TikTok, Musk and the German far right and diversity backlash
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Today, the US Supreme Court hears arguments on Congress' TikTok ban, Elon Musk shifts his political interest to Germany's far-right AFD party, and the future of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

It's Friday, January 10th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Christopher Waljasper in Chicago. And I'm David Spencer in London. When you hear LSEC data and analytics, what do you think of?

Donald Trump is scheduled to be sentenced today for his conviction on criminal charges in his hush money case. The US Supreme Court rejected his last-minute request to halt it just days ahead of his inauguration.

The state funeral of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who died last month at the age of 100. President Joe Biden gave the eulogy for the 39th president. "Jimmy Carter's friendship taught me, and through his life taught me, the strength of character is more than title or the power we hold." Biden was among five living presidents who attended the funeral.

President George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump were all in attendance, seated next to one another. Carter's remains have been flown to his hometown of Plains, Georgia, where he'll be buried next to his wife.

The brief detention of Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Mercado has been condemned by world leaders. She was held for an hour after appearing in public for the first time in months, a day before President Nicolas Maduro's inauguration for a third term. The government says the opposition fabricated her arrest.

At least 10 people are now known to have died in the Los Angeles wildfires with nearly 10,000 structures destroyed. Five fires were burning into a third night on Thursday as dry desert winds again gathered strength. Nearly 180,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes.

For the latest on the wildfires, follow updates on the Reuters app or website. And listen out for our weekend episode looking at the key issues that have been highlighted by these wildfires and what California might need to do to prevent future devastation on this scale. That pod drops on Saturday.

Global shares have been under pressure as investors count down to the US jobs report today on the lookout for numbers which could exacerbate or ease the sell-off in the global bond market. Both Nasdaq futures and S&P 500 futures were down 0.3% as Wall Street was shuttered overnight to mark the funeral of Jimmy Carter. The US Supreme Court hears arguments today in a case that pits free speech against national security.

The U.S. ban on TikTok is set to go into effect on January 19th, threatening the accounts of 170 million American users, pending a ruling from the highest court. David Shepardson is covering the case in D.C. David, what should we expect from the court today?

So it's not like a typical case where you can easily sort of predict along ideological lines where the court might end up. But it's clear that ByteDance and TikTok are putting all their, the entire focus, and it's what the court wants them to look at, is the First Amendment issue. And they're going to really press this argument that Congress was motivated not by data, because they argue there's

There's other Chinese apps that collect lots of data. They're going to argue that this really is about the content of videos that have been on TikTok and their response by Congress, not about the national security grounds. But there are two fundamental views in opposition to one another here. The conservatives in the Supreme Court have been generally pretty optimistic

on defending the First Amendment rights of Americans in terms of free speech across a wide variety of cases versus national security. And the court and the conservatives have shown a lot of deference to the government when they invoke national security grounds. So political support isn't really falling along neat political party lines here. No, absolutely not. In fact, you have a lot of conservative attorney generals and others who really say, this is

This is just a risk that the United States can't tolerate. On the other hand, President-elect Trump talked during the campaign about saving TikTok and trying to appeal to younger voters. And so I think he very much wants to find a way to keep TikTok afloat. And just given sort of this, the weird sort of timing by happenstance that this goes into effect one day before this change administration sort of makes the whole legal case much more dramatic.

In the last few months, Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany Party, or AFD, has caught the attention of Elon Musk, thanks in part to a 24-year-old German social media influencer named Naomi Zeit.

Musk's interest in the AFD has grown to full endorsement as he took to X yesterday to interview Alice Weidel, the co-leader of AFD and its pick for Chancellor in February's elections. Our senior correspondent in Berlin, Thomas Eskrit, was watching. So there have been a lot of concerns that Musk's support for the AFD and other far-right parties across Europe

could amount to election interference, so this conversation was being monitored for the possibility of misinformation and even hate speech. What's behind those concerns? The fundamental concern I think is that

He has the ability to bring enormous sums of money to European politics. European politics is very different from US politics. Spending is much more tightly regulated. I think one concern is simply that as a very rich, powerful man who controls the social media platform, he is very well placed to put his thumb on the scales in the elections which are coming up in Germany on February the 23rd.

So officials in Brussels are carefully monitoring how the conversation went. Musk introduced Weidel by saying that she was the leading candidate to Germany's next leader, which of course is very unlikely to be true. For one thing, her party is second on the polls, and all the other parties in the German parliament have said that they won't work with the AFD, which means she won't be able to build a coalition. But it was enormous exposure for someone who is actually not particularly well known outside Germany.

Has Musk responded to claims that he's trying to somehow influence these elections? He has said that he is a free speech absolutist and that he is entitled to make his views known. And he says that there is nothing underhand or dishonest about his expression of opinions, including on European politics. He also says that he has a legitimate interest in European politics. He, of course, does have investments here. He has a very large Tesla factory outside Berlin. The AFD has declared

declined to comment on what contact they have with Musk. When asked, they have admitted that Vidal's office was in contact with Musk's office to set up this discussion, but nothing beyond that so far.

Over the past year, a conservative backlash against wokeness has sapped corporate enthusiasm for diversity, equity and inclusion, also known as DEI. Reuters interviews with corporate directors and advisors, as well as a recent study, paint a stark picture of how pronounced its fallout has been. Isla Binney covers corporate governance.

and chatted with Chris about these issues. So what we're seeing in corporate boardrooms is that diverse people broadly have more seats at the table than they did in 2020. But in the past year, among those new directors getting seats at those tables, the proportion of black people in particular is significantly lower than it was in the previous two years.

And from those you spoke to, what might be behind this drop? Is there a cultural shift around DEI initiatives? There is a sense that this is not an issue that has gone away, and there is still interest among corporations in ensuring diversity at the highest levels. However, whereas

In recent years, especially following 2020 and a real spurring of the Black Lives Matter movement around national outrage around the killing of George Floyd, that the priorities have somewhat shifted. So whereas diversity may have been in the top two criteria for a company seeking a new board member around that time, that now

Now there is less emphasis. What is the case for diversity in boardrooms? One argument that comes up quite frequently is that if you are expecting any executive to be challenged by their board, that perhaps they

if they are similar to each other and they think similarly, or indeed if they even knew each other and they were within each other's networks perhaps before, that there is less chance that there would be the necessary challenge to ensure that correct and good practices are being followed. To stay ahead in fast-moving markets, you need to transform quality data into tailored, practical and valuable intelligence.

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And for today's recommended read, a look at the life and work of Jimmy Carter, a link to the story, and a set of images from Thursday's state funeral is in the pod description. For more on any of the stories today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. We'll be back on Monday with our daily headline show.