TheChek News Flow

Republicans fear backlash against White House agenda could undermine support in this year’s midterm elections

On a cold Tuesday evening last week, about 200 Missourians crammed into a Methodist church to share a message: The AI revolution embraced by Donald Trump’s White House does not have their unqualified support.

“I voted for this administration and didn’t really think about [AI] until it started to affect me,” said Lisa Garrett, who lives beside the site of a rapidly greenlit $6.6bn, 400-acre data centre development in the satellite city of Independence, just east of Kansas City.

A worker for a local ministry, Garrett’s unease extends beyond the project’s demand on local water and electricity supplies to the broader social impact of the industry it is being built to support.

“I have grandchildren . . . It does concern me that they’re being drawn into a world that isn’t real,” she said.

Her concerns, which poll after poll has shown are shared by much of Trump’s base, are increasingly at odds with the posture and policies of his administration.

Over the past year, the White House has courted tech billionaires and gone out of its way to protect the AI industry’s agenda, fast-tracking permits for data centre construction and greenlighting the sales of advanced chips to China while cracking down on states’ attempts to regulate chatbots.

Trump’s advisers — plucked from Silicon Valley and led by AI tsar David Sacks, an investor with close ties to the industry — have warned Republican state legislatures not to pass AI safety bills and challenged claims AI tools will cause widespread job losses or environmental damage. The president has emphasised that American AI dominance is a “national security imperative”.

But across the US, citizens, clergy and elected officials in conservative communities are leading a grassroots rebellion against the rapid rollout of the technology. Political strategists fear this could wreck Republicans’ chance of maintaining their majority in Congress this November and become a defining issue in the 2028 presidential race.

Brad Littlejohn, a director at the conservative think-tank American Compass, said: “There’s a real danger here that you get a Democratic candidate who really builds their message around this . . . and wipes the floor because the Republicans have been pigeonholed as the friends of the AI companies.”

Polling by Public First for the FT found about 60 per cent of Trump voters are concerned about AI’s rapid development and almost 80 per cent believe the technology needed more regulation.

A recent survey by the Institute for Family Studies, a pressure group that campaigns for more AI regulation, found close to four-fifths of voters in Republican-supporting states wanted tech groups to be liable for harming children.

While the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan urges companies to “build, baby, build”, dozens of data centre developments have been stalled across the US because of local opposition, including in Kentucky, Georgia, Texas and other Republican strongholds.

The backlash is most pronounced when it comes to policing AI. Last year, the White House twice tried to pass federal legislation that would ban state-level AI regulation, only to be thwarted by some of the president’s closest Maga allies including Steve Bannon.

Instead of backing down, Trump, who has attracted tens of millions of dollars in donations from AI billionaires such as OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, in December forced through a similar measure via an executive order, echoing the industry’s claims that AI companies would be “destroyed” if obliged to comply with a “patchwork” of safety laws.

The order threatened to withhold federal funds from states that pass “onerous” laws to govern AI and ordered the Department of Justice to investigate attempts at regulating the nascent technology, but it is being defied.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis, seen as a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, last month hit out at the “very harmful” effects of AI and criticised Trump-backed attempts to “kneecap the states and let Big Tech write the rules”.

Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee-Sanders, Trump’s former press secretary, has also publicly broken with the administration over the issue, as has Utah’s Republican governor Spencer Cox.

While Sacks has painted state-level regulation as an existential threat to the industry that would thwart efforts to beat China, his close friend JD Vance, the vice-president, said in the summer he understood the arguments against a moratorium and could “kind of go both ways” on the issue.

Vance, a protégé of Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel who is also close to tech podcasters such as Chamath Palihapitiya, nonetheless told Fox News on Tuesday there were a “lot of things we are worried about” about the rollout of AI, including privacy violations.

A spokesperson for Vance did not respond to a request for comment.

The AI industry has amassed a war chest to back candidates who support light-touch regulation. One group backed by venture capital titan Andreessen Horowitz raised more than $125mn last year.

But in state capitols across the US, the mood music is very different. At least 370 AI-related measures have been introduced in state legislatures this year, according to FT analysis, with more than 120 of those originating in Republican-led chambers.

