• The Senate just passed a TikTok "ban"  as part of a larger foreign aid bill.
• Once Biden signs it into law, ByteDance will have 270 days to sell TikTok.
• Trump tried to institute a similar ban via executive order, but it was struck down by in court.

The Senate passed a multifaceted bill Tuesday evening that would effectively ban TikTok from the US app store once President Joe Biden signs it, as he has signaled he will. The final vote was 79 in favor and 18 opposed.

The House of Representatives passed a series of bills over the weekend to send foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian funding for the Gaza Strip. Tucked into the foreign aid bills was text forcing TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to sell the social media service to an American one or face a ban.

The House passed a similar bill in March, pressuring ByteDance to divest in 180 days. The newer version gives ByteDance 270 days to divest, a decision that appears to have been enough to sway Senate Commerce Committee Chair Sen. Maria Cantwell.

Cantwell did not support the previous TikTok bill, saying she was unsure it could pass legal scrutiny. This is a problem other Senators have pointed out, given the legislation specifically identifies ByteDance by name.

Biden has said for months that he'll pass the legislation once it reaches his desk. In his last year in office, former President Donald Trump tried to force ByteDance to sell to an American company via executive order, but a federal district court struck down the order.

The bill's passage in the Senate comes after months of lobbying against it by TikTok — the app prompted its users to reach out to their representatives and voice their displeasure, and its CEO personally traveled to Washington, DC, to try to stop it — as well as reportedly China itself. Politico reported earlier in April that officials from the Chinese Embassy met with congressional staffers to voice their displeasure with the legislation.

TikTok has vowed to challenge the bill in court once Biden signs it.

Enacting the TikTok "ban" could hurt Biden's chances at reelection in November, given the app's popularity among younger demographics and the likelihood of a close final vote. Trump may have picked up on that, too — earlier in the year, he spoke against banning TikTok despite his actions while president.

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• When Summer Lee ran for Congress in 2022, she had to battle a wave of pro-Israel spending.
• That didn't happen this year, despite her initially appearing to be a top target.
• Lee easily defeated her primary challenger on Tuesday, likely assuring her reelection.

Going into this year, Rep. Summer Lee seemed likely to be a top target for pro-Israel groups.

The first-term "Squad" member won the 2022 Democratic primary for her Pittsburgh-area House seat by less than 1,000 votes after facing down millions of dollars in outside spending from a super PAC affiliated with the The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

But that level of spending didn't materialize again this year, and Lee handily defeated Democratic primary opponent Bhavini Patel on Tuesday.

Both AIPAC and another key pro-Israel group, Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), opted to stay out of the primary. But that doesn't mean other progressives will go unscathed.

"The national pro-Israel community did not engage in this race, which means it's not really a serious test," DMFI President Mark Mellman told the Washington Post. "But there will be tests yet to come."

Pro-Israel groups have become the biggest opponents of progressives in Democratic primaries

The rise of the progressive left — spurred by Sen. Bernie Sanders's presidential campaigns and accelerated by shock victories by politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — has brought with it a cohort of Democratic politicians who are more critical of Israel and sympathetic toward Palestinians.

That's increasingly been a challenge for groups like AIPAC, who have long worked to maintain a bipartisan consensus around support for Israel through lobbying and political fundraising.

Those groups began fighting back in 2020 and 2022, drawing on the support of deep-pocketed donors — many of which Republicans — to try to block progressive candidates from winning Democratic primaries across the country.

One of those progressive candidates was Lee, who was elected to the Pennsylvania State House in 2018 with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America. Pro-Israel groups spent money against Lee not just in the primary, but in the general election as well.

Why that didn't happen this year

Lee, who called for a cease-fire soon after the October 7 Hamas attacks, initially seemed vulnerable in part due to anger from the local Jewish community in Squirrel Hill, where the Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting took place in 2018.

That congregation's rabbi, along with several others, signed two different letters to the congresswoman denouncing her rhetoric on Israel.

