WSJ What’s News - Pennsylvania Becomes Ground Zero for Election-Fraud Claims

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

A.M. Edition for Oct. 31. Officials ring the alarm over efforts to question the integrity of the presidential vote in the swing state with misleading posts on social media. Plus, the U.S. warns North Korean troops may be heading to Ukraine’s front lines to fight alongside Russia. And WSJ reporter Shen Lu tells us how Chinese e-commerce company Temu is angling for a piece of Amazon’s lucrative business offering services to merchants. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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may be heading to Ukraine's front lines to fight alongside Russia. And Amazon makes billions by charging its sellers fees. We'll look at how rival Temu is angling for a piece of that business. The fight is taking place across the world. The two companies are increasingly looking like each other in terms of how they compete for sellers and how they deliver things. It's Thursday, October 31st.

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 living your world today. Pennsylvania officials are ringing the alarm over efforts by Donald Trump and his supporters to call into question the integrity of the presidential election in the crucial swing state before even a single ballot has been counted. Republican Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said yesterday that bad faith actors were attempting to exploit fears about the vote and in doing so were harming the state's democratic process. There is already a lot of misinformation about Pennsylvania's elections, and it's likely to continue in the coming days and weeks ahead.

Over the past 24 hours, we've seen several videos shared widely online that lack proper context or were inaccurate, leading to false narratives. Schmidt's comments come as posts suggesting or declaring systemic fraud in Pennsylvania, propelled globally by Elon Musk and other pro-Trump influencers with millions of followers, are now outpacing officials' attempts to explain the realities on the ground. Authorities say the posters are misrepresenting routine or unverified problems, leading to a false narrative about electoral malfeasance. Foreign operatives also appear to be playing a role in efforts to portray chaos in Pennsylvania,

with the office of the director of national intelligence and two other federal agencies saying that recent viral footage purporting to show a person destroying mail-in ballots was a hoax created by unspecified Russian actors. While elsewhere in the Keystone state, Elon Musk's $1 million giveaway to battleground voters has landed him a court date today in Philadelphia. A judge ordered the billionaire to answer questions as part of a lawsuit by the city's district attorney who is seeking to shut down the sweepstakes, alleging it violates state consumer protection laws as well as a law giving the state the sole authority to run

lotteries. A representative for Musk's America PAC didn't respond to a request for comment. And Donald Trump is leaning into remarks by President Biden earlier this week that appeared to call Trump supporters garbage, donning an orange vest yesterday on a noisy airport tarmac in Wisconsin, before hopping into an unusual campaign trail vehicle for a photo op. How do you like my garbage truck? This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.

Harris, meanwhile, has attempted to distance herself from Biden's comments. Harris and Trump's schedules are set to overlap today, with both candidates holding events in Arizona and Nevada. With just days to go before the U.S. election, North Korea seems intent on grabbing Washington's attention, test launching an intercontinental ballistic missile today that stayed airborne for longer than any previous attempt. Showcasing a longer flight time suggests the missile's potential not just to travel farther, but also to carry heavier payloads. One of Kim Jong-un's top priorities is possessing a

long-range missile powerful enough to carry several nuclear warheads. The outcome of next week's election could reshape U.S. policy vis-à-vis North Korea. During Biden's presidency, Kim shunned outreach from the U.S. and drew closer to Russian President Vladimir Putin, increasing the risk of Russia helping to advance North Korea's weapons technology. Hours before North Korea's latest test, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with his South Korean counterpart, where he expressed alarm over another example of Moscow's blossoming relationship with Pyongyang.

The evidence now suggests that North Korea has sent around 10,000 soldiers to train in eastern Russia. And some of these DPRK troops have already moved closer to Ukraine. And we're seeing them outfitted with Russian uniforms and provided with Russian equipment. Such deployment would pile pressure on Kiev's troops, which are already outgunned and outmanned. And journal reporter Isabel Coles says that although Ukraine's recruitment numbers jumped earlier this year, after the age of compulsory military service was lowered to 25, the country's military is once again struggling to backfill its losses.

Earlier this month, we saw draft officers carrying out spot checks outside a concert hall in Kiev where one of Ukraine's most popular bands was playing and also outside a fancy store. These are venues where draft officers hadn't really ventured before and their presence is indicative of the fact that Ukraine is having to ramp up its efforts to recruit more soldiers. You know, in the early days of Russia's invasion, we saw people queuing up to fight, but now in the third year of the war, that supply is dwindling and President Zelensky is under pressure to show that the burden of the war is being shared evenly across society.

war is being shared evenly across society. Moving to markets now, shares in Microsoft are slipping in off-hours trading, with excitement about the tech giant's strong earnings yesterday quickly giving way to concern about its outlook. The company's projections that revenue growth at its Azure cloud business, a core of its AI offering, would be slightly lower this this quarter at 31 to 32 percent, raised questions about the near-term payoff of its massive investment in AI. Journal reporter Tom Doton explains what's behind that disappointing forecast. The reason that they ended up a little bit below, according to their CFO Amy Hood, was that capacity constraints on the data center side

