Members voted 370-48 to pass the continuing resolution yesterdat, easily obtaining the two-thirds majority necessary to fast track the bill under a suspension of the rules.

The bill originated in the Senate through a bipartisan deal, with the upper chamber passing it in August. It now goes to the desk of President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it into law.

For the Defense Department, the CR ensures that current weapons programs can be funded at fiscal 2026 levels, and prevents a situation where civilians are furloughed and troops must work without pay.

“This clean, short-term continuing resolution simply keeps the government open, protects the progress we’ve made, and preserves the path to full-year appropriations,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said today during a speech on the House floor.

“The bill protects our national security, providing funding for our armed forces and security agencies, as well as crucial authorities for core research and development programs to ensure our military remains the best armed and equipped services in the world,” he added.

During a press conference this morning, Rep. Pete Aguilar, the House Democratic Caucus chair, said he projected “broad bipartisan support” for the bill. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, encouraged members to vote yes on the CR during a caucus meeting that morning, he said.

Rep. Betty McCollum, ranking member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, praised the bill for its exclusion of Iran war funding.

“I am very proud that this bill for the CR does not have funding that the president requested in his supplemental for the war in Iran, which was his war of choice,” she said on the House floor ahead of passage.

The bill also does not include most of the anomalies — or special funding exemptions — requested by the White House on behalf of the Pentagon. That list of unfunded anomalies includes:

• $1 billion for the Trump-class battleship, which was needed to begin advanced procurement of the nuclear propulsion system, the White House said in a list of anomalies provided to Congress.
• A request for language that would have allowed the Pentagon to obligate funding for five key munitions programs: the Patriot system’s PAC-3 interceptor, Tomahawk cruise missile, AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, and two different Standard Missile-3 variants. The White House had warned the department “may incur cancellation liabilities on multi-year procurement contracts if it does not order the negotiated production quantities.”
• A request for language that would have exempted funding granted in last year’s reconciliation bill from sequestration, or automatic spending cuts. Without the exemption, the White House said about 8 percent of the unobligated reconciliation funds would be made unavailable when the new fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.

Instead, the bill includes boilerplate language common in most CRs that prohibits using funding to start new programs or multiyear contracts.

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Yadda yadda yadda, he lost.

Has anything happened in the intervening months to make financial institutions trust turning over their legal future to AI? No. But they’re asking for it anyway. The next recession is going to be wild, y’all.

Just last week, at ILTACON, the message from clients was that they wanted outcomes at any price. Now Wall Street, the people who brought you the Great Recession, wants its law firms to turn over legal review to the robots.

Absolutely not.

The entire point of AI is for a first-year to finish the assignment in 3 hours, sit on it for another 7, and bill 10.

I’m beginning to think these banks don’t understand innovation. https://t.co/wO66OeYy8n

— Bill Moore, Esq. (@lawyer_memes) September 1, 2026

This is funny, but there’s actually a lot of truth here.

The monied interests shoveling cash onto the AI bonfire, clucking their tongues knowingly that OF COURSE an industry that’s burned almost a trillion and a half in expenses to generate around $200 billion is a sound investment! The only way that bet works is if you accept the deeply misanthropic worldview of Silicon Valley investors who believe AI will become a digital messiah — a robot Jesus, except with less “healing the sick,” and more “shoving poor people into the human battery farms from the Matrix.” For these people, AI makes sense because it can replace human labor at every level (except, for some reason, their own ability to invest).

The finance bros believe the robot is infallible because it’s a necessary article of faith when they’ve loaded up their books with a money black hole. They don’t have time to worry themselves with hallucinations. Or boilerplate drawn from wholly unrelated deals. Or suboptimal research. Just press the “Easy” button and turn in whatever the hell comes out!

But that’s not how law works. Without human legal judgment, mistakes get made. After a couple years of “human-in-the-loop” — an empty phrase that presumes a senior partner will read 200 pages of agentic logs on the backend — legal tech is starting to realize that the process needs to optimized to give the AI more break points for humans to interject, course correct, and reflect.

AI keeps getting faster, but the human brain doesn’t. Those hours and days spent turning the document included epiphanies and strategic rethinks. Compressing the time from start to finish robs humans of that time to really think about whether they’ve forged the right output. This matters because AI delivers the median acceptable answer by design. It’s taking prior results and spitting out smoothed over mediocrity. That may give a lawyer a good head start, but it’s not an endpoint. And bringing the output up to snuff requires more than a once-over with a red pen. It’s going to require real time.

At ILTACON, one analogy I made after the panel I spoke on is that the investors want AI to be a robot, but the law needs it to produce a cyborg. From this industry’s perspective it has to work in conjunction with humans. Indeed, we’ve already seen some early indications that AI isn’t reducing lawyer hours but increasing them. AI can surface research rabbit holes that humans might never have found before, and the humans are chasing them down to deliver better work product.

Not that AI won’t change billing. To the extent it saves time in some places, that is time that lawyers can’t bill. In the past, people mused about the $10,000 billable hour to reflect the value of senior judgment. The banks, it seems, aren’t buying it. A flat fee for relatively repeatable tasks could give the client cost predictability without firms sacrificing revenue. That makes the most sense, but it requires clients to believe they’re getting value.

If this is the stance they want to take, they’ll discover the value in a year or so when the litigation gets going. Because they’re playing a risky game with bet-the-company propositions. Of course, considering that they’re continuing to hand hundreds of billions of dollars to OpenAI in 2026, their betting judgment may leave a lot to be desired anyway.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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Shein makes lacklustre Hong Kong debut as investors fret about growth and regulatory risks [Reuters]

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Piacenti, who lived in Chester, N.J., was one of two people stabbed near 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue at around 4:30 p.m., in what the NYPD described as an unprovoked attack. She was stabbed in the abdomen and pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later.

Police identified the assailant as Pamela Cisneros, a 49-year-old Queens woman with what officials described as a documented history of mental illness. According to the account NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch gave reporters, Cisneros pulled two kitchen knives from a Target bag and first stabbed a 68-year-old man who had just come up from the subway with his wife at West 41st Street. She then moved a block north and attacked Piacenti. The two stabbings happened roughly 20 seconds apart. The man is expected to survive.

Officers surrounded Cisneros and, police said, spent several minutes trying to talk to her while she was still armed; when she charged at them with the knives, officers opened fire. She was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Piacenti earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and her J.D. from Fordham Law in 2021, and she had built a career at the intersection of law and finance — serving, according to her LinkedIn profile, as Bank of America’s Vice President of Business Selection and Conflicts.

She had celebrated her second wedding anniversary on Aug. 10, just three weeks before she died. Our thoughts are with her family, her husband, her colleagues, and the Fordham Law community.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1

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A War That Won’t End Is Complicating the Fed’s Next Move [WSJ]
“It is my belief that we’ve seen a supply shock,” [Bessent] said on CNBC. “Traditionally, you don’t raise [rates] into a supply shock unless you see second- or third-order effects, and we are seeing the core inflation has remained very, very restrained.”

Goldman Sachs, BofA and others plan to issue dollar stablecoin together in 2027 [Reuters]
The group will compete with a separate consortium of 37 financial institutions which formed ‌a ⁠company called Qivalis and said they plan to launch a euro-pegged stablecoin later this year…. Still, there are few signs of ​demand for stablecoins issued ​by banks.

The private sector added 38,000 jobs last month, missing expectations, ADP says [Yahoo!]
Economists polled by Bloomberg had been expecting a gain of 47,000 jobs. July's job gains were revised up slightly to 46,000…. On Friday, the Labor Department will release its own August jobs data gathered from surveys of public and private sector employers. ADP's data is based on payroll data from millions of private-sector employers. Economists expect the government data to show that the US added 55,000 jobs.

Trump Crypto Ally David Bailey Rebuilds After 99% Stock Collapse [Bloomberg]
“It’s been a very rough year for us,” Bailey said in an interview at this year’s Bitcoin Asia conference. “We bought Bitcoin at the top, and then Bitcoin performed very poorly….”
Nakamoto now trades well below the value of its Bitcoin holdings, making it far harder to issue stock to buy more of the cryptocurrency. Bailey is instead turning to a more conventional source of firepower: businesses that generate cash.

UBS Faces Protracted Capital Battle as Minister Hits Back [Bloomberg]
“This is a solution in favor of the bank and against taxpayers,” [Karin] Keller-Sutter said Tuesday in Basel.
Her comments come after a committee of the Swiss parliament on Monday endorsed a proposal that would allow the country’s largest bank to use a type of hybrid debt known as AT1 bonds to meet half of the new capital requirements.

Manhattan firms have been locked in a space race, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett’s 916,000-square-foot relocation — the single largest legal deal of the quarter, according to Savills — is the kind of number that would have been unthinkable in 2020, back when landlords were quietly pricing out condo conversions.

Since 2023, Biglaw has been tightening its in-office mandates with the enthusiasm of a firm that has somewhere very expensive to put everyone, despite associates making it clear they’ll trade prestige for flexibility. Four days a week is increasingly the new floor across Biglaw, with Duane Morris the latest to jump from three to four just last week. And Sullivan & Cromwell is leading the pack with five days required in the office. The leasing figures make a statement: the work-from-home heyday is behind us — you don’t ink these deals for a hybrid workforce that turns up when it feels like it.

It’s been trending for a while now that firms lease reckless amounts of premium space and then, having done so, discover a sudden and urgent need for everyone to come justify it in person. Three years later, the mandate and the lease have stopped being cause and effect and started being the same gesture. The work-from-home glory days are not coming back.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1

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New York City-based Cityblock offers clinical care, behavioral health care and social care in patients’ homes, virtually and in community-based clinics. It primarily serves Medicaid and dual-eligible populations. The company’s AI-powered operating system aggregates physical, behavioral and social health data to provide care teams with predictive insights into members.

The $116 million round supported Cityblock’s acquisition of Homeward Health, a rural healthcare provider. The funding will be used to invest in the combined platform, including optimizing operations, the care model, technology and data infrastructure.

Happy Health secures $75 million in funding

Happy Health offers an FDA-cleared smart ring for at-home diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea. It also provides treatment management and daily sleep health measurements. Happy Health’s platform uses continuous health data and AI to create a personalized baseline for each patient, helping doctors identify meaningful changes in their health. Sleep is the company’s first focus area, but it plans to expand into other areas in the future.

The $75 million round was from ARCH Venture Partners and OpenLoop. The financing will help Happy Health accelerate the clinical validation of its tech, as well as build the infrastructure to expand beyond sleep.

Flagler Health raises $50 million in Series B funding

New York City-based Flagler Health is an AI-native operating system for musculoskeletal care. It helps MSK practices run more efficiently and better manage patients between visits. The company supports thousands of providers across 36 states.

The Series B round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from SignalFire, Alumni Ventures, Streamlined, 186 Ventures, Proof VC, Tribeca Venture Partners and Offscript. In total, Flagler Health has raised $63 million. The financing will help Flagler scale across the country, according to the announcement.

Network Bio launches with $50 million in funding

Palo Alto, California-based Network Bio is a biotechnology company building disease-specific AI models based on human biological data. It collaborates with academic medical centers and leverages its technology to accelerate diagnostics, biomarker discovery and drug development.

The $50 million raise was from Section 32, Thiel Bio, Founders Fund, Breyer Capital, Blue Venture Fund and JSL Health Capital. The funding will be used to expand Network Bio’s life science platform, according to the announcement.

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Federal judges can take up to 90 extra days to perform the barest of minimum acts of transparency, and Alito takes advantage of that almost every year. His eight colleagues filed on time and the Administrative Office posted their forms on June 29, Bad Bunny tickets and seven-figure book advances and all. Alito extended his clock to run into late September.

Now, here’s the scheduling rub. On October 5, the first argument day of the new term, the justices will hear Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, where the oil and gas industry will beseech the Court to ban local governments from suing polluters over climate damage. Since May, watchdog groups have been asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to look at why Alito hasn’t recused, given that, based on past disclosures, he’s the only justice holding oil and gas stock directly. A late-September filing would have answered that question a few days the oral argument.

And that filing reveals that he hasn’t divested from any of it. ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, AES, BHP Billiton, Black Hills, OGE Energy, Woodside Energy, all at the same value ranges as last year with no sales recorded, plus a mineral interest in Grady County, Oklahoma, reported at $100,001 to $250,000.

Given that Alito has shown no sign of recusing in the face of an obvious conflict of interest, could he have sped up his disclosure hoping that the story has time to cool down before he sits down to make sure the Earth never will?

That’s a deeply cynical read, but we’re also talking about a deeply cynical actor.

As a reminder, Alito recused from the 2023 cert petition in this very case. He recused from a 2025 petition raising the same question with different companies. In January he stepped out of Chevron U.S.A. v. Plaquemines Parish days before argument over his ConocoPhillips shares. Then in February he voted to grant cert in Suncor. Back in May, a spokeswoman told NBC News that Alito “does not have a financial interest in any party” in the case and that Court lawyers advised him “his recusal is not required.”

It’s a neat trick for an industry seeking a particular outcome. Just continue to play musical litigants until you strike on a combination that the judge doesn’t own. The fact that the case implicates the stocks he owns and he will profit off the decision he makes doesn’t matter because he doesn’t have a current stake in either of these parties.

The recusal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 455(b)(4), disqualifies a judge who has a financial interest “in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.” But, of course, the Supreme Court does not consider itself bound by any ethical rules so… “shrug emoji” it is.

The spokeswoman also explained that the earlier 2023 recusal was “inadvertent.”

Yeah, it’s hard keeping track when you’re betting on oil and gas stocks like DraftKings on the first weekend of football. Did I put $50 on the Bills outright or just to cover? Is it Exxon or Chevron? It’s all so confusing.

The Revolving Door Project pointed out that the oil companies themselves have treated these cases as linked in their own filings. In fact, they told the justices back in 2022 that the Colorado suit was “less likely” than the others to present recusal problems. The petitioners were apparently tracking Alito’s conflicts more carefully than Alito was.

Remember Paul Singer? The guy who flew Alito to Alaska on his private jet for a trip before Alito ended up hearing Singer’s case. In another stroke of convenient inadvertence, Alito claimed he never realized Singer was involved in that matter when he refused to recuse from that one too. Anyway… Singer’s Elliott Investment Management holds more than 52 million shares of Suncor.

Scolds may say, even if the rules applied to justices, that § 455(b)(4) doesn’t reach a justice’s stock in nonparty companies that merely operate in the same industry. Reading the statute that broadly, they might say, would require recusal every time any outcome moves a sector. But… justices don’t have to own stocks. Would we be comfortable with a judge landing a case impacting a specific sector and then instantly buying every other player in that sector before deciding? Because that’s the logical extension of this reading.

Anyway, congratulations to Alito on all his financial success.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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Suppose Iran feels desperate by late September. The regime is beginning to wobble.

Do you really think the Iranians would admit defeat and come to the negotiating table with their tail between their legs?

I personally doubt it.

Surely there are folks in Iran ginning up an October surprise that would devastate the Republicans (and Donald Trump) in the midterm elections. I’m a bit concerned about those possible Iranian ideas.

The Iranians don’t have to be able to hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear weapon to cause a ton of trouble for us. Chemical or biological agents could be smuggled into the U.S. (or manufactured here) and then released by Iranian operatives in a few strategic locations.

The attack need not be that sophisticated. Even a few well-placed conventional weapons (or, for instance, airplanes; or, perhaps, this time around, trucks or trains) could do a lot of damage and affect the midterms.

