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Bob Bakish is ousted as CEO of Paramount Global as internal struggles explode into public view

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Bob Bakish is ousted as CEO of Paramount Global as internal struggles explode into public view

Paramount Global’s months-long internal struggles spilled into full view Monday as Chief Executive Bob Bakish was ousted and pressure mounted for the company’s directors to accept — or reject — a takeover bid by David Ellison’s Skydance Media.

Moments before the company announced its first-quarter earnings, Paramount issued a statement announcing Bakish’s departure. The company said three of its top entertainment executives would run the firm: Paramount Pictures CEO Brian Robbins; CBS CEO George Cheeks; and Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios chief Chris McCarthy.

Bakish’s firing comes during a tumultuous period for the company as its traditional TV and movie studio businesses decline amid head winds for the media industry. Bakish also was at odds with controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, who is seeking an exit.

Redstone, who has presided over the steep decline of her family’s media heirloom, is in a bind. She doesn’t want the company built by her father, the late, ferocious mogul Sumner Redstone, carved up and sold for parts at auctions. Paramount includes the CBS television network, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET and the Paramount Pictures movie studio on Melrose Avenue.

But Paramount’s common shareholders are wary of the two-phased deal with Skydance because Redstone will get a premium for her family’s shares.

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Paramount is in the midst of a 30-day exclusive negotiating period with Ellison, a tech scion whose Skydance Media has teamed up with investment firms RedBird Capital and KKR to acquire Redstone’s National Amusements holding company. On Sunday, Skydance sweetened its offer by $1 billion, with money earmarked for Paramount’s B-class, or nonvoting, shareholders, according to three people familiar with the deal but not authorized to comment. National Amusements holds 77% of Paramount’s voting shares.

The exclusive negotiating period ends Friday. It is unclear whether Skydance and RedBird have given Paramount’s board a deadline to accept its revised offer. Skydance and its partners have been wrangling with Paramount’s independent board members over how much money will go to common shareholders, two knowledgeable people said. Skydance and its partners have pressed for more of the proceeds to pay down Paramount’s debt.

The company’s credit last month was downgraded to “junk” status by ratings agency S&P Global.

Bakish was opposed to the Skydance transaction, a stance that infuriated Redstone, who in 2016 handpicked Bakish to run the company, then known as Viacom. In recent weeks, senior company executives also raised questions about Bakish’s leadership and the strength of his long-range plan in their conversations with board members — a development that expedited Bakish’s departure from the company, the sources said.

Bakish was more open to another proposed deal, favored by smaller shareholders, with private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which has offered $26 billion, including the assumption of Paramount’s debt. Sony Pictures Entertainment has been negotiating with Apollo to join that effort. Most insiders expect that Apollo and Sony would break the company apart, a scenario that Redstone does not want to allow.

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Redstone, according to one person familiar with the matter, has also been frustrated with some of Bakish’s decisions, including not selling Showtime, the premium cable network that the company folded into its television networks and streaming effort. Bakish had dismissed a recent offer of $3 billion for the channel from investors, including former Showtime head David Nevins.

Paramount, meanwhile, has lost more than $2 billion on its streaming service, Paramount+.

“Paramount Global includes exceptional assets and we believe strongly in the future value creation potential of the Company,” Redstone said in a statement. “I have tremendous confidence in George, Chris and Brian. They have both the ability to develop and execute on a new strategic plan and to work together as true partners. I am extremely excited for what their combined leadership means for Paramount Global and for the opportunities that lie ahead.”

In addition, the company faces a crucial Wednesday deadline to strike a new deal with cable distribution giant Charter Communications, which runs the Spectrum TV service.

Paramount entered the Charter negotiations with a weak hand — its cable television channels have suffered from falling ratings amid consumers’ shift to streaming. Paramount relies heavily on the revenue it receives from Charter, Comcast, DirecTV and other distributors.

