Can Trump Avoid the Saudi-Houthi War?

As President Trump and Iran's president head to the UN, we'll look at whether diplomacy could be in the cards. Plus investors reward meadows push into agentic shopping and with campaign season heating up, Republicans make big gains in the ad-spending war. This was the first time that we see Republicans spending ahead of Democratic spending across all of the Senate races that the Cook Political Report designates as toss-ups. "It's Tuesday, September 22, I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today." All eyes are on President Trump today, as he prepares to address the UN General Assembly later this morning, but it's what's happening, more not happening, offstage that has investors and geopolitical analysts abuzz, as we report that Trump is expected to meet with a number of Middle East leaders during his stay in New York, and that Cotari officials are hoping to use the UN gathering to discuss the possibility of resuming peace talks. Something analysts have said could reverse a recent rise in oil prices. With more, on What to Watch For, I'm joined by Oxford Analytica, senior Middle East analyst Laura James, Laura is probably telling that even the UN Secretary General has been pouring some cold water on the prospect of any direct peace talks occurring in New York. And yet, I have to ask, how significant would it be if even indirect meetings are held at this point? At this point, any kind of advance in negotiations is going to be seen as positive by markets, but I would say the challenge is not really about channels, it's about the bottom lines. And I would say that the indications are that the bottom lines are not shifting on either side. Iran is still not prepared to give up its right to control the straight of hormones. It's not about the money necessarily at this point, it is about the deterrent provided by that control. And to some extent, the bargaining factor and the international legitimacy, those kind of payoffs. Meanwhile, there's absolutely no sign on the US side that this is a point that's up for negotiation now. From the US perspective, the economic pressure campaign is succeeding, the shuttling through the straight of hormones is working. This is not the time to concede to Iran what in fact wasn't offered in June. And so with those bottom lines so far apart, even indirect channels would be less than positive. Right, Laura, so seemingly no deal in sight there. And meanwhile, we are seeing intensifying fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis. The Saudis have asked for support in that campaign, and yesterday the UK volunteered to help with aerial refueling saying this was part of efforts to keep oil pathways open. We have reported that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has asked President Trump for support in this war. Is there a chance we could see the US drawn into that fight sooner rather than later? If the Houthis Saudi standoff persists, I think there's a very large chance of the US and more of the region being drawn in as well. To some extent, the UK offer of health is quite symbolic. It's a very time-limited single-era plane issue. But the fact is that this is another threat to global navigation. The United States, we're informed, was already actually providing significant help to the Saudi-backed forces in Yemen before the conflict kicked off on a kind of covert intelligence level. In some ways that's really likely to be the most useful, the problem here is that we have seen the Houthis out face long-term aerial pounding by the United States in the previous rounds of fighting. It cost quite a lot in terms of munitions. It didn't deter the Houthis who are pretty resilient to casualties. And so in that sense, the reason that everybody is not piling in against the Houthis who are not particularly popular in the regional globally is simply that nobody sees a clear end game. Laura James is a senior Middle East analyst for Oxford Analytica, which is owned by Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. Laura, thank you so much. Thank you. British Columbia has filed a lawsuit against open AI and chief executive Sam Altman for alleged safety violations in a mass school shooting earlier this year in the world town of Tumblr Ridge. Eight people were killed and more than 25 injured in the shooting, which came after employees at open AI raised alarms about the 18-year-old suspects chatbot use. The lawsuit, which was filed in California, claims that open AI designed an unsafe product and aided and abetted a mass shooting by not alerting police. Nikki Sharma, heard here courtesy of Global News, is British Columbia's Attorney General. This tragedy raises serious questions that need to be examined through the courts. Questions about what responsibility tech companies have when they become aware of credible threats of serious violence. Questions about the safety of AI chatbots that are designed in a way to form relationships with its users. And questions about what action should be taken when public safety may be at risk. I want to be clear, I have not read the interactions between the shooter and chatGPT. We have asked open AI to disclose these chats they have refused. We should all be asking them why. On Friday, Sam Altman apologized to the people of Tumblr Ridge for not alerting police sooner to the suspect's activity on chatGPT, open AI said it provided the chat logs to law enforcement and is offered to work with the plaintiffs on discovery. NewsCorp, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, has a content licensing partnership with open AI. And has Meta cracked the code on monetizing its AI investments. The tech giants shares closed up more than 11% yesterday after announcing a deal that it lets muse AI assistant complete purchases on behalf of users at stores that are partnered with Shopify. Meta released muse in the US just two weeks ago, and according to sensor tower, the app, which is equipped to handle tasks like booking doctors appointments and managing finances, has skyrocketed to the top free spot on Apple's App Store surpassing chatGPT. Rocco Strauss is a senior analyst at Errady Research and says the Shopify tie-up highlights the potential for muse to become a global leader in agentic AI. Shopify merchants now get surfaced directly within muse. So effectively, this cuts out the middleman retailers, like Atse eBay and also Amazon to an extent. Have in mind, Meta takes no cut off the transaction, but Meta CEO indicated that they may take a cut in the future. Though I think that Meta's play here is more in retail media and search