Bloomberg - Evening Briefing - Trump picks Vance

Just two days after surviving an assassination attempt, Donald Trump picked Senator JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate, elevating a populist venture capitalist who is also a strident Trump defender. Vance is 39, nearly four decades younger than the 78-year-old Trump. He may be intended to help Republican efforts to bolster their appeal to younger voters and working-class residents of battlegrounds such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Once a sharp critic of Trump—Vance previously called him “noxious” and accused him of “leading the White working class to a very dark place” —Vance has since changed his tune entirely, embracing Trump in full. US President Joe Biden responded quickly to the pick, attacking Trump’s selection and casting doubt on Vance’s independence and populist credentials. “Here’s the deal about JD Vance,” Biden said on social media. “He talks a big game about working people. But now, he and Trump want to raise taxes on middle-class families while pushing more tax cuts for the rich.” —David E. Rovella

Capping two years of highly unorthodox rulings that largely favored the man who made her a federal judge, US District Judge Aileen Cannon made what legal experts said was perhaps her most extraordinary decision of all by throwing out entirely Trump’s prosecution for mishandling sensitive military secrets. Cannon ruled that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment itself was unconstitutional, going against decades of precedent that stands for the opposite proposition. Cannon’s ruling follow’s a landmark ruling by the Republican-appointed supermajority of the Supreme Court—which includes three Trump appointees—making it close to impossible to prosecute a former president for acts while in office. That ruling has thrown into doubt Trump’s prosecution tied to efforts to prevent Biden from taking office in 2021, and potentially Trump’s felony conviction in New York for manipulating the 2016 election campaign via payoffs to a porn star and accounting fraud. A fourth case, the sprawling racketeering indictment in Georgia state court also tied to the 2020 election, is on hold as Trump’s lawyers attempt to remove the prosecutor.

Aileen Cannon Source: US Senate

Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that Cannon dismissed Trump’s case on the first day of the Republican National Convention, Timothy L. O’Brien writes in Bloomberg Opinion. Perhaps it’s a coincidence that, rather than dismissing the case when it first landed in her courtroom in 2022, Cannon may have discovered the legal reasoning to do so only after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas laid the groundwork for her in an opinion published two weeks ago, O’Brien says. And perhaps it’s a coincidence that Cannon has slow-walked the case—giving Trump and his lawyers ample latitude to delay the proceedings until a second presidential term might grant him the authority to bury it entirely. Still, writes O’Brien, those are a lot of coincidences.

The US Secret Service has bolstered the security details of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump following the assassination attempt on Trump. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who oversees the Secret Service, laid out the change in posture on Monday at the White House amid scrutiny of the agency’s protective efforts. Vance, Trump’s newly selected running mate, will also receive the “appropriate level of security,” Mayorkas said.

Stripe’s valuation has edged up to $70 billion as Sequoia Capital offers to buy shares from its investors looking to cash out of the fintech that helps merchants process customer payments. One of the most valuable private tech companies, Stripe was most recently valued at $65 billion after striking a deal that allowed current and former employees to cash out some of their shares. That was up from a $50 billion valuation last March but below the $95 billion it was worth in a 2021 funding.

Salesforce is said to have terminated 300 roles this month, following several other large tech companies who similarly fired large numbers of workers this month. Intuit announced plans to eliminate 1,800 employees last week, while software makers UiPath and Open Text also disclosed firings. 

Salesforce headquarters in San Francisco  Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Apple’s annual sales in India hit a record of almost $8 billion, underscoring a rapidly growing market where the iPhone maker now assembles more of its devices and operates two flagship stores. The India revenue jumped about 33% in the 12 months through March from $6 billion a year earlier. Apple’s pricey iPhones accounted for more than half of the sales. The increase signals steady progress in Apple’s effort to win users in the world’s most populous country, whose consumers are gradually gaining more purchasing power as the economy expands.

New York City’s taxi commissioner warned that his agency is working on a tighter set of rideshare driver pay rules in response to driver lockouts implemented by Uber and Lyft that have contributed to lower wages. The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission plans to unveil the proposed rules in “the next couple of months,” Commissioner David Do said in an interview. Meanwhile, the commission has been in talks with the companies to see if it can address the lockouts without implementing a rule change.

• Traders add to bets on Fed rate cuts after Goldman chimes in.
• Powell says recent data raise confidence inflation on path to 2%.
• Xi Jinping’s great economic rewiring is cushioning China’s slowdown.
• The world’s power grids are failing as the planet warms.
• ASML-backed university caught in middle of US-China chips war.
• Menendez jury ends second day of talks after bribe question.
• Amazon sold a used diaper. It tanked a mom-and-pop business.

Maurizio Reggiani, who retired in 2023 from his position as Lamborghini chief technical officer, has taken a job at Eccentrica, a new company that modifies classic Lamborghinis. Reggiani, the engineer behind Lamborghinis such as the Murcielago, the Reventon, the Aventador and the Huracan, will advise the San Marino-based firm on how to produce a modernized version of the Lamborghini Diablo supercar.

Eccentrica performs aesthetic modifications and installs modification kits on Lamborghini donor Diablo cars. Source: Eccentrica

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