The intensity of the opposition to AI in Missouri is remarkable. After Meta and others built large data centres in the state over the past two years, lured by the the many rivers and tax abatements, the city of St Charles fought back. Last August, the district just outside St Louis became the first in the US to implement a year-long ban on new data centre construction.

Colin Wellenkamp, a Republican who represents St Charles in the Missouri state legislature, said: “The top three items people are most thinking about are: what are you doing with my water and my air, what are you doing to keep AI secure where you’re not using it to pull scams . . . or replicate identities and is it going to take my job?”

St Charles’ residents are proposing a permanent data centre ban. In the past week, residents in other parts of the state held three different meetings to protest such construction.

The Republican-dominated state legislature is proposing at least 10 bills regulating AI in defiance of Trump.

One law was introduced by Republican state senator Joe Nicola, whose district includes Independence. He is concerned AI tools are being deployed to surveil his blue-collar constituents including Amazon workers during shifts at a local warehouse.

“I don’t care who the president is,” Nicola said. “Being told as an elected official in this state [that] I can’t protect my people. No, that goes against my principles.”

AI is “just advancing so rapidly”, said Nicola, a pastor-turned-politician whose bill bans the technology from being treated as sentient. “We have data centres going up all over the place and we still have no regulation . . . we literally have reports across the nation where people have married an AI,” he added. “We’re headed in a really bad direction very, very quickly if we don’t have some regulation on this.”

Other state lawmakers are proposing legislation that would make AI developers responsible for potential harms caused by the technology, particularly chatbots. This is a real threat in Missouri, where juries are known to award large damages to plaintiffs taking on large corporations.

Some Maga groups in the state have supported them.

“We support Trump’s efforts to win the AI race, but we don’t want to do it at the expense of human dignity,” said Byron Keelin, head of Freedom Principle, a right-wing group that this summer rallied its members to oppose the president’s attempt to ban state legislation. “We are trying to protect citizens from being taken advantage of by big corporations.”

In Washington, Josh Hawley, Missouri’s senior senator and one of Trump’s strongest supporters, has warned the AI revolution is “working against the working man, his liberty and his worth”. He has introduced federal legislation that would force AI companies to verify users’ ages and ban them from providing virtual “companions” to minors.

The Trump administration has attempted to temper the AI backlash. The president has called on data centre operators to “pick up the tab” for their power consumption and the White House has been keen to stress that facilities will not receive federal subsidies.

Companies including Microsoft and Anthropic have also sought to calm tensions by pledging to absorb some costs and spend more to support local communities whose lives are upended by AI.

Yet there is no sign the White House is rethinking its resolute backing for the industry. With AI investments underpinning much of the US’s recent economic growth, “we can’t afford to go backwards”, Sacks wrote.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Residents of Independence, meanwhile, feel whiplashed by the pace of change.

Garrett said: “I’ve listened to [Elon Musk] talk about . . . how quickly it is happening and I don’t know, I just think sometimes things need to be slowed down a little bit, put some thought into it.”

“Why does it need to happen so quickly? I know that there’s a race, but I don’t have a good answer for that.”

DAX:

MDAX:

SDAX:

Hedge fund manager’s digital asset strategy stung by ‘terrible year’ for cryptocurrencies

Brevan Howard’s crypto fund slumped 30 per cent in 2025, as a downturn in digital assets stung one of the hedge fund industry’s highest-profile participants in the sector.

The BH Digital Asset fund, which bets on digital currencies but also makes venture capital investments in the digital assets sector, fell 29.5 per cent last year, its worst annual decline since its launch in 2021, according to people familiar with the fund’s performance.

The fund was launched with backing from Alan Howard, Brevan Howard’s notoriously private billionaire co-founder who was an early adopter and champion of digital assets. Bevan Howard’s digital assets unit managed $2.4bn in assets at the start of 2025, most of which was in the fund.

