WSJ What’s News - Trump Turns Up the Heat on Wall Street

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

A.M. Edition for Aug 5. President Trump is looking to step up pressure against banks for dropping clients over perceived discrimination against conservatives and crypto companies. WSJ editor Alex Frangos says it comes as investors are increasingly worried about political interference on Wall Street. Plus, The Justice Department tasks a grand jury with reinvestigating the intelligence community’s findings over Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. And, in a bid to deter foreigners from overstaying their visas, The State Department might require travelers entering the U.S. to post a bond of up to $15,000. Azhar Sukri hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From AI adoption to building stronger teams, hear how today's leaders are putting strategy into motion, stay informed and inspired with the Executive Insights podcast brought to you by AWS, available on all major podcast platforms. The Trump administration turns up the heat on Wall Street banks, this time over perceived discrimination against conservatives. First of all, the banks say that they don't discriminate. People on the conservative side of things feel otherwise. They think that companies as well in the oil and gas industry were discriminated against over the last few years. Plus a grand jury will now investigate

the 2016 probe into then presidential candidateidential candidate Trump and Russia. And a new programme could end up requiring some travellers to the US to post a $15,000 bond. It's Tuesday, August 5th. I'm Azhar Sukri for the Wall Street Journal. Here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We are exclusively reporting that the White House is preparing to step up pressure against

big banks, over-perceived discrimination against conservatives and crypto companies. A draft of an executive order which was viewed by the Wall Street Journal threatens to fine lenders that drop customers for political reasons. Combined with last week's dismissal of a top official at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Trump's continued calls to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell, the moves have some investors worried about the independence of key Wall Street institutions.

Journal Finance Editor Alex Frankos is with me once again. Welcome back, Alex. Let's start with that executive order that could punish banks that discriminate against conservatives. What more do we know about this? Well, first of all, the banks say that they don't discriminate.

There've been instances that folks in the conservative community point to, and the banks say that they dropped customers for. There have been instances that folks in the conservative community point to, and the banks say that they dropped customers for all sorts of reasons, some of which have to do with rules that the government itself implemented about anti-money laundering or trying to avoid reputational risks. People in the conservative side of things feel otherwise. They think that companies as well in the oil and gas industry were discriminated against over the last few years when there was this kind of movement towards green energy

and that banks were trying to kind of decarbonize their banking books. The other thing is that the Trump family itself, its business had done business with Capital One, and a bunch of their accounts were shut down. This is something that Eric Trump has brought up as a reason for them to be suspicious and skeptical about how the banks are treating certain types of customers. Yeah, this is definitely a new kind of front that the Trump administration seems to be opening up.

And the firing last week of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner, Erica McIntarfer, is continuing to reverberate through Wall Street, right? Yeah, I mean, that's less of a direct impact on the banks and more kind of a collateral damage where the investment community on Wall Street has relied on the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the other organs of government that collect data to make investments. And it's something that sets the US apart is that we've been perceived as having this gold standard

statistical collection service. A whole lot of other countries, you just can't trust the numbers. And in the US compared to everywhere else, you have been able to trust the numbers. And this matters a lot. If you're making an investment, if you're buying US government debt, you want to know what the inflation rate is. You want to know that you're going to be told what the inflation rate is in the future because that's going to affect the value of your bond that you're buying.

There's also a huge market in inflation indexed securities that the government issues every year, and there's a whole infrastructure around that on Wall Street and investing in these things. And if right now there's this perception that, well, if the White House doesn't like the numbers, they fire the statistician that next time the numbers are going to look good, even if underlying them, they're not good. And that's a problem because eventually the economy will catch up to that and the investments that people make will not perform the way they expect them to.

