WSJ What’s News - Two Israeli Embassy Staffers Shot Dead in Washington D.C.

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

A.M. Edition for May 22. A man shouting “Free Palestine” fired shots near a Jewish museum in the U.S. capital, with President Donald Trump suggesting the killings were driven by antisemitism. Plus, WSJ’s Quentin Webb says it's a new, golden era for crypto as Bitcoin jumps to a fresh, record high. And Oasis fans look set to outspend Swifties as the British band’s summer reunion tour gears up. Azhar Sukri hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Washington, a man who shouted free Palestine has fatally shot two Israeli embassy staff members near a Jewish museum. Plus, the GOP makes last-ditch changes to the tax bill to appease conservative hardliners. It's more important to get this right, to get it correct, than to get it fast. We are sitting at the table to do that. And Bitcoin jumps to a new all-time high. It's Thursday, May 22nd. I'm Azhar Sukri for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. Here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

world today. Law enforcement officials say a man shouting, free Palestine, has fatally shot two Israeli embassy staff in Washington. The shooting happened near a Jewish museum just after 9pm Eastern last night. Officers believe the shooting was committed by a single suspect identified as 30 year old Elias Rodriguez of Chicago. He has been arrested. Israel's ambassador to the UN described the attack as anti-Semitic terrorism. While President Trump said radicalism has no place in the US, here's DC Mayor Muriel Bowser. What I do know is that the horrific incident is going to frighten a lot of people in our city and in our country. And I want to be clear that we will not tolerate this violence or hate in our city.

A number of surveys have documented a steep rise in anti-Semitism around the globe that has worsened with the war in Gaza triggered by the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel. And according to New polling, support for the war is rapidly decreasing, with around 70% of-minute changes to their sprawling tax and spending bill as they try to unite the party ahead of a nail-biter floor vote expected early today. Texas Representative Chip Roy and Pennsylvania's Scott Perry from the Conservative Freedom Caucus are among the holdouts. It's more important to get this right, to get it correct than to get it fast.

We are sitting at the table to do that. And for the bill to move off of the floor, these issues have to be addressed. The new language added to reassure conservatives includes accelerating new Medicaid work requirements and ending many energy tax credits by 2028. Coming up, Bitcoin surges to a new record high, and how Oasis fans are set to outspend Swifties on the band's hotly anticipated reunion tour this summer. Those stories and more after the break. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink.

And of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile. Different is calling. In market news this morning, Bitcoin has rallied to a new record high of $111,000. The boost to the world's largest cryptocurrency comes as investors search for value amid wider market sell-offs. Deputy Finance Editor Quentin Webb spoke to our Kate Bullivant.

Quentin, it seems counterintuitive that a risky asset like Bitcoin would rally in a market sell-off. What's going on? Right. Well, I think there's just sort of building optimism about the future of digital currencies. Earlier this week, we saw a stablecoin bill make a key kind of step forward in the Senate. So we're moving towards a regime where the US is more kind of overtly crypto friendly. And of course, ever since the start of the Trump administration, we have seen this dramatic shift in tone in how it treats crypto. This evening, don't forget, we have a gala dinner for the top holders recently of President

Trump's Trump coin. Now, arguably, you could say in an environment where there are question marks about longer term US debt sustainability and the safety of assets such as US Treasuries, perhaps at the margin that encourages people to look again at alternatives to dollar-based assets. But I think that may be less of a driver here than just this sort of sense that it's a new kind of golden era, if you like, for crypto. And what does this tell us about the potential for crypto values to go even higher? Well, I mean, that is a very difficult question because of course, you know, there is no sort

of fundamental if you like underpinning the value of Bitcoin. There's no dividend that it throws off, so you can't value it using a traditional valuation metric. It's often very momentum driven. We have seen this extraordinary run up where it was below $60,000 a coin as recently as September and now we're up above $110,000. And that momentum often has a way of sustaining itself, but it's anyone's guess really where we go from here. That was Deputy Finance Editor Quinton Webb. Quinton, thanks so much. Thanks very much. Thanks very much. And while US bond yields have been hitting new highs recently, German debt yields fell this morning after surprisingly low services data raised concerns about European growth.

Paul Hannan is the economics editor for Dow Jones Newswires. The surveys are a little bit surprising in that the part of the economy where this weakness is most manifest is services. And that's the part of the economy that is not directly affected by the tariffs. So what seems to be happening is that you're still seeing a lot of inventory build up around these tariff announcements. And factories are still producing at quite high levels. But in the other parts of the economy that are less directly affected by that,

businesses have gotten a lot more gloomy about the longer-term prospects, and they're already cutting back. Meanwhile, existing home sales for April are due out at 10am Eastern this morning. It's the second month of the crucial spring home buying season, which is shaping up to be a bit of a dud. Morgan Stanley's US housing strategist Jim Egan told WSJ's Take on the Week podcast that rising inventories and tepid demand are hurting sales. It's not as unaffordable as it was in the fourth quarter of 2023, but we're still talking

about one of the more pressured environments of the past several decades. And because of the proliferation of 30-year fixed rate mortgages, you have this lock-in effect that's been well covered in the media, and that's keeping inventories close to, I can no longer say at historic lows, but close to historic lows. So unaffordable, and there aren't a lot of those homes to buy, which is propping up that unaffordability. You can hear much more about the state of the US housing market on the latest episode of WSJ's Take on the Week on YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And in a quick roundup of corporate news, we're exclusively reporting that popular fitness app Strava

has completed a fresh round of fundraising valuing the business at $2.2 billion, including debt. We've also learned that Walmart plans to cut around 1,500 corporate jobs in a US restructuring aimed at trimming its expenses and speeding up decision-making. And Nike has said it will begin selling its products on Amazon's US site after a five-year hiatus. This as Nike looks to increase sales under CEO Elliot Hill, who returned to the company in October. And it seems that fans attending Oasis' sold-out world tour are gearing up for some

supersonic spending, beating out Taylor Swift fans. British bank Barclays found that people attending Oasis' concerts are spending more than they had planned, an average of $228 on tickets. But if you're going, please don't look back in anger. So we're expecting and anticipating Oasis fans to spend over a billion pounds attending the UK reunion tour. We've looked at it in comparison to the Taylor Swift tour. It was closer to £997 million. So the Gallagher brothers are just pipping Taylor Swift to the top of the post there. That was Tom Corbett, managing director of sponsorships and media at Barclays. He told us that consumers are prioritising spending their money on experiences that'll live forever.

And that includes buying bucket hats and parkers, or even getting a null Gallagher-like haircut. The principle around that is exactly the same as with the Swifties. It's around spending your money on creating experiences with friends and families and of course the reunion of the Gallagher brothers is a really great opportunity to do that. You've got the ticket price itself but then you've got everything else that comes with attending these experiences and that will include things like your accommodation, your transport, your dining, your drinks at the venue, your merchandise, and as equally we saw with the Taylor Swift tour, possibly a little bit more, accessories or clothing to wear to the event as well.

It remains to be seen though whether Oasis concerts in the US will generate as much as the $5 billion consumers spent during the first few months of the US leg of Swift's Eras tour. Sounds like the Gallagher brothers may just have to roll with it. And that's it for What's News this Thursday morning. Today's show is produced by Kate Bullivant and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Azhar Sukri for the Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.