WSJ What’s News - The Battle for Control of the House Goes Down to the Wire

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

A.M. Edition for Oct. 9. The WSJ’s Katy Stech Ferek goes over the key races and issues that could determine who wins the House majority. Plus, millions are put under evacuation orders in Florida as Hurricane Milton strengthens to a Category 5 storm. And, U.S. antitrust officials consider breaking up Google. Azhar Sukri hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by CME Group, the world's leading derivatives marketplace, offering the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes. CME Group, where risk meets opportunity. Millions are told to evacuate immediately as Florida braces for a historic storm. Plus, antitrust officials consider splitting up Google, and the battle to win the House majority goes down to the wire. Everyone is watching each little brick that will form the majority. During the last election, Republicans did better in New York than everyone expected. Will the lawmakers that won seats be able to retain them two years later? It's Wednesday October the 9th. 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. We start in Florida, which is bracing for a direct hit by Hurricane Milton. It's strengthened to a category 5 storm overnight, with winds of up to 160 miles an hour. It's expected to make landfall late Wednesday or early Thursday, and batter Florida's West Coast with hurricane-force winds, life-threatening storm surge and heavy rain. Millions of people along the state's Gulf Coast have been told to leave their homes with President Biden yesterday urging residents to leave immediately.

This could be the worst storm hit Florida in over a century. And God willing, it won't be, but that's what it's looking like right now. And if you're under evacuation or orders, you should evacuate now, now, now. You should have already evacuated. It's a matter of life and death, and that's not hyperbole. It's a matter of life and death. Milton will likely compound the destruction from Hurricane Helene, which struck Florida less than two weeks ago. Turning to the Middle East now, and Israel has been weighing how to retaliate against Iran, but according to US officials, it's refusing to share its plans with the Biden

administration. Frustrating officials have been repeatedly caught off guard by their allies' military actions. They say they don't yet know the timing of the strike or what Israel might target. The White House has been urging Israel not to hit Iran's oil facilities or nuclear sites. Some officials had been hoping to learn more today during a planned meeting between Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gelland and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon. But according to an Israeli official, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

blocked Gellolan from travelling to the US last night as Israel plans its Iran operation. Meanwhile, Israel continues to expand its air and ground campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. It also launched a strike in the capital of Syria yesterday, targeting a member of the group, according to our reporting. Syrian state media said the attack hit a residential building, killing seven people. US antitrust regulators haven't broken up a company in 40 years.

That could soon change. The Justice Department gave a federal court a range of options yesterday. To end, what a judge said was Google's unlawful monopoly in search. Those range from conduct restrictions to a breakup. Google responded by saying that the DOJ's initial proposal for reforming the search engine market is quote, radical and sweeping. It also warned of negative consequences for innovation and consumers in the US. The search giant also faces the threat of break-up from another government suit targeting its online ad business. And Ticketmaster owner Live Nation and Facebook parent Meta Platforms face antitrust cases of their own, which could also lead the DOJ and the Federal Trade

Commission to ask courts to break up the companies. And inflation may be easing across much of the US economy, but the cost of health insurance keeps on soaring. An annual survey by healthcare non-profit KFF has found that the cost of employer health insurance rose by 7% for the second year in a row. The back-to-back increases have added more than $3,000 to the average family premium, which reached roughly $25,500 this year. And according to employers and benefit consultants, health insurance costs are projected to sharply increase again in 2025. It's been another volatile day for markets in China. Investors were left disappointed yesterday, after the country's economic planning agency failed to meet hopes

for more fiscal stimulus measures. But China's finance ministry has now scheduled a media briefing on Saturday, and journal deputy finance editor Quentin Webb says that's reignited those expectations. So investors are hoping for something in Saturday's media briefing that builds on the existing stimulus measures, but is on the fiscal side,

and so stands a better chance of helping support the real economy as well as the measures so far to date, many of which have been focused a bit more on supporting the markets or perhaps supporting home buyers, for instance, with mortgages. There needs to be something, a lot of people think, unveiled soon by the Ministry of Finance or another authority in order to keep this rally going and stand a real chance of turning this from a sort of brief blip into a decisive turnaround for the Chinese economy. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index paired losses after today's announcement,

but still ended the session sharply lower. And in other news moving markets, Rio Tinto has agreed to a $6.7 billion takeover of Arcadium Lithium. The Anglo-Australian mining giant says its cash offer represents a 90% premium to Arcadium's closing price at the end of last week. Shares in Arcadium Lithium jumped nearly 30% in off-hours trading. Coming up, the race for the presidency is a close one, but so is the battle to control the House. DC reporter Katie Stich-Ferrick helps us crunch the numbers after the break. The race for the US presidency may be tight, but looking further down the ballot, the contest for supremacy in the House seems to be at least as unpredictable.

