WSJ What’s News - ICE Protests Spread to San Francisco

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

A.M. Edition for June 10. Protests against President Trump’s immigration policies spread beyond Los Angeles. Plus, WSJ reporter Ed Ballard breaks down a potential policy shift by the World Bank that would allow it to fund nuclear power projects across the developing world. And the CEO of Bolt, the European rival to Uber, joins us from London Tech Week to discuss how the continent can catch up in the global tech race. Luke Vargas hosts.   Check out Joanna Stern’s video wrapup of the new features announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Find an agent today at Desjardins.com slash business coverage. Ice protests spread to San Francisco. Plus, the World Bank considers a policy shift that could open the taps to funding for nuclear power. And we'll hear from one of Europe's tech champions about why the continent's lagging behind in the global tech race. We're very clear, it's just Europe

is significantly behind the US. I mean, when you look at public market liquidity, retail trading, it's 10, 20 times below. So there just isn't enough funding actually for European upcoming companies. And that's one thing Europe very particularly can change through government action. It's Tuesday, June 10th.

I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. After days of unrest in Los Angeles over President Trump's immigration policies.

Protests are spreading to San Francisco. The city's police department says it made around 150 arrests on Sunday and that it was forced to declare an unlawful assembly yesterday evening after another night of demonstrations. Meanwhile, we are learning more about a May meeting chaired by Stephen Miller, the architect of President Trump's immigration agenda that sparked the L.A. migrant crackdown in recent days. According to people familiar with the meeting, Miller told top officials at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to drop the long-standing practice of developing target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, and instead

told them to quote, just go out there and arrest illegal aliens, end quote, directing agents to Target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Federal agents are now making warrantless arrests, and ICE agents appeared to follow Miller's tip, conducting an immigration sweep at an LA area Home Depot that helped to set off weekend protests. And the administration is holding firm in the face of criticism of its tactics. Here was Trump's border czar Tom Homan, who has threatened to arrest those who obstruct

immigration enforcement efforts on MSNBC's Morning Joe. People have to talk on ICE, terrorists and criminals and races, because they're enforcing the laws enacted by Congress, signed by a president, and that's exactly what ICE is doing. They're enforcing the law. They're not making this up. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has removed all 17 members of a key committee that recommends vaccines and when and how often adults and children should get them. In a statement, Kennedy said, quote, the committee will no longer function as a rubber stamp

for industry profit-taking agendas, end quote, arguing that the change would help to restore public trust in science. Public health leaders and Democrats decried the move. The panel next meets at the end of June, and Kennedy will need to name new members by then. Asian markets showed mixed signals today as wary investors size up high-stakes China-U.S. trade talks, which are entering a second day in London. Following Monday's session, U.S. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett signaled progress saying Beijing could soon greenlight rare earth exports, while Washington could help to ease China's semiconductor squeeze.

Comments that boosted chip stocks and helped to lift major indexes. Meanwhile, Apple released an array of new software at its Worldwide Developers Conference yesterday, including live translation capabilities and upgrades to group chats. However, it was far from the AI comeback that investors were hoping for, with shares falling when Apple announced that an upgraded voice assistant wasn't yet available. In fact, Journal's senior personal tech columnist Joanna Stern said that Siri was mentioned just twice. That's a big change from last year.

But Apple did talk about how it's bringing Apple intelligence to more parts of its operating systems. The biggest one? Visual intelligence. Now, when you take a screenshot, it will give you an option to search those images and even discuss them using built-in chat GPT. And Apple opened its on-device large language models to developers so apps can now tap into offline AI features.

Still, Apple's looking really behind in AI, and it's clear it didn't really want to talk about it today. And you can find a link to Joanna's full video in our show notes. And the board of the World Bank is meeting today as it weighs ending a ban on funding for nuclear energy projects. The move is supported by bank president Ajay Banga and comes after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged it to invest in gas and fossil fuels earlier this year. I asked journal reporter Ed Ballard about the choice facing the Washington-based

lender. There's several things going on here. So what Bangor has said he wants is an all-of-the-above energy strategy, which would include nuclear as well as the renewable energy, which is what the World Bank is mostly funding at the moment. And of course, that's in keeping with the Trump administration's own preferences. Other countries are also expanding their nuclear fleets. The UK has just announced a major new nuclear power plant project. The other thing to bear in mind is

this isn't just about political preferences about which energy sources are best. It's also about competition for geopolitical influence. Russia is involved in nuclear projects and so is China. So really, there's also the question of if countries in Africa and other parts of the developing world are going to build nuclear plants, who is going to help them do it? Coming up, I'll speak with the CEO of Bolt, Europe's rival to Uber, about how the continent can help homegrown companies to

catch up in the global tech race. That chat from London Tech Week after the break. We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight. Rocky's Vacation, here we come. after the game. It's kind of like I'm already on vacation. Nice. On behalf of Air Canada, nice travels. Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equip flight sponsored by Bell. Conditions apply. seercanada.com Tech leaders have been gathering in the UK in recent days for London Tech Week as politicians and members of the European business community reflect on why the continent continues to lag behind in the

global tech race. A recent journal analysis put some numbers on that, finding that Europe is generating far fewer unicorn companies, private firms worth more than a billion dollars compared to China and the U.S. It's falling behind on R&D spending and worker productivity, and venture capital levels are just a fifth of those seen in the U.S. in dollar terms, all of which is stymieing the creation of global tech companies and stalling economic growth. Though there are some success stories, among them, Estonian ride-sharing and food delivery platform Bolt, which operates in

50 countries and in a number of European markets, says it's outmaneuvering industry-heavyweight Uber. I caught up with CEO Markus Willig and asked him how. It was actually a very contravenient bet when we started 11 years ago. We talked to dozens of VCs, nobody believed in the idea, nobody thought that you can go and challenge the incumbents in this space, which we have now successfully done. We're the market leader in more than 20 countries, we have millions of daily trips going on on the platform and we're growing much faster than anybody else in the sector.