style ads against that agentic traffic, which is key for distribution, especially across the more privacy-sensitive countries here in Europe. From a distribution perspective, Meta has clearly an ad with WhatsApp's billions plus daily users and muse download numbers speaking for itself. Meta shares are up roughly 35% over the last month. Coming up the midterm advertising blitz is heating up, our Kentamas and Anthony DeBarros break down the state of the money race heading into the midterms after the break. If you're already sick of political ads, just you wait, because the advertising war ahead of the midterms is about to get turned way up. As Republicans pump money into battleground states, the Democrats had dominated earlier this summer. The journals Anthony DeBarros and Kentamas have been tracking that ad spending and they joined me now with more. Anthony, you are our data news editor, so hit us with the data. What are the numbers telling you? Well, we looked at ad spending over the first 18 days of September gathered from the firm ad impact. And in that time, groups that were backing Republicans spent $204 million on ads across 10 of the most competitive Senate races. Not only did the spending on the GOP side skyrocket, but the gap between the GOP and Democratic spending widened to $83 million. And there's a bit of a shift occurring in where the two parties are bringing money in from now. We've seen during the course of the primary so far, the Democratic candidates have been generally outpacing Republicans in terms of fundraising. So this surge of ad spending has been fueled mainly by party committees and by two new superpacks that are closely aligned with Maghe Inc, which is the Trump-aligned superpack. Can I, I'm curious, does that gap between pack money and presumably smaller dollar donations on the Democratic side really matter at the end of the day after all an ad is an ad, right, regardless of who funded it. But one form of support might indicate where momentum remains in the race. Right. I mean, Republicans are certainly dealing with intensive headwinds here. They have an unpopular president. There's a lot of unhappiness about the economy, the high costs of goods that everyone is dealing with, gas prices. And so all of those things are difficult to combat and also just history. Any midterm election is typically a referendum on the president and oftentimes presidents lose seats in midterm elections. But this is an advantage that the Republicans have. have the benefit of the fundraising that President Trump has been doing this year, and so they've made a real concerted effort to get their message out, especially in the Senate races that are largely in Republican-controlled states, places like Alaska, Texas, Ohio. These are states where the President really needs Republicans to turn out, and one way of doing that is getting your message out over TV. So what you're saying there, kind of sort of the silver lining for Democrats, right? Maybe Republicans are bringing more money to the to the ad wars, and yet they're needing to spend a lot of it defending states that have been sort of squarely Republican going into the campaign. Is that right? Absolutely, and you're seeing this in a big way in Texas. James Telerico has been a very successful fundraiser. He's vastly outraged, Ken Paxton, and so that has forced the Trump forces to put a lot of money into Texas that will not necessarily be able to be used elsewhere as a result. Anthony, Ken there mentioned Texas. I'm glad he did, because I know the number is so quite a big uptick in Republican spending. There, where else are we seeing the GOP deploy their resources here? Let's talk first about Texas, because the most dramatic uptick in spending that we saw looking at just that first portion of September was there $62 million, and just over the weekend, the Trump-aligned Super PAC MAGA Inc. announced that it had spent another $5 million on that race bringing its total investment there up to $15 million. So there's a ton of money going into Texas, and one of the things that we note in our story is that this was the first time that we see Republican spending ahead of Democratic spending across all of the Senate races that the Cook Political Report designates as toss-ups. It's the first time that that's happened throughout the primaries in this election cycle. So I think that's pretty significant. Some other key races that we're seeing upticks in spending are in Maine, where Senator Susan Collins is defending her seat against Troy Jackson, and also one additional race is in Michigan, where former representative Mike Rogers is running against Abdul Al-Sahead. Ken close us out from the money to the message. Do you see any notable themes popping up in how Republicans are pitching themselves in their ads? And what else will you be watching for in the coming weeks as presumably this campaign air war heats up even more? Yeah. I think Republicans are generally trying to cast Democrats as a risky bet to take control of Congress. You hear a lot of mention of liberal policies and the Democratic Socialists overtaking the Democratic Party. And so I think that will be a pitch that President Trump will be making in the weeks ahead. Then you've got a glorious quote from Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy, who said basically if the left wing weren't so extreme in his words that otherwise we'd be total lunch meat. Yeah. And, you know, John Kennedy has been traveling the country. He spent the weekend in the Midwest in Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. Those are three traditionally Republican states that have very active Senate races. There's a lot of worry on the Republican side about the race in Kansas, especially. I think you're also seeing some Senate candidates trying to differentiate themselves from the president. I have spent a lot of time in Maine. And Susan Collins is really trying to focus on the work that she's done as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, her ability to deliver for her home state Democrats view Collins as perhaps the most vulnerable sitting Republican. That's a state that Kamala Harris won in 2024. I've been speaking to Wall Street Journal National Political Reporter Ken Thomas and data news editor Anthony DeBarros. Ken, Anthony, thank you both so much. Thanks. Thank you. And that's it for what's news for this Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach and Happy Moyer, our supervising producer with Sandra Killhoff, and I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a news show. Until then, thanks for listening. [BLANK_AUDIO]