DOJ Sues Georgia Over Voter Law

represents intentional discrimination against black voters and is unconstitutional. Let's check in with the reporter on that, Storry Chris Strom. He's a national security reporter for Bloomberg News. Chris Big News Today. What do we know right now? So this is the first major action that the Justice Department under

under Biden and Merrick Garland taking in regard to voting. Right, There's been a lot of criticism against the Department as Republican controlled state moved the past voting laws that critics they are really restrictive and discriminate, and um, you know, the Department has been facing a lot of pressure and today they came out with their first action, and um, you know it's against the law that uh that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp had signed in March that restricts voting

access in ballot drop boxes and other things. So, Um, one of the things that we all have heard about this um Georgia law is that it makes it illegal to approach a person and give him or her food and water understanding in line to vote. Is that considered somehow racist in itself or is it more of is it more of secondary issue here? I'm having trouble understanding why you why why the Department of Justice would consider this racist. So the issue that you mentioned there is

the secondary issue. So the stuff this is a complaint is really about the the other sections of the voting law. Um that that imposes new voter identification requirements. Um that Um, it's limits. What are the voter What are the voter identification requirements? Do you have to prove who you are? Somehow? Yes? You can no longer use like photo copies of of of documents. You have to original You have to use the original documents. Those could be easily doctored, right, I mean,

doesn't it make sense to have to prove your identity. Sure, I mean, you know, the thing is is that you know, as as uh you know, Garland has said voting identification laws in and of themselves are not um, you know, are not are not bad. The question becomes how they're applied and what the consequences are going to be and if if they begin to um cause you know, hardships, especially targeted against you know, minorities, then there's the potential

for violations of federal law. And that's what the Justice Department is alleging here. Um. You know what what Garland and uh, you know, the d o j Is saying is that this law just goes too far in terms of in terms of what it's, what it is requiring, and and how it's going to have a negative impact, especially on minorities. And that's where the kind of you know,

rubber meets the road. The the issue of you know, the you know, making making it impossible or making it illegal for people to approach voters with water and food, you know, that's a much secondary issue. And um and you know critics, you know, i mean, supporters of that restriction say that voters were being harassed in line, and so it's justified to you know, put that kind of restriction out there, all right, Chris. So the Justice Department

files here today the lawsuit. What are next steps? Well, the next steps are going to be that there's several lawsuits that are that have already been filed against this law, and those will probably most likely to go first into into court um, and the Justice Department will evaluate whether it's going to join in any of those lawsuits, which would be kind of a quicker avenue for the Justice Department to become involved, or if the Justice Department will

sue its own track. Um. Right now, the Justice Department is pursuing its own track, and so you know, they will go into court and begin to you know, make their make their argument. And it's also possible that you know, they reached some kind of a settlement with the with Georgia UM where the you know, the governor agrees to make certain you know changes through you know, executive authority that then satisfies the Justice Department. So it's a long way to go before we know how this will play out.

At the same time time, the Justice Department is saying that they're looking at other laws and other states, and they said clearly today that this was the first of many anticipated actions, and so we can probably expect that, you know, the Department will move against other laws and

other states in the coming months. Chris, I wonder on a on a broader level, on a federal level, is there any um move towards taking away all of this, um, all of these misunderstandings and and putting into place of policy the likes of which we see, for example, here in Germany, when you register to vote, which you're required to do at the age of eighteen, you're issued a federal identification card and everyone has one, and there's no you know, question about, um, whether certain groups are held

back for lack of these identification cards. Um, there's I mean, so you know, in the United States, the voting, the voting is voting is ran by this by the states, and there there there is no federal authority that kind of dictates. There's no you know, I mean, if you want to say, if there's a federal identification then you can say it's a driver's license, although you know passport,

passport can be another one. But there you know, there's there's cutouts where um, you know, people just get state identification cards rather than like you know, an actual driver's license. Um. You know, there is talk about passing a federal legislation then that's been that's been uh, you know, installed in Congress. It's very divisive right now and it doesn't look like

it's going to have the support to move forward. There is a push for UM that the Justice Department wants Congress to pass legislation that would give it the ability to UM oversee when states make changes to their election laws, that the Justice Department will kind of have to sign off on that. But I gotta say, like, you know, are you know, Congress in the United States is very deadlock right now, and it doesn't seem like any legislation is canna get through anytime soon. You know, it's clearly

it's very polarized. I was just and you make a good point that it's a the fact that it's on a state basis makes it more difficult for a federal republic uh to do something like that a federal republic like Germany does. It's just that, um, you know, there's there's been so much UM strife around this issue in the United States. To me, it would make sense that you have to identify yourself, but it should also be you know, everyone should get the same kind of identification.

