it's rolling out its own outlet-type concept, expanding jewelry and beauty offerings and more, but results from those initiatives aren't expected until later this year. the big question remains, is it enough. for nightly business report, i'm courtney reagan. another hit to the retail

sector came last night when a federal judge killed the planned merger between staples and office depot because of antitrust concerns. the judge sided with the federal trade commission which had argued that deal would lead to higher prize. shares of both companies got slammed, office depot losing 40%. this isn't just the first deal blocked recently. eamon, i guess that's the question, why have so many deals been scuttled and why are regulators being more aggressive? >> that is an interesting question. judge emmitt sullivan's decision this week means that the office depot/staples merger goes on a long list here of other mergers. take a look at the list that have been blocked by the u.s. government the past few years starting with ge and electrolux. we've had comcast and time warner, cisco and u.s. foods, bumblebee and chicken of the sea. on the a-- on and on and on the

list goes. they say they took each of the deals on the merits and are not necessarily looking to sending some broader message than that. the critics in the board rooms of these companies that wanted to merge are saying they're disappointed by these decisions and they would like these deals to go through. >> are companies, eamon, postponing deals or putting them off, not doing them, or are they or might they wait for an administration that might be more merger friendly next year? >> well, put yourself in the mindset of a company that's contemplating a deal right now. you're sitting here in the month of may, 2016. you've got a few months left of the obama administration. we just saw the obama administration's track record when it comes to this kid of deal. if hillary clinton gets the democratic nomination and is elected, you can imagine that her appointees throughout the federal government, department of justice, ftc as in the case of office depot, those

appointees would probably be very similar to what we've seen with barack obama. on the other hand, if donald trump gets the republican nomination, if he is elected in november and comes into office in january, what would his antitrust policy be? that is anybody's guess. i think a lot of ceos contemplating deals right now are scratching their heads. >> i'm sure they are. eamon, thank you so much. one thing that could be holding back wall street and business in general is red tape. at least that's what jpmorgan's ceo jamie dimon thinks, and he sounded off today on regulations. >> i get a huge amount of complaints about regulations. there's no question it's part of what is slowing down the economy. i do think, i'm hoping the next president looks at it and says what's the good regulations, what are the ones that are just hampering and it's a normal thing to look at them, clean them up and do the right thing to protect the people, protect the consumer but also protect

the economy. >> when you ask the question which is doing better, wall street or main street, the knee-jerk reaction is usually wall street. but as mike santulli tells us, this time around the conventional wisdom may not be right. >> main street has been outpacing wall street for the past year and a half. the stock market has gone exactly nowhere since thanksgiving, 2014. the quarterly corporate profits are down double digits. over that same period, more than 4 million new jobs have been created and average hourly pay is up almost 4%, including a solid gain for april, reported on friday. real personal spending, consumer confidence and household borrowing have also picked up nicely since stock prices stalled. this is a big reversal from the first few years following the great recession when stock prices and corporate profits surged as the fed supplied easy money. while most americans didn't feel many benefits of the recovery. so why is the political debate about economic insecurity? the recent pickup on main street is too little too late to turn the decades-long trending of

incomin equality and wage stagnation. recall that bill clinton won in 1992, saying it's the economy. in retrospect the recovery was well under way at that time. it's unclear if main street can maintain its momentum. more companies are cutting jobs and the energy bust has yet to work its way through the economy. then there's the chance that all the campaign talk of a structurally broken economy could itself drag on consumer and business confidence. standard washington wisdom says it should be hard to win an election based on the dark economic message with unemployment at just 5%. we have nearly half a year to see if this idea holds up. i'm mike santulli at the new york exchange. tax time is usually a good time for the u.s. government but this year it wasn't its best. the government ran a surplus of $106 billion as taxes came in, but that was down from last april's $157 billion.

the treasury did say the drop was due to a quirk in the calendar related to the timing of benefits payments. nonetheless, in the 12 months ending in april, the u.s. budget deficit widened to slightly more than half a trillion dollars. that's 2.8% of gdp. caterpillar's chairman and ceo is heading to cuba to meet with government representatives to, quote, enhance its relationship with that nation. the company also says the trip is part of caterpillar's effort to promote open markets and free trade. in february cap signed a deal with cuban distributors to start the process of selling machinery in that country which would make it one of the first u.s. manufacturers to do so. tomorrow house speaker paul ryan will meet with donald trump as the two try to reach some common ground. today house republicans urged ryan to get behind the presumptive gop presidential nominee. john harwood joins us now. john, donald is meeting tomorrow with michigan mcconnell, paul ryan. what does mr. trump wanting to

get out of it? >> what he really needs to do, tyler, is to unite his party. you cannot win in modern american politics unless you have your party overwhelmingly behind you. donald trump has not done that so far. he's got active resistance from people like paul ryan, from mitt romney, who is today ratcheted up his pressure on income tax returns. so donald trump needs to smooth things over, get the entire party on the same page for reasons of turnout and for reasons of simply calming the waters before that convention this summer. >> that's what he wants to get out of it. what about the congressional leaders, what do they hope to achieve? >> their goal is pretty singular. they want to hold their majorities. the senate republican majority, they have 54 seats, is in big danger. there's seven republican incumbent senators in states that president obama carried twice. the house has a more secure majority, but if there's a big defeat for donald trump, that would mean trouble for that majority.