But the politics of Israel within the Democratic Party shifted significantly in the intervening months, in large part due to the brutality of Israel's war in Gaza, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians.

The progressive forces backing Lee also ended up being stronger than those hoping to defeat her.

Lee's opponent Patel did receive roughly $612,000 in outside spending from a super PAC bankrolled by GOP billionaire Jeff Yass, a significant investor in TikTok's parent company. But that only proved to be a boon for Lee and her allies, who blasted Patel for benefiting from a GOP megadonor's largesse.

Meanwhile, progressive groups supporting Lee spent nearly $710,000, and on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez came to Pittsburgh to rally with Lee.

Lastly, Lee — despite being significantly to the left of President Joe Biden — aligned herself closely with the president's agenda, including running on over $1 billion in federal funding that she helped deliver to the district, much of which was originally allocated under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

That helped the congresswoman neutralize attacks from Patel, who sought to paint Lee as being insufficient loyal to Biden. The president even shouted out the congresswoman as one of the "folks who've had my back" during a recent visit to the city.

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• Oracle head Larry Ellison said Tuesday the company is planning a move to Nashville, Tennessee.
• The company relocated from Silicon Valley to Austin in 2020.
• Ellison said he now wants the company to be closer to the center of the healthcare sector.

Oracle is headed to Nashville.

Larry Ellison, the software giant's cofounder and chairman announced plans Tuesday for a "huge campus" in Nashville, "which will ultimately be our world headquarters."

"It's the center of the industry we're most concerned about, which is the healthcare industry," Ellison said at the Oracle Health Summit in Nashville, according to CNBC.

Oracle did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

In 2020, in the thick of the pandemic, the company relocated from Silicon Valley — its home since 1977 — to Austin, Texas. At the time, the company said it would help offer workers more flexibility.

The announcement follows Oracle's recent shift to the healthcare industry. In 2022, the company bought the medical records company Cerner for about $28 billion.

Other health companies in the Nashville area include HCA, HealthStream, and Change Healthcare.

The company has already purchased office space in Nashville, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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• Celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz bought her California farm estate in 2019 for $7.5 million.
• She just listed the property, featuring a 7-horse barn and recording studio, for $8.995 million.
• Take a look inside the sprawling 65-acre grounds nestled near the Bolinas Lagoon. 

Five years after purchasing a historic property in rural California, celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz has placed her dream home back on the market.

"I had always thought of myself as a California person," she said in a statement to Business Insider. "I went to school there, at the San Francisco Art Institute. I learned to be a photographer there."

She added, "When Rolling Stone moved to New York in 1977, I didn't think that I was moving too. I didn't believe that I went to New York to stay. I thought I lived in California. But the work was in New York. Or Europe. After all those years living and working in New York and raising my children, I dreamed about returning to California."

After some years of searching, she purchased an estate in Bolinas, California, for $7.5 million in 2019, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. This month, she listed the property for sale, asking $8.995.

Take a look inside the property that captured this famous photographer's eye.

The estate, nicknamed The Hideaway, is nestled on 65 acres with views of Bolinas Lagoon, Stinson Beach, Mount Tamalpais, the Pacific Ocean, and San Francisco.

The property has sprawling vistas of rolling hills and verdant pastures. It's located near bird and seal sanctuaries and is about an hour from San Francisco. Considered a historical touchpoint in the region, the property sits near the small coastal towns of Bolinas and Stinson Beach.

The property includes a circa-1920s house with four bedrooms and a one-bedroom guest house.

The residential portion of the property features four structures, including a 1920s home with four bedrooms, a guest house, a caretaker's residence, and a converted garage. Adjacent to the residences is a barn built in the 1930s, a banquet hall with a performance stage, and a second large barn.

The kitchen is a new addition to the residence that Leibovitz upgraded, featuring a subway tile backsplash and gas range.

Leibovitz said in a statement to Business Insider that she had longed to find the perfect place to make her home on the West Coast, and when she purchased the property, she thought she'd found it.