I guess it's just a little bit more difficult in um, a United States kind of federal situation, right. And it's and it's not just the identification cards either, that's an issue in some of these states, like Georgia. It's also there's a couple of other factors too. There's also just access to to uh to to voting uh, you know, like using ballot drop boxes and and the hours of

which you can vote. And what the o J is saying with the with the Georgia law is that the Georgia law live, it's uh ballot drop boxes and specifically limits them in in minority and minority uh community and off the limits the ability for people to vote during hours. All right, Well, it's a fascinating development. Will definitely follow

your reporting, Chris, Thanks so much for joining us. Chris Strom is our national security reporter for Bloomberg News covering the Department of Justice suing Georgia over the new voter law. This is Bloomberg. It is Pride Month and here in New York City, NYC Pride Parade will take place this Sunday. We want to check in with Alison Witherspoon. She's the chief marketing officer fort Nissan. Allison, thanks so much for

joining us. I love to get a sense of how you guys at Nissan are you know, kind of aligning yourself or interacting with this community here as we celebrate Pride Month. Yeah. Absolutely, I think we are very be proud to be a part of NYC Pride. We're actually supporters of and part of the celebrations for Pride events around the country, not just for Pride Month in the month of June, but also throughout the year. Um so our support continues actually through April with various Pride celebrations

around the country. So for us from a price standpoint and how we support the l g B t Q plus community, it actually starts with our own employees and it starts internally. So we want to make sure we have a commitment to UH. We're committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, and we strive to make sure that our internal policies, our benefit packages are support for employees is inclusive of everyone. So it starts first internally and then we get into how do we support externally with the

l g B t Q community. I I don't want to put it on the spot here, but I wonder about UM, this kind of position at Nissan, just in regards to Japan. UM not famously an inclusive culture. What's the lgbt Q plus situation there? Yeah, Actually I worked in Japan for a couple of years, so I was there for two thousand seventeen through two thousand nineteen, so I have direct experience in this. I think. UM. You know, obviously Asian markets are very different culturally from a support

of LGBTQ communities. Actually, Nissan is a supporter of the celebration of the Tokyo Rainbow Pride Parade. UM, we also have a lot of inclusivity policies and program and training for all of our employees, and that includes in our head in our home market in Japan. Alison, give us a sense, as chief marketing officer for Nissan, how Nissan markets and promotes its products to this community, anything, anything unique that you guys are doing. I think for us

at Nissan, it's not just one month. To us, it's not just the month of June. We want to be supporting and engaging with the LGBTQ community throughout the year. So this is why we have a full schedule of Pride events which we support. UM. We work with all of our regions around the country to make sure that we're supporting at a local level, so it's not just in the month of June. This is a year round support that is part of not just our our business strategy,

but also our marketing strategy. And I mean, obviously it's just the right thing to do. You want to show you know more than tolerance, acceptance and and love. I don't want to sound corny, but you know that's what makes life worth living, right UM. On the on the business side of things, though, Allison does it, does it pay dividends? I mean, do you see broader acceptance from that community of your products. I think yes, we do.

And obviously we know that the LGBTQ community has a very large amount of spending, so I think there's that piece of it, but we also see that when you show up and you show up authentically and not just in the month of June, we have seen very strong acceptance of our brand as well as our products from this community. That's a great message. Authenticity is important and I think consumers definitely recognize that. Alison Witherspoon talking to

us as a chief marketing officer at Nissan. Really interesting, UM and cool. We focus obviously on this issue in the month and Pride Month, but certainly should be paying attention to it all year round. So Alison, thank you so much for joining us. Now, let's bring in Andrew chain in right now, chief executive officer at procure a m UM. Procure has the e t F UFO. It's not an e t F for unidentified flying objects, but rather one that it is a pure play investment in