The fund made gains of 43 per cent in 2023 and 52 per cent in 2024 but suffered heavily last year, as crypto assets were buffeted by steep losses for technology stocks at risk of disruption from AI. The price of bitcoin, the world’s biggest digital currency, fell 6 per cent over the course of 2025 after a record-breaking rally gave way to a sharp sell-off.

“There are a lot of private equity and venture capital type investments [in the fund],” said one hedge fund investor. “They have underperformed bitcoin but to give them some credit, last year was terrible for crypto.”

The BH Digital Asset fund’s poor returns came during a tumultuous year. Gautam Sharma, its chief executive and chief investment officer, left Brevan Howard and was replaced by Chris Rayner-Cook, the former head of trading and financing at crypto exchange Coinbase.

Howard personally made a series of early venture capital investments in the crypto industry, including Copper, a crypto custody and trading firm that was chaired by former UK chancellor Philip Hammond; crypto exchange Bullish Global and blockchain horseracing video game Derby Stars.

This year, the BH Digital Asset fund has participated in funding rounds for companies including Superstate, which works to put traditional assets such as equities and bonds on a blockchain, and TRM Labs, which tracks illegal activities on blockchains, according to announcements from those firms.

Crypto assets have endured another difficult stretch at the start of 2026. Bitcoin has dropped precipitously and is down more than 20 per cent to about $68,000 a coin, having peaked above $125,000 in October.

Meanwhile, Brevan Howard’s other strategies had middling returns last year. Its Master fund, which makes money by betting on key economic indicators such as interest rates through assets such as currencies and commodities, gained less than 1 per cent in 2025, according to a person familiar with the matter. However, it had a strong January, gaining more than 4 per cent, the person added.

CEO Olivier Bron discusses the agenda for the upscale department store and how it transcends a sector fraught with difficulties.

With Bloomingdale’s distancing itself from the competition and strengthening its luxury and contemporary profile, the challenge is clear — how to sustain the momentum and build upon last year’s gains.

That formidable task falls on the shoulders of chief executive officer Olivier Bron, a 48-year-old Frenchman. Before taking the reins of Bloomingdale’s two years ago, he served as CEO of the Central and Robinson Department Stores in Thailand. Before that, he was chief operating officer and director of strategy at Galeries Lafayette Group in France, and earlier he worked at Bain & Company, the global consulting firm, focusing on retail transformations.

“We had a great performance in 2025, which set a new high watermark for Bloomingdale’s. We’re working on building 2026 into a better year than 2025,” Bron told WWD. “It was the highest sales in Bloomingdale’s history. We’re doing amazingly well in ready-to-wear — across the board from contemporary to luxury. We’re doing amazingly well in beauty and in fine jewelry, and we’re doing great in home, which is a key differentiator for us. These trends will keep going in 2026.”

Bloomingdale’s comparable sales rose 9 percent in the third quarter last year — the upscale department store’s biggest gain in 13 quarters — 5.6 percent in the second quarter, and 3.8 percent in the first quarter. Total annual volume hovers around $4 billion, industry sources estimate.

Bloomingdale’s recent performance provides some affirmation that with proper execution, the department store model is still viable, despite what have been decades of consolidation and skepticism dogging the sector. Bloomingdale’s operates 31 department stores, 25 Bloomingdale’s outlets and four Bloomie’s units, which are smaller, contemporary-oriented versions of the full-line stores.

There’s little chance for opening additional department stores, but Bron has built a strategy for organic growth, with the rallying cry, “Dream Big.” The strategy centers on investing in store renovations at the 59th Street flagship and key branches; building up the luxury image by attracting designer and premium contemporary brands not previously carried, and giving top brands deeper, fulsome presentations and additional points of distribution through much of the store fleet.

“We launched, let’s say, 3,300 new points of distribution over the past 12 months,” said Bron, citing Acne, Chloe, Burberry, Casablanca, Bottega Veneta, Jacquemus, Khaite, Roger Vivier, Skims and Zimmermann as examples.

“We’re still developing our luxury footprint, which was very much focused on a couple of doors. Now, we’re creating the right ecosystem for luxury brands to succeed. We have more opportunities in luxury ready-to-wear and luxury fine jewelry. We also have opportunities outside of New York for really expanding points of distribution.”

