The only thing more perturbing than TikToker Reesa Teesa’s video series account of her ex-husband’s torrid double life is the fact that you may soon have to go to YouTube to watch it.

A congressional committee voted unanimously on Thursday to advance a bill to the House that would be tantamount to a ban on TikTok, jeopardizing the future of the app used by 170 million Americans.

• US lawmakers have long expressed concerns about TikTok’s influence and accused the app’s parent company, ByteDance, of being linked to the Chinese Communist Party (which both TikTok and ByteDance deny).
• But the committee became extra motivated to fast-track the bill after TikTok encouraged users to call their representatives and ask them not to ban the app. This resulted in a flood of calls and what may be the greatest social media backfire since Elmo asked, “How is everybody doing?”

What the bill says: The bipartisan bill aims to “protect the national security of the United States from the threat posed by foreign adversary controlled applications.” Practically, the bill gives ByteDance two choices: Find a US company to buy TikTok within six months or shut it down.

Video app-turned-political pawn

Yesterday, President Biden said he would sign the bill if it got through Congress—even though the president’s reelection campaign joined the platform last month.

The legislation has to get passed first, though, and previous efforts to address TikTok have stalled. A bill that would have allowed the Commerce Department to ban tech from outside the US died in the Senate last year. Still, experts are cautiously optimistic about the new bill since it’s more targeted at TikTok.

But TikTok still has supporters. The ACLU called the bill an effort to score “cheap political points during an election year.” Former President Trump posted on Truth Social, “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” in an apparent 180 after signing an executive order in 2020 that intended to ban TikTok.—CC

Lithium is essential for batteries in electric cars, renewable energy storage, and even smartphones. That’s why demand for lithium is projected to grow 20x by 2040.

So when EnergyX revealed that their technology could extract 300% more lithium than traditional methods, investors everywhere took note—General Motors included.

GM is the lead investor in EnergyX’s $50m funding round. And you can join them. That means you have the unique opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a company just as they’re set to unlock the US lithium supply.

EnergyX’s stock price just increased, thanks to growing demand and their first acquisition of lithium resources in Chile.

Don’t miss your chance to share in their growth potential as an EnergyX shareholder.

US companies are still hiring. The US added 275,000 jobs in February, according to the government’s latest jobs report, which dropped yesterday. That’s more than was expected, signaling a still-hot labor market. But elsewhere, there were signs of cooling: The unemployment rate rose to 3.9%, and wage growth slowed down. This makes the report something of a choose-your-own-adventure tale for those hoping to use it to guess what Jerome Powell might be thinking about cutting interest rates.

No evidence of UFO sightings, Pentagon says. The truth may still be out there, but we haven’t found it yet, according to a new 63-page Pentagon report that assessed government activities related to “unidentified anomalous phenomena” and found no evidence that aliens have been to Earth or that it’s been covered up. Rather, suspected UFOs from 1945 to now have turned out to be “ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” including test flights of government spy planes in the ’50s and ’60s. But for those who still want to believe: The military is developing portable UFO detection kits to collect better data.

⚕️Wegovy got approved to treat heart problems. Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster weight-loss drug scored FDA approval to be prescribed to lower the risk of heart attack, stroke, and even death from cardiovascular causes for adults with obesity. This additional approval may help broaden insurance coverage for the drug, which is costly and not always covered. But it might still be hard for patients to get, as it’s in short supply. Novo Nordisk is also seeking a similar approval in Europe.

Electric-car maker Rivian made tech lords smile with teeth when it unveiled its new mid-price car and then surprise-revealed two more handsome new models this week.

Within 24 hours, Rivian said it received 68,000+ reservations for its $45,000 R2 SUV, a competitor to Tesla’s Model Y. The unexpected releases—a compact SUV called the R3 and its high-performance version, the R3X—aren’t available for preorder yet, but their sleek designs and intriguing additional features are generating shut-up-and-take-my-money buzz.

Rivian’s stock soared 17.25% this week in response, but time is not on its side: By the time R2 deliveries begin in 2026, more electric SUVs will be on the market (including one from Volkswagen Group).

Then there’s the burning cash of it all. Rivian, which is backed by Amazon:

• Is losing $43,000 on each first-generation car it builds, per a recent earnings report.
• Could need $2.5 billion more to survive until R2 production gets going, a Jefferies analyst estimates.
• Lost $5.4 billion last year and doesn’t think it will sell many more cars in 2024 than it did in 2023, scaring some investors.

Cost-cutting collateral: To save ~$2.3 billion, Rivian announced yesterday it’s postponing the construction of an R2 factory outside Atlanta that would’ve created thousands of jobs.—ML

Spammers begone. Between phishing attacks, robocalls, and emails pretending to be from a wealthy, generous prince, spam trickles in from pretty much everywhere. Enter Incogni. Use code MORNING for 55% off a one-year subscription and a 30-day money-back guarantee to eliminate spam calls, texts, and emails—and protect your sensitive deets with Incogni.

Right about now, Taylor Swift is wrapping up her sold-out Singapore concerts, and besides boosting demand in the country for sequined leotards and friendship bracelets, this six-show leg of her Eras Tour created geopolitical strife.

Why? The leaders of neighboring countries were miffed about the exclusive deal Singapore cut with the singer to be the only Southeast Asian country she visited. This kind of agreement, known as a “radius clause,” is common in the music industry but rarely extends outside of a country.

• Thailand’s prime minister accused Singapore of paying as much as $3 million per show to keep “Sparks Fly” within its borders.
• Singapore said the actual price it paid was much lower, but refused to reveal the number.

Even at the highest estimates, it was a good investment: Swifties who flocked to Singapore are expected to have spent up to $300 million on food, lodging, and other tourism-related purchases while visiting, likely juicing the country’s GDP by .02 percentage points this quarter, according to Bloomberg.

And other nations are taking notes…neighboring countries have gotten over the beef but have already started updating their playbooks so they can follow Singapore’s lead and snag the next big tour.—MM

Stat: The person responsible for resetting the “days without a safety incident” sign back to zero at Boeing’s headquarters has been busy. This week alone, there were three headline-grabbing mishaps involving the company’s planes, per Bloomberg. The most recent one was yesterday when a United Airlines plane rolled off the runway into the grass after landing in Houston, forcing the evacuation of its 160 passengers and six crew members (no one was hurt). Before that, another United plane lost a tire after takeoff while a third had flames coming from its engine—luckily, no one was injured in those situations, either.

Quote: “I suspect this pizza topping ‘fact’ may have been inserted as a joke or to test if I was paying attention, since it does not fit with the other topics at all.”

That’s not quite, “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that,” but Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus chatbot made waves this week when an engineer revealed that the AI model appeared to know it was being tested. The engineer posted on X that during a “needle-in-the-haystack” evaluation where a sentence about pizza toppings was inserted into documents about other topics, Opus was asked to find it. Not only did the AI locate the right sentence, but it also flagged that it was unrelated to the rest of the text…and correctly surmised why.

Read: America’s incredible—and incredibly unequal—restaurant comeback. (The Atlantic)