UM space and things surrounding space exploration. Andrew, thanks so much for joining us. Uh, what is UM the interest right now in uh? Pure play space e t F as we start to see you know, almost on a feel like a weekly basis, UM elon Musk putting rockets up there, and new satellite technologies coming out that even the average person can afford. You know, the the appetite force based investing is unlike any I've seen UM in

my career. And there's been so many transformational technological advancement that have helped allow us to reduce the cost of sending things down into outer space. We're also even seeing it from the military and defense side of government spending, UM really ramping up space efforts as well. So we're at a really unprecedented, unprecedented time for the space industry. And uh, you know, there's a lot of companies that

you can get through play exposure to these days. All right, Andrew, So looking at UFO, what are some of the big holdings in UFO? Certainly so we have companies like Virgin Galactic max are we just recently in the most recent UH rebalanced added company m d A to the fund. Um. You also have a lot of satellite operators and providers, launch companies, and even some of your diversified aerospace and defense names that are major players in the space industry,

like your Blowings and your Lockey. So, um, if I look at the e t F over the last year, it's just shot up from twenty to h thirty almost thirty two. So you're looking at the game the last twelve months, what's your expectation going out a year or two? You know, I can't really make I'm not allowed to

make projections. But what we what we can look at is there's various investment banks and research houses that have all started building focused space analyst team and companies like Morgan Stanley are predicting that the space industry could be over a trillion dollars by Think of America even pointing that the space economy could be roughly two point seven trillion dollars and as of the most recent Space Report, numbers in industry is currently at about four four billion.

So um, you know, a lot of a lot of these analysts are pointing to broadband internet and communications really driving that growth over the next several years. Andrew, what we have you? I have to ask you about UFOs. I've generally not been a believer in UFOs, but there's been a lot of military footage, you know, I'm not sure if it's Air Force or Navy pilots, a lot of documentaries lately. Yeah, and I understand there's some Pentagon report out there. Give us what you know about that. Yes,

we're we're waiting for the public release. There have been several um, you know, individuals and entities that I've been um given copies of the report already. But this was something that was passed in a coronavirus relief plan that this report would need to come out. And essentially, um, from what we're hearing that's been leaked already. Um, you know, it discusses hundreds of confirmed reports of having identified um, these UFOs or as they're now calling them, U A

p s, And we don't know what they are. And so although we might not have an answer saying that, okay, these crafts that we can't identify or understand our foreign adversaries or other worldly Um, it's terrifying from from both your standpoints. One that you know, our adversaries could be a hundred years ahead of us technologically, or on the other end that um, you know, these are other worldly

craft that we can't even understand. Oh I see, So you're saying it's possible that rather than aliens, these are earthly foreign adversaries. Yes, because I you know, any logical person who thinks about it rationally has to assume there are many other life forms in the universe, right, I mean it's very large and and it's very unlikely that we happen to be on the leading edge of life intelligence,

right Yeah. And it's it's amazing to think that, you know, if there were other countries that were advanced enough to come up with these technologies that defy you our understanding of physics. Um, you know that they've just been sitting on these technologies and not using them for other purposes. So you know, to to think that there could be other technologies that maybe you were you're not far away from being able to understand or potentially harness and thinking

about how that could advance. Uh, you know human you know space, Uh, you know desires as well as just you know, what we can learn from potentially others out there that might be a lot smarter than we are. So the fact that our government can't rule that out, I think is, you know, potentially, what could be the big takeaway from this? Yeah, if if, if there's that kind of techno ology coming from other countries on Earth that is slightly terrifying and we don't know about it.

But Paul Sweeney, don't you have to assume in you know, a galaxy, that a universe that goes out thirteen billion light years that one of the I don't know how many millions of other planets there are, how many millions of their solar systems there are on on at least one of those, most likely thousands of them, life forms have developed. You know, I'm as big a Star Trek fan. I go way back to the original Star trek Um. So yes is my answer. But you know, it just

it just haven't really seen any evidence. But this is this new stuff that we're seeing just recently from some of these military aircraft are are very interesting to be interesting to see what kind of conclusion the Pentagon comes up with. But Andrew, I mean, when you have all this talk about potential UFOs, is that good for the

space business? I certainly think so. You know, if you look at it, you know, our ability to learn and whatever these technologies are to you know, advance us, you know, extremely quickly if we're able to figure out, you know,

how to reverse engineer some of this. And from your a defense standpoint, um, you've got to think that there's a there's a good chance that we could see more government and military expenditures towards space, whether it's trying to figure out how to create these technologies ourselves, whether it's just tracking, identifying, cataloging, and trying to understand where these

crafts that are moving within our own airspace. So this is a national defense issue as well as you know, one that could provide opportunities is the Space Force Andrew, is still a thing. I know you spent a lot of time thinking about. This is still a thing, absolutely, and we're spending going towards space force and that's a growing branch of our military. Sweet is. At first I thought it was just like, what is this? You can't the Air Force just continue doing it? But maybe, uh,

