WSJ What’s News - Why Bosses Have Had It With Office Activists

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

P.M. Edition for Aug. 29. This week, Microsoft became the latest company to crack down on political dissent among its employees. We hear from WSJ reporter Lindsay Ellis on why corporate leaders are adopting a new, harder-line playbook for dealing with political debate at work. Plus, the Trump administration said it’s using an untested strategy to rescind about $5 billion in foreign aid without congressional approval. Journal congressional reporter Siobhan Hughes discusses the backlash on the Hill and what’s at stake. And Kraft Heinz nears a breakup, a move that would undo an infamous 2015 merger. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. Trump moves to bypass Congress in cutting billions in foreign aid. The biggest thing at this stake is Congress's power of the purse, which is ascribed in the

Constitution. If Congress is not able to stand up now and stop this from happening, the thought is that the game is over. It has totally handed over its power to the White House. Plus, bosses are increasingly telling employees to stop their workplace activism, or else. And Kraft Hines nears a breakup, undoing an infamous 10-year-old merger. It's Friday, August 29th. I'm Alex Oscella for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The Trump administration said that it is using an untested strategy to rescind $4.9 billion in foreign aid without congressional approval. In a letter to congressional leadership sent last night,

President Trump said that he wanted to rescind funds from the State Department, international assistance programs, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, using his authority under the Impoundment Control Act, which gives the White House power to pause spending only in limited circumstances. For more on this, I'm joined now by Shavon Hughes, who covers Congress for the journal. Shabon, what is the controversy here? The controversy is essentially that, according to lawmakers, the White House is step in on Congress's power of the purse. It is Congress that decides what programs to fund. And if the White House turns around and simply says it is not spending congressionally appropriated

money using a fast one to do so, that's walking you right up to this constitutional crisis. There was a legal opinion from the GAO back in the 1970s that said there is a loophole in the Impalment Control Act that you should really consider closing. But a series of court decisions and congressional laws since then have, according to the government accountability office, closed that loophole. And at this point, according to the GAO, this is not a legal tactic. What have the reactions been on Capitol Hill? So far we have seen reactions from many Democrats, but also we have heard from Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, who out and out said that this was an illegal tactic. That does reflect the views of other Republicans. And this is going to land with a bomb when

Congress returns from recess next week. Why is Trump using this law to make these cuts? President Trump has really been asserting a quite muscular power for the presidency, and this is of a piece with that. The amount is very small. It's worth noting it's aimed at foreign aid, so it will hit in ways that will not affect his constituencies, but it is a big flex of his at a time when Congress is about to come back. And he also has a practical reason here to message to the conservative wing of his party, that he is serious about controlling debt and deficit. The biggest thing at this stake is Congress's power of the purse, which is ascribed in the Constitution. If Congress is not able to stand up now and stop this from happening, the thought is

that the game is over. It has totally handed over its power to the White House. That was Wall Street Journal reporter, Chavon Hughes. Thanks, Shavon. Good to be here, Alex. In a separate development, Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker, and Chuck Schumer are calling on Trump officials to pause their efforts to sell shares of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The senators sent a letter this morning to federal housing finance agency director William Pulte, demanding he focus on housing affordability instead of matters such as the mortgage fraud allegations against Fed Governor Lisa Cook, which President Trump has cited in his move to fire her. In a statement, Pulte blamed Elizabeth

Warren, Jerome Powell, and Joe Biden for making housing unaffordable. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., signaled today that she will move quickly to rule on whether President Trump acted unlawfully in his attempt to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook. The judge didn't issue any decisions from the bench during the two-hour hearing, but asked lawyers for Cook and the Trump administration to set a schedule for the case that will allow her to expeditiously reach the legal merits of Cook's claim. The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation measure rose by 2.6% over the 12 months through July, steady from a month earlier. That's according to new data from the Commerce Department out today. The closely watched

core PCE price index, which excludes volatile food and energy categories, was up by 2.9% year over year in July, up from 2.8% in June. Inflation last month did not move closer to the Fed's 2% target, emphasizing the policy challenge the central bank faces as it prepares for a possible interest rate cut in September. Meanwhile, consumer sentiment declined slightly in August. A closely watched index from the University of Michigan fell to 58.2 this month from 61.7 in July, slightly lower than economist expectations. U.S. markets ended the day on a downbeat note. The Dow closed down 0.2%. The S&P 500 fell 0.64%, and the NASDAQ dropped 1.15%. But this was not a enough to derail stocks monthly climb. For the whole of August, the S&P 500 was 1.9% higher,