"We were told of this extraordinary property that from the top of the hill had views of the lagoon and bay and the coast that are magnificent. It has its own special climate," Leibovitz said. "Everything can grow year round. There were 65 acres with an old milking barn that Ansel Adams had photographed. It had been used as a gathering place for country and folk music concerts in its day. We planned to partner with a legendary farmer over the hill to bring the place back to its former self as a working and teaching farm."

Leibovitz remodeled portions of the property but kept key fixtures like this rotary phone.

"I've spent many holidays with friends in Bolinas," Leibovitz said. "When the children were born we would go together and they would surf and pick up shells and stones along the shore. And I would occasionally look for "the place."

So when her oldest daughter seemed to be eyeing colleges in the Bay Area, Leibovitz snapped up the property.

But, she said, "things don't always go as planned."

"All three of my girls decided to go to college in the Northeast," prompting her to list the property for sale just five years later.

A weathered barn on the estate had previously been photographed by photographer Ansel Adams.

Adams snapped a shot of a barn on the farm during his travels through the West in 1932, with one photo later becoming part of a Smithsonian exhibition. Nearly a century later, Leibovitz came to own the property and continued its legacy of attracting iconic photographers to its grounds.

In addition to a hay barn and dairy barn, the property includes a 7-stall horse barn.

The equestrian-focused property features a 100' x 200' riding arena adjacent to the 7-stall barn. It includes multiple additional horse and livestock stalls and pastures along the expansive property.

Inside the old dairy barn is a complete recording studio built by a prior owner.

Prior to Leibovitz's purchase in 2019, the Bolinas farm was owned by Warren Hellman, a San Francisco financier and founder of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass music festival. He converted an unused farm building on the property into a music studio and another into a music venue to host private concerts.

For now, the historic property sits idle, waiting for its next owner to take control of its legacy.

"The Hideaway at 605 Horseshoe Hill Road stands as a historic property with generations of notable stewardship," Compass agent Alexander Lurie, who is co-listing the property with Nick Swenson, told Business Insider. "The site of many special events, concerts, and weddings over more than a century, The Hideaway has an indelible place in history — both for the SF Bay Area as well as globally — this special space has served as a launching pad of creative inspiration for renowned musical and visual artists of international repute."

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• Tesla is blaming hybrids for stealing EV sales.
• Inexpensive hybrid cars have become a popular choice for green-car shoppers.
• That's a real problem for Tesla, which doesn't sell hybrids.

Tesla is pointing the finger at hybrids as its electric cars experience a drop in demand.

In the opening page of its first-quarter earnings presentation Tuesday, Tesla blamed an industry-wide prioritization of these partially battery-powered cars for putting pressure on global EV sales and — by extension — Tesla's sales.

"While positive for our regulatory credits business, we prefer the industry to continue pushing EV adoption, which is in-line with our mission," Tesla wrote.

Elon Musk's Tesla is right that hybrids are currently having a moment.

Major automakers like GM — which were once all-in on EVs — are now prioritizing hybrid models as EV demand softens, and Toyota, once thought to be an EV laggard, is dominating the green car market with its hybrid lineup.

The problem for Tesla: It doesn't sell hybrids.

Musk's EV company has been slashing prices for the past year and a half in an effort to boost sales. But a new cohort of green-car shoppers is looking for more than an affordable price.

After years of wealthy early adopters clamoring for expensive new technology, today's EV shopper is more frugal and practical — and more interested in hybrid models that fit their everyday needs.

This phenomenon showed up in Tesla's first-quarter deliveries report earlier this month when the company reported its lowest quarterly sales numbers since 2022.

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• Tesla says cheaper models are coming sooner than they'd planned.
• The news comes as the carmaker announced Q1 results and noted global EV sales are under pressure.
• CEO Elon Musk has long promised the launch of a $25,000 Tesla.

Tesla is pivoting its plan for vehicle production amid a steep revenue drop in the first quarter of 2024.

The electric vehicle maker said Tuesday it will be launching "new and more affordable products" ahead of its previous timeline, which had predicted production to start in the second half of 2025.