Or a large-scale cyberattack would be quite an October surprise and quite a lasting disaster.

But my imagination is pretty limited. Be more creative!

Couldn’t the Iranians do something that would make the Strait of Hormuz unnavigable for the foreseeable future? Couldn’t they release some radiation, or blast a hole in an oil tanker to cause a large oil spill, or sink a couple of large ships in the relatively narrow navigable shipping lanes?

If we really do manage to back the Iranians into a corner, I sure hope someone’s thinking about what the Iranians might do to wiggle their way out of that nook — or simply to exact revenge on Donald Trump, the guy who started it all.

The more you think about this, the more depressed you’ll become.

If Iran launches an October surprise, what will Trump do (possibly with broad public support at that point) in the days after Election Day? If the Iranians have killed a bunch of Americans, or put a real dent in our way of life, America might be mad. And Trump, of course, doesn’t like to lose. That could be a nasty combination.

Trump doesn’t have conventional weapons to spare, but might he nuke Pickaxe Mountain, the underground Iranian nuclear facility that can’t be reached with conventional weapons? Nuke Fordow, the other underground facility? Nuke ’em both? Add Tehran to the mix?

My imagination isn’t sufficiently expansive to predict what the future might hold.

But I can sense the timing, and the direction, of what might happen shortly, and I don’t like the picture my crystal ball portends.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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Shein’s Lackluster Debut Shows a Fast-Fashion Model Left Behind [NYT]
Shares in Shein fell 10 percent at one point before clawing back to close near its offering price, a humbling debut for a company once valued at $100 billion but now worth about a quarter of that. Its offering came after a wave of Chinese A.I. companies went public in Hong Kong and Shanghai, and years after Shein tried, and failed, twice in its efforts to list in New York and London amid opposition from officials and activists over working conditions at its facilities.

SEC Presses Investment Firms to Prove They Have Access to Shares in Hot Startups [WSJ]
SEC examiners have been asking registered investment advisers for proof that their SPVs own or have exposure to the shares in private companies that they claim to…. SPVs operate under few regulations, and the SEC has the authority to check the funds that are held by registered investment advisers. Some SPVs are offered by firms that are technically outside of the SEC’s purview, though if there is an issue of fraud, the SEC has authority to investigate and take action.

Hedge Fund Disclosure Deadline Delayed Again by SEC, CFTC [Bloomberg]
The disclosures are meant to inform officials about the market conditions that could lead to systemic financial risk, such as counterparty risk, sudden margin calls or any significant adverse event impacting private funds…. The latest delay comes after hedge fund Situational Awareness saw its highly-leveraged equities trades go sideways in July. During that time, the artificial intelligence-focused fund went from $45 billion in assets under management to about $10 billion.

Citadel Says Marshall Wace ‘Stonewalling’ in Spat Over Shatz [Bloomberg]
A New York judge ruled in June that Citadel could subpoena records from Marshall Wace as part of a dispute in arbitration with [Daniel] Shatz, who claims he was denied deferred compensation from Ken Griffin’s firm. Citadel claims Shatz stole confidential information in preparation for his 2024 move to Marshall Wace…. On Tuesday, Citadel advised the judge of an email it received from the panel arbitrating the dispute with Shatz. The panel was “extremely frustrated by the delay in resolving the issues related to the Marshall Wace subpoenas” and “expects compliance with those subpoenas,” which may uncover “relevant evidence….”

Ex-BlackRock employee sues for $12M in case that could unveil firm’s secretive pay structure [N.Y. Post]
Neal Dignum, a former director in BlackRock’s Long Term Private Capital fund, is accusing BlackRock of failing to pay a single cent of the carried interest it promised him as part of his pay package…. To keep the complaint permanently sealed from the public, BlackRock would need to argue that it contains “trade secrets, confidential business information, or proprietary information,” the filing said – and if it fails to do so, its compensation structure could be revealed in court.

The lawsuit began inauspiciously, when Judge Stephen Merryday struck the original complaint sua sponte for standing “unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8.” Trump’s sparklemagic lawyer Alejandro Brito really put his back into that first draft, which clocked in at a whopping 85 pages and included Trump’s entire CV, including cameos on Wrestlemania V, All My Children, and The Nanny. But it was not meant to be, and so Brito had to cut more than half of his delicious prose lauding “President Trump’s transcendent ability to defy wrongful conventions.”

Now he’s got to do real law … sort of.

The new complaint purports to establish actual malice by pointing to the source of Trump’s leaked tax returns: former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn. Trump insists that Times reporters Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner “purposefully avoided the truth by failing to independently verify whether the documents that Charles Littlejohn provided them with, and upon which they relied on for the challenged statements in the Book, were legitimate, accurate copies of President Trump’s tax returns.”

This suggests but does not state as fact that the leaked returns were fakes. This is somewhat in tension with the assertion that “Littlejohn was charged with unlawfully stealing and disclosing President Trump’s tax returns on September 29, 2023” and thus the reporters “had reason to doubt the accuracy” of his documents. And it’s deeply in tension with Trump’s own claims in the lawsuit he filed against the IRS seeking billions of dollars in recompense for Littlejohn’s unlawful disclosure.

Either the returns were real, in which case the Times had every reason to rely on them. Or they weren’t, and Trump and Brito just filed a fraudulent lawsuit against the IRS that led to the creation of the January 6 slush fund and blanket immunity for past tax crimes for Trump and his family. If the documents were fake, then the settlement must be invalid, right?

This is obviously the least of the problem with this dumpster fire of a defamation suit. This is a document which argues that it’s defamatory to report that “Trump’s desk showed no signs of real work—no computer, contracts, or files. It was just smothered by newspaper and magazine articles focused on one subject: himself.” But it is yet another sign of the deeply unserious lawyering by the president as he bleeds journalists with endless rounds of pointless litigation.

Pity poor Judge Merryday and his clerks!

Trump v. NY Times [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye produces the Law and Chaos Substack and podcast.

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It never made much sense. For most of that time, Oracle was busy trying to build itself into a leading cloud service provider — and cloud services rely on the exact same Section 230 protections Oracle was paying people to attack. But it’s not like Oracle is known for being particularly successful in its ability to think things out long term.

While Trump’s first attempt to hand TikTok to Oracle flopped, the second attempt (helped along by Democrats succumbing to a bogus moral panic about TikTok’s alleged dangers) resulted in Oracle ending up with a 15% stake in TikTok (as well as a lucrative hosting deal). In fact, Oracle’s long-term top lobbying exec, Ken Glueck (who was the architect of Oracle’s funding of a bunch of dark money groups that attacked Section 230) actually ended up with a seat on TikTok’s board.

And TikTok is already suffering from the attacks on Section 230. Remember, the wacky Anderson v. TikTok ruling that bizarrely said TikTok didn’t qualify for Section 230? That kind of ruling doesn’t happen without the widespread drumbeat of “Section 230 has gone too far” that Oracle spent years helping to push. TikTok is in a way worse position legally because of Ken Glueck’s advocacy. And now he’s on their board.

Meanwhile, Oracle, while not in the top tier of cloud providers — AWS, Microsoft, and Google together account for around 63% of enterprise cloud spending — is solidly at the top of the second tier. And while there aren’t that many Section 230 cases targeting the underlying cloud hosting providers, they’re not totally unheard of.

So, Section 230 protects both Oracle, and its large investment in TikTok. Yet Oracle spent years funding attacks on Section 230 (mainly just to piss off Google) and the main architect of that strategy is now on TikTok’s board.

Which puts us right back where we were six years ago, wondering if Oracle will ever change its tune. The company’s disclosures offer a partial answer. Section 230 is still under attack in DC, but the courts have been dismantling the law via judicial decisions that it’s not even clear what’s left for Congress to do. Looking at Oracle’s “Political Activity Reports” we see that while back in 2019 it was funding anti-tech groups which promoted attacks on Section 230 (like the Internet Accountability Project, the Free and Fair Markets Initiative, and the Copyright Alliance), these days it only funds the Copyright Alliance whose remit is larger than just attacking tech (though it still does that too).

Indeed, the IAP and FFMI, who were these huge fake grassroots non-profits designed to hold Google and Amazon to account, barely seem to exist any more. FFMI’s website stopped updating in 2023 and IAP’s in 2024. It’s almost as if they were astroturfed operations that suddenly became unnecessary once Ellison could get what he wanted directly, having spent $45 million to work his way deeper into Trump’s circle.

It looks like a large segment of the “grassroots” movement against Section 230 was conjured into existence with Oracle’s quiet backing, and seems to have evaporated once Oracle no longer needed it to exist.

Of course, there’s also the separate issue of the ongoing attempt by Ellison to also buy up half of Hollywood. Hollywood itself has probably been the second biggest force, behind Oracle, in the anti-Section 230 lobbying effort over the past decade. Ellison already owns Paramount, and may still end up with Warner Bros., as well, which might pull Oracle’s efforts back towards hating the open internet rather than defending the thing its own business runs on.

The simple fact, though, is that if you want a dynamic, competitive open internet, you need a strong Section 230. Gutting it won’t hurt the internet giants. They have buildings full of lawyers and can survive the onslaught of misguided lawsuits (most of which they’ll end up winning in the end). However, it will hurt all the small sites, the forums, the upstarts, the blogs that can’t afford to find out whether a case would get dismissed after a couple years and a million dollars of discovery. Who knows… perhaps that’s Ellison’s strategy all along: make the open internet weaker, so the companies he controls have way more power.

The next time Section 230 lands on the chopping block — and it will — Oracle (and, for that matter, TikTok) will have to pick a side. The smart move would be to defend it. But, then again, the smart move all along would have been for Oracle to defend it, and it chose the opposite for many years. The real question is whether Oracle’s years-long campaign against Section 230 comes back to bite it: devaluing the TikTok stake it worked so hard to get, and eating away at the legal protections its entire cloud business sits on top of.

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Aon CEO says insurance broker seeks to build ‘premiere middle market platform’ with purchase of rival USI [CNBC]
Insurance broker Aon announced on Monday it will purchase rival USI Insurance Services from private equity firm KKR…. The acquisition for Aon builds on the company’s purchase of NFP in 2024, another insurance broker focused on the U.S. middle market….
Shares of Aon tumbled 7% in response on Monday.

States can regulate prediction markets as gambling, federal appeals court rules [CNN]
The 3-0 ruling came from a panel of three Trump-appointed judges. The case originated from Nevada, where regulators tried to shut down the Kalshi prediction site…. With the backing of the Trump administration, prediction markets have been operating as federally regulated financial exchanges….
The ruling Friday creates a circuit split, with dueling rulings on the same question, teeing up the issue for potential Supreme Court review.

Former White House teleprompter operator ordered to turn over profits, pay fine over insider trading [AP]
The settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, announced Friday, also dealt Gabriel Perez a three-year trading ban. Perez was placed on unpaid leave from his job at the White House after reports emerged that he used his position to make bets on what President Donald Trump would say in speeches…. Perez was ordered to repay his profits in full, along with the $65,000 civil penalty, which the commission said was a reduction because of his “exemplary cooperation.”

Ex-Congressman George Santos Receives Kalshi’s First-Ever Lifetime Ban [WSJ]
In addition to the ban, Kalshi said its compliance department had imposed a penalty of $71,356…. Kalshi announced several other disciplinary actions on Monday, including a three-year ban for a Republican congressional candidate in North Carolina….
The CFTC alleged that in February 2026, Santos made a series of misleading statements on social media about whether he would attend Trump’s State of the Union speech, while placing lucrative bets on Kalshi on the matter.

Power, Betrayal and the Fall of Leon Black [WSJ]
Black said he didn’t realize he had spent that much because after an initial written contract with [Jeffrey] Epstein, all subsequent payments had been agreed to by handshakes between the two men.
I was incredulous that he would have such a loosey-goosey fee arrangement with Epstein, especially considering Black’s Wall Street reputation as a tough negotiator. In response, Black quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson to me: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

The Rise of the Influencer-Investor [Vogue Business]

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But the money on the page is not the same as money in the bank.

Standard billing rates rose double digits again, yet realized rate growth came in at just 7.3 percent, down from 9 percent this time last year. A little of that gap is discounting. Most of it is inventory: work that’s been done but not billed, or billed but not paid. Inventories grew 17.7 percent across the Am Law 200 — faster than revenue itself — and grew fastest at the very top, up 19 percent for the Am Law 50. The collection cycle, the number of days it takes to actually get paid, slowed by 8.5 days. Clients, Wells Fargo notes, are eyeballing their invoices harder and cutting the checks slower.

None of which should surprise anyone who read the Q1 report. Back in April, the same collection cycle had already slowed 6.5 days, Am Law 50 inventory was already up 19 percent, and Wells Fargo’s own consultant pinned the lag on the AI gold rush — all those data center deals and pre-IPO scrambles that hadn’t been collected on yet. Three months later, the inventory is bigger and the cash is slower. Wells Fargo credits the AI capital-spending frenzy for much of the activity, and that part is real. But getting the deal done still isn’t the same as getting paid for it.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1

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Meta Says It’ll Pay Up to $18 Billion in Social Media Claims [Bloomberg]

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Companies Can Tell Investors Less Under Proposed S.E.C. Rules [NYT]
“What is the big problem that we need to solve?” said Rebecca Patterson, a former chief investment officer of Bridgewater, a hedge fund.
“U.S. firms today are highly profitable overall, and they are still able to make longer-term strategic business decisions,” she added. “They are nicely walking and chewing gum at the same time.”

In Trump’s Washington, Ballooning National Debt Stirs Little Action [NYT]
Mr. Trump, who was such a prolific borrower as a private businessman that he termed himself “the king of debt,” has never seemed to care much about deficit spending. During his 2016 campaign, he almost offhandedly boasted that he could eliminate not just the deficit but the entire cumulative national debt in eight years as president. Instead, the debt has doubled since then under him and Mr. Biden.

The U.S. Created 79,000 Fewer Jobs Than Previously Reported, New Revisions Suggest [WSJ]
The private sector likely had 178,000 fewer jobs in March than the still-official data shows, with the slide concentrated in retail and in wholesale trade.

Two Sigma’s Feuding Founders Head to Arbitration in Fresh Battle [Bloomberg]
Entities associated with the Siegel family claim co-founder John Overdeck improperly handled an earlier dispute, in which an ex-employee sought severance and deferred compensation two years after their exit…. The other fight is an escalation of a conflict that’s been brewing for months, after Siegel’s first pick to share the CEO role resigned. Siegel replaced him on the firm’s two-person management committee with Seth Platt, but whether Platt then automatically becomes co-CEO alongside Lyons remains in dispute.

Hedge-fund titan’s $6.2B divorce could be third-biggest of all time: Truth behind bitter court battle [N.Y. Post]
If Laura Overdeck successfully wins the astronomical sum, the couple’s divorce would only fall behind those of Bill and Melinda Gates and Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott as the most expensive in US history…. Laura Overdeck is seeking a 35% piece of John’s stake in Two Sigma — which her lawyer pegs at $6.2 billion.

Suleiman Sami was working full-time as an IT employee. But he also had three side hustles: A transportation service, event ticket sales, and social media influencing.

His social media influencer work involved videos of athletes and celebrities. Sometimes he was in the videos and other times he was behind the camera.

Sami paid large sums of money during the tax years at issue (2019-21) to get in contact with celebrities. He paid thousands of dollars to attend events like the Grammy and Emmy award ceremonies and charity events like the Tiger Jam hosted by Tiger Woods. He also paid to meet movie stars like Benedict Cumberbatch, Matt Damon, and Mark Ruffalo. He also paid for a personalized video message from Chris Evans.

