Business News at a Glance

Trump Weighs Rejoining Pact on Pacific Rim

President Donald Trump, in a sharp reversal, told a gathering of farm state lawmakers and governors Thursday that the United States was looking into rejoining a multicountry trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal he pulled out of days after assuming the presidency. Trump’s reconsideration of an agreement he once denounced as a “rape of our country” caught even his closest advisers by surprise and came as his administration faces stiff pushback from Republican lawmakers, farmers and other businesses concerned that the president’s threat of tariffs and other trade barriers will hurt them economically.

Appeals Court Questions Dual Roles of Consumer Bureau’s Director

White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney privately fumed Thursday that his own staff had been leaking confidential information “to make me look bad,” hours after a federal appeals court questioned whether he could legally run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while heading the budget office. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit expressed support for the president’s legal right to appoint an interim director of the consumer agency. But two of the three jurists raised doubts about Mulvaney’s dual roles. The 2010 Dodd-Frank law mandated that the bureau retain independence from other federal agencies.

Colorado Group Pushes to Buy Embattled Denver Post From New York Hedge Fund

A Colorado civic group is spearheading an effort to buy The Denver Post, which on Sunday excoriated its owner, a New York hedge fund, in its opinion section by saying, “Denver deserves a newspaper owner who supports its newsroom." The group, Together for Colorado Springs, said it had begun contacting potential investors in the state, who have so far pledged $10 million to the effort. The initiative follows a revolt at the Post that grew out of years of dissatisfaction with the paper’s owner, Alden Global Capital, which has cut costs and shrunk the newsroom staff.

Senators Had a Lot to Say About Facebook. That Hasn’t Stopped Them From Using It.

With respect to Facebook, U.S. senators do not seem to be too different from many of us: They do not necessarily trust it, but they are not ready to quit it. Even as the members of the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees were questioning Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, many of them were feeding content into the site. All 44 of the senators who questioned Zuckerberg on Tuesday have pages on Facebook. At least 35 of them have two pages, with many using one for official Senate communications and a second for their campaign-related material.

A California Housing Fight, Waged With Pen and Walking Shoes

In California, where 1 person in 5 lives in poverty once rent is figured in, lawmakers have offered a flurry of bills to streamline building regulations, expand tenant protections and put more money toward subsidized housing. For many tenants, those efforts are not nearly enough. Up and down the state, activists and renters groups are using California’s tradition of citizen government to put voter initiatives on the ballot. Pitting a rising tenants rights’ movement against apartment owners, the fight will consume tens of millions of dollars’ worth of organizing efforts and political advertising before the November election.

After Cambridge Analytica, Privacy Experts Get to Say ‘I Told You So’

The scandal swirling around Facebook and Cambridge Analytica has begun to usher in a new era for a once-ignored community of privacy researchers and developers. After years of largely disregarding their warnings about exactly what companies like Facebook were doing — that is, collecting enormous amounts of information on its users and making it available to third parties with little to no oversight — the general public suddenly seemed to care about what they were saying. Many developers believe this is the right time to push ahead with testing more privacy solutions.

An App Moved Offline, and China’s Censors Stepped In

Two Chinese apps, one joke sharing and the other for funny videos, have been growing dramatically in recent months. But now, China’s top media regulator has closed one of those apps. Officially, the app, Neihan Duanzi, was shut down for hosting “vulgar” jokes and videos. But it and another app, Douyin, which helps users make goofy music videos, have brought together legions of fans who make themselves known to one another in the real world. That has led some to wonder whether the platform’s tight-knit user community, with its own subculture and obscure vocabulary, had angered China’s ruling Communist Party.