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“Paramount still has a popular network, an esteemed studio, and solid streaming services, but its business prospects look tenuous as it looks to sell,” EMarketer senior analyst Ross Benes wrote Monday in an emailed statement. “Arranging a new quixotic leadership structure may appease those looking for new blood. But the dramatic removal evokes a feeling of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

Less than two minutes after Paramount announced Bakish’s departure, the company reported its earnings results.

At the beginning of a call with analysts, company executives said they would not take questions after reporting their financial results. The call lasted slightly less than 10 minutes.

After Cheeks thanked Bakish for “his many years of leadership and steadfast support for all Paramount Global businesses, brands and people,” McCarthy tried to calm concerns about the new triumvirate leadership structure, saying that he, Cheeks and Robbins have worked together for years.

“It’s a true partnership,” McCarthy said. “We have a deep respect for one another, we’re going to lead and manage this company together.”

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He said the company’s long-term strategic plan would be focused around three pillars — making the most of the company’s popular content, strengthening its balance sheet and optimizing its streaming strategy.

Paramount reported $7.68 billion in revenue for the three-month period that ended March 31, up almost 6% compared with the same period a year earlier. Paramount reported a net loss of $554 million, but that was less than its loss of more than $1 billion from a year earlier.

The company’s streaming division saw increased revenue of nearly $1.88 billion, up 24% compared with a year earlier. The segment’s quarterly loss was $287 million.

The company’s TV media revenue was aided by CBS’ February broadcast of the Super Bowl, which drew a massive audience. Revenue for the television networks division totaled $5.23 billion, up 1% compared with a year earlier. Paramount’s film division revenue totaled $605 million, up almost 3% compared with a year earlier.

The media empire now known as Paramount Global was formed in 2019 from the merger of Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. But the combination never convinced Wall Street of its promise. In the last year alone, Paramount Global’s stock has lost nearly half of its value.

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“While the mighty Viacom empire declined tremendously under Bakish, who profited handsomely personally, it isn’t clear that another appointed leader would have changed Paramount’s fortune,” Benes of EMarketer wrote in a note to investors. “With a mountain of debt and its primary assets, namely TV, continually losing value, the deep problems facing the company extend beyond any single executive.”

Bakish, who joined Viacom in 1997, was named CEO of Viacom in 2016, after the company’s stock had fallen 45% in two years due to falling ratings at some of its key networks, including Comedy Central and MTV, as well as struggles at its Paramount Pictures film studio.

After Redstone orchestrated the merger of Viacom with CBS, Bakish became CEO of the combined enterprise.

“The Board and I thank Bob for his many contributions over his long career, including in the formation of the combined company as well as his successful efforts to rebuild the great culture Paramount has long been known for,” Redstone said in her statement.

Paramount’s B-class stock rose 3% to $12.25 a share Monday before Bakish’s departure was officially announced. The shares continued to gain slightly in after-hours trading.

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What Trump Gained, and Didn’t, From China

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What Trump Gained, and Didn’t, From China

Andrew here. With President Trump set to arrive back in Washington on Friday, we’re taking a hard look at what his high-stakes summit in Beijing actually achieved. The TL;DR: It didn’t lead to the “grand bargain” many had anticipated.

While there were optics of cooperation between Trump and Xi Jinping, concrete deals — including on Nvidia chips or tariffs — were few. Trump just said that he rejected a proposal from Xi, China’s leader, to help broker a peace between the U.S. and Iran, leaving the critical Strait of Hormuz effectively shut.

Ultimately, the president is coming home to rising oil prices and a slumping bond market.

President Trump departed Beijing a few hours ago, hailing “fantastic trade deals” struck during his two-day summit.

Still, many analysts and investors appear underwhelmed by a lack of details or breakthroughs on key issues like tariffs, Iran and tech restrictions. The summit seems to have fallen short of already diminished expectations.

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For the 17 business leaders who accompanied Trump on the trip, the deal flow also appeared thinner than what was announced on his last presidential trip to China, in 2017.

Here are the highlights so far, Grady McGregor writes.

Nvidia and Citi apparently scored wins. Shares in Nvidia, the chipmaker, hit a record on Thursday on reports that Washington had cleared 10 Chinese companies to buy its H200 semiconductors.