He paid to catch a pass from Tom Brady, which he fumbled (he later testified that he is not a Brady fan.) He also paid to catch a pass from Drew Brees that he caught.

Whenever Sami posted pictures of himself with celebrities, it generally garnered more attention on his social media feeds and gathered more views. The increased views can lead to shared advertising revenue. But during the years at issue, Sami did not generate income from his influencer activities although in later years he did.

Sami deducted these celebrity-related payments as marketing expenses on his tax returns. The IRS disagreed with the deductions, and his matter went before the U.S. Tax Court.

In the decision, the judge disallowed the celebrity-related deductions because she believed that the primary motive for the celebrity interaction were for personal purposes and charitable intent and not for business marketing. But she also noted that Sami did not initially claim or view the expenses as marketing ones and it is likely that he derived considerable personal status (i.e., “clout”) from being seen with famous people. Taking all of this into consideration, it was not enough to show that Sami’s expenditures were made with a business purpose.

To understand where the IRS objections and the court decision are coming from, note that both groups see a common situation where a full-time W-2 employee tries to reduce their taxable income by claiming what are seen (by the IRS and the court) as suspicious deductions. Usually this involves so-called independent distributors in multilevel-marketing operations.

Several other factors hurt Sami’s case. He did not keep good records despite having two accounting degrees. And his social media influencer business did not generate any income during the years at issue. This may make one wonder whether, but for the tax benefits, a reasonable person would spend three years investing his money this way.

Despite these shortcomings, the judge’s opinion seems to be overly restrictive. She acknowledged that there is a pay-to-play system to gain prominence in social media platforms. Influencers like Sami pay to be seen with celebrities, and they can later post their pictures and videos on social media platforms which can lead to more attention which can later turn into shared advertising revenue. Also, some of his marketing expenses include paying other people to promote his social media platforms and to sites where you pay to increase the number of followers on social media.

It appears that a number of people do this, and it seems to work. One recent infamous example involves the Tate brothers, who were arrested in Miami in July for sex offenses allegedly committed in the United Kingdom. British police are seeking to extradite the brothers, who hold citizenship in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The Tate brothers branded themselves as rich influencers who offered courses on how to become rich. They were routinely seen in luxury yachts, supercars, and expensive watches.

But the brothers’ lawyers say that their clients are not as rich as they claim to be. They said images of luxury yachts, supercars and expensive watches shared by the brothers online should not be taken as evidence of their wealth. “The outrageousness of the posts by them and about them is the point,” their lawyers said in court filings. “The more hyperbolic and outlandish the post, the more likely it will generate views and likes, which in turn generates income. In short, they are playing a role.”

While it seems deceptive, that’s how the social media monetization game works. If someone’s social media analytics shows being seen with celebrities increases their view and follower count which later turns into advertising revenue, then there is a business purpose for paying to be seen with celebrities, even if you enjoy the experience.

For those who plan to make money as an influencer, do not rely solely on social media posts for tax advice, even those from tax professionals. In most cases, the advice is not tailored specifically for you but for a large audience. Some of the outlandish “advice” given could get you into trouble. Instead, meet with a tax professional in person and discuss your plans, especially if you plan to claim an unusually large deduction on your tax return.

Second, keep good records. Use your phone to take photos of receipts or have them emailed to you. In addition to payment receipts, keep a copy of promotional and any other related materials that can show business purpose. This case is going to be the first of many where influencers or aspiring influencers will deduct costs of attending celebrity-related events and photo opportunities.

This is likely the first of many cases where federal and state tax agencies will challenge unusual deductions claimed by social media influencers. It would be prudent for the IRS to post guidance on social media sites although they won’t get many likes or constructive comments.

Steven Chung is a tax attorney in Los Angeles, California. He helps people with basic tax planning and resolve tax disputes. He is also sympathetic to people with large student loans. He can be reached via email at stevenchungatl@gmail.com. Or you can connect with him on Twitter (@stevenchung) and connect with him on LinkedIn.

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“The President has proven himself unfit for office, and a reckless and wanton threat to the Constitution that he pledged to preserve, protect, and defend,” the firms wrote.

Strong words. Principled, even.

But that was then, and that principled view of the rule of law has given way to the pursuit of cold, hard cash.

Because today, as Bloomberg Law reports, DLA Piper is defending Trump in the Jan. 6 cases — cases arising from the very attack the firm once described as a reckless and wanton threat to the Constitution. Partners Caryn Schechtman and Mike Walsh entered appearances last month as part of the Trump team fighting a lawsuit brought by Capitol police officers injured in the riot, along with a separate suit filed by members of Congress. Both cases allege Trump bears responsibility for his false election-rigging claims and agitating his supporters on the day of the attack… which is, more or less, exactly what DLA Piper itself said in 2021.

The firm, naturally, has a statement, and it is a piece of work.

“DLA Piper’s clients rely on our lawyers to help them navigate many of the world’s most complex legal matters,” it reads. “Providing exceptional legal counsel to clients that span the political spectrum is central to who we are as a global law firm.”

Ah, the political spectrum. On one end, the client whose worse fomented an attack on the Capitol. On the other end, the firm’s own 2021 letter demanding that same client be removed from office for those exact actions. Truly, DLA Piper contains multitudes.

The academics were less charitable. Scott Cummings, a UCLA law professor, put the sharpest point on it. DLA Piper’s turn toward Trump is “at best deeply hypocritical,” he said. “At worst, it suggests that these expressions of professional integrity in these critical moments may be not seriously grounded in commitments by the firms but rather a performance that’s consumed by the public.”

“It’s striking that a firm that had been so critical of Trump with regard to Jan. 6 would represent him,” Yale Law professor John Morley told Bloomberg, before getting to the part everyone is thinking. “There’s obviously a close connection between the president’s personal interests and political priorities. Firms that wish to gain sway with administration can potentially gain a lot from advising Trump personally.”

There it is — this isn’t a firm rediscovering its commitment to zealous advocacy for the unpopular client. Trump is the most powerful man in the country, and personally handling his lawsuits is a very direct way of getting on his good side, a good side that has spent the last year and a half handing out and withholding favors to Biglaw based on loyalty. The pro bono deals, the executive orders, the whole ecosystem of capitulation. Defending the man himself is just the premium tier.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1

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Below are seven things to know about the incident.

—The attack occurred on Tuesday, and Boston Scientific notified the public on Wednesday. The company hasn’t disclosed whether data was stolen or whether ransomware was involved.

—The incident has knocked out systems Boston Scientific relies on to fill and ship customer orders. The devicemaker said the outage is limiting access to global IT systems and apps tied to day-to-day operations, and it has not set a timeline for getting everything back online.

—It’s unclear how the hacker gained access. Boston Scientific hasn’t identified or disclosed who is behind the attack, and no group has claimed responsibility for it yet.

—The disclosure hit Boston Scientific’s stock hard. The company’s shares fell 5-6% post-cyberattack. This comes as Boston Scientific has already lost nearly half its value this year amid disappointing demand for its Watchman heart implant and a weaker profit outlook.

—The full scope of the attack, including its operational and financial impact, remains unknown. Boston Scientific hasn’t yet determined whether it’s likely to have a material effect on the business.

 —Boston Scientific activated its incident response plan and brought in third-party cybersecurity specialists to investigate and contain the threat. It also filed an 8k with the Securities and Exchange Commission and said it will continue to provide updates on its website when appropriate.

—Boston Scientific is now part of a growing list of medical device companies hit by major cyberattacks this year. In 2026, there have been similar incidents at Stryker, Medtronic and Abbott.

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While the prospect of gas being around $4 per gallon isn’t exactly thrilling, it could get a lot worse very quickly. Before Donald Trump launched his foolish war against Iran, more than 100 ships were traversing the Strait of Hormuz every day, toll-free. Now, it is more like five.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve has dropped to its lowest level since 1982 as America and some allies tap into oil reserves to try to stem the damage. This, obviously, cannot go on forever.

Best case scenario, Trump declares victory, pulls the U.S. military away from Iran with no real deal in place, and Iranian authorities impose new tolls that are not too draconian. Even in that scenario, refilling reserves will take time, and the only thing that will keep oil prices from spiking anew is not ideal: lack of demand.

Falling demand is already mostly responsible for keeping gas prices from rising even higher than they are. Declining demand for oil, though, is a classic sign of economic weakness. Low demand means fewer people traveling and spending money. While so far cuts in oil consumption have come mostly from the Middle East itself as well as the Asia-Pacific region, Americans will have to use less gas too to prevent prices from rising to $6 a gallon or more given current geopolitical conditions.

However, if Americans are using less gas, that means they are spending less money overall. Consumer spending is the main driver of the U.S. economy, accounting for about 70% of America’s gross domestic product. If consumers tighten their belts enough to keep gas prices down, that could drive us into a recession.

Of course, a worker will not have much of a choice about spending if that worker’s job is displaced by artificial intelligence. Should you believe the bloviation of the AI company CEOs, many of us need to watch our jobs in the months and years ahead.

Nobody really knows exactly how AI will affect the job market. More realistic estimates from sources other than the tech companies themselves indicate that very AI-exposed jobs will be most drastically impacted, while many others might see some changes yet largely retain their workforces.

Still, other than replacing humans’ jobs, not very many means of revenue generation on the table have a realistic shot of allowing big tech companies to recoup the tremendous amounts of money sunk into AI over the past few years. Right now, AI investment accounts for over a quarter of GDP growth, and a staggering 8% of total GDP — not much compared to consumer spending, yet a dangerously large chunk for a single industry, especially one that has never been profitable.

If AI does not prove profitable, 8% dropping out the bottom of our GDP would immediately throw us into a recession. If AI does prove profitable, that would mean so many jobs being lost that consumer spending would plummet and throw us into a recession.

With cheaper gas, Americans would have more money in their pockets, and perhaps consumer spending could power the economy a while longer. Under current global circumstances, though, cheaper gas is not coming from anywhere other than a weak economy. The economy will be significantly weakened if AI takes over a bunch of human jobs or if AI fails to become profitable and the massive sums being dumped into AI development and infrastructure dry up.

So, we can have cheap gas on plummeting demand because we are in a recession and lost our jobs. Or we can lose our jobs to AI, keep the economy growing with continued AI investment from the resultantly enriched tech companies, and have to deal with high gas prices despite underemployment. Or perhaps AI is mostly a flop, so we get to keep our jobs, but a big hole opens up in GDP as AI spending evaporates, pushing us into a recession.

None of these are good possibilities. But I guess you get what you vote for.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

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Kevin Warsh has a plan for the Fed. Scott Bessent is getting in the way [CNN]
That hands-off approach from Warsh was already facing perhaps insurmountable real-world obstacles because it’s almost impossible to get the market to stop obsessing over the next Fed move. And then Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent introduced a new wrinkle: a very hand-on approach in the Treasury market. His intervention in the bond market last week was widely viewed as an effort to put a lid on surging yields.
In other words, Bessent is fogging up the very same windshield Warsh was attempting to get a clear view from.

Fed’s Lisa Cook turns mortgage allegations back on Trump and his Cabinet [CNBC]
[Cook’s lawyer Abbe] Lowell also noted that Trump himself, along with others in his administration including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General Todd Blanche, have reportedly also listed multiple properties as primary residences in the past…. Attempting to fire Cook on the basis of Pulte’s allegations would be selective, Lowell added, and “would raise troubling questions about why President Trump is singling out Governor Cook.”

U.S. and Canada Are Bracing for Prolonged Trade Dispute [WSJ]
“The best thing to do is let some water run under the bridge and give everyone time and space to cool down,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, deputy director of the National Economic Council in Trump’s first term. “I don’t see any possibility of an off-ramp between now and September,” she said, adding, “Let’s see where things are in December.”

Wall Street Journal: Billionaire did not violate policies by using AI for op-ed [The Hill]
“There’s a reason I moved from an English major to being an economics major,” [Stanley Druckenmiller] told NOTUS. “I’m not embarrassed by it. … I write everything using AI now for the same reason I use a calculator when I do math problems.”
The Journal has not added a note to Druckenmiller’s piece stating he used AI to write it.

Dolly Parton Was a Trailblazer in Business, Too [NYT]
Over her six-decade singing and entertainment career, Ms. Parton built a range of enterprises that spanned retail, hospitality, food, publishing and consumer goods, long before the age of influencers and the products they now sell….
“She was so early,” [Coresight Research CEO Deborah] Weinswig said. “She was just Dolly Parton, as opposed to a celebrity-led brand that had a whole aura around it. She was just who she was, and didn’t bring a lot of drama into it.”

Many people tell me they want to write a book. Fewer actually write one. Fewer still stop before they begin and ask the question that probably matters most: Why do I want to do this?

If the answer is money, I would reconsider. Some authors make real money from books. Some authors turn one book into a career. But most nonfiction authors, particularly professionals writing in a niche, are not going to make enough from book sales to justify the hundreds of hours it takes to write, edit, publish, and promote a book. If you calculate your return by the hour, the math may be depressing.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write one. It means you should understand the return you are actually seeking. Maybe you have something useful to say. Maybe you have spent 20 years learning lessons that could save someone else 10 years. Maybe you want to establish yourself in a field, teach younger professionals, build credibility, open doors to speaking opportunities, or put your ideas into a form that lasts longer than a social media post. Those are all good reasons to write a book.

The book itself may not be the business. It may be a calling card, a credential, a conversation starter, or a contribution.

Before You Write, Understand Your Platform

In nonfiction publishing, you will hear the word “platform” a lot. Your platform is essentially your existing ability to reach the people who might buy and read your book. It is not limited to social media followers. It can include a LinkedIn audience, newsletter subscribers, podcast listeners, speaking engagements, association leadership, clients, professional networks, media appearances, prior publications, courses, or a recognized position in a particular industry.

Publishers care about platform because they are making a commercial bet. A terrific manuscript helps, but a publisher also wants to know who is going to buy it and how those readers will hear about it. If you already speak to 5,000 people at conferences each year, have 30,000 engaged followers, publish regularly in respected outlets, or lead an organization whose members are the natural audience for your book, you have reduced some of the publisher’s risk.

There is no magic follower number. Ten thousand people who actually care about your subject may be more valuable than 100,000 people who followed you for something unrelated. Engagement, credibility, access, and fit matter. The better question is not “How many followers do I need?” It is “Can I identify a meaningful audience that knows me, trusts me, and has a reason to care about this book?”

If your platform is small, start building it before the book comes out. Write articles. Speak. Post useful material. Appear on podcasts. Start a newsletter. Participate in the organizations that serve your intended readers. Do it because you have something to contribute, not because you are collecting human beings for a future sales funnel. A real platform is built on trust.

Traditional Publishing: What You Are Really Choosing

Traditional publishing generally means a publishing house acquires your book, pays for the publishing process, and handles editing, design, production, distribution, and at least some marketing. Depending on the deal, you may receive an advance against royalties and then royalties if sales exceed the advance.

The obvious advantages are credibility, professional infrastructure, broader distribution, and a team that knows how to turn a manuscript into a finished book. A recognized publisher can make it easier to get into bookstores, secure media attention, and place the book in channels an individual author can’t reach.

The tradeoffs are control, speed, and economics. Traditional publishing moves slowly. You may have less control over the title, cover, length, release date, pricing, and sometimes the substance. The publisher owns the commercial process. Your royalty on each copy will generally be much smaller than what you could retain through self-publishing.