To make the process move along faster, the new EVs "will be able to be produced on the same manufacturing lines as our current vehicle line-up," it said.

"Ultimately, we are focused on profitable growth, including by leveraging existing factories and production lines to introduce new and more affordable products," the company said.

Tesla's revenue slumped 9% year-over-year in Q1 — the steepest drop since 2012. Deliveries of its vehicles fell 9%, far faster than its 2% drop in production.

"Global EV sales continue to be under pressure," it also said today.

In recent weeks, Tesla has slashed the prices of the Model S, X, and Y in the US and China. It has faced stiff competition from Chinese automakers who also slashed vehicle prices.

Since 2020, Musk has claimed that a $25,000 EV is attainable in the near future. It has also launched the Cybertruck —with a retail price that can reach six figures.

The company is also turning to job cuts. CEO Elon Musk told staff earlier in April that Tesla plans to slash more than 10% of its workforce.

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• Donald Trump's Manhattan hush-money trial is in its second week.
• On Tuesday, ex-tabloid publisher David Pecker described Trump's prophetic hesitancy over hush money.
• "It always gets out," Pecker testified Trump told him.

Donald Trump should have gone with his gut on this one.

In the summer before his election, the then-candidate wanted nothing to do with buying the silence of a Playboy Bunny.

Model Karen McDougal was shopping around a story of a love affair with Trump from ten years prior. But Trump was queasy about the required payoff, according to testimony on Tuesday in the former president's Manhattan hush-money trial.

"It always gets out," Trump explained of his hesitancy, according to the trial's first witness, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker.

Trump's words — and his worries — would prove prophetic.

Not only would news of McDougal's $150,000 payoff eventually "get out," but so would the $130,000 payoff to a second sex-accuser, porn star Stormy Daniels — the very payoff behind Trump's ongoing hush-money trial.

Trump has strenuously denied having an affair with either of the women. Trump has also derided as a political "witch hunt" District Attorney Alvin Bragg's accusations that he falsified business documents to disguise the Daniels payment as "legal fees."

Bragg says the documents were falsified to hide what was actually an illegal campaign expenditure meant to keep 2016 voters from finding out about Daniels.

"I think the story should be purchased and you should buy it," Pecker told jurors, describing what he told Trump about McDougal's accusations during a June, 2016 phone call.

Pecker had been helping his friend Trump for years, he told jurors, through a so-called "catch-and-kill" strategy where dangerous stories would be purchased by the tabloid and "taken off the market" instead of published.

But Trump wanted nothing to do with the McDougal payoff, Pecker said Tuesday, his second day on the witness stand.

"He says, 'I don't buy any stories,'" Pecker testified, describing Trump's reaction to the five-woman, seven-man jury.

"He said, 'Any time you do something like this, it always gets out.'"

Trump indeed kept his fingerprints off the $150,000 in National Enquirer cash that purchased McDougal's silence, prosecutors for Bragg allege. The cash came out of Pecker's pocket.

But Trump is now on trial for a second hush-money payment that prosecutors say has Trump's fingerprints all over it — the payment to Daniels.

Trump used a middleman — his then-fixer, Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen — as bag man to handle the $130,000 transfer, prosecutors say.

Just 11 days before the election, Cohen transferred the money — hastily borrowed through a home-equity loan — into a shell company's bank account, and from there to Daniels' lawyer, jurors were told during opening statements.

In an election where just 80,000 votes in three swing states tipped the scales in Trump's favor, voters never heard Daniels' tale — an alleged fling at a Tahoe golf tournament in 2006, when Melania Trump was home nursing baby Barron.

Trump falsified 34 Trump Org business documents to disguise the monthly reimbursement payments to Cohen as "legal fees" paid throughout his first year in office.

In reality, the 34 documents covered up what was instead an illegal campaign expenditure, prosecutors say.

The trial is down on Wednesday. Pecker's direct testimony is scheduled to continue Thursday.

