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Chapter 1: What impact did Zohran Mamdani have on New York's congressional primaries?
Zoran Mamdani leaves his mark on New York's congressional delegation, boosting his standing as a Democratic kingmaker. Plus, President Trump threatens big oil with a DOJ probe over prices at the pump. And we'll look at how El Nino could be the global economy's next big test.
We already had expected rising food prices. Now that we have an extra layer of very volatile weather, high temperatures, drought, that's going to just exacerbate the stress on farmers, on the agricultural sector.
It's Wednesday, June 24th. I'm Luke Varkas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We begin in New York, where three congressional candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani have prevailed in primary races over more mainstream Democratic opponents.
In a sign of the powerful anti-incumbent wave playing out this year, 32-year-old community organizer and Democratic socialist Darielisa Avila-Chavalier defeated Representative Adriano Esbiat, the chairman of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus.
Despite him making history just a decade ago by becoming the first formerly undocumented immigrant to be elected to Congress, Avila Chevalier used her victory speech last night, heard here courtesy of Spectrum News, to cast him as out of touch.
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Chapter 2: How is President Trump addressing gasoline prices and big oil?
Doing nothing about the affordability crisis and looking the other way while the real estate corporations that funded his campaign raised our rents and priced us out of the community that we love. Thank you.
In a fourth, closely watched House primary, Assemblyman Micah Lasher defeated a crowded field that included Jack Schlossberg, grandson of President John F. Kennedy. And in South Carolina, Alan Wilson coasted to victory in a Republican primary runoff to be the state's next governor.
President Trump had initially backed Wilson's opponent, but hedged his bets in the waning days of the campaign and endorsed both candidates.
Chapter 3: What are the potential economic implications of El Niño?
Back in Washington, Congress has passed its most ambitious housing legislation since the 1980s, aiming to ease federal regulations and boost home construction. President Trump is expected to sign the bill into law as soon as today. However, developers are responding with a shrug, noting that the bipartisan package lacks new funding and cannot alter the local zoning laws that block development.
And for more on the housing bill, check out the latest episode of Your Money Briefing, where journal reporters Rebecca Picciotto and Paul Kiernan join What's News host Alex Osola to explain what the bill means for Americans. We'd love to link to that in our show notes.
Heading overseas, a heat wave that's descended over much of Europe this week is peaking today, leading to widespread school closures, travel disruptions, and a surge in heat-related deaths. London, Brussels, and Frankfurt will see temps in the mid-90s today, while Paris and Madrid are set to breach 100. And while those numbers may not faze U.S.
Chapter 4: How could El Niño affect global food prices and agriculture?
listeners, consider that 9 in 10 Americans have air conditioning compared to roughly 1 in 20 Brits, something U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres noted during remarks at a Gothic event space in London yesterday.
These citizens far beyond are experiencing the hottest day of the year with higher temperatures to come. London isn't just calling, it's cooking. Around the world, climate disasters are becoming more frequent, more destructive, and more costly.
Last year's European heat waves cost the continent an estimated 43 billion euros. And according to research from Allianz, the current trajectory of intensifying heat waves could sap European economies of between 5 and 7 percent of their GDP by the end of the decade. President Trump is criticizing oil companies for not lowering gasoline prices in line with a recent pullback in crude.
Posting on True Social, the president said that customers are being gouged and that he's instructed the DOJ to immediately start looking into the situation. However, as markets editor Alex Frango says, the logic of the probe misses the reality of how gasoline prices work.
What you put in your gas tank is not oil. It's gasoline.
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Chapter 5: What challenges are farmers facing due to weather changes?
So it has to go from the oil well through a pipeline to a refinery. It has to get refined. It has to get in another pipeline and get to your gas station. So there's just a time element for the price to trickle through. The other thing is all the gas station owners, when the prices were going way up, their profit margins got squeezed massively.
And then they had to go out and buy much more expensive gasoline. They're sitting on that inventory. They're eating through it. They're not going to lower prices while they're still selling the gas that they paid higher prices for. So that's why it takes time for the prices to drop. But, you know, we've been through this many, many, many times.
And politicians are often very frustrated at the way the market works. But the market does work. And the lower prices you see that get quoted on the news every evening, they will eventually get to the gas pump.
And as Alex explained, while the Strait of Hormuz may have reopened, it'll take time for tankers and their cargos to get through the waterway.
What's happening on the ground is ships are starting to move, but it's slow. It's not a uncorking and a massive parade of ships. It's more of a trickle or a faster trickle now than a few weeks ago, but it'll take time. The main shipping channel is still, there are concerns about there being mines there. So authorities are trying to get ships through much narrower channels.
And so there just there isn't the capacity to get the, you know, 100 ships a day that we're going in and out of there. We're still in the tens of ships. So that that also will mean that it'll take longer for the global oil markets to fully adjust and get back to, you know, where they were before the war.
The International Maritime Organization said yesterday it would begin evacuating the over 11,000 seafarers still stranded in and around the Strait of Hormuz, though it didn't set a timeline for the mission. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense in a bid to get its name struck off the Pentagon's list of blacklisted companies.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon added about two dozen companies to its list of Chinese businesses that said are aiding China's military, including Alibaba and Baidu, limiting their ability to operate in the U.S. Alibaba has denied any links to the Chinese military, while the Pentagon said it doesn't comment on ongoing litigation.
And we're exclusively reporting that Tesla competitor Agility Robotics is set to go public in a deal that values the startup at about $2.5 billion. Agility's flagship humanoid robot is known as Digit, which can automate tasks including moving and stacking heavy containers.
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