The FDA said yesterday that after two years, there is no longer a shortage of injection products for semaglutide, the key ingredient in Novo Nordisk A/S’s blockbuster weight loss and diabetes drugs. The announcement means the countdown has begun for companies like Hims & Hers to either stop making their cheaper, compounded versions or, much more likely, to fight back.

Hims & Hers, which you might recognize from its flashy Super Bowl ad smashed between junk food and beer spots, is at the top of the $1 billion-a-year weight loss drug compounding industry.

The compounding of drugs is a fairly common practice to make customized copy-cat versions of brand-name drugs. They’re often personalized for patients, so if someone is allergic to an ingredient in a drug, for example, a pharmacist can tweak the formula without getting hit with IP claims from the drugmaker. But compounding is also allowed when drugs are facing shortages—like the highly popular Wegovy and Ozempic were. That’s created a big market because:

• Hims & Hers is able to sell its weight loss medicine for less than $200 a month.
• That’s a fraction of the cost of the name brand drugs from Novo, which clock in at around $1,000 per month without insurance.

But…Pharma giants and regulators claim copycats can be a serious safety risk. Compounded drugs don’t go through the same quality checks that are required of brand-name or generic drugs.

With the market for GLP-1 drugs expected to be $150 billion a year by 2033, drugmakers are clamping down on anyone trying to eat into their profits. Novo Nordisk has filed 50+ lawsuits accusing compounders and clinics of trademark infringement.

Looking ahead…The FDA said compound drug makers have 60 to 90 days (depending on their facility) to close up shop. Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum said in a post on X yesterday that the company would continue to monitor supply constraints, but will still offer “personalized treatments as allowed by law to meet patient needs.” Expect more lawsuits.—MM

Germany heads to the polls tomorrow. The national election for a new parliament in Europe’s largest economy will have repercussions not just for Germany, but for the entire European Union, especially as President Donald Trump appears poised to distance the US from Europe. Recent polling shows Germany’s mainstream political parties losing ground while the right-wing AfD party gains support. Top of mind for voters will be which party they believe can give the country a much-needed economic boost, while immigration has also been a hot-button issue throughout the campaign.

Senate Republicans approve $340 billion budget framework. Like a college student with a midterm paper due and a six-pack of Celsius, the Senate stayed up all night for a “vote-a-rama,” and eventually passed a budget framework in a 52-48 vote largely along party lines. The framework is a first step toward funding the mass deportations and immigration enforcement—as well as additional defense spending—that President Trump wants. But it’s likely to be a long road to a final budget, with both intra-GOP fights and pushback from Democrats ahead—especially if Congress tries to deliver the single “big, beautiful bill” the president prefers rather than addressing border security and tax cuts separately.

Apple pulls UK cloud encryption after government spying demands. Apple will no longer offer Advanced Data Protection, its end-to-end encrypted iCloud storage feature, to users in the UK. The tech giant’s decision to pull the feature comes after it reportedly received a secret government request for a backdoor entry to all customer data stored that way, which would have given British law enforcement access to information from users around the globe.

In a development akin to Tom officially ending his pursuit of Jerry, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) agreed to drop its enforcement lawsuit accusing Coinbase of running an unregistered securities exchange, the crypto marketplace said yesterday.

Coinbase, which has been fighting the case since 2023, said it’s set to walk away without having to pay a fine and celebrated it as “a complete win.” The agency’s apparent change of heart reflects a wider crypto-friendliness from the Trump administration.

Gary Gensler’s baby

The case was a flagship effort of the SEC’s broad crypto crackdown when it was led by Biden appointee Gary Gensler, who believed the industry was rife with fraud.

• The SEC argued that crypto vendors should follow the same extensive regulations as stock and bond exchanges.
• Coinbase tried to challenge the case in court, but a federal judge refused to toss it, setting it on a path to become a game-changing precedent for the industry that lets you trade Poopcoin.

Big picture: The outcome is a victory for the crypto industry players who derided Gensler’s SEC as an innovation-stifling bully. But critics claim that the case vaporizing as fast as the value of a shady meme coin could harm trust in the Wall Street regulator and fortify fraudsters.—SK

One of the longest-running partnerships in sports broadcasting is going, going…about to be gone: ESPN and Major League Baseball plan to end their 35-year-old media rights deal at the end of the current season, they said this week, after MLB rejected the network’s efforts to negotiate a cheaper contract.

Cut short: MLB and Disney, which owns ESPN, canned the rest of a seven-year partnership that would’ve had ESPN pay MLB $550 million per year through 2028 for broadcast rights to 30 regular season games, Wild Card playoff rounds, and the Home Run Derby:

• ESPN pressed MLB to reduce its price tag, citing the league’s streaming deals with Apple and Roku, which pay it $85 million/season and $10 million/season, respectively. Fellow broadcasters Fox and Turner Sports pay MLB $729 million/season and $470 million/season, respectively.
• MLB hasn’t been satisfied with ESPN’s “minimal coverage” of baseball outside of live games, Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a letter to team owners. The league is pursuing new broadcast and streaming homes.

Quid pro quover: Last year, MLB’s Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN notched its most-watched season since 2019.

In other baseball news…the New York Yankees are pulling out all the stops to try to win their first World Series since 2009. The team dropped their 49-year rule banning beards in order to lure free agents and boost morale.—ML

Typically, the job of boats is not to sink. But not this time for the venerable SS United States—an engineering marvel when it first hit the seas in 1952 and broke the transatlantic speed record on its maiden voyage with an average speed of 36 knots (that’s about 41 mph for the landlubbers). The 1,000-foot ship, which still holds the speed record for an ocean liner, began its final trip this week, which will end with it being sunk at the bottom of a gulf, where the plan is for it to become the world’s largest artificial reef.

After spending more than three decades at a Philadelphia dock, the long-retired military vessel is now being pulled by tugboats to Mobile, Alabama, where it’ll get prepped to head to its final destination off the coast of Okaloosa County, Florida. County officials have struck a deal potentially costing up to $10 million for the ship to join the county’s 500+ artificial reefs in hopes of creating an attraction that will bring in millions in tourist dollars, per the Associated Press.—AR