And getting a traditional deal is not simply a matter of finishing a manuscript and emailing it to a publisher. For many nonfiction projects, the real first product is the book proposal.

The Literary Agent and the Book Proposal

Many major publishers do not want unsolicited submissions. They want literary agents to bring projects to them. An agent understands which editors are acquiring which types of books, how to position a project, how to negotiate a publishing agreement, and how to protect the author’s interests.

For a nonfiction book, you often approach agents with a proposal rather than a completed manuscript. A strong proposal typically explains the idea, the audience, why the book matters now, why you are the person to write it, competing or comparable books, your platform, your marketing reach, a chapter outline, and sample chapters.

That proposal forces you to answer questions you should answer anyway. Who is this for? What problem does it solve? Why will someone buy it instead of the 50 books already addressing the same general subject? What is your distinct point of view? How will readers find you?

Finding an agent requires research. Look for agents who represent nonfiction in your category. Review books similar to yours and see who represented the authors. Read agency submission guidelines and follow them. A generic blast to hundreds of agents is easy to send and easy to ignore. A thoughtful query showing that you understand an agent’s list is more work, but publishing has never been a business in which avoiding the work is a competitive advantage.

Rejection is part of the process. A rejection does not necessarily mean the book is bad. It can mean the timing is wrong, the category is crowded, the platform isn’t large enough, the agent doesn’t know the right editor for it, or the project doesn’t fit that agent’s list.

Self-Publishing Is Publishing — But You Become the Publisher

Self-publishing has changed dramatically. You can now produce a professional book, sell print and electronic editions, and reach readers around the world without persuading a traditional publishing house to acquire the project.

The advantages are significant. You control the content, title, cover, price, timing, updates, and marketing. You can move much faster. Your per-copy economics can be better. If your book serves a narrow professional audience that you already know how to reach, self-publishing can make enormous sense.

But “self-publishing” should not mean “I did everything myself.” Traditional publishers employ editors, copy editors, proofreaders, designers, production specialists, and marketers for a reason. If you self-publish, you are taking responsibility for assembling those functions. Hire a good editor. Have someone proofread the final text. Invest in a professional cover. Make the interior look like a real book. A reader should not be able to identify your publishing model from the quality of the finished product.

The biggest danger in self-publishing is that no gatekeeper will tell you the book isn’t ready. Freedom is useful. So is friction. Create your own quality-control process.

Which Path Should You Choose?

Your goal should drive the decision. If your dream is national bookstore distribution, major media, and the validation and infrastructure of an established publishing house, pursuing an agent and traditional publisher may be worth the time and rejection that come with it.

If your goal is to get a highly specialized book into the hands of clients, colleagues, conference attendees, students, or members of your profession, self-publishing may be faster and more rational. If you already have direct access to the people most likely to read the book, you may not need a publisher to build a bridge you already possess.

Independent and hybrid publishers also occupy territory between the two models. The arrangements vary widely. Some provide valuable editorial and production services. Others are essentially expensive service packages wrapped in the language of traditional publishing. Read the agreement. Understand who pays whom, who owns the rights, what services are actually included, how distribution works, and what happens if you want your rights back.

Do not choose a publishing model because one sounds more prestigious at a cocktail party. Choose the one that best serves the book and the reason you wrote it.

Write the Book Only You Can Write

The market doesn’t need another generic book that anyone could have written. Your advantage is your experience, your point of view, your stories, your mistakes, your observations, and the conclusions you reached after doing the work.

That does not mean the book has to be about you. Usually it should not be. The reader should remain at the center. Your experiences matter only insofar as they help the reader understand something, avoid something, accomplish something, or see something differently.

Before writing 60,000 words, be able to explain the book in a few sentences. Identify the reader. Identify what that reader wants or needs. Identify what will be different after the reader finishes the book. Then build the chapters around that promise.

And finish it. The publishing world is filled with people who are “working on a book.” At some point, you have to stop talking about being an author and sit down long enough, often enough, to become one.

The Book Is the Beginning, Not the End

Whether you traditionally publish or self-publish, you will probably have to promote the book. Publishers can help, but authors should not assume that a publishing contract comes with an unlimited marketing machine. You may still write articles, appear on podcasts, speak at conferences, post online, contact organizations, and introduce the book to the communities most likely to benefit from it.

That is another reason your motivation matters. If you wrote the book because you care about the subject, promotion feels less like asking strangers to buy something and more like continuing the conversation that caused you to write it.

A book can travel farther than you do. It can reach someone you will never meet. It can sit on a shelf for years and become useful at exactly the moment someone needs it. It can establish an idea, preserve what you learned, and create opportunities you could not predict when you wrote the first page.

Very few of us are going to get rich writing nonfiction books. That is fine. Money is only one measure of return. If you have something worth saying, know who you want to say it to, and are willing to do the work to say it well, publishing a book can still be one of the most worthwhile professional projects you undertake.

Frank Ramos is a partner at Goldberg Segalla in Miami, where he practices commercial litigation, products, and catastrophic personal injury. You can follow him on LinkedIn, where he has about 80,000 followers.

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Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter is reportedly the frontrunner for Blanche’s old job, according to Bloomberg Law, with strong backing from some in the White House and the support of Trump gadfly Boris Epshteyn. There’s just one catch: McCotter was one of the principal architects of the $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund. You know, the slush fund that caused Sens. Cornyn and Tillis to drag their feet on getting Blanche’s nom out of committee? Recall a federal judge found the slush fund was “akin to a fraud on the court,” and that Blanche had to formally rescind in writing (not that it’s worth more than the paper it is written on) just to get the AG role.

Are Republicans really ready for another news cycle that heavily features the phrase “Trump slush fund”?

But don’t worry! That’s not McCotter’s only baggage! After being elevated to Principal Associate DAG in April, McCotter intervened to dismiss DOJ’s blockbuster fraud charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani — charges that had been built over years by career prosecutors. A federal judge approved the dismissal on August 11 while taking the unusual step of criticizing McCotter’s justification directly, finding it contained a “baseless assertion” that was “unbecoming of his office.” That is not a great line to have in your file when you’re auditioning for the number two job at the DOJ.

All this is messy AF headed into a contentious election season, and some are questioning if it’s worth it. Other contenders for the role include Colin McDonald, who runs the newly created DOJ fraud division and has a closer relationship with Blanche; Harmeet Dhillon, who has had an interesting record at the Civil Rights division, is actively lobbying for the nomination but is considered nonviable by DOJ leadership; Stanley Woodward who, you may recall, filed a wildly inappropriate response to Judge Brinkema claiming she was violating separation of powers by asking for a sworn declaration, but who isn’t inclined to leave his current role; and Bill Essayli, the Los Angeles First Assistant U.S. Attorney, who has fans in the White House but a “polarizing” and “partisan” record that could complicate confirmation.

But finding a qualified and confirmable DAG that actually wants to serve in this administration is not the easiest thing. Blanche only got confirmed by the slimmest of margins, but he’s arguably the closest thing the administration could find to someone who fit the traditional profile while also being in Trump’s inner circle. Finding his replacement is going to be harder.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1

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Now, Wood Smith is not Wachtell, it is not a white-shoe name with a marquee M&A practice. By revenue — $244 million last year — Wood Smith sits just outside Biglaw proper, though with 500-plus lawyers it is nobody’s boutique. It is a high-volume insurance-defense shop, which is to say exactly the kind of commodity, repeat-business practice private equity has been circling, because the work is predictable and, crucially, sticky. As an M&A adviser predicted back in May, the early PE/law firms deals would come from a firm with a smaller cap table and founders still active and ready to cash out.

The mechanism of the deal is a management services organization, the structure that lets an investor own the billing, the software, and the back office while the lawyers keep control of the law part of the firm. The deal’s reported price tag, $700 million, works out to about 18 times the firm’s adjusted EBITDA of $38.2 million.

None of this means private equity has taken over Biglaw. It hasn’t, and the marquee partnerships are still not ready to hand over the keys. But the industry knows how to read a weathervane, and Wood Smith is a good one… anyone trying to read which way the wind is blowing just got the clearest data point so far.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1

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Target receives almost $1 billion in tariff refunds, plans to lower prices [Modern Retail]

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Longer-dated Treasury yields rise as Bessent’s bond buyback rally fizzles out [CNBC]
“The rise in bond yields and the Treasury’s purchases all set the stage for what will be a very important Jackson Hole speech next week, which gives Warsh the opportunity to talk to markets, which are in need of more clarity on the central bank’s plans,” said Paul Stanley, Arca managing director and founding advisor.
“It seems as though Warsh wants the market to do the tightening for the Fed, and that’s really what is happening with the recent surge in bond yields,” he added.

Private-Equity Firms Look for an Exit Three Years After Buying EverBank [WSJ]
The bank, the sponsor of the Jacksonville Jaguars stadium and brand partner of quarterback Trevor Lawrence, could pursue an initial public offering if it isn’t able to reach a deal to sell itself…. The five firms struggled to form a cohesive strategy at EverBank, leading to tension between the owners and inside the boardroom….

Two Binance Employees Detained in the U.A.E. Amid Police Inquiries [NYT]
The two Binance employees were stopped at airports in the Emirates, said two of the people with knowledge of the situation, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive legal issue. One of the employees was a midlevel staff member who was traveling through the Emirati city of Sharjah this month when he was stopped, taken to a police station and held overnight, the people said. A third Binance official, a leader of the company’s Dubai-based subsidiary, was questioned at a police station in July.

Morgan Stanley picks Dallas for expansion outside NYC [N.Y. Post]
The financial giant plans to relocate up to 4,800 jobs to the state by 2031, passing over Alpharetta, Georgia…. The Wall Street behemoth led by CEO Ted Pick — which began exploring options outside the Big Apple earlier this year following the election of the Big Apple’s socialist mayor — had been weighing the new regional hub against Alpharetta, where it already has 3,000 employees.

Victor Niederhoffer, Trader Who Went Boom and Bust (Twice), Dies at 82 [NYT]
In an industry of big personalities, Mr. Niederhoffer outperformed in eccentricity. He wore mismatched sneakers on the squash court, ordered dessert before dinner, browsed bookstores in his socks and read just one newspaper, The National Enquirer…. To some Wall Street observers, Mr. Niederhoffer appeared harebrained and reckless. But as his yearly returns soared to 30 percent and higher, big-name investors, including George Soros, began sending him their cash.

“There is no serious dispute that an objective viewer of Comey’s post could read it to mean ‘Kill President Trump.'”

Are they fucking for real with this one? There’s literally nothing but dispute over the meaning of the phrase. This case is generating explainers, dictionary usage notes, and active federal litigation. Plus a federal judge has ALREADY RULED that “86 47” doesn’t mean a violent threat against Trump!

While the seashell case was pending, a progressive group called Accountability NOW USA flew an “86 47” flag at a permitted, round-the-clock anti-Trump demonstration on Constitution Avenue. The Secret Service opened an investigation, the National Park Service threatened to revoke the group’s permit, and when the group sued, DOJ lawyers marched into court armed with a sworn declaration from a Secret Service deputy director insisting the phrase would be perceived as a potential threat against the president. Sound familiar?

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss was unmoved. He granted a temporary restraining order on June 1, then made it a permanent injunction on June 29, holding that the flag — like the signs flying beside it — was “core protected speech.” He found it “difficult to fathom” that a reasonable observer would read the flag as a true threat, and pointed out that the government had produced no evidentiary basis whatsoever for the claim that the phrase endangered anyone.

Sure, Judge Moss’s ruling isn’t binding in a precedent sense, but it sure as shit undermines the government argument that there’s “no serious dispute” over the meaning of “86 47.” A sitting federal judge weighing the identical phrase, hearing the government’s identical argument, and rejecting it in a written opinion is, definitionally, a serious dispute. You cannot lose this argument in front of an Article III judge in June and declare it indisputable in August.

It gets worse when you notice who isn’t being prosecuted. The slogan is plastered across protest flags, yard signs, and an ocean of merch, and the DOJ has charged exactly one human being over it, and SHOCKER! it’s the one Donald Trump has spent the better part of a decade demanding be jailed. Asked point-blank whether the department would start prosecuting everyone who posts “86 47,” acting AG Todd Blanche allowed that “every case is different.” Which is a roundabout way of admitting the phrase is ordinary political speech… except, apparently, when Comey is the one posting it.

Listen, the charges live or die on whether a numeric phrase in a beach photo is a “true threat,” a question of definitions, connotation, and plain reading comprehension. It is, at its core, a semantics case. And the government has now demonstrated, in a filing, that it cannot accurately describe the state of a semantic dispute unfolding in dictionaries, in courtrooms, and on a flag a mile from Main Justice.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1

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However, the Republican candidate for Minnesota’s open U.S. Senate seat doesn’t think I should be proud of where I’m from. Here’s her full quote that she had the courage to voice on Fox News so that I can’t be accused of failing to include context:

Minnesotans are exhausted, and John, quite frankly, they’re embarrassed. I have talked to hundreds of voters in Minnesota who have told me, ‘Gosh, I went on vacation this summer. I didn’t want to tell people where I was from because it’s embarrassing.’ And it’s true.

Now, I suppose she was technically alleging that it wasn’t her saying this directly, it was hundreds of Minnesota voters who thought it was embarrassing to be from Minnesota because of its progressivism. But this is just the same “many people are saying” crap that Trump is always pulling to put just a little distance between himself and his most heinous statements. Anyhow, then she stated right after that that she thought it was true, thereby ruining this tactic for herself.

Well, I think I speak for thousands of Minnesota voters when I say, “F*ck right off, Michele Tafoya.” With this kind of political savvy, it’s a small wonder she managed to win the GOP primary (though My Pillow guy says the GOP primary election was rigged, so who knows?).

Nobody has ever heard of Tafoya, yet we’ve entered an era in which being essentially unknown barely trumps being well known as an unhinged lunatic. Now Minnesota voters are getting to know her, though, and it’s not much of a prettier picture than Mike Lindell.

Going onto a vile propaganda network to belittle the sacrifices made by Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and the thousands of brave Minnesotans who, unlike Good and Pretti, escaped with their lives while resisting ICE’s 2026 siege of Minnesota is a profoundly stupid move politically. Huge majorities of Minnesota voters think these shootings — these murders — at the hands of federal agents were unjustified. The agents responsible have since been spirited away by the federal government and are yet to face any legal consequences whatsoever.

Unfortunately, my hometown of Long Prairie is filled with some of the dumbest voters in the state. They backed one of Tafoya’s competitors in the Senate primary (and overwhelmingly backed another losing horse by choosing the My Pillow guy to run for governor). Look, some people are a little slow, God bless ‘em.

One thing the Republicans of Long Prairie are not, though, is world travelers. Were hundreds of Minnesotans really going on all these out-of-state vacations over the summer, really being embarrassed about being from Minnesota, and then really telling Michele Tafoya the truth about it? Let me answer my own question with another question: Have you ever known an ardent MAGA supporter to be outwardly embarrassed about anything whatsoever?

I obviously can’t speak for all Minnesotans (only the sensible ones), but I can say that in the past 12 months, in addition to within Minnesota itself, I have traveled to Wisconsin, New York, North Dakota, Michigan, Washington, D.C., Poland, and Ukraine. Whenever it came up, I was not embarrassed in the least to tell people where I was from. On the country: I was very proud.

Republicans always say, “Love it or leave it,” when it comes to the United States of America. But most countries are just as reticent to accept immigrants as ours is, and in addition to that, there are all kinds of other barriers in the way of moving permanently to another country.