That said, Beijing, which is looking to champion domestic rivals like Huawei, has not signaled it would be open to permitting the sales — an issue echoed on Friday by Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative.

And on the eve of the summit, Beijing approved Citi’s application to operate a securities business in China, ending a yearslong regulatory application process. It is unclear whether the presence of Jane Fraser, the bank’s C.E.O., on the trip played any role in Beijing’s decision. Citi shares gained on Thursday.

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Boeing landed an order for 200 aircraft, a deal Trump highlighted in a Fox News interview last night.

But shares in the plane maker fell sharply in premarket trading on Friday: The number was short of analysts’ forecasts of at least 300 planes.

The Board of Trade looks like a go. The Washington-Beijing body would manage trade in sectors such as aviation, energy, medical equipment and agriculture. Greer said it would aim to reduce tariffs on roughly $30 billion worth of goods.

He added that he expected the tariff truce the countries struck last fall in South Korea to be extended.

What’s still unclear:

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Major cryptocurrency regulation clears a key hurdle. The Senate Banking Committee passed the Clarity Act, which has been promoted by crypto companies and investors like the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The bill heads to the full Senate, where it faces a less certain fate.

Federal prosecutors will drop criminal charges against India’s richest man. The move to end the case against the businessman Gautam Adani came after one of his lawyers — Robert Giuffra, who is also one of President Trump’s personal lawyers — met with Justice Department officials, The Times reports. (A presentation by Giuffra said that Adani was willing to invest $10 billion in the U.S., though sources told The Times that the withdrawal of charges wasn’t tied to the offer.) A settlement in a parallel case by the S.E.C. was announced Thursday in which Adani agreed to pay $6 million.

Bill Ackman bets big on Microsoft. The billionaire financier said on Friday that he had acquired a major stake in the tech giant and that he believed in the long-term prospects of its productivity software and its spending on A.I. Other hedge fund managers have bet the opposite: TCI, the firm run by Chris Hohn, recently sold off an $8 billion stake in Microsoft.

The high-stakes legal showdown between Elon Musk and OpenAI is finally headed to the nine-person jury.

Over more than seven hours of closing arguments, lawyers for each side sought to paint the other as untrustworthy.

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Here are some of the highlights of Thursday’s proceedings.

Can anyone trust Sam Altman? That was again the central attack by Steven Molo, Musk’s lead lawyer, who has argued that Altman, the OpenAI chief, deceived Musk, a fellow founder, about plans to convert the company from nonprofit to for-profit.

Molo told jurors that five witnesses had called Altman a “liar,” and he hammered home his point with a creative metaphor:

Imagine that you’re on a hike, and you come upon one of those wooden bridges that you see on a trail, and it’s over a gorge. There’s a river that’s 100 feet below and it looks a little scary, but a woman standing by the entry to the bridge says, “Don’t worry, the bridge is built on Sam Altman’s version of the truth.” Would you walk across that bridge? I don’t think many people would.

Can jurors trust Musk’s version of events? OpenAI’s lawyers, from the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, argued that the billionaire knew about the company’s plans for for-profit conversion earlier than he admitted to and that the statute of limitations for his claims had passed.

Referring to Musk’s claim that he hadn’t read most of a 2018 email about OpenAI’s plans to seek outside investment, Sarah Eddy, a lawyer for OpenAI, said:

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Here you have one of the most sophisticated businessmen in the history of the world and he claims he didn’t read a four-page summary term sheet.

The outcome of the trial could drastically alter the A.I. landscape. If OpenAI loses, its operations could be disrupted at a time when rivals are gaining steam.

The artificial intelligence boom has been a tale of haves and have-nots. Some companies have benefited mightily, most recently the chip maker Cerebras, whose stock shot up 68 percent in its debut. But many enterprise software providers have been walloped.

One of them was Figma, the design-software maker whose shares have tumbled since it went public last year. But as it reported strong quarterly earnings on Thursday, its C.E.O., Dylan Field, spoke with Michael de la Merced about why he believed his company was poised to survive, and even thrive. Here are our takeaways after the conversation.