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• Tesla unveiled an upgraded version of its Model 3 Performance sedan on Tuesday.
• Tesla said the new Model 3 has more power, reduced energy consumption, and improved handling.
• The announcement follows a decline in sales, layoffs, and a drop in Tesla's stock.

Tesla announced a new version of its Model 3 sedan on Tuesday as the electric vehicle maker faces a decline in sales.

The upgraded Model 3 Performance, which starts at $52,990, can go from zero to 60 mph in 29 seconds and has a top speed of 163 mph, according to Tesla.

Tesla said the vehicle has more power with less energy consumption compared to the previous Model 3 Performance version. The company said it also has a new adaptive damping system that adjusts to inputs from the driver and the road in real time for better handling, among other changes.

The announcement came just before Tesla reported its quarterly earnings on Tuesday and as demand for electric vehicles, including Tesla's, has been declining.

Tesla's first-quarter earnings report revealed the company fell short of its profit and revenue estimates, but was up on gross margin. Tesla also previewed its upcoming ride-hailing service and said it plans to move up the production timeline for cheaper electric vehicles.

Tesla sold about 386,800 cars in the first quarter of 2024, about 20% less than the last quarter of 2023. The figure fell far short of Wall Street's expectations and marked the first year-over-year decline in sales for Tesla since 2020.

Shortly after the disappointing quarterly sales report, Tesla laid off more than 10% of its entire workforce earlier this month, with CEO Elon Musk citing a "duplication of roles" that occurred during the company's rapid growth.

The company issued another round of price cuts on its vehicles on Monday, with Tesla's stock down 42% year-to-date at market close on Tuesday.

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• Mark Zuckerberg revealed the reason for his new chain necklace.
• The Meta exec said he's designing his own piece of jewelry with a heartfelt message.
• The internet has been flooded with memes and compliments since Zuckerberg debuted the new look.

The hype around Mark Zuckerberg's new chain lives on, and the story behind it is pretty endearing.

The Meta CEO spoke with Eva Chen, head of Instagram's fashion partnerships, about new developments for its Ray-Ban smart glasses, and spilled more information on his viral accessory choices.

"I'm in the process of designing a long-term chain," he said in a Tuesday Instagram post.

As part of his "design process," he said he's testing out necklaces that will eventually hold an engraving of the prayer he reads to his daughters.

Zuckerberg was spotted wearing a shorter-looking chain last week, prompting memes and talk of a "glow-up." (Another popular image floating around was of the billionaire photoshopped to look like he has a beard, but the chain is definitely real.)

This new venture into fashion has drawn comparisons to current "mob chic" trends and rapper swag. But, Zuckerberg said the necklace boils down to a sentimental gesture to his children.

Either way, the move has certainly earned the Meta chief some internet cool points — although perhaps not from Instagram's Chen, who suggested the chain he was wearing in Tuesday's video should be a bit shorter.

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• Tesla just gave us a peek at its planned ride-hailing interface.
• Elon Musk's company is emphasizing its self-driving and robotaxi businesses as EV demand softens.
• Tesla hasn't said when it would launch a ride-hailing service.

Tesla on Tuesday released more details about its planned launch of an Uber-like ride-hailing service.

The service would live inside the Tesla app, which Tesla owners can already use for almost all vehicle functionality, the company said.

Tesla's Q1 earnings presentation contained screenshots illustrating a moody black-and-white interface that would allow riders to summon a supposedly driverless vehicle, set the car's interior temperature, and track its location on a 3D map.

Tesla has placed more focus on the potential value of its self-driving software and robotaxi business as softening EV demand pinches sales and price cuts take a bite out of Tesla's mighty automotive profit margins. Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced earlier in April that the company would reveal a long-awaited robotaxi in August. 

Despite pushback from safety groups and high-profile legal troubles, Tesla has pushed forward with new iterations of its driver-assist software, which it calls "Full-Self Driving" or FSD. Tesla has also said it is working on ride-hailing functionality to be available sometime in the future.

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