Washington Tightens the Screws on Venezuela’s Maduro

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Luke Vargas (0:33)

Washington tightens the screws on Venezuela's Maduro. Plus, the White House tries to rein in a surge of state AI regulations, and Paramount's Warner bid makes it clear Wall Street's appetite for debt is back.

Matt Wirtz (0:47)

Right now it's like the rainy season just happened. All the grasses are growing and the population is booming and everyone's feasting.

Luke Vargas (0:55)

It's Friday, December 12th. 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.

The US is stepping up pressure on Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, sanctioning some of his family members and six oil tankers. The Treasury Department said the targeted tankers had engaged in quote deceptive and unsafe shipping practices and continue to provide financial resources that fuel Maduro's corrupt narco-terrorist regime. It follows the US seizure of an oil tanker off Venezuela's coast earlier this week, and comes as President Trump last night repeated his threat to soon begin strikes on suspected narcotic shipments making their way via land from Venezuela to the US. To Indiana now, where senators have rejected a congressional redistricting plan in a blow to President Trump. Trump has been pressuring Republican-controlled legislatures and GOP governors to adopt congressional maps under unusual mid-cycle redistricting plans in a bid to ensure the party retains control of the US. House after next year's midterms. Democratic State Senator Andrea Hunley and Republican State Senator Sue Glick both opposed the redistricting.

Andrea Hunley (2:11)

There's been a lot of outside sources that were pressuring, but you know, the Hoosiers prevailed today. I mean, the Hoosiers, their phone calls, their letters coming to the state house, their testimony showing up at town halls, it mattered. And legislators listened.

Sue Glick (2:26)

I'm sure there's going to be some frustration. There have been some some comments made about things that may or may not have to happen for the state of Indiana as a result of the Senate's vote. But we shouldn't have to look over our shoulder at the federal government and say, you know, we didn't get this because somebody in Washington was upset with us.

Luke Vargas (2:50)

Other states, including Texas, North Carolina and Missouri, have approved redistricting that would benefit the GOP, while Democrats last month pushed through a similar plan in California to counter those efforts. President Trump is attempting to put a lid on state rulemaking efforts around AI, signing an executive order that empowers the Justice Department to punish states whose AI laws are deemed too restrictive. Tech execs had lobbied for such a move, arguing that the proliferation of AI bills proposed at the state level, which now exceed a thousand, could cause the US to lose out to China. In the Oval Office, Trump stressed the need to clear roadblocks for companies working on artificial intelligence.

Donald Trump (3:35)

We have the big investment coming, but if they had to get 50 different approvals from 50 different states, you could forget it, because it's not possible to do. Especially if you have some hostile, all you need is one hostile actor and you wouldn't be able to do it.

Luke Vargas (3:48)

Democrats and some of Trump's backers, including Steve Bannon and Republican Senator Josh Hawley, have criticized the efforts to rein in state AI laws, characterizing them as a giveaway to tech companies and saying they would undermine state efforts to protect consumers. Well, speaking of the AI race at the corporate level, OpenAI is rolling out a new version of ChatGPT as it tries to fend off mounting competition from Google and Anthropic. OpenAI said the new model, dubbed GPT 5.2, was better at math, science, and coding, skills seen as critical if businesses are to see returns on their AI investments. Journal tech reporter Sam Schechner told me OpenAI needs to act fast to hold on to its early lead in AI adoption.

Sam Schechner (4:33)

OpenAI has seen a lot of challenge lately from competitors. You know, the chatbot race, which it ran away with early on and quickly and rose to 800 million users every week for ChatGPT is now super competitive. With this new model, OpenAI is really targeting business users. We're talking about all the kinds of white collar office work that people do on their computers. And actually OpenAI built its own metric for measuring how well an AI model does at these.