He cited 10 “destination” Bloomingdale’s doors best suited to bolstering luxury: 59th Street; South Coast Plaza, Century City, Valley Fair and Fashion Valley, which are all in California; Roosevelt Field in Garden City, N.Y.; Tysons, Va.; Aventura, Fla.; Short Hills, N.J., and Chestnut Hill, Mass.

“But we don’t want again to be luxury only. It’s very important we’re not Neiman Marcus,” Bron said. “The core, the sweet spot for Bloomingdale’s, is premium and contemporary to high luxury. We don’t ask the brands just to join us. We’re creating this ecosystem for them to succeed, meaning great store environments, big spaces for brands to express their identity and great service.

“Let’s move from a transactional relationship with the customer to a more experiential relationship.”

During an interview at Bloomingdale’s Long Island City, N.Y., offices, which command sweeping views of the East River and Manhattan skyline, Bron pointed out that it’s the day before Bloomingdale’s was due to stage its first vendor conference, happening at the 59th Street flagship. (He also maintains his office at the 59th Street flagship.) About 200 people representing 180 vendors would learn about the “Dream Big” strategy, plans for the future and why Bloomingdale’s is an outlier.

“It’s rare in our industry [when] all the planets are aligning like today. The underlying economics are actually pretty OK, despite some uncertainty, and of course, the competition is struggling, but most importantly, it’s the fruits of this ‘Dream Big’ strategy we implemented. It’s about modernizing the assortment, bringing new brands in, and new points of distribution for the brands. We are really expanding with brands that are working well. Our growth is happening with almost no new stores, maybe one outlet here and there, but it’s mostly organic. We’re also playing the role of incubator of new brands to make sure Bloomingdale’s is the place of discovery.”

At the vendor event, Bron would introduce a “partner intelligence platform” geared to strengthen partnerships with vendors by giving them greater information on customer shopping behavior. It’s being beta tested with five brands with the aim of a rollout to all brands within a few months. Vendors will be able to get greater customer information on how a customer shops their brand, other brands and other categories.

“It’s impossible to get this unless you’re launching a big survey, but we have this information,” Bron said. “Brands can benchmark the behavior of their customers against comparable brands. For example, if you’re L’Agence and you’re selling a lot of pants, where are customers buying tops? Department stores are the only ones able to deliver this kind of data.”

“Dream Big” also entails enhancing service and customer engagement by bringing more salespeople to the selling floors. Over the past year or so, about 90 “top” sellers were hired, many recruited from competitors and armed with client books filled with “VICs,” those high-spending, very important clients.

“It’s my worst nightmare when a customer comes to a store and can’t find anyone to help. That’s a disaster,” Bron said. “We increased our number of our VIC sellers — our top sellers — by 30 percent. They sell at least $1.5 million a year [each]. It’s very important that locally we’re relevant. The story we’re building at Bloomingdale’s right now is making us more and more attractive for these top sellers. We have the right brands. We have the right environment. We have the right momentum now. And we have a great culture at Bloomingdale’s.”

So what makes for a good salesperson?

“You have to genuinely care for people,” Bron said. “If you don’t, you don’t belong in retail. At department stores, there’s a complex selling ceremony because we have so many different types of customers and categories. The people in the store have the hardest jobs in the company. Without them, we can’t live. We can’t make a difference. You’re standing all day long, waiting and welcoming customers. And sometimes [business] is soft. Sometimes you have challenging customers. Sometimes you have a bad day or a bad evening with your kids or significant other. And what I keep saying is when you come to the store, you have to shine. You have to be welcoming. You have to be enthusiastic. That’s tough when otherwise, you’ve had a bad day.

“We have not only the best sales ever, but we have the best NPS score ever, thanks to the service that we’re providing in our stores — more people, better people and better training,” meaning more storytelling and awareness of the brands. “Are we perfect? By far no. We will keep working on it. But honestly, when you look at the surveys and what we’ve done, customers can perceive the evolution.”

