The study found a 10 percent increase in head count growth over a two-year period among the top third of A.I. spenders in the survey, Niko Gallogly reports.
Entry-level jobs had the biggest gains. The findings run counter to the idea, popularized by some A.I. executives, that the technology could lead to a jobs-pocalypse. Entry-level positions grew by 12 percent among high A.I.-adopting firms.
Why? Demand for young talent is “intuitive,” Ara Kharazian, Ramp’s lead economist and an author of the paper, told DealBook. Companies are looking to leverage the unique skill set of recent grads who are part of the first A.I.-native generation, he said.
More crucial findings from the study, which compared trends in spending and hiring data from 22,000 Ramp customers:
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Firms that spent only moderately on A.I. did not see head count growth. That may be because the more expensive A.I. systems, like coding agents, drive bigger productivity gains that lead to more hiring, the authors hypothesized.
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Hiring growth took place across job categories. Sales positions saw the biggest gains, followed by administrative and engineering roles.
While the paper found that A.I. spending correlated with an increase in head count, it did not prove that A.I. was the cause of that growth. Other factors, like a surge in demand for a company’s product, could also lead to an uptick in hiring.
Contradictory conclusions: The paper’s findings run counter to a prominent labor study by the Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson. Using data from the payroll software provider ADP, Brynjolfsson found a 16 percent drop in employment for workers aged 22 to 25 in A.I.-exposed sectors since the release of ChatGPT.
Ramp’s results are also not in sync with research by the Yale Budget Lab. “We don’t yet see any clear evidence from our analysis that A.I. is disrupting the labor market,” Ryan Nunn, the lab’s director of research, told DealBook.
So far, studies tallying the economic effect of A.I. on the labor market range from “positive to negative to everything in between,” Nunn said.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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Rocket Lab agreed to buy Iridium Communications, in a deal that values the satellite communications company at $8 billion, as it seeks to compete with Amazon and Elon Musk’s Starlink. (Bloomberg)
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“Elliott’s Acolytes: How Paul Singer’s Hedge Fund Became a Spinout Factory” (FT)
Politics, policy and regulation
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Pro-Trump conservative groups are reportedly preparing to push the F.C.C. and its chair, Brendan Carr, to revoke Disney’s broadcast TV licenses. (Politico)
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A federal judge permanently blocked the Trump administration from withholding funds from a $16 billion rail tunnel project to connect New York and New Jersey. (WSJ)
Best of the rest
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