The White House is reportedly eyeing new limits on shareholder advisory services — and investors have recently tuned the services out on major votes.

• 🤐 Why it matters: Pressure is mounting on firms like Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, which have long played influential roles in stockholder votes on issues like executive pay, board seats and corporate resolutions.

Zoom in: The White House may "curb the influence of proxy advisers and index-fund managers," WSJ reported today.

• It could include an executive order banning shareholder recommendations, according to the report (the White House characterized that as speculation).
• WSJ separately reported that the FTC is investigating whether ISS and Glass Lewis violated antitrust laws.

🥊 Friction point: Conservatives and business execs have long claimed that proxy advisors have political agendas and are too prone to recommend against board positions, Reuters noted.

• Advocates say the services play a crucial third-party role in aiding stockholders and note that their recommendations are not mandates.

😡 State of play: High-profile business leaders have ramped up criticism in recent months.

• Tesla CEO Elon Musk called proxy advisors "corporate terrorists" on an earnings call last month.
• JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in March called ISS and Glass Lewis "incompetent" and said they are "driving companies out of the public market."

🗳️ The intrigue: Shareholders have ignored recommendations by ISS and Glass Lewis on multiple major votes recently.

• Both recommended against Musk's nearly $1 trillion pay package, but Tesla shareholders overwhelmingly supported it last week.
• Both recommended against Larry Fink's compensation at BlackRock in 2024, but shareholders endorsed it.
• ISS endorsed activist investor Nelson Peltz's effort to get onto the Disney board in 2024, but shareholders voted against him.

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Waymo is taking the on-ramp to the freeway.

• The self-driving car company announced today that it will begin offering autonomous freeway rides — without a safety driver — to certain paid riders in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Why it matters: Until now, the company has kept its robotaxis exclusively on urban and suburban roads.

The big picture: Waymo executives said they've spent more than a year testing their vehicles on freeways — with employees and their guests riding along — to ensure they're ready to begin this new chapter of autonomous ride-hailing service for the public.

• It's "one of those things that's very easy to learn but very hard to master," Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov told reporters. "So it took time to do it properly with a strong focus on system safety and reliability."

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📊 Advanced Micro Devices shares jumped after the Nvidia chips rival projected a 60% rise in data center revenue over three to five years. (Yahoo Finance)

💳 Visa is testing stablecoin payments from businesses to workers in the gig economy. (Bloomberg)

🚚 Autonomous trucking company Einride announced plans for an IPO through a SPAC. The deal would value the Swedish company at $1.8 billion. (Axios Pro)

Tiger Woods has agreed to help renovate a historic Washington, D.C., golf course originally built for Black players in the first half of the 20th century, according to Front Office Sports.

State of play: Langston Golf Course — where everyone from local players to icons like Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis teed it up — is still open to the public, but it fell into disrepair years ago, according to the Washingtonian.

• It's owned by the National Park Service but was leased in 2020 to a new nonprofit called National Links Trust, which has been working to rehabilitate D.C.'s public courses.
• White House Environmental Advisory Task Force chair and Trump consultant Ed Russo told Front Office Sports that Woods had agreed to help with the course's redesign.

💭 Nathan's thought bubble: This is great news for D.C. golfers. There are way too many exclusive private courses around here and not enough nice courses open to the public.