In certain ways, Bron is reshaping the culture. He’s taking much of what he learned overseas and liked best about department stores in Europe and Asia and applying it to Bloomingdale’s. Overseas, retailers invest in stores differently, often providing richer experiences and presentations, with greater impact than stores in the U.S. He believes that in Europe and in Asia, a visit to a department store can be an enjoyable family outing. That’s not what department stores are generally known for in the U.S.

“Bloomingdale’s is definitely the best job I ever had,” Bron said. “It’s the convergence of everything I learned before and what I’ve learned since coming here. It’s an amazing opportunity to bring everything together with the team here and build the next chapter, the next golden age of Bloomingdale’s. 2024 for me was about learning the U.S. market, learning about Bloomingdale’s, learning how to work with the teams, and for the teams to learn to work with me. It was really about setting the vision. We launched our ‘Dream Big’ strategy two years ago, with this key notion of being the local leader,” meaning dominating the competition in each market where Bloomingdale’s operates, not just in New York City, where for much of Bloomingdale’s history, investments were heavily weighted toward the flagship.

“Our model for the department store model is a profitable and very strong model,” Bron said. “We have a strong balance sheet. We can invest in small brands. We can invest in service. We can invest in renovations.” The plan is to upgrade 12 stores, with renovations underway in Century City and Glendale, Calif., in addition to 59th Street.

“We have 4.2 million active customers every year. They visit at least 2.7 times a year, and many of these customers come every week. So saying the department store model is dead is crazy. There are some boring department stores that might be dead, so we have to keep reinventing ourselves and challenging our reasons for being.”

The Saks Global bankruptcy this year perpetuates doubts about department stores, yet for Bloomingdale’s, “it accelerates our journey,” Bron said. “We were already on track, and our performance was already very strong without the Saks Global situation. Now it’s important for brands to consider some diversification, and we’re probably the best option in that given context. So it’s not changing our strategy. It’s accelerating the success of this strategy. With ‘Dream Big,’ we are on a five-year journey. We started two years ago.”

Saks Global is closing certain department stores — nine have been revealed so far — which could pose some opportunity for Bloomingdale’s. “We remain open to opportunities of potential expansion,” Bron said. “We don’t have any plans right now.” It has to be the right market and right box. “If some opportunities come on the market, we will look for sure.” Bloomingdale’s does not operate any department stores in Texas or the Pacific Northwest, though the retailer has “a pretty strong online performance” in those areas, Bron said.

At Bloomie’s, the smaller format, contemporary-oriented versions of the bigger department stores, “We’re looking for some more opportunities. There is nothing we can share now,” Bron said. “It’s a profitable model for us, and very complimentary to our full-line stores.”

Additional outlets are also expected to open. About 30 percent of the merchandise in the outlets is from Bloomingdale’s department stores; 70 percent is bought expressly. Last year, two outlets were opened.

Asked if food and beverage is another growth opportunity, Bron replied, “I think you are right about that. It’s a very important complimentary service for our customers.” He suggested possibly opening additional restaurants in the department stores, though several operate in such locations as White Plains, Short Hills, South Coast Plaza, Roosevelt Field and 59th Street. “It’s definitely something we’re exploring.”

At 59th Street, there are three restaurants: Forty Carrots for frozen yogurt and salads; Flip for burgers, and Studio 59 for sophisticated cocktails and quick bites like tuna tartare or avocado toast. There is also Magnolia Bakery. A fourth restaurant is being “explored,” Bron said.

Regarding selling food to take home, “It’s a bit more complex in the current environment,” particularly given inflation and low margins. “But we could do that from an opportunistic perspective. In some of our campaigns, where we’re pushing food products, it worked pretty well with [fall 2024 campaign] ‘From Italy With Love.’ But I don’t think it will be a significant portion of our business in the future.” Decades ago, Bloomingdale’s 59th Street operated a section for epicureans on its main floor.

