Judge Blocks White House Bid to Pause Federal Assistance
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In today's enterprise, how are CIOs creating more impact in the C-suite and with the board? What does it mean to be a blended executive? Learn more on the fourth episode of Tech Fluential, a podcast from Deloitte and custom content from WSJ. Here is your morning brief for Wednesday, January 29th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal.

A federal judge yesterday blocked federal agencies from implementing a White House effort to pause potentially trillions of dollars in federal assistance programs just minutes before the directive was set to take effect. The stay in the order's implementation is set to last until Monday when oral arguments in the case can be held.

Separately, attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia have sued to stop enforcement of the White House funding freeze, which they argue unconstitutionally overrides Congress's power to decide how federal funds are spent.

Another Chinese AI model is on the scene from e-commerce giant Alibaba. The company claims the latest version of its QEN large language model achieves competitive performance compared to leading models from OpenAI and Meta, as well as Chinese peer DeepSeek, whose AI model sparked a market frenzy earlier this week.

And shares of chip equipment manufacturer ASML are surging in Amsterdam after Q4 orders beat analysts' expectations as clients scrambled to meet booming AI demand. The Dutch company said it's bullish about the chip industry's long-term outlook, predicting that global semiconductor sales would top $1 trillion a year annually by the end of the decade.

Asian stocks have end of the day broadly higher, European stocks are mostly up in midday trading, and U.S. stock futures are split between small gains and losses ahead of earnings from Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla due out this afternoon. And we've got a lot more coverage of the day's news on the WSJ's What's News podcast. You can add it to your playlist on your smart speaker or listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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