It’s much easier to move to another state though! If you’re embarrassed to be Minnesotan, I’m happy to report that there are two underpopulated Dakotas right at our western border, either of which would be happy to accept a few more right-wing dimwits.

Minnesota was the very first state to offer volunteer troops to fight for United States during the Civil War. Minnesota was the first governmental entity in America to offer any kind of subsidized housing when it spent $88,285.31 (about $3.5 million in today’s dollars at a time when housing was much more affordable than it is today) to build simple frame houses for those who’d lost their homes to the Great Hinckley Fire of 1894. Minnesota was the only state to vote for the Democrat over the protofascist Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. While its history is replete with instances of horrible things being done to native people like almost everywhere in America, at least Minnesota is giving some land back to the tribes these days, in addition to how it’s going to make history for American Indians when Peggy Flanagan mops the floor with Tafoya in November’s election.

You can vote Republican and still be a Minnesotan. You can’t be ashamed to be a Minnesotan, ignorant of its entire history, flying its old, long-since replaced flag, and a bootlicking MAGA zombie and still be a Minnesotan, at least not a real one. Seriously: the Dakotas are both right next door.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

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This year, we’ve finally had some peace and quiet! Against all odds, Dershowitz has fallen silent about his resort town travails, allowing us to all go happily about our lives without this manufactured drama.

So The Atlantic decided to go stir some up.

The magazine dispatched Mark Leibovich to the porch of the Chilmark General Store to eat pizza and listen to Dershowitz recount the woes of an overexposed law professor trapped in his personal pity party. Along the way, the pair chatted about the Larry David fight, unverified tales of harassment, and Jeffrey Epstein. A whole lot of Jeffrey Epstein. The flights, the massage, the island trip.

Funny… the House Oversight Committee has been trying to have this exact conversation for months. That’s when Dershowitz — who is canceled and silenced, don’t you know? — appeared on NewsNation to declare that he remains “very proud” of his role representing Epstein and is “prepared to testify about everything,” adding, “I will personally not invoke privilege. I have nothing to hide.” As soon as Congress took him up on that offer, Dershowitz balked.

Maybe instead of irate letters, Rep. James Comer should come up for a slice at the General Store!

“I never thought I would see McCarthyism come to Martha’s Vineyard,” Dershowitz wrote in The Hill in 2018, comparing the federal government destroying people’s careers and Roy Cohn sending the Rosenbergs to the electric chair to a neighbor not selling him a fucking pierogi. At least we know that guy didn’t sell Dershowitz a pierogi. The professor’s other claims don’t hold up as well to scrutiny. The book festival that supposedly blackballed his work says his claim is “completely false.” The restaurateur everyone’s supposedly pressuring to ban him refused to comment on it. Epstein victim lawyer Chuck Cooper is described as having privately told the professor that he knew Dershowitz could never have done anything — “This event that he’s reporting and this comment that he’s attributing to me are both categorically untrue,” Cooper told Leibovich.

Dershowitz claims a lot of the backlash is over his support for the Israeli government, though the article notes the ostracism he complains about predates the global attention on Gaza. Most of the disdain centers on Dershowitz’s work for two clients in particular: Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

It was his work for Trump that got Larry David yelling at him. It was his Epstein work that motivated an unknown heckler to allegedly mock him outside the Chilmark store. Dershowitz’s “stock explanation was that everyone is entitled to legal representation,” the article notes. That’s why he represented Trump and Epstein and O.J. and Claus von Bülow.

It’s like Gideon, but for the 1 percent.

That’s the problem with the “everyone is entitled to a lawyer” excuse. It may be true, but everyone isn’t entitled to you as a lawyer. And when the clients at issue have millions and millions in the bank, choosing to represent them isn’t a noble sacrifice for the sanctity of the profession, it’s a business decision. Stow the moralizing over any representation that involves the client giving you private jets to attend meetings.

Moreover, Dershowitz’s work for Trump and Epstein sound in a different register than a run-of-the-mill representation. He’s recast himself as token disaffected Democrat, a stock character in the Kabuki theater of right-wing media, trotted out to repeat Republican talking points ensconced in the authority of having at some point been a “lifelong Democrat.” Dershowitz also hasn’t spent years jumping in front of microphones to wax philosophic about O.J.’s innocence, but he does declare to the press that the non-prosecution deal he helped secure for Epstein should have been more lenient. The “everyone is entitled to a lawyer” act lands much better when coupled with critical distance.

Zealous advocacy has a terminal point when the case ends. Dershowitz has used these representations to push his personal brand as a lapsed Democrat to hawk books like “Why I Quit the Dems: And So Should You!” and provide intellectual cover for op-eds like “Statutory Rape Is an Outdated Concept.” His trick is to bootstrap his personal advocacy to his legal work so he can reject any criticism with a sanctimonious lecture on the right to counsel.

The people of Martha’s Vineyard just got tired of it.

But, the article reports, part of the reason we’re not hearing as much about Dershowitz’s exile is that he’s making new friends! He spent a recent evening at a Chabad function hosted by Paul Singer, the hedge fund billionaire you might remember for flying Sam Alito to Alaska on a private jet to go fishing as his legal interests headed toward the Supreme Court. The justice did not recuse himself in that case. Alito, for his part, said he barely knows Singer — a claim complicated by an Above the Law report way back in 2009 where Alito’s “personal friend” Singer introduced the justice at a Federalist Society event.

Alas, the long national nightmare of Dershowitz’s Martha’s Vineyard complaints might finally be behind us. At least until another magazine decides to buy him a slice.

Alan Dershowitz Won’t Forget What Larry David Did to Him [The Atlantic]

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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While the custom-made Luce was estimated to sell for $1.1 million by the auction house RM Sotheby’s, the winning bid ended up being $40 million. All the sale proceeds would go to a 501(c)(3) charity, specifically the Ferrari Foundation.

To put that $40 million into perspective, the legendary McLaren F1 — considered to be one of the greatest sports cars of the 20th century — sold at the same auction for more than $34.6 million. This model is notable for being owned for more than two decades by Pink Floyd drummer and noted collector Nick Mason.

So who paid this astronomical amount? It was Herbert “Herbie” Wertheim, a self-made billionaire inventor, investor, and philanthropist. Wertheim built his fortune through Brain Power Inc. and decades of stock market investing. He is also known for pioneering ultraviolet-light-absorbing technology for eyeglass lenses.

Wertheim also purchased a one-of-one Ferrari Daytona SP3 Tailor Made for $26 million at RM Sotheby’s Monterey auction in 2025. That car was likewise sold for the benefit of The Ferrari Foundation.

Earlier this year, Wertheim also paid $2 million at a charity event for a private visit with President Donald Trump at the White House. The proceeds benefited educational scholarships for children of Palm Beach police officers and firefighters.

There was speculation and numerous conspiracy theories as to why Wertheim would pay so much for a car that had an MSRP of $640,000. Many thought that it was a way to get into Ferrari’s good graces and get an allocation for one of their limited-edition supercars like the F40, Enzo, and the LaFerrari.

But many also thought that the purchase is a large tax write off since all of the sales proceeds would go to charity. But can he really take a $40 million tax deduction after purchasing a Ferrari?

According to IRS rules, if you donate to a 501(c)(3) charity and get a good or service in return, you can only deduct the difference between the price you paid and the fair market value (FMV) of the good or service received. So what is the FMV of the Ferrari Luce? Is it the MSRP of $640,000? The $1.1 million expected auction winning price? Or the $40 million that Wertheim paid?

The Treasury Regulations provides some guidance on this issue. According to Section 1.170A-1(c)(2), the FMV of a contribution of property is the price at which the property would change hands between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither being under any compulsion to buy or sell and both having reasonable knowledge of relevant facts. This definition matches the general definition of FMV.

But Section 1.170A-1(h) which specifically discusses payments in exchange for consideration has a special rule that allows a donor to rely on the charity’s written valuation made in good faith to determine the FMV of a good or service unless there is reason to know that the estimate is unreasonable. In fact, the regulation provides an example where a taxpayer can rely on a written good faith estimate provided at auction as the FMV.

In this case, RM Sotheby’s presale estimate was $1.1 million for the bespoke Luce. This estimate is made in good faith and does not seem unreasonable considering the Luce’s MSRP of $640,000 and its disappointing public reaction. If this is the case, Wertheim could potentially take a $38.9 million tax write-off based on the Internal Revenue Service’s own regulations.

The tax rules impose additional substantiation and deduction limitations, and the charity’s documentation matters. For a payment of this size, the donor would need appropriate written acknowledgment and other supporting documentation. The IRS also requires additional reporting for large noncash charitable contributions in circumstances where applicable.

The IRS may have a problem with a billionaire claiming a large charitable deduction after purchasing a Ferrari and may try to argue that the good faith rule should not apply either because the requirements of the good faith estimate rule are not met or that the estimate is unreasonable. If that is the case, then the general definition of FMV should apply and there will be a valuation issue as to whether someone would buy a custom made Ferrari Luce for $40 million considering its middling popularity, relatively modest MSRP and the value of getting closer to Ferrari’s limited allocation list.

While most people will not purchase a Ferrari for $40 million anytime soon, they may one day make a large donation to a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and receive something valuable in return. If they want to calculate how much of the donation they can write on their tax returns, they should obtain a written statement from the organization on the value of the item received. And when they do, determine whether their valuation is reasonable.

Steven Chung is a tax attorney in Los Angeles, California. He helps people with basic tax planning and resolve tax disputes. He is also sympathetic to people with large student loans. He can be reached via email at stevenchungatl@gmail.com. Or you can connect with him on Twitter (@stevenchung) and connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Stripe to buy OpenRouter as fintech expands deeper into AI [CNBC]
The price tag is about $7.5 billion, with $1.5 billion allocated to OpenRouter’s founders. Less than three months ago OpenRouter raised $113 million at a valuation of about $1.3 billion…. Stripe has become one of the most valuable startups in the world, with a valuation of close to $160 billion as of earlier this year, thanks mostly to its online payment technology that’s become ubiquitous in many markets. Last year it bolstered its exposure to crypto with the $1.1 billion acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge.

Crypto Stocks Continue to Surge After Upbeat White House Meeting [WSJ]
In a White House meeting with industry executives, Trump urged Congress to pass the Clarity Act, which is currently stalled amid disagreement over ethics language.

California Draws More Startup Investment Than All Other 49 States Combined [WSJ via Yahoo!]
Companies based in the Golden State have drawn around $366 billion of venture capital since the beginning of the year, according to data provider PitchBook. That's more than three times the amount of venture funding that has gone into the other 49 states combined, and nearly double California's previous record, set in 2025. New York state ranks a distant second in venture-capital investment, with $27 billion in deals announced so far this year.

Two Sigma Lost a ‘Major Investor’ Over Co-Founders’ Feud [Bloomberg]
[John] Overdeck described the fallout from the men’s clash Wednesday while he was testifying concerning another major split in his life — his divorce from wife Laura Overdeck…. “If the investors become aware that there are disclosable disputes or arbitration among the partners, it gives them reason to question whether the company will be able to conduct itself in the way they’ve expected it to,” Overdeck said on the stand. “I am concerned large investors of the company would consider reducing their investments with the company.”

NJ billionaire had cops called on him by girlfriend while fighting $6.2 billion divorce case: report [N.Y. Post]
Cops were summoned at least eight times to the 6,000-square-foot estate in Short Hills that the Two Sigma founder once shared with his estranged wife, Laura Overdeck…. Many of the 911 calls to the home — which took place between April 2023 and June 2024 — involve an unnamed paramour whom John Overdeck told cops he was seeing, the report states.
Charges were never filed in any of the incidents….

The Lurid Lawsuit, Salami Scandal and Trash-Can Thief Vexing JPMorgan’s PR Department [WSJ]
A woman who dumped out and walked off with a special-edition Knicks trash can in broad daylight. An investment banker whose lawsuit alleged sexual harassment by a former colleague in excruciating detail. A startup founder who expensed “cellulite butter” to the bank during her trial for defrauding the bank.

Big Banks Ace an Easier Annual Stress Test [WSJ]
Big banks responded with buybacks and dividend hikes, with JPMorgan saying it would repurchase $50 billion in shares and Morgan Stanley saying it planned to repurchase $20 billion worth…. The results won’t come as a surprise. Acting under legal pressure, the Fed in late 2024 said it would begin releasing the scenarios and the models they use to calculate how well banks fare in any given hypothetical. Critics of the move have accused the Fed of giving away the answers to its own test before it happens.

SEC Pressed To Curtail Hedge Fund, VC Reporting Rules [Law360]
Venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and Ropes & Gray LLP are urging the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission to rewrite the definition of “hedge fund” before putting into place proposed regulations on what those funds have to disclose about their holdings.

M.B.A. Pay Is Drifting Down—and So Is Demand for the Degree [WSJ]
Tim Westerbeck, co-chairman of the higher-education consulting firm Eduvantis, said the M.B.A. was built for graduates to get a foothold in consulting and finance with analyst jobs—the very positions that AI is structurally absorbing. When even the top 20% of M.B.A. graduates can’t find the type of roles they want, the market for their degrees is changing in a permanent way.

At This Private-Credit Fund, Exits Have Been Restricted for Four Years and Counting [WSJ]
One wealth manager estimates it could take six more years to get all his clients’ money out of the fund, which specializes in a niche corner of the private-credit world.

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Now there’s a new chair at the once-venerable Biglaw shop. And though the Trumpian deal was widely panned by those in the legal industry that was not the undoing of former chair Brad Karp. No, it was his repeated appearances in the Epstein files which revealed a much cozier relationship with the infamous pedophile than previously known. Now at the helm of Paul, Weiss is mergers & acquisitions partner Scott Barshay, who Karp crowed about wooing over from Cravath in 2016.

Barshay was reportedly a major internal cheerleader of the Trump deal, dressing up the cowardice as pragmatism. But as Above the Law readers know, that decision ruffled feathers and sent litigators packing. And more may be headed for the exits. As the Wall Street Journal reports, additional litigation partners are currently in talks to leave, while Barshay has been crisscrossing the country trying to reassure the troops that everything is totally fine, nothing to see here, please stop updating your LinkedIn.

Barshay has been steadily reshaping Paul, Weiss (pushing for the changes even before he took over as Chair) into something that looks a lot more like a hyper-corporatized profit machine than the legacy institution many of the partners thought they signed up for. The partner compensation system has been revamped to throw eye-watering sums at rainmakers. Associate staffing is now more tightly controlled, ending the firm’s generalist model and limiting who gets to work with whom in the name of client consistency. The firm’s partner meetings are reportedly more “subdued,” which is a nice way of saying the personality has been sanded down to corporate beige. And Barshay’s push to make the firm apolitical has sealed the transition from “litigation powerhouse with a conscience” to “M&A juggernaut with a carefully managed personality.”

But here’s the part that makes all of this deliciously complicated — the numbers are good. Like, really good. Revenue is up (23.8% to $3.26 billion) and profits per equity partner are up (14.5%). The money is flowing, and in Biglaw, that tends to function as the ultimate sedative. Barshay’s changes are working in a purely financial sense, but at some point, the people who came for something more than just a paycheck are going to look around and realize they’re working at a place they barely recognize.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.

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If you were to closely scrutinize a U.S. banknote, however, right now you would come across two signatures: those of the Treasury Secretary and the Treasurer. If you have bills printed far enough back in time, you could compare the relatively legible signatures of some of the more recent holders of those offices, and the inscrutable scribbles of others.