E-commerce represents about 38 percent of Bloomingdale’s total volume. “It’s still growing massively. We’re elevating the editorial content, and bringing new brands in, but the best way to invest in our digital business is to invest in our stores. When we talk about the marketing investment for digital, we talk about lower funnel, which is really about activating Google, Facebook, etc. Upper funnel is more about the branding. But what better way to invest in our brand than investing in our stores? Think about your best experience at Bloomingdale’s. You will never remember a brown box in front of your door shipped by someone you don’t know. That’s not the experience at Bloomingdale’s. It’s about being in a store to buy a suit or a sweater, and the seller was great, the store looked good and the ambience was good.”

His biggest challenge is enabling Bloomingdale’s to keep up with the fast-changing market. “We have to get ahead of the wave, and that’s why I’m pushing and pushing the teams to go bigger and faster. With the opportunities in the market and our positioning, we are doing the right things, but we have to keep going faster.

“My best day at Bloomingdale’s was when I realized what Bloomingdale’s was all about. It was the Saturday launch of ‘From Italy With Love.’ At noon, I told my wife I’m going to spend an hour in the store to check what’s going on. We had so many activations; I really wanted to take a look. Ultimately, I spent six hours in the store instead of one. When I went back home, there was this kind of negotiation with my wife — that’s a different topic. But I realized what Bloomingdale’s was about: all these customers, all these brand partners and our staff having fun together, having a drink together, going from one activation to another, one brand corner to another and spending time together. There is one KPI we don’t measure in our store, that I’m sure would be amazing — the amount of time people spent in the store that day. Sales were great, but most importantly, when I was watching the people, seeing some still there after three hours, I realized, that’s Bloomingdale’s. It was just my best day.”

Since then, Bloomingdale’s has stepped up its special events strategy. “Saturdays at Bloomingdale’s” occurs about eight times a year at all stores. “It’s where people just come to enjoy having a glass of Aperol spritz, an ice cream and chat with the brands doing some activations,” Bron said. “It’s an opportunity for people to relax, spend time together, for brands to cascade their storytelling. It’s about amplifying animation with our vendor partners. You see more carts, more food, DJs, installations and personalization.”

When the “Dream Big” strategy was launched, Bron and his executive team visited every Bloomingdale’s store to explain the strategy to everyone in the stores, before opening hours. “People were challenging us, questioning us. It was about getting some feedback. Were we missing something? The reactions were amazing. So the energy and the vibe it created in the company was amazing. We’ve done that for every single function here in the head office, at every single store. We went to the distribution centers. We went to call centers. We explained to 100 percent of the people in the company what the strategy was. It took us six months. I wanted our people to hear about the strategy directly from me and from the executive committee, not through layers of management and intermediaries.

“Our people are making the Bloomingdale’s experience different. They are engaging. That’s one thing. The brand mix is also different. This mix of contemporary with luxury, I think is very attractive. And look at our stores — they don’t look the same as others. It’s absolutely not the same experience.” There’s a vibe unlike other stores. The stores are high energy, upscale, pulsating with crisp, sophisticated of-the-moment merchandise displays with bright lighting, and they’re often busy, with a multigenerational draw.

“We want people to feel cozy, warm, to feel connected, to feel this relationship. It’s all about emotions, and that’s exactly why we’re investing and redesigning the look, feel and the aesthetic of Bloomingdale’s, because we want people to feel these emotions, and you won’t feel that anywhere else,” Bron said. “We’re redesigning totally the entire store in a warm way, in a festive way,” Bron said, referencing the 59th Street flagship. “Actually the experience at Bloomingdale’s is not as formal as others. It’s not intimidating. It’s easygoing. You can come in your weekend outfit. We don’t care. Come as you are and feel good.

“There’s always something happening. We’re doing these campaigns three or four times per year. So our next campaign this spring is going to be ‘California.’ We will have another campaign in September, and another campaign for holidays. You don’t see that anywhere else. Each of these campaigns will be bigger and more impactful from a creative standpoint and an execution standpoint.

“There’s a lot to do, and we have to go fast, but the opportunity is here. We have this opportunity to bring Bloomingdale’s to international market standards. It’s an opportunity to really realign the department store strategies with the brand strategies. It’s about more storytelling, and less about pricing and discount and things like that. It has to be vibrant, but without being overwhelming.”