democrats need 30 seats to move ahead, put nancy pelosi back in the speakership and goal number one for paul ryan is make sure that doesn't happen. he's also thinking about a potential presidential campaign down the line. >> two questions in one. tomorrow at this time what do you expect the tone to be coming out of mr. ryan, number one. number two, how big of a problem is it for mr. trump that mr. romney again said turn over your tax returns before the election, and mr. trump says i'm not going to do it? >> well, on the tax returns, it's a big problem because mitt romney is validating the critique that hillary clinton is offering of him right now. every presidential candidate for decades has released those returns, and so donald trump is going to face some more pressure. now, it didn't hurt him in the primary campaign. there's no guarantee that it's going to hurt him in the general election, but mitt romney by siding with hillary clinton there, that's a difficulty. in terms of the tone, i would expect paul ryan to have a very positive tone but not committal, not come out and endorse donald

trump. i would expect donald trump to take a softer tone as well. >> all right, john, thank you very much. john harwood reporting. coming up, wanting those long lines at the airport to go away? sure you do. don't we all. well, some senators say they have the answer. cut the baggage fees. but is that really going to solve it? the federal trade commission may be looking at google's search dominance. ftc officials have been asking questions about google's search presence with another u.s. company that objects to google's practices. the report says the inquiry is in its early information-gathering stage. the ftc looked at something similar with google in 2013 but

closed the case without any charges. shares of google's parent company, alphabet, finished off about 1%. well, it is no secret that the relationship between the tech and government sectors of our economy have been strained. today defense secretary ash carter paid a visit to silicon valley hoping to ease those tensions. josh lipton has more from mountain view, california. >> this was secretary ash carter's fourth official trip to the bay area where he acknowledged the tensions between uncle sam and silicon valley. >> there are also tensions, obviously, about how to handle technology in the context of security, privacy, a free internet, but also one that is secure and that is -- contributes to protecting people rather than harming people. that's a difficult thing to engineer. >> perhaps even more difficult now after the recent conflict

over encryption, where virtually every major u.s. tech company came out in favor of apple and against the government. twitter has now reportedly barred intelligence agencies from accessing dataminr. secretary carter has a plan in place to win back consumer and enterprise tech companies. he created the defense innovation unit. its mission is to help the d.o.d. discover new, emerging technologies in silicon valley that could strengthen national security. >> this is an experimental outpost of the pentagon and silicon valley to try to create that connection between this vital mission for which i'm responsible, to protect our country, and make a better and safer world with the great innovative nature of american society. >> today, carter announced that he has requested $30 million in new funding for the defense

innovation unit, recruited top talent from apple and google and plans to open a second office in boston. some entrepreneurs in silicon valley may be wary of working with the government, worried about bureaucracy and red tape, but secretary carter says this new unit will be fast, agile and capable of moving at the speed of business. for nightly business report, i'm josh lipton in mountain view, california. wendy's warns that its sales will slow and that's where we begin tonight's market focus. despite issuing quarterly results that topped estimates, the fast food chain cautioned that same-store sales growth for the current quarter would fall below its own forecast. the company also raised its full-year guidance, but that news wasn't enough to impress investors. shares fell nearly 9% to $10.19. the strengthening yen is expected to be a drag for toyota. the automaker forecasts a 35% drop in profit for the fiscal year which ends in march of 2017, as that company caombats

currency head winds. shares fell. analysts are bearish on seaworld. they downgraded the theme park operator to underperform from outperform and also cut its price target to $15 down from $27. those downgrades were attributed to competition from rivals and a lack of pricing power. shares fell 3% to $17.87. shares of electronic arts surged today after the video game maker reported better than expected results after the bell yesterday. those results lifted by the sales of the star wars battle front game and the company's sports games. shares rose more than 13% on the day to 73.38. walmart will sue visa, alleging the credit card company is not allowing the retailer to let customers verify their chip debit card purchases with a personal identification number, which walmart says is more secure. walmart says visa is forcing it to accept signature

verifications only. shares of walmart fell more than 2.5% on this down day to $66.41. visa also down over 2% to $77.30. chipotle has hired a food safety expert who was once a critic of the company's response to last year's e. coli outbreak and one of chipotle's biggest supporters still seies promise n the brand. >> chipotle is a very good brand. we've done a lot of research with millennials. there are three brands overindexed. one is starbucks, the other is taco bell and chipotle. and chipotle, i think, obviously has had its challenges but great brands will come back, it just takes time. >> shares fell a fraction to $454 even. alaska airline secured the top spot as the best rated traditional air carrier according to jd power and associates. it marks the ninth consecutive year the airline has won that

