Happy Friday, N2K reader!

Pick a winner in this week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ in today’s poll. And enjoy the news you Need2Know…

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

What’s the stock market up to, eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.56% )   $DJI ( ▼ 1.61% )   $NDX ( ▼ 0.26% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$GOOGL ( ▼ 0.74% )   $AMZN ( ▲ 0.98% )   $COST ( ▼ 2.4% )   $FDX ( ▼ 2.8% )   $ANTHROPIC ( ▲ 10.12% )   $PLTR ( ▼ 0.34% )   $CBRL ( ▲ 1.47% )   $AEO ( ▼ 13.9% )   $AAL ( ▼ 5.38% )   $UAL ( ▼ 5.03% )   $DAL ( ▼ 3.95% )   $BRCM ( 0.0% )  

Why on earth is influencer MrBeast getting into financial services?

TL;DR: For the money, and also to help young people figure out their financial futures. I.e., for the money.

Jimmy Donaldson, the 27-year-old YouTube $GOOGL ( ▼ 0.74% ) megastar known as MrBeast, has built his empire on outlandish stunts — he once attempted to eat 100,000 calories in a single day, for example — and giving away massive piles of cash (but not to me). Now he's asking his followers to trust him with their money. Through his company Beast Industries, Donaldson has acquired Step, a financial services app targeting teenagers and young adults that boasts over 7 million users.

With this move, MrBeast has "essentially become a banker, too," according to The New York Times. The acquisition marks a significant expansion beyond his current ventures, which include a reality show on Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 0.98% ) Prime Video, chocolate bars, burgers, a mobile phone service, and even a thriller co-written with novelist James Patterson.

Jeffrey “Two Fonts” Housenbold, CEO of Beast Industries, has called Donaldson "the most popular guy in the world," briefly mistaking the YouTuber for yours truly. (The irrefutable proof: 79 people confessed to having a crush on me in a recent N2K poll run for Valentine’s Day.) Meanwhile, a mere 1.4 billion people have watched MrBeast’s content in the past three months alone. His 469 million YouTube subscribers outnumber the entire U.S. population — and many haven't yet finished high school.

So why financial services? Donaldson has said he wants to provide young people with "the financial basics he lacked when he was younger." The Step app offers spending, savings, and investment accounts, plus a secured card that can help teens build credit.

Of course the best financial advice I can give most teens is probably to start a YouTube account and try to eat 100,000 calories but that is #NotFinancialAdvice.

A judge orders the government to refund $130 billion in tariffs

A federal trade-court judge has ordered the Trump administration to begin refunding more than $130 billion collected from tariffs that the Supreme Court struck down last month.

Judge Richard “Mess“ Eaton of the Court of International Trade issued the directive Wednesday following a hearing involving a filtration company's refund request. The order requires U.S. Customs and Border Protection to recalculate duties paid by importers, excluding the voided tariffs. Over 2,000 lawsuits from companies including Costco $COST ( ▼ 2.4% ) , FedEx $FDX ( ▼ 2.8% ) , and Pandora Jewelry are now seeking to recoup their money.

Trade attorney Larry Friedman called the decision historic. "This is the order I hoped for, but never expected to see," he told the Wall Street Journal, noting it means the government must refund everyone who paid the tariffs.

When Justice Department lawyer Claudia “Do I have to?” Burke argued that refunds would require manually reviewing millions of import entries, Judge Eaton was unmoved. "We live in the age of computers," he said. "It must be possible for Customs Service to program its computers so it doesn't need a manual review."

However, customs broker Nunzio “No nickname is better than my real name” De Filippis urged patience: "My message to the trade community is to chill out. There's still a whole process to figure out."

Would you believe the administration is expected to appeal?

Quote of the Day

Anthropic chief back in talks with Pentagon about AI deal

Anthropic $ANTHROPIC ( ▲ 10.12% ) chief executive Dario “Jeff Bezos“ Amodei is fighting to salvage his company's relationship with the U.S. military after tense negotiations collapsed last week, leaving the AI startup at risk of being blacklisted from the Pentagon's supply chain.

Amodei has re-engaged in discussions with Emil Michael, under-secretary of defense for research and engineering, hoping to reach a compromise on contract language governing military use of Anthropic's AI technology. The stakes are high — defence secretary Pete Hegseth threatened Friday to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk, which would force military contractors to sever ties with the company.

The breakdown centers on Anthropic's firm stance against AI being used for mass domestic surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons. In a memo to staff, Amodei revealed the Pentagon's last-minute demands raised alarm bells.

"Near the end of the negotiation the [department] offered to accept our current terms if we deleted a specific phrase about 'analysis of bulk acquired data' which was the single line in the contract that exactly matched this scenario we