Aiming to keep the cost of your Sunday evening grocery trip from increasing, the FTC announced yesterday that it’s suing to block the $25 billion Kroger–Albertsons merger.

The FTC alleges that the merger—which would combine the second and fourth largest grocery store chains in the US—would lead to higher food prices for customers at a time when Americans are already spending more of their money on food than they have in the last thirty years. The proposed mega grocery chain would own 5,000+ stores across the country, including popular stores like Fred Meyer, Ralphs, and Safeway, and would control 15%–20% of the market—still short of Walmart’s 5,200 stores and more than 25% market share.

What do Albertsons and Kroger say? Both companies claim customers would actually see lower prices if they teamed up.

And while the FTC claims the merger would result in lower wages and worse conditions for workers, Kroger and Albertsons note that they are mostly unionized, and argue that together they’ll be better able to compete with largely nonunionized big shots like Amazon, Costco, and Walmart. (But the unions representing their workers oppose the deal.)

They saw the FTC coming: Under the Biden Administration, the FTC has challenged several mergers that it claims could drive up consumer prices, including the proposed JetBlue–Spirit tie-up. In anticipation of antitrust challenges, Kroger had already pledged $500 million to reduce prices and $1 billion to increase wages, and offered to divest ~400 stores by selling them to Piggly Wiggly owner C&S Wholesale Grocers.

That wasn’t enough…the agency called the proposal “inadequate” and said it fell “far short of mitigating lost competition.” That’s probably because weighing the price of Dijon has the FTC feeling deja vu about Albertsons’s $9 billion merger with Safeway in 2014. Safeway and Albertsons won approval for that deal by agreeing to divest 146 locations to a private operator…which went bankrupt less than a year later.—CC

Arguably the most famous mantra in investing is, as we all know, easy to say and hard to do.

For example…in 2023, interest rates reached the highest levels we’ve seen in over two decades. The effects were widespread, but the real estate market in particular suffered major losses as demand dropped like a rock.

The classic investing question…do falling prices mean it’s time to bail or time to buy?

For the Fundrise Flagship Fund, it’s time to buy. The Fund is gearing up to take advantage of today’s market by expanding its $1+ billion private real estate portfolio, and it plans to invest hundreds of millions into well-located residential and industrial assets over the next 12 months.

You can add the Flagship Fund to your portfolio right now, starting with as little as $10.

Sweden is set to become a NATO member. Sweden will soon be the 32nd member of the military alliance, after Hungary’s parliament voted yesterday to allow the nation to join NATO following more than a year and a half of saying “you can’t sit with us.” Sweden and Finland both sought to join after Russia invaded Ukraine. All member countries must approve any new ones, and while Finland got a quicker nod, Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, blocked a vote on Sweden’s bid for more than 18 months. His decision to finally allow the vote, which went 188 to 6 in favor of admitting Sweden, paves the way for Sweden to join NATO as soon as this week.

Microsoft is looking at a broader AI future than just OpenAI. Microsoft has been at the forefront of the AI revolution through its $13 billion stake in the ChatGPT-maker, but yesterday it showed it’s also making other AI bets, announcing it will pursue several partnerships and is investing $2.1 billion in French startup Mistral AI. Mistral’s tech will be available to Microsoft Azure users. Microsoft President Brad Smith told Axios that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is “brilliant,” but “just as the printing press quickly evolved beyond Gutenberg, AI is quickly evolving beyond any single individual.”

Palestinian Authority shakes up government, eyeing post-war Gaza role. Mohammad Shtayyeh, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, submitted his government’s resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas. The move came after neighboring countries and the US pressured the Palestinian Authority to make changes so that it could manage Gaza after the war between Israel and Hamas ends. Abbas, who has asked the government to stay on until he can form a new one, is expected to appoint Mohammad Mustafa, a former World Bank official and chairman of the Palestine Investment Fund, as prime minister. Separately, President Biden said a deal for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas could come as soon as this weekend.

Big Tech titans clashed with conservative-led states yesterday in two Supreme Court cases that could strip social media companies of much of their power to moderate content.

In the cases NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, trade groups that represent social media sites including Meta and Google are challenging state laws in Florida and Texas that would bar tech companies from 1) removing content on their social media sites that could be seen as political and 2) banning accounts based on the viewpoints they share—even if they violate user agreements.

Here’s what each side argued before the high court yesterday:

• Attorneys for Texas and Florida say the laws (designed largely to shield conservative voices from moderation) protect people’s First Amendment rights against big companies’ ability to remove and shadowban content they deem harmful.
• The social media companies maintain that they need to be able to remove disinformation and other harmful content, citing examples like spam, pro-terrorism speech, and the Tide Pod Challenge of 2018.

The decision is expected by June. During yesterday’s oral arguments, the justices appeared skeptical of the states’ laws and their arguments that deplatforming counts as censorship. But if the court does uphold the Texas and Florida laws, the social media companies’ bipartisan public and private sector allies say hate speech would flood platforms like TikTok and Facebook, likely driving advertisers away. Another option for the sites, if the court’s decision forces them to allow all opinions, could be to prohibit entire topics—like race or gender—from being discussed at all.—ML

The next gold rush. Demand for lithium, the essential component in EV batteries, is projected to soar 20x by 2040. Perfect timing for EnergyX—their technology extracts up to 300% more lithium than traditional methods, earning them investments from GM and POSCO. Now you can invest, too. Become an EnergyX shareholder here.

If you like your health, Samsung thinks you should put a Galaxy Ring on it. The company best known for catering to iPhone haters flashed a prototype of its first-ever smart ring at the Mobile World Congress that began in Barcelona yesterday. The wearable will track sleep and activity patterns for the Samsung Health app and may also enable contactless payments.

Samsung’s debut as a jeweler makes it the first tech giant to enter the electronic ring game, which has been dominated by startups like Finland-based Oura. Industry watchers expect the ring race to heat up, as Apple is also reportedly mulling whether to start encircling fingers (probably at Tiffany prices).

Why ring it up?

Samsung is betting that some users might be more comfortable sleeping with a ring rather than one of its Galaxy smartwatches, but its VP of Digital Health, Dr. Hon Pak, envisions customers wearing multiple devices for a more complete picture of their health.

• The first-gen ring will measure heart rate, breathing, and movement during sleep.
• You’ll be able to get one sometime this year in platinum silver, gold, or ceramic black.

It’s just a start…Samsung is developing noninvasive glucose monitoring and blood pressure sensing for its wearables.—SK

Stat: When it comes to cash, it really is all about the Benjamins: There are more $100 bills in circulation than any other kind of US paper money, according to the Wall Street Journal. And there are now more than twice as many hundos out there as there were in 2012, data from the Federal Reserve shows. The prevalence of the denomination is in part because people tend to hang on to them longer than smaller bills, rather than forcing a cashier to hold them up to the light. But these days, most transactions aren’t happening with any bills—cash is only the third most popular payment method in the US, with 60% of payments being made with credit or debit cards.

Quote: “There’s a sh*tshow going on in Seattle.”

The CEO of Ryanair, the budget airline beloved by your friend who won’t stop talking about when they studied abroad in Europe, is none too happy with Boeing. Michael O’Leary did not hold back recently about his frustrations with the delays that Seattle-based Boeing’s safety problems have caused in getting new planes for the carrier. “We don’t really know how many aircraft we’re going to get from Boeing,” he explained, and, if it’s not enough, he warned Ryanair might have to cut flights or raise prices as much as 10% during its busy summer season.

Read: Why are there suddenly so many car washes? (Bloomberg)