WSJ What’s News - Calls Grow to Increase Former President Donald Trump’s Security

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

P.M. Edition for Sept. 16. The Wall Street Journal’s Ryan Barber on why the U.S. Secret Service is rethinking its approach to the presidential candidates’ protection. And the U.S. power grid survived another brutal summer, but just barely. Energy reporter Katherine Blunt on what it needs to keep going. Plus, Boeing freezes hiring, as it buckles in for what could be a costly strike. Tracie Hunte hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going back to university for zero dollar delivery fee, up to five percent off orders and five percent Uber cash back on rides. Not whatever you think university is for. Get Uber One for students. With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Savings may vary. Eligibility and member terms apply. Calls grow to boost Donald Trump's security amid concerns about candidate safety. Trump's status as a former president who's also now the nominee again is really prompting this wider reassessment of the Secret Services calculus here. And Boeing issues a hiring freeze as it grapples with a costly strike. Plus, the U.S. power grid barely survived a brutal summer.

What needs to happen to keep it going? It's Monday, September 16th. I'm Tracy Hunt for the Wall Street Journal. This is a PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The suspected gunman in yesterday's apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump appeared in a Florida courtroom today. Ryan Wesley Ruth is facing several federal gun charges, including possessing a firearm

with a wiped out serial number and having a gun despite being a felon. The FBI is investigating the incident as an assassination attempt, the second threat on Trump's life in as many months. Trump said today that the suspect was influenced by Democrats, many of whom have portrayed him as a threat to democracy. Both president Joe Biden and Trump's Democratic rival, vice president Kamala Harris, have said they were briefed on the incident and condemned political violence. The apparent assassination attempt spurred more calls to increase the former president's security and raised fresh doubts about whether the Secret Service is capable of protecting

both presidential candidates, giving the rising risk of political violence. Reporter Ryan Barber has been covering this developing story for the Wall Street Journal and he joins us now. So Ryan, prosecutors said today that Ruth was hiding near the former president's Florida golf course for nearly 12 hours before a Secret Service agent spotted him and opened fire. Given that this is the second attempt on Trump's life, how is it that the whole perimeter of the golf course wasn't secured? So this is an area of increasing scrutiny for the Secret Service.

They're increasingly having to grapple with how to properly devote resources to Donald Trump. So as a former president, you just don't get the same level of protection that a sitting president or even a sitting vice president would get. That has been the historical precedent for the Secret Service. They deem the resources are necessary more for the current office holders. But Trump's status as a former president, who's also now the nominee again, is really prompting this wider reassessment of the Secret Service's calculus here. We're hearing it from members of Congress saying, we need to think about stepping it up. You know, two assassination attempts in as many months should be sending a message that the normal playbook isn't working and Secret Service,

this isn't your average former president. Is the Secret Service rethinking how they protect candidates? Absolutely. The July 13th shooting at the Butler Farm Show grounds prompted already this period of introspection. The Department of Homeland Security, they have an independent task force investigating. We have a house task force stood up and they've already requested a briefing about this second assassination attempt. So there are plenty of pressures both within the Secret Service and external to it that are saying we need to rethink the MO here.

And we've also seen the acting director of the agency in an agency-wide call the other month. He said the agency needs to change the paradigm, that they need to really rethink some of their long-held assumptions. Obviously, this isn't happening in a vacuum. Has there generally been an increase in threats of political violence? There's absolutely been an increase in threats of political violence. In the Trump administration, a number of agencies really tracked a spike in public figures coming under threats of violence. And it's really across the government, from the local to state to the federal level. Within the federal government,

no branch is spared here. The Marshall service, for instance, which protects prosecutors and judges. They have tracked a doubling of serious threats against judges. In a more recent span, from 2021 to 2024, there's been a similar kind of doubling of serious threats targeting federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials attribute it to a lot of fiery rhetoric that we're seeing in our political discourse, a lot of vitriol on social media, a general growing bitterness in the way that we talk about matters of policy in our society. That was Wall Street Journal reporter, Ryan Barber. In other news, Boeing said today that it will freeze hiring and delay pay increases for its

salaried workforce as it grapples with a costly strike. In a memo to staff today, the manufacturer also said it would cut back orders from suppliers for its 737, 767, 777 jets and that it was considering temporary furloughs for employees and executives. One analyst estimate said the strike could cost Boeing up to $500 million a week. The jet makers 33,,000-member machinist union went on strike last Friday after rejecting a labor deal. Union leaders are surveying members to determine priorities as they prepare to restart negotiations with the company tomorrow. Coming up, how the country's power grid survived the brutal summer. That's after the break. striving to deliver index-beating performance for our investors. Dynamic funds. Invest with advice. Visit dynamic.ca slash advice to learn more.