Microsoft's still probably in a good position. Things are a little bit concerning in the short term, but assuming that demand really is what Microsoft says it is and they're able to build up the capacity to meet it, long term it's probably still a fairly positive story for Microsoft. And in other standouts amid a flurry of earnings reports, Starbucks has promised not to raise prices in the U.S. for the next year, to bring back condiment bars where customers can help themselves to milk and sugar and to stop charging extra for dairy alternatives. The moves are part of new CEO Brian Nichols efforts to reverse a sales slump and get customers

who've been grumbling about long waits and high prices for drinks back to Starbucks cafes. Here was Nichol during yesterday's earnings call. I think we have a real opportunity in simplifying the pricing experience, right? Because you start off with a price for a latte or whatever you start with. And then the next thing you know, you start customizing. And right now, everything has a kind of a different price. And whether it's one pump, four pumps,

frankly, I'm still wrapping my head around how the whole system works. And that's part of the reason why I know we have to simplify it. Looking ahead, it's shaping up to be another bumper earnings day with MasterCard, Merck, Uber, Comcast and Kelenova, among those reporting this morning, while tech giants Apple, Amazon and Intel are due to post results after the closing bell. And we'll also get the latest reading of the Fed's preferred inflation measure, the

Personal Consumption Expenditure Price Index, at 8.30 a.m. Eastern. Coming up, Journal reporter Shen Liu takes us inside the intensifying battle between Amazon and Chinese e-commerce rival Temu to win over sellers. That story after the break. Balance your trading strategy by adding futures. CME Group helps you manage risk and capture opportunities in all market environments. Capitalize on around-the-clock access to highly liquid global futures and options markets across all major asset classes. Visit your online broker and get started. See what adding futures can do for you at As we mentioned before the break, Amazon is reporting earnings later today, figures that

could shed light on the health of one of its biggest moneymakers, helping sellers on the platform to promote and deliver their products. Fees related to that business brought in around $140 billion last year, more than Amazon made from Prime subscriptions or its cloud services. And as journal reporter Shen Liu told our Kate Bullivant, Chinese rival Temu is after a piece of that. Temu's popularity has risen very fast over the past two years. It didn't exist until September 2022 and now has become one of the most popular shopping sites in the US. Tammu's share of the US ecommerce market is expected to triple from 0.7% last year to 2.3% next year. That's according to data

from research firm eMarketer. And even though Tammu's share is much smaller compared to Amazon's, Amazon takes about 40% of the US e-commerce market. But Tammu's rise represents one big challenge for Amazon in recent years. Their rivalry echoes the ones Amazon had with Walmart, Target and eBay over the years, which pushed the company to lower its prices and expand its services and speed up deliveries. Temu is increasingly attracting sellers who felt like their profit margins have become smaller on Amazon because Amazon charges a large seller's fee and other fulfillment fees. Okay, so how are these two companies trying to win over sellers?

So the fight is taking place both in the US and in China and across the world. The two companies are increasingly looking like each other in terms of how they compete for sellers and how they deliver things and the pricing of the products. Amazon is looking to open a new storefront for its sites to sell the kind of low price items that have been popular on Temu. And Temu, which is backed by Chinese e-commerce firm PDD Holdings, previously they have been known for air shipping products directly from China and now it's more relying on local sellers or sellers with inventories in the markets where they operate. And this battle between these two e-commerce companies, what does it

mean for sellers on the site? I mean for sellers it's simply one more avenue to sell products. Many Amazon sellers have been wary about the increasing fees Amazon has charged over the years. Amazon sellers said that Amazon penalizes them if they list products on competing sites at lower prices to avoid penalization. Some businesses told us that they actually list on Temu using different names. And some sellers told us that Temu requires the same products to be listed at least 15% to 30% cheaper than on Amazon.

Right. We should note here that Temu says both it and sellers have healthy margins without sharing numbers, while Amazon told you that sellers are very important to the company and that it provides them logistics and tools. Looking ahead though, how is this battle for dominance likely to play out? What hurdles do the two rivals face? So one challenge for Temu would be for it to attract big brands like Nike, like Coach, which have been listing on Amazon for years. And for Amazon, its challenge would be to attract sellers in China, which have likely worked with bargain sites like Temu and Shiyin

and to airship products directly from China to the US. And how is Amazon able to compete with bargain sites like Temu on low prices when it's charging fees from sellers? That was Wall Street Journal China reporter Shen Liu. Shen Liu, thanks so much for your time. Thanks, Kate. And that's it for What's News for Thursday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach and Kate Bulevent with supervising producer Christina Rocca, and I'm Luke Fargus for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.