It has been this way for 165 years. Yet, despite how he claims to care so deeply about history and tradition whenever he’s attempting to preserve a statue of some racist he just learned about the existence of, President Trump does not actually give one sh*t about history, tradition, or good taste.

In yet another unprecedented (some might say demented) move intended to fan the dictatorial flames of a sitting president’s massive ego, Trump’s jagged, thirsty signature is going to adorn U.S. paper currency. The Treasury Department also intends to drop the signature of the U.S. Treasurer, a first since greenbacks were originally introduced in 1861.

Trump, while he does still head an ever-shrinking cult of irrationally devoted supporters, is probably the most loathed president in United States history. Some outraged citizens claim that they will refuse to use any paper currency bearing Trump’s signature.

Personally, I believe large-scale resistance to Trump-signed paper money is going to take a different form. Remember when he slapped his disgusting glowering mug on this year’s annual National Parks passes right next to a portrait of George Washington like a total f*cking lunatic? Well, it took no time at all for people to start distributing custom stickers fit to go right over Trump’s stupid face, or to just color over it with a Sharpie. The Trump administration then scrambled to try to force the hardworking NPS rangers it had treated like a mass of human garbage during its DOGE campaign to disallow people who’d already paid for their passes from using them to get into National Parks if they’d covered the Trump photo.

Well, the Trump picture on the National Parks pass went over like a fart in church, and it seems to me that the Trump signature on paper money is even more ill-conceived. How long do you think it’s going to take for someone to start selling a desktop stamp that allows a person to stamp every single Trump-signed bill they come across to read “Donald J. Trump protects pedophiles” in his own dopey handwriting so it looks like he wrote it himself?

I should note that anyone who “mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates” a banknote with intent to render it unfit for reissue (the intent part’s important) commits a crime, and I am certainly not advocating for anyone to do anything like that. That being said, it actually isn’t against the law to harmlessly write, draw, or doodle in a small space on your paper currency as long as you’re not putting an advertisement on it. Plus, unlike with a National Parks pass that is issued to and tied to an individual person, cash changes hands a lot. It would be very easy for anyone with a modified bill to claim it came to them that way in a legitimate cash transaction.

The possibilities are endless, and I frankly can’t wait to see what people come up with. The first Trump-signed hundred dollar bills are supposedly going to be printed in June, with other denominations to follow, though keep in mind that his ballroom is still a crater in the ground where the East Wing of the White House used to be, Iran is far from fully defeated, and we’re still waiting on that wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for in his first term.

Folks, Trump turns 80 in June, just in time for his new $100 bills to drop. Hard to believe though it is, everything is only going to keep getting even stupider from here. Hopefully at least we can all get a few lolz out of this one.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

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But assistant attorney general Patrick Davis wrote to the committee to “kindly ask that you confirm that the subpoena is withdrawn,” and that the DOJ “continues to believe that additional compulsory process is unnecessary in light of our demonstrated willingness to voluntarily assist your oversight efforts.” And a spokesperson for the Department said, “Because of the leadership transition at the Department, the subpoena no longer applies.”

Which, I guess if you never ask the answer is always no. But, let’s be so fucking for real right now, that argument is about as persuasive as a toddler claiming bedtime “no longer applies” because they changed into different pajamas. Unsurprisingly, the committee is not buying what DOJ is selling at the clearance rack of accountability — they’ve already confirmed they’ll reach out to her personal attorney. “The Department of Justice has stated Pam Bondi will not appear on April 14 for a deposition since she is no longer Attorney General and was subpoenaed in her capacity as Attorney General,” a spokeswoman for Oversight Republicans said in a statement. “The Committee will contact Pam Bondi’s personal counsel to discuss next steps regarding scheduling her deposition.”

Plus the committee has already heard testimony from, ahem, former Attorney General Bill Barr, proving that “ex-A.G.” is not, in fact, a cloak of invisibility. And top Democrat on the committee Rep. Richard Garcia made it clear he’s not going to let this go. “She must come in to testify immediately, and if she defies the subpoena, we will begin contempt charges in the Congress,” he said. “The survivors deserve justice.” Rep. James Walkinshaw noted the subpoena “did not become null and void when she was fired.”

Republican Nancy Mace also had strong words for the flimsy excuse. “Leaving office doesn’t mean you get to dodge accountability,” Mace said in a statement. “Pam Bondi was subpoenaed by name, not by title, and because the DOJ stonewalled Congress and refused to follow the law, she needs to appear before the Oversight Committee and answer for it.”

“She promised she would comply,” she said. “April 14 is her chance to prove it. Chairman Comer must make one thing clear: show up or face contempt.”

The committee sure looks like they’re ready to go all in to show Bondi you can’t ghost Congress like a bad Hinge date.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.

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“What has been agreed to, what’s been stated, is the Strait [of Hormuz] is open,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters yesterday morning. “Our military is watching. Sure their military is watching. But commerce will flow. And that’s what you saw the markets react to.”

Regardless of whether Tehran and Washington sustain this ceasefire and hammer out a long-term agreement, Hegseth said a host of US military objections have been accomplished over the past five-and-a-half weeks, calling it a “decisive military victory.”

“America’s military achieved every single objective, on plan, on schedule, exactly as laid out from day one. Iran’s Navy is at the bottom of the sea,” Hegseth told reporters this morning.

“Iran’s Air Force has been wiped out,” he later added. “Iran no longer has … any sort of a comprehensive air defense system. We own their skies. Their missile program is functionally destroyed. Launchers, production facilities and existing stockpiles depleted and decimated and almost completely ineffective.”

Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine provided additional context on just what damage the Pentagon believes it has inflicted on Iran’s defenses. Internal analysis, the four-star general explained, estimated during Operation Epic Fury the US struck 13,000 targets and 1,700 ballistic missiles were intercepted by US forces and Gulf partners. Approximately 80 percent of Iran’s air defense systems were destroyed, he added, along with 90 percent of the “regular” fleet of maritime vessels (not the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and 95 percent of their naval mines.

And when it comes to Tehran’s defense industrial base, Caine said, the Pentagon believes that it has either damaged or destroyed 20 naval production and fabrication, nearly 80 percent of Iran’s nuclear industrial base, and 80 percent of their missile facilities.

“We’ve destroyed Iran’s defense industrial base, their ability to reconstitute those capabilities for years to come,” he told reporters. “We attacked, along with our partners, approximately 90 percent of their weapons factories. Every factory that produced Shahed one-way attack drones was struck. Every factory that produces the guidance systems that go into those drones was struck. Their missile defense industrial base is shattered.”

Despite US claims of military success, Iran has continued to have the ability to strike targets across the region including a petrochemical complex in Saudi Arabia this week, and an F-15E fighter last week.

Regardless, Hegseth’s comments about the delicate ceasefire between Washington and Tehran followed a tense weekend and start to this week after President Donald Trump vowed total destruction of Iran’s bridges and power plants if Iran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 8 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday and present other acceptable terms.

 “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday morning. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”

But shortly before that US imposed deadline lapsed, Trump lifted the threat, instead announcing a new two-week “double sided” ceasefire during which the two sides would continue negotiations centered around a previously disclosed Iranian 10-point proposal. That proposal reportedly allows Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz, ends US military attacks on Iran, requires US withdrawal from the Middle East and grants Tehran permission to enrich uranium.

However, the two-week ceasefire does not extend to all ongoing military operations in the region and Israel is continuing to strike Hezbollah inside Lebanon.

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Stocks Rally on Ceasefire Amid Biggest Short Squeeze Since 2020 [Bloomberg]
"This is more of a relief rally than anything sustainable and we believe that ultimately we will not get anything satisfactory for either side, but taking the temperature down a notch is all that the market desired,” said Joe Gilbert, portfolio manager at Integrity Asset Management…. The sharp market rebound had hedge funds rushing to close out bets against US stocks…. Hedge fund managers sharply accelerated the covering of short positions tied to macro products — like major indexes and exchange-traded funds — late Tuesday, just after President Donald Trump announced the temporary ceasefire deal. The bank said the volume of such unwinding is on track to reach the levels seen early in the pandemic.

Retail traders sold Wednesday’s rally. They aren’t buying Trump’s Iran ceasefire [CNBC Pro]
Individual traders have shifted away from their long-running “buy-the-dip” playbook, JPMorgan data showed.

OpenAI will allocate IPO shares to retail investors as it preps for debut, CFO says [CNBC via MSN]
"AI needs to garner trust in everything that we do. That is part of why retail particularly speaks to me," Friar said. "It has to be that everyone partakes, that it isn't just that a very small group, and everyone else gets left behind."
She pointed to her time as CFO of Square, now known as Block, where the fintech company offered a direct selling program to small business owners and sellers in its IPO.

Some hedge funds are expanding in Miami — but its share of prized portfolio managers has fallen [BI via AOL]
While well-off founders and near-retirement executives might be buying property in exclusive Miami neighborhoods or Palm Beach gated communities, the average employee in the asset management industry has not yet been convinced that the grass would be greener in Brickell instead of Midtown Manhattan…. In 2025, eight of the industry's biggest employers — multistrategy funds including Millennium, Citadel, Point72, Balyasny, Schonfeld, ExodusPoint, Verition, and Walleye — had a combined 218 investment professionals in Miami, according to filings. A year later, the eight firms had 20 fewer investors in the Magic City, despite the firms' investing-focused head count increasing by more than 11%.

British computer scientist denies he is bitcoin developer Satoshi Nakamoto [Guardian]
“I also don’t know who satoshi is, and i think it is good for bitcoin that this is the case, as it helps bitcoin be viewed [as] a new asset class, the mathematically scarce digital commodity,” [Adam Back] wrote…. Back said it was all happenstance. The artefacts that had led to [reporter John] Carreyrou’s conclusion were “a combination of coincidence and similar phrases from people with similar experience and interests”, he wrote.

You knew the law. You understood the procedure. You prepared your case. You showed up. You asked the right questions. You made your arguments. You learned from experience.

Technology sat on the periphery. It made things faster. It made things easier. It rarely changed the core of what it meant to practice well.

That is no longer true.

Litigation is beginning to move in real time. And when that happens, competence starts to shift.

During a recent conversation with Dean Whalen, chief legal officer of Readback, we explored what this shift looks like inside one of the most consequential moments in litigation: the deposition.

You can watch the full discussion here:

The takeaway is not that technology replaces lawyers. It does not. The takeaway is more subtle and more important.

When the tools available to lawyers change the speed, precision, and visibility of decision-making, the baseline for competent practice shifts with them.

The Old Rhythm Of Litigation

For decades, depositions followed a familiar pattern.

Lawyers prepared their outlines. They walked into the room. They asked questions. A stenographer recorded the exchange. And then everyone waited.

Days or weeks later, the transcript arrived.

Only then could lawyers confirm what had actually been said, whether key testimony landed as intended, and how the record might affect summary judgment or settlement strategy.

Dean described that experience with a mix of familiarity and frustration.

“I would hear attorneys say, ‘I think we did really well, but let’s see how the transcript reads.’”

That sentence captures an older rhythm of litigation. Act first. Analyze later.

It was acceptable because there was no alternative.

When Litigation Becomes Immediate

That rhythm is starting to break.

Real-time transcription, live annotation tools, and AI-assisted analysis are changing how depositions unfold. Lawyers can now see testimony as it happens. They can confirm whether an answer is precise. They can adjust their questions immediately.

In some cases, experts are observing the deposition remotely, reviewing testimony in real time, and feeding suggestions back to the examining attorney.

The deposition becomes less of a static event and more of a dynamic system.

Imagine a key witness gives a vague answer on causation.

In the old model, that ambiguity might not be discovered until days later, after the deposition is over.

In a real-time environment, it’s caught immediately, clarified on the spot, and locked into the record.

Dean put it plainly.

“In today’s information age, we shouldn’t have to walk out of there not knowing that we’ve precisely nailed the testimony.”

That expectation would have sounded unrealistic not long ago. Today, it is increasingly achievable.

And once something becomes achievable, it starts to influence what clients expect.

Competence Is No Longer Static

The legal profession has always tied competence to knowledge and judgment. That remains true. Technology does not replace either.

But competence has also always had a practical dimension. It reflects what a reasonable lawyer should know and do under current conditions.

Dean pointed to this directly when discussing ethical obligations.

“We as attorneys need to stay up and competent on technologies,” he said, referencing the professional expectation that lawyers understand tools that can benefit their clients.

There was a time when it was reasonable to ignore certain tools. They were too expensive. Too immature. Too unreliable.

That argument is becoming harder to sustain.

When real-time tools improve the accuracy of testimony, reduce ambiguity, and allow lawyers to correct gaps before they become embedded in the record, they are not simply conveniences. They are inputs into the quality of representation.

That does not mean every tool must be adopted. It does mean every tool worth considering must be evaluated.

The In-House Perspective

This shift is particularly important for in-house counsel.

Legal departments are not only consumers of legal services. They are managers of risk, cost, and outcomes. They rely on outside counsel to execute a litigation strategy, but they remain accountable for the results.

When depositions become more dynamic and data-rich, in-house leaders gain new leverage and face new responsibilities.

They can ask better questions.

How quickly do we know what happened in a deposition?
How confident are we in the accuracy of the transcript?
Are we adjusting strategy in real time or reacting weeks later?

These are not technical questions. They are management questions.

Dean framed it in practical terms.

“If you’re speaking to outside counsel, you want to make sure you’re using all the tools at your disposal to maximize your ability to win the case.”

That does not require in-house lawyers to become technologists. It requires them to understand where technology changes outcomes.

The Resistance Is Real

Not every lawyer is eager to embrace this shift.

Some argue that real-time tools are distracting. They prefer to maintain eye contact with the witness, focus on the flow of questioning, and avoid splitting attention between the person in front of them and the transcript on the screen.

That concern is legitimate.

Litigation is still a human process. Rapport, pressure, and presence matter. A deposition is not simply a data exercise.

Dean acknowledged this tension.

“Some lawyers want to be eye to eye with the witness,” he said. “They don’t want to be looking to the right to see how the transcript is being created.”

But he also described a middle ground.

“I call it the safety net use of it. Don’t look at it while you’re questioning. Use it during a break. Make sure you actually nailed the testimony.”

This framing matters.

The question is not whether technology should replace traditional skills. It should not. The question is whether technology can reinforce those skills by reducing avoidable error.

Guardrails Define The Future

As litigation becomes more dependent on technology, another issue becomes central: trust.

Not all tools are created equal. Not all systems protect data. Not all outputs are admissible.

Dean was clear about what matters.

“You want to make sure that your transcript is admissible. You want to make sure your data is protected. You want to make sure there’s human oversight.”

Those are not minor details. They are the difference between useful innovation and professional risk.

In many ways, this is where competence becomes most nuanced.

It is not enough to adopt new tools. Lawyers must understand how those tools work, what risks they introduce, and how to use them responsibly.

A Moving Baseline

The definition of competence does not change overnight.

It shifts gradually, almost imperceptibly, as new capabilities become standard and expectations adjust.

We are in the middle of one of those shifts.

Litigation is becoming more immediate. Information is becoming more accessible. Feedback loops are getting shorter.

In that environment, waiting weeks to understand what happened in a deposition starts to feel less like prudence and more like delay.

The profession does not need to abandon its foundations to adapt. Legal judgment, preparation, and advocacy remain central.

But the conditions under which those skills are applied are changing.

And when the conditions change, competence follows.

Lawyers who recognize this shift early won’t simply change how they practice. They’ll change the outcomes they deliver. Competence isn’t standing still. It’s keeping up.