maybe they're onto something. When when are we going to see this report? Officially they were it was supposed to be released actually too day, um, and now they're saying that it could be released by the end of the month. So you know, keep keep your eyes killed. This is something that we're we're certainly looking forward to its release. And maybe he added a risk disclosure to the UFO perspectives because of potential U A T and USO risks. All right, well, it's some cool stuff. We'll have you

back on Andrew Shannon. He's a chief executive officer for procure a m talking to us about UFOs, the E T F and also actually the real thing, Matt. I mean again, um, big fan of Star Trek. I'll go there, you know, Um, we'll see. But anyway, it's attracting money, so that's important to us. A Bloomberg we'll have more

coming up. This is Bloomberg. Now let's get over to Ben's lavin right now, Global head of E T S n Asset Servicing at b n Y Melon, because we've seen um an interesting trend here mutual funds converting into e T s. Ben, Why are we? Why are we seeing this? What's the ben fit to investors? Well, an industry milestone occurred in March with the first ever conversion, and then a few weeks ago we saw dimensional funds convert around thirty billion in mutual fund assets the e

T S, which is notable for the scale. But why is this happening? I mean really because investors are demanding it um. The market is preferring investment content delivered in the et F wrapper, and the data shows that mutual fund flows have been persistently negative and E t F flows have been persistently positive over the last several years.

And the recent SEC ruling UM and regulatory developments that were adopted last year really set the stage to make this easier or asset managers to convert products and bring some of these strategies to market inside an et F rapper. But some mutual funds can transition easily to the EHF structure, but some are not well suited due to the underlying investment strategies. But this is a trend I expect to continue and it will attract a lot of attention going forward.

So Ben, I'm just unclear what is the advantage to the investor for you know, going from the mutual fund structure to et F structure. Well, there are several advantages that e t F s bring UM. One certainly is around tax station and certainly UM the e t F rapper offers in many ways a better mouse trap compared to mutual funds when it comes to managing the underlying taxes UM. So the e t F structure does allow the portfolio managers to to eliminate or avoid distributing capital

gains to investors compared to mutual funds. But other features that e t F s have such as daily liquidity, daily transparency UM and certainly lower fees on average in many cases is another big driver behind the trend towards e t F adoption and managers thinking about converting funds into the e t F rapper. What are the drawbacks of an e of an e t F rapper A mutual fund. Well, I think UM, you know, the drawbacks

are few, but the process is UM, you know, somewhat complicated. UM. And for investors who have bought their mutual fund shares directly with the company UM, they would need a brokerage account UM, where many mutual fund transfer agencies have not are not able UH to easily UM have an equity security or an equity like security on their platform UM

and so that's a big piece of conversion. But but more recently, many investors are buying their mutual funds through brokerage platforms UM and so it's a quite easy conversion UM, you know, if you have those accounts in place. UM. And also many of the fund companies are offering you know,

other options for asters who don't want to convert. But generally speaking, in the conversions we've seen, most investors have opted to transition their shares from a mutual fund to an et S. So UM just a good headline come across the bloomber terminal Justice Department to sue Georgia over voting restrictions. That's according to the Washington Post and we'll have more reporting on that up. Shows you where this

Justice Department is yeah, exactly, new sheriff in town. I guess Ben Slaven joining us here talk to us about um the record flows we're seen the e t F. It just seems like there's NonStop money coming into the e F et F space. What have you seen so far this year? Well, the e t F industry continues to set records. We saw the global et F flow top over five hundred billion years of date and over

a trillion in the trailing twelve month period. UM. So the industry globally sits at nine trillion, which is now around four of all funds. But here in the US we've seen about four hundred and fifty billion in inflow year to date, which would put us on pace to shatter the record that we saw last year. But what's remarkable is the breath. Um It's not just a few

products or a few issuers. We are seeing that inflow spread across the industry up and down the lead table, but also across investment type as well, So it's not just equities, it's fixed income and and other multi asset products. The other interesting thing we are seeing here at being why is really the record pace of new fund launches. So with that inflow. UM. You know, issuers are also launching product at a record pace. We've seen over a hundred and fifty new EPs launched this year alone, UM

and again after a record year last year. UM, so we expect this trend to continue. UM. Also, trading volume is also up significantly as well with all the new products in the flow, which would just not surprising, Yeah, just extraordinary development and financial services really over the last several years is the growth of e t F. Ben Slaven, Global head of E t F S and Asset Servicing at b n Y Melan giving us the latest on e t F s again, continued record inflos into the

e t F space, just amazing. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews with Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller three pt On Fall Sweeney I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney. Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio