TODAY’S BUSINESS story

Electronic Arts to go private in record $55B deal

What happened
Electronic Arts, the video game giant behind “The Sims” and “Madden NFL,” announced yesterday that it had agreed to be acquired by investors including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners and private equity firm Silver Lake. The $55 billion deal would be the largest buyout of a publicly traded company in history.

Who said what
EA is a “sports-gaming juggernaut,” The New York Times said, and the deal is the Saudi fund’s latest effort to “advance into gaming” and sports “as it looks to diversify its investments away from oil.” The buyout will be financed by a “staggering” $20 billion of debt, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier said on social media. The likely result will be “some *aggressive* cost cutting,” including “mass layoffs” and “more aggressive monetization.”

Shareholders in EA, which has been publicly traded since 1990, would get $210 per share in cash under the deal, a 25% premium over the company’s stock price before investors caught wind of the buyout. Amid “strong buzz” about the upcoming release of “Battlefield 6,” The Wall Street Journal said, EA looks to be “getting out while the getting is good.”

What next?
The Saudi involvement means the deal needs approval from national security regulators on the Committee on Foreign Investment, “but there are plenty of reasons to expect it will go through,” The Associated Press said. Along with Kushner being President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, “the president could also be inclined to look favorably on any Saudi investment because he has benefited directly from their spending.”

TODAY’S LEGAL Story

YouTube to pay Trump $22M over Jan. 6 expulsion

What happened
YouTube yesterday agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a four-year-old lawsuit from President Donald Trump and other plaintiffs who claimed the Google-owned company censored them by suspending their accounts after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Trump’s share, $22 million, will go toward funding the ballroom he is building at the White House, according to court documents.

Who said what
Since his election last November, Trump has “raked in more than $80 million in settlements” from tech and media companies, The Wall Street Journal said. YouTube is the “final Big Tech company to settle” his censorship claims, following Meta’s $25 million agreement in January and Twitter/X’s $10 million payout in February. When the lawsuits were filed, “legal experts predicted Trump had little chance of prevailing,” The Associated Press said.

Until recently, the suits “had largely stalled,” The New York Times said. “A federal judge dismissed the case against Twitter in 2022, and judges had put the lawsuits against Meta and YouTube on ice.” If Trump “had not been re-elected, we would have been in court for 1,000 years,” said John Coale, one of his lawyers. “It was his re-election that made the difference.”

What next?
“There is a reason to settle, but it has little to do with the law,” which is “very clear that private companies need not give anyone a right of access,” University of Maryland law professor Mark Graber told the Journal. “If you’re Meta or Google,” it’s “probably worth $25 million in lunch money to make this go away” when you have regulatory or legal business with the Trump administration.

It’s not all bad

Giving babies blueberries as one of their earliest solid foods could improve their immune systems and reduce allergy symptoms, according to new research from the University of Colorado. The study, involving 61 babies in Denver, is the first to examine a link between infant health and a specific food. Scientists determined through stool and blood samples that the babies who ate blueberry powder had “reduced inflammation” and “positive” changes in gut microbiota, the Good News Network said.

Under the radar

Inside Syria’s al-Hol camp

Iraq is pushing for the dismantling of a notorious detention camp just across the border in northeastern Syria, where thousands of people, many with links to ISIS, are struggling amid brutal conditions. Originally set up for Iraqi refugees fleeing war, the al-Hol camp is now a “reliquary of the defeat” of the Islamic State, said New Lines magazine. Family members of ISIS fighters are contained there, and Baghdad views it as a threat to national security.

Authorities are facing an “uphill struggle” to secure camps and prisons in this region of Syria, and President Donald Trump’s aid cuts have made matters worse because the camp management teams rely “heavily” on nongovernmental organizations to provide funding for food and guards, said the BBC. The al-Hol camp is ostensibly run by the Kurdish authorities that control northeastern Syria, but Baghdad and Washington believe that much of the site is actually run by ISIS and used for indoctrination and recruitment.

Repatriation efforts have been made, but the hold of ISIS ideology in the camp means that many of its inhabitants are afraid to leave and return home. Even when, in January, Kurdish authorities offered to allow all of the camp’s 16,000 Syrian nationals to go home, some chose to stay.

Iraq has employed the “most aggressive repatriation strategy,” said Al Jazeera, with hundreds of Iraqis returned in “more than a dozen campaigns.” And since the suspension of aid to the camp, Baghdad has “stepped up repatriations.” The Kurdish authorities have “done their best” to keep the camp functioning, but the “sheer number of detainees” means it’s “constantly overcrowded and lacking services.”

On this day

September 30, 1927

Babe Ruth became the first player in baseball history to hit 60 home runs in a season. Ruth’s New York Yankees won the World Series that year. His record stood until Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961. Ruth is still considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Ticking boxes’ to ‘make Trump all-powerful’

“Deal still elusive as shutdown draws near,” The Boston Globe says on Tuesday’s front page. “Trump, Dems hold firm,” The Minnesota Star Tribune says. White House budget director “ticking boxes on his checklist to make Trump all-powerful,” The New York Times says. “Military brass questions Hegseth’s strategy,” says The Washington Post. “FEMA revamp paralyzes recoveries,” The Wall Street Journal says. Michigan “gunman ranted against Mormons,” USA Today says. “CDC: ‘Kissing bug disease’ now endemic in the South,” says The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

Thought for food

In North Korea, state tour guide trainees are being instructed to refer to hamburgers as “double bread with ground beef,” as part of efforts to stop using foreign loanwords. They must swap out any “phrases foreign tourists commonly use” in favor of their party-sanctioned equivalents, said Daily NK. Even the South Korean term aiseukeurim (“ice cream”) is blacklisted, with trainees told to instead use the government-mandated word eoreumboseungi (“ice confection”).

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Chas Newkey-Burden, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.