BP is switching its focus from wind energy to solar. The London-listed oil and gas company announced today that it would sell its wind energy division, called BP Wind Energy, so it could simplify its business and focus on its solar operation, LightSource BP. BP Wind Energy owns stakes in operating onshore wind energy assets across seven U.S. states. It has a combined gross generating capacity of 1.7 gigawatts. BP didn't provide financial details.

Bloomberg and the Financial Times have reported a business valuation of at least $2 billion. Despite record-breaking heat waves that pushed electricity demand to new highs, this summer the U.S. power grid held up. But not by much. And in many places the margin for error is shrinking. So what did work and what can be done for the future? Catherine Blunt is an integer reporter for the Wall Street Journal. So Catherine, how did the power grid manage to hold on this summer? What made it work?

All things considered there were enough electricity supplies to power through some really tough periods of high demand driven by some pretty severe heat waves in which residents in different areas of the country were cranking their air conditioning units. Historically speaking, the risk of electricity supply shortages has been most acute in Texas and California. There were shortages in those states in 2021 and 2020, but this summer there was quite a bit of new renewable energy online in the form of mostly solar, as well as battery storage to help kind of power through the evening hours

when solar production declines. There are still some supply risks that are going to need to be addressed in the coming years. So what can be done to make the risk of shortages less likely in the future? Some of what we've already seen, which is the build out of large scale batteries to store solar power during the day and discharge it at night when it's needed during those evening hours. And another thing too is to build more high voltage transmission lines to transfer power between regions. That's what a lot of experts say is really going to be critical in making this work.

But one of the challenges with that is just it's historically been very difficult to build transmission in this country. And there are things that have made it even harder in recent years. So that's an obstacle there. Catherine Blunt covers power, renewable energy and utilities for The Wall Street Journal. Traders are ramping up wagers that the Federal Reserve will kick off its interest rate easing campaign with a big half point rate cut on Wednesday. In U. In US markets

stocks were mixed. The Dow rose 228 points and notched a record while the Nasdaq slipped half a percent. The S&P 500 inched up 0.1 percent. As the nearly year-long war between Israel and Hamas continues, we want to hear from you. What do you want to know about the conflict and where it may be headed? Send a voice memo to wnpod at wsj.com or leave a voicemail with your name and location at 212-416-4328. We might use it on the show.

The federal government is still a long way from breaking up Google, but investors have already started treating the possibility as a foregone conclusion. Google's second antitrust case started last week, a month after it lost the first case. A federal judge previously ruled that the company engaged in illegal practices to maintain its dominance in internet search. The current trial challenges Google's position in the ad tech industry, where the company's tools play a major role in the buying and selling of online advertising. Stock in Google's parent company Alphabet is down nearly 14% since the start of the current

quarter. Heard on the street columnist Dan Gallagher spoke to our tech news briefing podcast about Google's prospects. You've seen a really noticeable decline in the stock and even more so than the decline we've seen over the last couple months for the other big techs because we've seen a market correction and investors getting concerned about some broader things in tech. It's just a big unknown and that's part of the problem is that you have this in the search case. We're not going to see a ruling on that on the remedies until August of 2025 likely. And then Google's likely to appeal those, which could tie it up

for another one or two years. So you've got just in that case alone, possibly two or three more years of just this overhang where investors don't really know what's going to happen. Ultimately. And so that's probably going to be a bit of a shadow on the stock. Now that doesn't mean the stock is going to stay down forever, but it might be this overhang relative to the rest of the techs, depending on how those trend and how their cases work out and other dynamics.

And you can hear more about this in today's tech news briefing podcast. And finally, it's a heated election season. Global conflicts are intensifying, news abounds, and some Americans are looking to avoid political conversations at all costs. According to a Pew Research Center survey in April, 62% of U.S. adults say they are worn out by so much coverage of the campaign and the candidates. And that's before President Biden dropped out of the race, before the national conventions of the parties, and before one assassination attempt and one apparent assassination attempt on former President

Donald Trump. Our reporter, Claire Ansboury, says people are avoiding political discussions, but not because they're uninterested. These people care about politics. They vote. They care about politics. They vote. They care about issues. But they just don't want to engage in them.

So they keep informed. But if the conversation turns political, they may walk away or they may act indifferent. They just don't want to engage in it. But some of the research says that if you become too disengaged, then you can be a disengaged citizen and not be motivated to vote or to volunteer or get involved. So there's some caution to becoming too distracted

or too disengaged. And that's what's news for this Monday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Anthony Bansi and Pierre Bienneme with supervising producer Michael Kosmitis. I'm Tracy Hunt for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.