Chapter 1: What changes did the Trump administration make to migrant work permits?
The Trump administration cracks down on work permits for migrants. Plus, U.S. officials arrested a Virginia man accused of planting pipe bombs in D.C. before the January 6 Capitol attack. And how New York City became the epicenter in the push to convert offices to apartments.
In the current office downturn, there are many midtown buildings that are facing very high vacancy. So buildings you never would have thought of as apartment buildings are being considered for these types of conversions.
It's Thursday, December 4th.
Chapter 2: What recent legal developments are related to the January 6 Capitol attack?
I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for Alex Osola. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The battle to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery is heating up.
One of its suitors, Paramount, criticized rival Netflix's bid, saying in a letter this week to Warner that regulatory hurdles would block a deal with the streaming giant. The previously unreported letter, which was sent on Monday and viewed by The Wall Street Journal, says Paramount's own proposal was the only one that didn't raise antitrust issues.
People familiar with the matter say Warner is seeking more bids by the end of today and plans to finish the auction by the end of the month. Paramount is aiming to buy the whole company, while Netflix and Comcast are bidding for Warner's movie and TV studios and libraries, as well as HBO Max.
Chapter 3: How is New York City addressing the office-to-residential conversion trend?
Turning to finance, the Trump administration is advancing a plan to establish $1,000 investment accounts for young Americans and Wall Street wants in. Many of the largest financial firms are preparing proposals related to the Trump accounts to submit to the Treasury Department.
People familiar with the matter say the administration is asking firms including Charles Schwab and Robinhood to pitch plans to manage the Trump accounts records and handle administrative tasks. Meanwhile, the administration said today that work permits for immigrants seeking asylum and other humanitarian protections will now be valid for 18 months rather than five years.
Officials said that will give the government more chances to vet immigrants and frame the change as part of a crackdown on legal immigration after two members of the National Guard were shot in Washington, D.C. last week. Federal officials say the shooter was a man from Afghanistan who was granted asylum in the U.S. in April. The new rules take effect today and for now only apply to new permits.
They will likely affect hundreds of thousands of people and may raise concerns among employers. The meatpacking industry, for example, has relied on people who received legal work authorizations after applying for asylum. Trading in stock markets was mixed today, with the Nasdaq and S&P ending slightly higher, while the Dow was just barely lower, closing down less than 0.1%.
And in currency markets, the U.S.
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Chapter 4: What challenges do developers face in converting office spaces to apartments?
dollar ticked higher, ending a decline of seven straight sessions against several other major currencies. Hannah Aaron Lang, who covers financial markets at The Wall Street Journal, says investors have been adjusting their views on where interest rates are going.
The U.S. dollar has suffered its longest losing streak since 2020. This primarily has to do with changing expectations about central banks across the globe. So here at home, we have the Federal Reserve. They have an upcoming meeting in December. And it's now widely expected that policymakers will cut interest rates.
Investors are also looking at how President Donald Trump is talking about his next pick for the Fed chair. And it seems really likely that his selection will be somebody who's quite dovish, which means that they will be inclined to lower rates even further. But the situation is different overseas.
In contrast, what we've heard this week from other major central banks is they're taking a different path. So the Bank of Japan recently indicated that they might hike rates. And the European Central Bank seems like it's going to hold steady. We know that when interest rates come down, it weakens a currency. And then when they go up, a currency gets stronger.
And that dynamic is cast into even sharper relief when you have major central banks around the world going in different directions.
That was Hannah Arendt-Lang. Coming up, the FBI has made an arrest in a long-running investigation into January 6th pipe bombs. That's after the break. U.S. authorities today announced charges against a Virginia man who they said placed two pipe bombs near the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican National Committees the night before the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The bombs were discovered on January 6th at the same time as rioters began to breach police barricades. 30-year-old Brian Cole was arrested the first time the Justice Department named a suspect in the long-running investigation. The FBI has been under intense pressure to solve the crime.
Some of President Trump's supporters had complained about the lack of progress and conspiracy theories about the bombs spiraled that law enforcement officials tried to push back on. FBI Director Kash Patel spoke today about the investigation.
We will not stop until we interview anyone and everyone associated with the subject, the house and every piece of his life.
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Chapter 5: How are financial firms responding to the Trump administration's investment account plan?
It's no longer working as an office building, so they came up with a plan for carving out space on the 4th through 17th floor, they're going to pretty much hollow out that base, demolish that space, but they're also going to create a new tower, which worked for apartments because it'll be narrow enough that the apartments can all get the necessary light in there.
And because of the new zoning incentives that the city created, they can now do this.
That was The Wall Street Journal's Peter Grant. Peter, thank you.
My pleasure. Thank you.
You can see the changes these buildings are making on WSJ.com. We'll leave a link in the show notes. And that's what's news for this Thursday afternoon. Additional sound in this episode, courtesy of Reuters. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bien-Aimé with supervising producer Tali Arbel. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning.
Thanks for listening.
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