So have we seen any reaction in the markets directly so far, or is this something that you think will reverberate in the longer term? Well, there's a dichotomy there. People are kind of tearing their hair out a little bit, but yet markets went up yesterday. They had fallen on Friday, but it's not been a huge major reaction. Part of that is, yeah, people saying, well, what are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to sell everything all at once? But people are more worried about the long term and that you get an erosion of these institutions and the premium that investors around the world have paid for owning

the US dollar, for owning US government debt, for buying American stocks will erode over time. The other thing that Wall Street's watching are these, who's going to fill the role of the BLS? And also there's a Fed position that just opened up and the White House has indicated that they're gonna move to fill those. And people wanna know who that's gonna be.

Is it gonna be someone seen as nonpartisan and mainstream or is it gonna be someone who's perceived as more loyal to President Trump? That was General Finance Editor Alex Frankos. Thanks so much for coming in, Alex. Thank you. Coming up, the DOJ launches a grand jury investigation into the 2016 Russia probe, the most serious escalation in Trump's long-time effort to portray the probe as a criminal plot

by Democrats. That story and more after the break. break. The Justice Department has tapped a grand jury to reinvestigate the intelligence community's assessment of Russia's efforts in the 2016 election, where officials and lawmakers ultimately concluded that Russia interfered to benefit President Trump over Hillary Clinton. The move originates with Trump's intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard's claim that President Obama directed a false assessment to undermine Trump's victory, and accused the former president of treason. According to a DOJ official, Attorney General Pam Bondi signed an order yesterday directing a US attorney to present evidence to the grand jury and gave that person broad authority

to also investigate outside the office's jurisdiction. The official declined to say which federal prosecutor Bondi has tapped, but said one grand jury investigation has been opened in Washington DC. No targets have been named in the probe. The grand jury is expected to hear testimony from witnesses in the coming weeks. The DOJ didn't return calls seeking comment. The State Department has outlined a year-long pilot programme requiring travellers entering the US from certain countries to post a bond of up to $15,000, a move aimed at deterring foreigners from overstaying their visas. Yesterday's notice says applicants for

business and tourist visas from countries with high overstay rates would provide the funds to the US Treasury and get them back if they exited before their visas expired. The requirement wouldn't apply to most European countries, as well as South Korea, New Zealand, Australia and countries whose citizens don't require US visas for temporary visits. The notice doesn't outline which countries would be affected. The State Department didn't respond to a request for comment. And there have been protests in Brazil overnight after the country's Supreme Court ordered

the house arrest of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Justice Alexandre de Moraes accused Bolsonaro yesterday of defying a social media ban as part of restraining orders placed on the former right-wing president last month, saying he had incited attacks on the court. Bolsonaro is on trial in Brazil over police claims he tried to block President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking office in 2023. Turning to markets now and oil prices are continuing to slip for a third day after OPEC plus countries over the weekend decided to raise output.

The slide in crude prices has hurt Saudi Arabia's national oil company Aramco, which saw profits decline in the second quarter. Meanwhile, British energy giant BP is launching a new cost review and assessing what businesses it invests in. The company is under pressure from investors to revive its flagging share price and boost shareholder returns. Earlier this year, it jettisoned a push into wind and solar energy and refocused on fossil fuels. Profits gained as a result of that change. And shares in Palantir Technologies have reached an all-time high, after it reported a 53% jump in second quarter profits, mainly driven by US government contracts.

It's the latest sign that the company is getting a boost from the Trump administration's push to quicken the adoption of AI technology. The Denver-based data analysis software seller reported revenue of more than $1 billion yesterday, its biggest quarterly haul since going public five years ago. Shares were up more than 4% in off-hours trading. And speaking of tech results, we'll have a bonus episode coming later today. In the next What's News in Earnings, we'll be looking at the companies that have been on everyone's minds, the Magnificent Seven, digging into how

they did in the last quarter, and more importantly, what they're planning to do with some of those billions of dollars in cash flow. That'll be in the What's News feed around midday, and then we'll have our usual PM show tonight. And that's it for What's News this Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bullivant and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer is Sandra Killoff. I'm Azhar Sukri for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening. More than 156 million Americans live with a chronic health condition as of 2022. Whether it's pre-diabetes, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, joint pain, or support

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