Olga V. Mack is the CEO of TermScout, where she builds legal systems that make contracts faster to understand, easier to operate, and more trustworthy in real business conditions. Her work focuses on how legal rules allocate power, manage risk, and shape decisions under uncertainty. A serial CEO and former General Counsel, Olga previously led a legal technology company through acquisition by LexisNexis. She teaches at Berkeley Law and is a Fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. She has authored several books on legal innovation and technology, delivered six TEDx talks, and her insights regularly appear in Forbes, Bloomberg Law, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, and Above the Law. Her work treats law as essential infrastructure, designed for how organizations actually operate.

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Unpacking Saks Global’s Post-Bankruptcy Plan [Business of Fashion]

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In addition to a $3.15 billion upfront cash payment, Gilead could pay out up to $1.85 billion more if the Tubulis assets achieve milestones, according to financial terms announced Tuesday. The deal continues what has been an active business development strategy. Tubulis represents Gilead’s third M&A announcement this year.

Munich, Germany-based Tubulis specializes in developing antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), a type of cancer therapy made by linking a targeting antibody to a toxic drug payload. ADCs are already represented in the Gilead portfolio by Trodelvy, whose approvals in breast and bladder cancers have made it a blockbuster seller. Trodelvy came from the $21 billion acquisition of Immunomedics in 2020. With its latest deal, Gilead is betting Tubulis can be part of the next generation of ADCs.

Though currently available ADCs enable targeted delivery, sometimes the drug payload is released before the therapy reaches the tumor, causing off-target toxicity. Tubulis’s drugs come from platform technologies that produce ADCs with better stability. A stable ADC is less likely to release its drug payload prematurely, CEO Dominik Schumacher said in a 2024 interview. He added that Tubulis’s technologies also enable the company to develop ADCs with more potent drug payloads. The startup’s technologies are based on research from the Leibniz Research Institute in Berlin and the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich.

Lead Tubulis program TUB-040 is designed to target NaPi2b. While high expression of this protein by ovarian and lung cancers make it a promising target, others have fallen short in their attempts to drug it. Zymeworks and Mersana Therapeutics are among the biotechs that have stopped work on NaP12b-targeting ADCs.

TUB-040 is currently in Phase 1b/2 testing in platinum-resistant ovarian cancer (PROC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The first interim data from Phase 1/2a testing in ovarian cancer were presented last fall during the European Society for Medical Oncology meeting. In 66 evaluable patients, results showed a 50% overall response rate. TUB-040 was generally well tolerated across all doses and the majority of treatment-related adverse events were classified as Grade 1 or 2. Soon after the conference, Tubulis was able to add new investors to its Series C round of financing, which closed at €344 million (about $401 million) total.

The next ADC in the Tubulis pipeline is TUB-030, which is designed to target 5T4, a protein highly expressed by many cancers but rarely by healthy tissue. Tubulis is assessing this ADC in a basket study spanning 13 types of solid tumors.

Gilead got better acquainted with Tubulis’s ADC technologies and pipeline through a partnership started in 2024. Gilead paid $20 million up front to collaborate on the discovery and development of an ADC for an undisclosed target. The deal granted Gilead the exclusive option to license the program for further development and potential commercialization. In Tuesday’s acquisition announcement, Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day said the collaboration gave his company conviction in Tubulis’s programs and research capabilities.

“Bringing this potential into Gilead would further expand what is already the strongest and most diverse pipeline in our company’s history,” he said.

Virology has been Gilead’s strength, but the company is also prioritizing immunology and oncology as additional areas for growth. In February, Gilead agreed to buy partner Arcellx in a $7.8 billion deal that brings a next-generation multiple myeloma cell therapy currently under FDA review. In March, Gilead agreed to pay about $1.7 billion to buy Ouro Medicines, a startup developing T cell engagers for autoimmune conditions. Both deals include the platform technologies that produced the companies’ respective drug candidates.

While Leerink Partners analyst Daina Graybosch acknowledged the potential of Tubulis’s two clinical-stage assets, her research note highlighted the biotech’s platforms, which she said give Gilead a way to drive future pipeline innovation. A note that Gilead sent to analysts said Tubulis’s next-generation ADC technologies fit with Gilead’s medicinal chemistry capabilities, which could lead to new classes of ADC payloads used in oncology, inflammation, and virology, Graybosch wrote. She added that Gilead’s comments brought to mind Merck’s $9.2 billion acquisition of Cidara. While Cidara’s platform technology produced the influenza-preventing drug that is its lead program, this technology also has applications in cancer. That is the type of novel antiviral drug conjugate program that Leerink believes Gilead aims to apply to virology, specifically for HIV drug R&D.

“This is more than an oncology bolt-on; we see real platform value in application of Tubulis’ ADC technologies to other therapeutic areas, namely virology,” Graybosch said.

Gilead Chief Medical Officer Dietmar Berger elaborated on his company’s interest in Tubulis and its technologies during a Tuesday conference call. The ADC that Gilead developed in partnership with Tubulis has advanced to preclinical development for a target that remains undisclosed. But this research gave Gilead insight into the Tubulis’s technological capabilities, Berger said.

One of the ADC platforms produces highly stable linkers connecting the drug payload to the antibody, Berger said. This capability enables development of ADCs with high drug-antibody ratios (DAR), meaning they can carry more drug payload for a more potent effect. Even with the larger payload, Tubulis’s ADCs are extremely stable in circulation, Berger said. The other Tubulis technology enables development of ADCs with new types of drug payloads, including novel cytotoxins, protein degraders, and immune modulators. Begrer said these payloads could be applied to new areas, such as immunology and virology.

“Think about potential antiviral payloads, think about potential immunologically modulating payloads,” he said. “That’s where we see the real opportunity and that’s also where our chemistry, and medicinal chemistry, but also biological capabilities come in in combination with this unique platform that Tubulis has developed.”

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Markets shift back towards potential Fed rate cut this year with Iran ceasefire in place [CNBC]
Odds for a reduction jumped Wednesday morning, hitting about 43%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool…. Prior to the announcement, market-implied odds for a cut were just 14%.
Traders had expected the Fed would be hesitant to cut this year as the Iran conflict had sent energy prices skyrocketing, threatening the central bank’s efforts to get inflation back to its 2% goal. Previous to that, markets had expected multiple cuts this year in an effort to shore up the plodding labor market.

My Quest to Solve Bitcoin’s Great Mystery [NYT]
Adam Back, a British cryptographer and leading figure in the Bitcoin movement, sat on a park bench in Riga, Latvia, his shirt untucked under a brown coat. The filmmaker casually rattled off the names of several Satoshi suspects. At the mention of his own name, Mr. Back tensed up, strenuously denied he was Satoshi and asked that the conversation be kept off the record….
I pored over Satoshi’s body of writing, especially the emails released by Mr. Malmi, and made a list of words and phrases that stood out to me…. Using the advanced search function on the social media platform X, I did a cursory search to see if any of the dozen or so people most often suspected of being Satoshi used the terms I had highlighted…. One person was a match for nearly all of my words and phrases: Mr. Back.

Hedge funds suffered worst losses since Covid in Iran war turmoil [FT]
The flagship hedge fund performance index of data provider HFR recorded a 3.1 per cent fall last month, more than any month since a 9.1 per cent drop six years ago…. “I’ve been managing money for 40 years and I’ve never been less certain on how things are going to turn out,” said one macro hedge fund manager.

SpaceX isn’t even public yet and investors are already abuzz about a Tesla merger [WSJ via MSN]
Musk hasn’t been shy about aligning his companies to achieve his life’s ambition of building human civilization on Mars. Morgan Stanley’s former Tesla analyst Adam Jonas dubbed the project the “Muskonomy.” In recent weeks, other Wall Street analysts have picked up where Jonas left off, with some telling investors they see some logic to a merger.

FDIC Lays Out Guidelines for Institutions Issuing Stablecoins [Bloomberg]
New guidelines would seek to establish requirements related to reserve assets, redemptions of outstanding stablecoins, permissible activities and capital, among others…. The plan is likely to be cheered by industry. Crypto firms will likely see it as a step closer to legitimacy while banks pore over the details to ensure the regulators don’t give financial technology companies too much room to act like traditional lenders.

Digital health startups raised $4 billion across 110 deals during the first quarter of 2026, according to data published Monday by venture fund and strategy group Rock Health. That’s a $1 billion increase compared to the $3 billion raised across 122 deals during the first quarter of last year.

The average size of a digital health financing deal during the first quarter was $36.7 million, marking the highest average deal size since the fourth quarter of 2021. A wave of 12 megadeals — financings of $100 million or more — largely drove the increase.

Wearable device company WHOOP’s $575 million Series G marked the biggest deal of the quarter. The next five largest deals were raised by precision health company Verily ($300 million), AI-powered search platform OpenEvidence ($250 million), telepsychiatry provider Talkiatry ($210 million), employer-focused GLP-1 clinic eMed ($200 million) and mental health startup Grow Therapy ($150 million).

If this pace keeps up, this year will finish with almost 50 mega deals, which would be nearly double last year’s count of 26.

As for M&A activity, the first quarter showed modest growth. It ended with 43 digital health deals, up from 30 deals during the previous quarter.

Rock Health’s report noted that two of the most notable transactions were deals in which the acquirer purchased a health tech startup to recruit its specialized talent rather than to acquire its assets and revenue streams: OpenAI‘s acquisition of health data startup Torch and Headway‘s purchase of Tezi, which makes an autonomous AI recruiting agent.

In addition to the 43 M&A deals that occurred, there was a new venture that crumbled during the first quarter. In December, reports emerged that Matt Holt, former managing director and president of private equity at New Mountain Capital, had left the New York City firm to start a new venture combining five of its health tech portfolio companies in a deal valued at more than $30 billion. But the deal collapsed last month due to disagreements surrounding governance and financing.

Overall, the exit market remains open, but companies with sufficient capital or financial stability are mostly choosing to wait.

It’s also worth noting that the first quarter of 2026 marked the first quarter for which Rock Health stopped differentiating between AI and non-AI startups in its report. In this day and age, pretty much every digital health startup is AI-enabled in one way or another, so the lines are too blurred for this distinction to hold much weight.

Rock Health also cautioned that the digital health market is likely to remain volatile as broader geopolitical and policy uncertainty continues to shape investment decisions.

Shifting federal priorities, evolving healthcare regulations and macroeconomic tensions could all influence where capital flows in the coming quarters. In this environment, investors are expected to remain selective, concentrating funding on startups with clear paths to growth and sustainability.

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Suppose Portugal announced that it wanted France to be its newest state.

Governor Macron, and all that.

How would the world react?

Lunatic at the helm, maybe?

Suppose Portugal said that it intended to take over Greenland — preferably by negotiation, but by force, if necessary.

What would we think of the Portuguese leader? Would we be coming to take him away, ha-haaa?

Suppose Portugal imposed ridiculously high tariffs on the rest of the world.

Portugal’s economy doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things, so I guess the rest of the world would just let ’em do it, and let Portugal suffer the consequences.

Suppose Portugal started blowing up fishing boats off the coast of Great Britain, saying that the boats harbored drug smugglers, and Portugal wasn’t going to let the criminals get away with it any more.

Would the U.K. sit still?

Suppose Portugal launched a military raid to capture the president of another country.

Would the rest of the world tell Portugal not to do such things?

Suppose the president of Portugal started using social media to insult foreign leaders. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was “no Winston Churchill,” “spineless,” “cowardly,” and “a loser who has no future.” Sadiq Khan was a “horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor” of London. Suppose the Portuguese president posted on social media private notes that Portugal had received from Emanuel Macron and NATO Secretary Mark Rutte, publicly embarrassing the notes’ authors.

Would the U.K., France, and NATO later want to help Portugal if it had a moment of need?

Suppose Portugal started a war in Iran without consulting its allies and later, after the Strait of Hormuz was closed and the worldwide price of oil was skyrocketing, asked other countries to step in and open the Strait.

Having spent the previous year antagonizing people around the world, do you suppose Portugal would find much global sympathy or support?

(Come to think of it, suppose the president of Portugal had posted on social media that Donald Trump was a convicted felon who had been found liable for sexual assault — an entirely accurate statement — and later asked the United States to get Portugal out of a jam. How would Donald Trump react?)

I realize of course that the United States is rich and powerful, and the American economy and military matter more to the world than the Portuguese ones. But, on a personal level, do people react differently when they’re treated poorly by the leader of a rich and powerful country than when they’re treated poorly by the leader of a less rich and less powerful one?

Despite all that Trump has done, other global leaders might continue to treat the United States with public respect, for fear of the consequences if they do otherwise.

But you can bet your last dollar that no American ally now feels warmly toward the United States or is inclined to do the U.S. any optional favors.

America has gotten away with having a clownish buffoon at the helm because America is the most powerful country on earth.

But the guy at the helm is still a clownish buffoon, and everyone else in the world knows it.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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I earlier authored an article raising the issue whether the mushrooming creation of deepfakes would jeopardize our judicial and litigation system. My concern and that of others is that the increased battles over what digital evidence is real and what is fake would embroil our system in endless time-consuming disputes and battles of experts.

And that by virtue of being exposed over and over to AI-generated fake photos, audio recordings, and videos, people — judges and juries — would come to disbelieve any and all of it. It’s known as the liar’s dividend, a phrase coined by Robert Chesney and Danielle Citron in a 2019 law review article.

Both have enormous repercussions for litigation and perhaps more significantly, the courtroom. The reliance on digital materials in courtrooms both for real evidence and as demonstrative material is pretty standard today. Indeed, it’s probably expected. But what happens when all that evidence is now questioned and fought over? At the very least, it could change the way cases are tried.

The Courts and Deepfakes

First, courts may soon come to insist on more vigorous authentication as a matter of course. The proponent of a photograph, video, or audio recording must offer evidence sufficient to support a finding of authenticity. Typically, this means the following questions and answers of a witness:

Q: Did you take this photo?

A: Yes

Q: Does it fairly and accurately depict what you saw when you took it?

A: Yes

It’s then offered for admission. There is almost a presumption of authenticity.

But in the future, that may not be enough as we move toward a spoken or unspoken presumption of lack of authenticity. This means that those offering digital-type evidence will have to do much more to convince a skeptical judge that the item be admitted into evidence. Things like providing the underlying meta data, testimony on how the image was created and “touched up,” requiring a showing of what amounts to a chain of custody of the image or recording. Perhaps even expert testimony. The “sufficient to support” standard may be about to get tougher.

Seeing will no longer be believing; seeing will require verification. All of which is going to gum up our trials, make them longer, and more expensive.

Another option for courts may be the greater and more aggressive use of concepts like those set out in Federal Evidentiary Rule 403. This Rule allows courts to exclude evidence the probative value of which is “substantially outweighed” by the risk of prejudice, misleading the jury, or confusion.

This rule is already used to exclude things like gruesome photos of accident victims. Its use has also been debated in situations where the opportunity to use immersive evidence such as that which could be viewed on a Vision Pro.

But when faced with digital evidence, the authenticity of which is hotly contested, a judge could very well conclude that the risk the evidence could mislead the jury into thinking some is real when there is a good chance it isn’t (or vice versa). And that risk outweighs its probative value. The result of course is less digital evidence in the courtroom.

One final option for the court: just let the jury decide if the digital evidence is credible and real. As a former defense lawyer, I shudder at the thought but understand the logic. If digital evidence is offered and I oppose it, it’s up to me on cross examination to raise doubts about credibility. Of course, this places a lot of responsibility on juries to understand and deal with technical issues but it’s an easy out for judges.