title. ares were down today more than 2% to $67.60. taking to the skies for summer vacation but dreading the long airport security lines? well, two u.s. senators believe dropping airline fees on checking luggage this summer could help reduce those long lines and your wait time, which is about two hours prior to your flight. but will this really fix the problem? michael boyd, chairman of the boyd group, joins us now with more on that. michael, what do you think? is this going to solve the problem or at least put a dent in the problem? >> no, it's a political error. even before we had fees, we had full overhead bins. what we have today, if there's any delays, it's at the gate, not security. so this won't fix a thing. it sounds good. i just wish they were as concerned about the quality of screening as they are the speed of the screening. >> it seems to me, michael, that obviously the theory there is that if you don't charge people to check luggage, they'll check more, which means there's less luggage going through the gate

screening. it seems to me as i travel around that there are no more tsa people, no more numerous places to go through than there were five or six years ago and air travel has risen since then. we've got more people going through the same portals. >> it's risen very slightly. this year it's going to be up about 3%. so it's not like a huge jump. the tsa claims that their staffing was cut. that scedoesn't mean they weren overstaffed before. so we need to look at tsa management, which has always been at the short end of efficiency anyway. not the people in the blue shirts doing the work, they're great, but the management, we need to look at that. doing something with baggage fees is not going to change the processing through security. >> but what is it going to take to revamp, if you will, tsa and the management specifically? >> get new management who knows what they're doing. when you have a 95% failure rate, like we found a few months

ago, somebody should be fired. just recently in minneapolis, the failed nine out of 12 tests. that's our problem. it's a management issue. it's not a processing issue and it's not the people at the screening points. it's the fact the people at the top are not particularly competent. >> but how is it not a problem with the people at the screening points if they failed tests on bags? >> because of the way they're managed and the way they're screened and the way the processes they use. those people are good people, but the problem is they're working for people at the very top who aren't security people. so the real issue is we're not thinking like terrorists, we're thinking like people who want to find pointy objects. you need to start at the top, the head of the fish, not the tail. >> do you think there's any political appetite for that, michael? >> obviously with these two senators there isn't. i mean we've had this problem with improper screening for years and all they're worried about is whether there's a tlaut of through put at the airports.

that's why we have to have politicians that really look at the answer. >> michael, we'll leave it there, thank you. michael boyd with the boyd group. from airlines to futuristic travel. why the hope for high-speed transit may be a step closer to reality. here's what to watch for tomorrow. the retail roundup continues. fasten your safety belts with kohl's and ralph lauren. we get an earful from the central bank when three fed bank presidents give speeches. that's what to watch for on thursday. well, it promises to revolutionize how we travel long and intermediate distances.

it's called the hyperloop and it is one step closer to becoming a reality. one of the two companies developing the transportation system that will shuttle people in pods traveling up to 700 miles an hour has completed its first public test run. it happened in the desert north of las vegas, and our phil lebeau was there. >> call it a glimpse of how we might travel in the future. hyperloop one shot a test sled almost a half mile down this track in only a few seconds to show how the hyperloop will eventually transfer people hundreds of miles in just a few minutes. >> this isn't going to be about riding in a tube. we're going to leverage technology and some of the smartest minds to create a transportation experience that feels like riding in an elevator but allows us to customize what we do when we're moving and we think we'll rewrite the rules and it's going to be pretty cool. >> the hyperloop vision is a network of low pressure tubes that will transport pods holding people or cargo.

electric motors in tubes like this which are 11 1/2 feet in diameter will propel pods on levitating rails at speeds up to 700 miles per hour. in theory, making a trip from l.a. to san francisco happen in just 35 minutes. >> ideas like hyperloop are possible at a faster pace than any other time in human history. the whole generation of entrepreneurs that have evolved, the skills and the confidence and the insights, both through successes and mistakes, and the access to resources to go after really big ideas. >> the idea for the hyperloop originally came from tesla and spacex ceo elon musk three years ago. since then entrepreneurs and college researchers have talked about zipping humans and cargo through tubes, but only two companies have actually developed hyperloop prototypes. >> the fact that hyperloop is only confined to just a few firms suggests to me it's just way too exploratory, because if this thing really were

promising, i'd like to see a number of private sector ventures displaying interest in it and investing in it. >> actually building a hyperloop could eventually cost billions of dollars and getting it approved by regulators will be a challenge, but hyperloop one executives believe this test is the start of what could become the hyperloop carrying people by 20 2021. phil lebeau, north las vegas, nevada. >> you go first. >> give me a cocktail. >> exactly. that does it for us tonight on nightly business report. i'm sue herera. thanks for joining us. >> and i'll tyler mathisen. have a great evening and we'll see you right back here tomorrow nigh

narrator: tonight on "quest"... wind energy is the fastest-growing source of power in the united states, but wind turbines can be deadly to birds. now biologists say there's a way to reduce bird deaths. and concussions are surprisingly common for athletes. what happens during a concussion? and what can be done to prevent brain damage? and there's a hidden danger in san francisco bay that's poisoning wildlife and people. learn how mercury pollution got here and what's being done to get rid of it. ♪ announcer: support for "quest" is provided by...