According to projections by the Cook Project, So, money is a thing, but it's not everything. I think you really look at the importance of what are you doing with your time. The conversations that we've had with our financial advisor is very much building what that framework looks like that helps support those important things. The places where you're investing your time and your resources, your family clearly, and those closest to you. Edward Jones.

We do money differently. Visit edwardjones.ca slash different. Political report, a non-partisan race ranking group. 206 seats are likely to be won by Republicans, while 203 seats are in districts that Democrats are favoured to win. The remaining 26 districts are toss-ups. Journal Congress reporter Katie Stetch-Ferrick has been looking at the races for House seats and joins me now. Katie, Republicans are slightly ahead in these projections, but Democrats seem to be optimistic.

Well, yeah, you mentioned the lay of the land, but those 26 toss-up seats in the middle, that can go either way. And Democrats have a history of winning a greater portion than 50% of those toss-ups. During the last election, they were able to capture about 75% of those toss-up seats. So it really is anyone's game here. The margins during the last two years in the House, the governing margin was tight and we're in an era of very thin majorities just across every chamber. And for Republicans, what are you hearing from lawmakers? Where do their strengths and weaknesses

lie? They're very confident in the economy. They say that voters trust them to handle these issues. High prices, everyone's feeling at the grocery store. They're hearing that people don't like the way that the country is being run right now and they feel that bodes in their favor this election year. They're also talking a lot about immigration. They're talking a little bit more about abortion than we've seen in the past. These are the issues that they're hearing back in their districts and the top things that voters want to talk about when they talk to who's representing them. What's made this race especially unpredictable?

One of the things is that there's an incredibly competitive presidential race going on, and there are also a bunch of states where there are really competitive Senate races going on. So that's creating a bunch of really weird pressures on House race candidates. Are people going to go to the polls because they feel really passionate about the presidential election? Are they going to go because they're really invested in the Senate race? Or will they be motivated to go to the polls because they want to vote for their representative in the House? I mean, these are the most local districts and some of the issues can get really localized for these voters. People brought this up in California when I was researching those races.

Some of those Republicans in those very competitive districts, the issues are very, they're in farming, it's water control, it's over regulation. So what are some of the key races that we should be keeping an eye on? This was really fun to ask. During the last week that Congress was here, I just asked more than a dozen lawmakers in the hallway, hey, what are you guys watching? Because this is so competitive, everyone is watching each little brick that will form the majority. So, you know, I talked to Debbie Dingell of Michigan and she said, you gotta watch those two open seats

in Michigan, there's two seats where a lawmaker's retiring and a lawmaker's running for Senate and she's gonna watch those to see how it's going. Everyone is watching these New York seats during the last election. Republicans did better in New York than everyone expected. Will the lawmakers that won seats be able to retain them two years later? Everyone's watching for similar things in California. What's really interesting is almost everything matters this race, and there will be a lot to watch on election night.

Journal Congress reporter Katie Stich-Ferrick, thank you very much indeed for your time. Thanks for having me. And finally, rubbing shoulders with everyday Americans has for long been the ultimate photo-op for political candidates. And when a presidential candidate swung by a local diner or ice cream parlour, the visits would provide a nice bit of publicity for those businesses. But in the final weeks of a tense election season, Journal reporter Chip Cutter says some of those companies have become more apprehensive about those visits. Some businesses are saying we want no part of this. They don't want to have any political campaign stops this season. I think some of the shops are trying to take this in stride.

For example, Penzi's Spices, which is a spice retailer that Vice President Kamala Harris stopped by in Pittsburgh recently. They told us that actually they've seen an uptick in sales after the vice president stopped by. That company got a lot of backlash from Republicans who said that they felt it was a company that didn't like Republicans, they sort of took issue with her campaign stuff there. And so a lot of the companies are trying to make the best of this, but some don't exactly

know what to do when suddenly their Yelp pages are flooded with critics or people are commenting and posting sort of bitch real on a Facebook page that we've seen in some cases. It all just makes things a little bit harder if you're the business owner trying to navigate all this. And that's it for What's News for Wednesday morning. Today's show is produced by Daniel Bach and Kate Bulevent with supervising producer Christina Rourke. 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.