No matter which way courts go, the risk of deepfakes will change the courtroom, and it will be up to trial lawyers to deal with it.

What Does It Mean for the Lawyer

Trial lawyers in the future will be faced with greater authenticity scrutiny, more risk of exclusion of digital evidence, or perhaps being forced to convince a jury of an item’s authenticity or lack thereof. All the while facing jurors who are likely to believe any and all digital evidence is not real and will therefore disregard it anyway. The power of digital evidence then actually becomes a liability instead of an asset. What’s a poor lawyer to do?

First, courtroom lawyers must be better prepared to offer stronger proof of authenticity. It will no longer be the standard two or three questions. This means boning up on deepfakes and how to combat them. It means mastering the technical end of photos, videos, and audio recordings and being able to explain and show validity in simple terms a jury and judge can understand. It means explaining creative methods. More importantly, it means offering corroborating proof in the courtroom of what the digital evidence purports to show.

In some situations, it may even mean electing to use less technology and digital evidence, not more. In fact, in general, varying digital evidence with more analogue-type evidence every now and then is a good idea in any event. It keeps the jury’s interest, in my experience.

It comes down to preparation and understanding of the risks and benefits of technology, which is already ethically required.

Tomorrow’s Trials: We Better Be Ready

There can be little doubt that authenticity will be front and center in the future. There will be some tough calls that need to be made by judges, juries, and lawyers. It will mean dealing with technical issues and concepts that aren’t clear cut. Tough decisions that will need to be made by both judges and juries.

As with most technology, the key will be to understand the risks of deepfakes and be ready to deal with it. You can’t get there by ignoring reality.

Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger, and writer. He publishes TechLaw Crossroads, a blog devoted to the examination of the tension between technology, the law, and the practice of law.

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The former Attorney General’s picture is barely cold in the trashcan, and already her would-be replacements are jockeying to be the next lawyer to land headfirst in the rubbish, with only a pile of congressional subpoenas to cushion the blow.

Jeanine! Alina! Harmeet! The gang’s all here.

This job is objectively a shit sandwich. An increasingly demented and desperate president is staring down the likely loss of at least one House of Congress in the midterms and a wildly unpopular war that refuses to end no matter how much he shitposts at it. The one thing Trump wants from the DOJ is the scalps of his enemies — a prize that moves ever further out of reach as statutes of limitations run.

The problem isn’t that Pam Bondi lacked “smarts and guts,” as Trump reportedly complained. The former county prosecutor and Florida state AG worked like hell to give her boss the perp walks he demanded. The problem is that the American legal system, battered as it is, retains a stubborn capacity to distinguish between actual crimes and the president’s personal grievances.

Darn you, grand juries! Darn you, federal judges! Darn you, probable cause!

This is a problem familiar to Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s second choice to lead the US Attorneys Office in DC. After Ed Martin failed to win Senate confirmation, Trump tapped the former Fox News host for the job. Pirro was a former state prosecutor in New York, but her chops are a little rusty. She’s gotten no-billed dozens of times by grand juries, suffered an embarrassing string of losses related to DHS’s “surge” into DC, and her subpoena for the Federal Reserve got quashed by Chief Judge James Boasberg, who found that the DOJ’s “justifications are so thin and unsubstantiated that the Court can only conclude that they are pretextual.”

For the case against lawmakers who posted a video reminding service members of their obligation to disregard illegal orders, Pirro brought in a ringer — a retired state prosecutor currently working as a dance photographer. But his presentation fell flat, and not a single grand juror voted to indict.

The Atlantic reports that Pirro is undeterred, and is actively lobbying for the job at Mar-a-Lago. She’s joined by Trump’s sparklemagic lawyer, Alina Habba, who recently relocated to Florida to be closer to the action. The former dress-up US Attorney for New Jersey is theoretically a senior Justice Department official advising on US Attorneys Offices. She’s never prosecuted a federal case in her life, but Caligula made his horse a consul so … sure, why not?

Other reported contenders include EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who practiced law for three whole years in Long Island before being elected to the New York State Senate. Trump has referred to Zeldin as his “secret weapon,” thanks to Zeldin’s uncanny ability to pump out expedited permits for hydrocarbon extraction, which is just like running the world’s largest law firm.

CBS reports that Harmeet Dhillon, another of Trump’s personal lawyers, is in the mix, too. Dhillon presided over the evisceration of the DOJ’s Civil Division, reorienting the office to hunt trans kids and protect white men from academic and workplace “discrimination.” But unlike Bondi, who understood that social media is just a tool for pumping out content to keep sweet with the White House, Dhillon isn’t in on the joke. She actually boasted once to the Wall Street Journal that she wakes up and scrolls X.com for “a list of new horrors,” after which “I text my deputies, and we assign cases, and we get cranking.” She could turn the DOJ into an anti-DEI machine without blinking. (Because she never blinks.)

I’ve been stuck at the same level of followers on this account pretty much since I started my government job. What, am I chopped liver over here?

What kind of content do my folks want to see more of to like and share?

— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@HarmeetKDhillon) December 6, 2025

Senators Mike Lee and Eric Schmitt are mentioned as possible candidates as well, but the real man to beat is Deputy AG Todd Blanche, yet another of Trump’s former personal lawyers. In the post announcing that Bondi would be relocated to a farm upstate where she could run around and chase squirrels with the other discarded former lawyers — say hi to Rudy! — Trump said “our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General.”

Graded on the Trump curve, Blanche is comparatively qualified: He worked as a prosecutor at SDNY early in his career. He has actual experience in Justice Department leadership. He’s not obviously delusional.

But if Blanche wasn’t able to make those political prosecutions happen as the second-in-command at DOJ, why would he be able to do it from the big chair?

He’s also got some stink on him from the Epstein files, another grenade Bondi tried and failed to diffuse for the president. Blanche interviewed Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in person, right around the time she found herself transferred from Florida to a cushy facility in Texas that categorically bars sex offenders. It was at this meeting that Maxwell remembered that Trump was always a perfect gentleman when she knew him — an amazing coincidence Blanche will certainly be asked about in a congressional hearing if he takes the top job. Will he be reduced to screeching about the stock market when asked about his boss’s former buddy?

View the original article to see embedded media.

There is one more potential wrench in the works. Senator Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican who doomed Ed Martin’s nomination by making sure he never got out of the Judiciary Committee, says he’s a “no” on anyone who downplays the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

“For me, the threshold for somebody following Pam Bondi ends the moment I hear they said one thing that excused the events of January the 6th. I’ve been very clear on that,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “So I hope whoever they have in mind to follow General Bondi is very clear-eyed on my position on Jan. 6.”

So … none of the above?

Whoever succeeds Bondi will preside over an institution that’s been gutted during her 14-month tenure. More than 6,400 employees were either fired, resigned, or took early retirement. The Civil Rights Division lost roughly three-quarters of its attorneys. The share of top law school graduates applying to work at DOJ has plummeted, and US Attorneys are reduced to asking anyone with a MAGA hat and a bar card to slide into their DMs. Worst of all, judicial deference to the government is decimated, thanks to the terrible, mendacious arguments Bondi forced her employees to make during the past 14 months.

“I won’t believe it until you testify. That’s what has happened to the credibility of your office,” New Jersey Judge Zahid Quraishi excoriated a hapless AUSA in March. “Generations of Assistant U.S. Attorneys had built the goodwill of that office for your generation to destroy it within a year.”

None of that will change for whichever lickspittle slobbers his or her way to the top of Main Justice. Bondi’s successor may be a better manager, or have a clearer understanding of how federal prosecutions work. But he or she won’t be able to magic up crimes by Trump’s enemies where none exist.

The only thing different is the name on the next portrait to wind up in the trash.

Liz Dye produces the Law and Chaos Substack and podcast.

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In the cold open, cast member Ashley Padilla took a turn as Bondi, delivering a performance that managed to capture both the self-seriousness and the spectacular lack of self-awareness that defined Bondi’s time at DOJ. The highlight? A line that feels destined to live far longer than Bondi’s already-short-lived post-Trump tenure, “The truth is, I was amazing at my job, and I am proud to say I made history as the first woman ever to be fired as attorney general. I shattered that glass exit door!”

But SNL didn’t stop there.

Because if you’re going to twist the knife, you might as well go for the jugular.

“They threw my headshot in the trash like it was the Epstein files!” Padilla cried, summoning crocodile tears for her disgraced legal career.

You can watch the full skit below.

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The Soleno drug, Vykat XR, won its FDA approval in Prader-Willi syndrome a little more than a year ago. Since its launch, the once-daily pill has seen rapid market uptake, giving San Diego-based Neurocrine confidence that the product can complement its portfolio, contributing to growth of a revenue base includes one blockbuster drug and is now adding a product also projected to reach blockbuster status.

“What we’ve seen across thus far across all our diligence is all the profile aspects of a potential blockbuster in the making with Vykat XR,” Neurocrine CEO Kyle Gano said, speaking during a Monday conference call. “Very pleased overall with the data we’ve seen through launch and leading through all the information that we’ve reviewed thus far in 2026.”

Prader-Willi syndrome, or PWS, develops from the lack of expression of genes that play a role in regulating feelings of hunger and satiety. This rare disease leads to morbid childhood obesity, which in turn raises the risk of a wide range of complications. In an investor presentation, Neurocrine notes that Prader-Willi patients have a shorter life expectancy and about half of the deaths are in those age 18 or younger. While these deaths are often related to respiratory or cardiovascular complications, PWS can also lead to rupture of the digestive tract.

Vykat was developed and approved for treating hyperphagia in PWS. While the exact way this drug works in PWS is not known, the once-daily tablet’s main pharmaceutical ingredient is an extended release formulation of diazoxide choline, an old drug for hypoglycemia caused by hyperinsulinism. In PWS, the drug is thought to activate potassium channels that regulate physiological processes, including feelings of hunger and satiety. For 2025, Soleno reported $190.4 million in Vykat revenue, including $90 million for the drug in the fourth quarter alone. These sales swung Soleno into profitability last year with $20.8 million in net income.

Neurocrine’s portfolio is led by Ingrezza, a blockbuster product first approved in 2017 for tardive dyskinesia and then in 2023 to treating involuntary movements associated with Huntington’s disease. Ingrezza accounted for $2.5 billion in revenue in 2025, a 4.3% increase compared to the prior year. Vykat has more overlap with Crenessity, a Neurocrine drug approved in late 2024 for treating the rare endocrine disorder congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Gano said Vykat can leverage Neurocrine’s experience commercializing a therapy for a rare endocrine disorder.

Samir Siddhanti, Neurocrine’s vice president, business development & strategy, said the company had followed Soleno and the PWS space for some time, adding that Vykat’s position at the intersection of neuroscience and endocrinology is a strategic fit. The field of PWS drug developers includes Bright Minds Biosciences, Harmony Biosciences, and Rhythm Pharmaceuticals. Some efforts have stumbled. Last September, Acadia Pharmaceuticals stopped work on a PWS drug after it failed to meet the main goal of its Phase 3 study. In February, Aardvark Therapeutics voluntarily paused a Phase 3 test of its drug after cardiac observations were reported in a healthy volunteer study.

“There’s unfortunately been some setbacks in the space in the last 12 months,” Siddhanti said. “We feel good where this asset is positioned to be a best and first-in-class treatment for PWS.”

The setbacks in the PWS space include Soleno, whose stock price took a hit last August after activist short-seller firm Scorpion Capital released a report claiming Vykat can cause safety problems such as pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure. Gano said Neurocrine is confident in the safety and tolerability of diazoxide based on its decades of use. He added that in clinical testing, the risk benefit profile was favorable for PWS patients.

Leerink Partners analyst Marc Goodman said in a research note that pediatric endocrinologists told the bank they were encouraged to have an FDA-approved therapy to prescribe to select PWS patients. Clinicians also told Leerink the Scorpion conclusions were overly negative, noting that diazoxide’s safety has been well understood from the drug’s decades on the market. While experienced endocrinologists are comfortable managing Vykat’s risks, clinicians also emphasized that not all patients are appropriate candidates for the drug due to its known side effects, including hyperglycemia and edema.

“In a population where obesity and diabetes are common comorbidities, incremental hyperglycemia risk is not acceptable for many patients, which in turn limits the addressable population,” Goodman said.

Globally, Soleno has said the total number of PWS patients is estimated to be between 300,000 and 400,000. Based on an analysis of claims data, the company calculates about 10,000 patients in the U.S. have the rare disease. Soleno said in its annual report that it believes this number is growing due to improved diagnosis.

Vykat is currently under European Medicines Agency review, but Gano said Neurocrine has no plans to commercialize Vykat in Europe at this time. The deal value and financial models for the drug are based only on the U.S. market, and Gano said the company plans to focus on the U.S. opportunity. Asked by an analyst whether Neurocrine would look for a partner to commercialize the drug in Europe and the rest of the world, Gano said the company would evaluate its plans for Vykat in other markets at a later time.

The deal terms call for Neurocrine to pay $53 in cash for each Soleno share. While that represents a 34% premium to Soleno’s closing price on April 2, it’s far from the stock’s 52-week peak of $90 last summer before Scorpion posted its report. The acquisition still needs a majority of Soleno stockholders to tender their shares as well as customary regulatory approvals. The Neurocrine and Soleno boards of directors have approved the transaction, which the companies expect to close within the next 90 days.

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Universal Music stock soars as Bill Ackman plans $64 billion acquisition and US listing [Yahoo! Finance]
The deal, valued at approximately $64 billion, would merge UMG with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, an acquisition vehicle…. Pershing is Universal's fourth-largest shareholder with a 4.74% stake…. By moving UMG to the NYSE, the billionaire investor aims to make the music label eligible for major US indexes, such as the S&P 500. Such a move would force massive investment funds to buy the stock, theoretically driving up its value.

Anthropic in talks to invest $200 million in new private-equity venture [WSJ via MSN]
General Atlantic, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman are among the private-equity firms in discussions to back the project, people familiar with the matter said. The startup is in talks to raise $1 billion for the effort…. The new company would serve as a consulting arm for Anthropic that teaches businesses how to incorporate the startup’s AI tools in their operations.

Blockbuster SpaceX listing could suck the oxygen out of fragile IPO market [Reuters]
Companies have waited years on the sidelines for ​favorable IPO conditions after a prolonged dry spell. A listing like SpaceX, with its celebrity billionaire CEO, hot industry and deep-pocketed backers, could have provided the jolt others need to push ahead.
Instead, its sheer scale ​threatens to overshadow others, with Wall Street banks and investors pouring a majority of their attention, and money, into the operator of the Starlink constellation of satellites.

New Jersey cannot regulate Kalshi’s prediction market, U.S. appeals court rules [Reuters via CNBC]
A three-judge panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in finding that the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has exclusive jurisdiction over the sports-related event contracts that Kalshi allows people to trade on its platform…. A Nevada judge on Friday said he would issue an injunction preventing Kalshi from offering event-based contracts that run afoul of state gaming law, and a Massachusetts judge had issued a similar ruling that is on hold pending appeal.

'The end of the road': Market heavyweights Michael Burry and Jeff Gundlach eye trouble ahead for private credit [BI]
"I believe everyone in PE and PC knows exactly what is going on," Burry stated. "PE is remarkably proficient at kicking the can down the road, but it looks like the end of the road to me."
Burry's comments came in response to an X post from Gundlach, which said: "It's 2007 for Private Credit."