So I think now coming to the root causes of what has caused that, it's been a couple of things. A, we think that this is an industry where you need to localize very well. So it doesn't matter how many cars you have in New York, what matters is how many cars you have available right then in Prague or in Nairobi or whatever other city you operate. I've heard you talk in extreme detail about Serbia, for instance. You're getting to know each country individually. Absolutely. So localization is key.

And the other thing is that we've got to recognize, this is a space that's very cost efficiency driven. So when you compare this to the likes of e-commerce, why do people use Amazon? They use it because it has great selection. Why doesn't it have great selection? Because they are paying the merchants more than anybody else. The merchants make more money on Amazon than elsewhere. So it's the same philosophy here.

Why do drivers enjoy our platform more than others? Because they make more money per hour driving with Volt. I mean looking ahead to future technology you've gone on the record saying the driverless car boy that would be lucrative for us. What else? I mean is there you're waiting for something big to change this business? It's old school in many ways currently. Absolutely. So when we think about the next 10 years then the most important thing for this whole sector is going to be self-driving, no question about it. We actually already have thousands of deliveries we're doing on the delivery side, so we deliver

robots where you can order your groceries or restaurant meals for robots. What's just going down the sidewalk? Exactly, and it's working already perfectly well and we think that's going to be a huge opportunity for the next decade. And the other one you mentioned of course is robot taxis or self-driving cars, And we think that most people haven't yet made the connection that if you get very cheap, very smart general AI, then that's also gonna, over time,

transfer over to the physical world, and you will also have very cheap and affordable and very efficient self-driving cars. So we're betting on that to be the future. Does it make your current drivers nervous to hear that talk? This is a business with hundreds of thousands of physical partners around the world,

but transitioning to a future maybe without them. Well, we don't think that's a big concern for any of them for at least the next decade, to be honest. The demand of this industry is so vast, and we're still talking about only one or 2% of trips in every city, so we think there's plenty of room for us to grow significantly. And actually, when you get into the mechanics of it, then we think there's plenty of room for us to grow significantly. And actually when you get into the mechanics of it then we

think there's going to be a hybrid period for a very extended period of time where you will want to have some base level of a demand served by these robot taxi cars, but there's going to be plenty of trips on the peak hours where you will actually still need human drivers to complement the network as well. When we imagine, when you close your eyes and imagine this Bolt driverless vehicle, is it European? Is it a Chinese product? Is it an American car? I mean, the auto industry is becoming a fierce arena for geopolitical competition right now.

Absolutely. And that's actually where we think Bolt is very uniquely positioned because unlike most other technology, this actually has massive national security implications. How many governments actually want to have, for example, millions of Chinese or other foreign-made cars on their streets that can theoretically be controlled by a type of button from anywhere else around the world. And obviously you want those to be aligned very closely with the values of your own administration. So in that sense we think Bolt is in a unique place that we can be this European player who

is going to be working with European governments and somebody they trust already for more than a decade. You talk about positioning yourself as kind of the trusted partner in mobility for European governments. Tell us a little bit about how you're looking at European business policy. Is it an ecosystem that would allow Volt to be created? So I'd actually argue that Europe has not been protectionist at all, and I think to our downfall.

So when you specifically contrast China versus Europe, what China has done is they've had a very strong walled garden where their own local tech champions barely have any competition. And what's been the result of that? It's been fantastic for them. They have many companies worth hundreds of billions that are now exporting their products globally, whether that's anywhere from TikTok to BYD to many others. And Europe took the opposite stance. So Europe was that we're going to allow free markets, all the US and other competitors can come in and compete with our companies. And what did that result in? Devastation. We basically don't have a European technology ecosystem. The vast majority of our companies are tiny compared to the US ones, and basically everybody's being wiped out.

So I think very clearly Europe needs to take some lessons in how do you actually enable some type of support to your local businesses so you can actually build the likes of Facebook and Google and so on which Europe is lacking. What specifically could the EU be doing now to make this ecosystem more prosperous, more growth oriented? Well, just reduce the bureaucracy, reduce the nonsensical regulation slowing local companies down and I think it's especially critical in the world of self-driving and transportation, where it's very sad, but you look at markets like Germany or Italy, they haven't updated their ride hailing, their taxi laws in three decades. So they're still stuck in the nineties, imagining smartphones don't exist. And obviously as a result of

that, who's suffering? So overall, where I see is that Europe needs to somehow support these six champions. I think there's very different ways how to do that. One of those is capital markets. We're very clear in just Europe is significantly behind the US. When you look at public market liquidity, retail trading, it's 10, 20 times below. So there just isn't enough funding actually for European upcoming companies. And that's one thing Europe very particularly can change through government action. You've had some big American participation in your past fund raises.

Do you think European money is ready to come off the sidelines now in ways it wasn't in the past? So actually, that's a sad reality of most European startups and tech companies, right? So the vast majority of funding, they're raised still from the US. In our example as well, more than 80% funding, we raised from the US because they were simply

just more forward leaning. They gave us significantly better terms than European investors, despite us being European company. So I think we're just another example in this line where Europe, if you give investors right incentives, I think they should be benefiting more from these tech stories as well. Marcus Villig is the founder and CEO of Bolt.

Thank you so much for being with us on What's News. Yeah, it was great. Thank you. And that's it for What's News for this Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bullifant. Our supervising producer was Pierce Lynch, and I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.