and the NASDAQ climbed 1.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced by 3.2%. We're exclusively reporting that Kraft Heinz is closing in on a plan to break itself up. That's according to people familiar with the matter. The decision would effectively undo much of the work done from the infamous merger of Kraft and Heinz in 2015. A deal orchestrate by Warren Buffett and Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital Partners. The people said that a transaction could be announced as soon as early next week, though they cautioned that the plans and timing could still change at the last minute. The Wall Street Journal reported in July that Kraft was planning to spin off a large chunk of its grocery business,

including many craft products, into a new entity that could be valued at as much as $20 billion on its own. That would leave a company housing goods such as sauces and spreads like Heinz's namesake ketchup, and Dijon mustard brand, Gray Poupon. The company is betting that two separate units would be in total worth more than Kraft-Hein's roughly $33 billion market value. Coming up, white bosses have had it with office activists. That's after the break. Increasingly in corporate America,

bosses are telling office activists to put a lid on it or else. This week, Microsoft fired a total of four states, staffers for protesting against the company's work with the Israeli military. Those are the latest examples of a growing corporate trend in which business leaders are cracking down on political dissent. Lindsay Ellis covers the workplace and careers at the Wall Street Journal. Lindsay, the big question here is, why? Like, why are bosses cracking down on this? So for some context, the sort of ethos of bring your whole self to work that a lot of companies really adopted, to some degree executives felt like that might have gone too far.

We're also now grappling with two additional trends. The first is that we're in a political climate in which the White House is taking a very close eye on corporate operations. And companies are risking backlash from lawmakers, from even some consumers, if they seem to be catering too much to the left or quote unquote woke forces, including their own employees. The other big factor here is we're in a much different job market for white-collar workers now than we were three, four years ago, especially in tech workers have lost considerable leverage. And that gives executives some flexing power to be able to basically make the rules and enforce them. Have the protests themselves had an impact here? Have they changed the work environment? The protests have brought considerable attention to companies' work. in these spaces, be it for Microsoft, their work with the Israeli military, for example.

Seven-ish years ago, there was a walkout at Google on, you know, its own policies, particularly connected to reporting sexual harassment. Each of those brought a lot of attention to sort of the internal operations of those companies, which sometimes will stay behind closed doors. Most of the examples that we saw were in the tech sector. I'll say, though, that some of these flashpoints in which companies are basically tamping down on the feedback that they're getting from employees, be it in an activist environment or a totally non-political environment, that's happened elsewhere too. J.P. Morgan Chase earlier this year had just this influx of employee comments on the returned office mandate and then shut down comments. after that point. It sounds like one of the kind of side effects is a more adversarial relationship between employees and their bosses.

Is this a trend that's likely to continue? We've seen that relationship shift in a number of ways. This summer I had reported on, even in job descriptions, employers saying, we're expecting you to work overtime, 100% in person, and basically making it clear from the outset that this is not for people who want to push boundaries or slack off,

this sense of employers having more leverage in this relationship and more control over what happens on the clock. We've seen that emerge in a number of ways. That was journal reporter, Lindsay Ellis. Thanks, Lindsay. Thank you. And finally, we were talking earlier this week about water use in agriculture. Turns out another industry also using a lot of it is tech. Google has put out a new report detailing the energy consumption, emissions, and water use of its generative artificial intelligence that users turn to every day.

WSJ Pro reporter Clara Hudson told our tech news briefing podcast why the company chose to talk about water use in particular. It's interesting that Google did talk about its water use because most of the conversation about AI and energy has been typically focused on. on the electricity that it needs, but data centers use a huge amount of water to cool down all of the electrical equipment that powers AI. So this report might encourage more companies to talk about their water use. And it could also help people who use chatbots really frequently and weren't even aware that there is this water cost to asking their questions. To hear more from Clara, check out today's episode of Tech News Briefing.

And that's what's news for this week. Heads up, we'll be taking the weekend off for Labor Day in the U.S., and we'll be back with our regular show on Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Anthony Bansy and Rodney Davis, with supervising producer Michael Cosmides. Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. Aisha El-Muslim is our development producer. Chris Zinsley is our deputy editor,

and Falana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. I'm Alex Osala. Thanks for listening. You know what I'm going to be.