Remember the “SaaSpocalypse”? Referring to “software-as-a-service,” it referred to investors’ worries that tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code would devastate the entire category of subscription-based software companies, like Figma.

Figma appears to have dispelled at least some of those worries:

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The company’s results held up after an A.I.-related change in pricing. For most of its existence, Figma charged companies per user (known as seat-based pricing). But A.I. agents that can do work once reserved for humans promise to drastically reduce how many “seats” customers need to pay for.

In mid-March, Figma switched to a system in which it charged users for how much A.I. they used past a certain amount. The company said that more than 75 percent of its business users kept using A.I. tools despite the cap.

The result: Shares in Figma are up more than 10 percent in premarket trading since the report.

“Market narratives are market narratives,” Field said to DealBook about the SaaSpocalypse sell-off, playing down the investor concern while pointing out Figma’s strong performance.

“The way we see it, A.I. is going to create more software than ever,” he said. He added, “Design matters.”

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But Field remains on guard. Makers of A.I. models have muscled into Figma’s territory, notably Anthropic, which in March introduced Claude Design, a tool seen as a competitor of sorts. (Only three days before, Mike Krieger, a senior Anthropic executive, resigned from Figma’s board; Field reportedly complained about the situation.)

“You have to take a company like Anthropic seriously,” Field told DealBook.

The musical playlist for Thursday’s state dinner in Beijing for President Trump drew big buzz on social media. It contained some Trump favorites, including the Village People hit “Y.M.C.A.”


Every week, we’re asking a leader how he or she uses artificial intelligence. This week, Jeremy Allaire, who leads the stablecoin issuer Circle, told Sarah Kessler that he had built a “C.E.O. prioritizer.” The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How do you personally use A.I. at home or work?

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One interesting one is a C.E.O. prioritizer. If there’s a request for me to meet someone or do something, you go to the agent and it interrogates you about it and does background research. Then it assigns a one-to-five score, with one being “Completely ignore it” and five being “This is a highly strategic use of your time.”

Circle wants to be part of the infrastructure that helps A.I. agents spend money. Tell me more about that.

The primary units of work in the economic system are going to be executed by A.I. agents. And increasingly, it’s going to be agents that are operating in teams.

You need an economic system to support that. We need a way for one agent to access and use the services of another agent. For example, you might have research data in a particular domain of biology, and I want to make that available to A.I.s to consume. And it’s going to be 5 cents, 10 cents. Whatever it is, you receive that payment, and the A.I. then can consume that data and use it.

And this transaction would take place via stablecoin and not dollars, because there is less friction and these are tiny transactions?

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There’s no payment system in the world except for something like USDC that can conduct a transaction for a fraction of a penny. Or even 5 cents or 10 cents. And it’s all programmable.

You said on your latest earnings call that 85 percent of your employees are using A.I. coding and automation tools. What does that look like?

We’re able to basically go through the entire software life cycle with A.I. agents conducting work. Agents are seeing feature requests, picking them up, coding and submitting the code for review. We have other agents that perform code review. Humans then obviously come in to do subsequent reviews.

What about outside of engineering?

It’s in every single function. If you want to build a creative strategy for a campaign, there’s a whole agentic workflow. If you are creating public communications content — we’re a regulated company, so we have very strict guidelines — there’s an A.I. that will vet all of your content and point out the issues with it.

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Deals

  • Investors led by Egon Durban, a C.E.O. of the tech investment firm Silver Lake, have reportedly struck a deal to buy 25 percent of the Las Vegas Raiders at a $9.9 billion valuation. (CNBC)

  • Michael Carr, a longtime top M.&A. banker at Goldman Sachs, died on Tuesday. He was 68. (Bloomberg)

Politics, policy and regulation

Best of the rest

  • Boeing and Toyota are said to have donated $1 million each to fund a reality-TV video series starring the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy. (WSJ)

  • “In a City of Big Dreams, Many Young Adults See a Cloudy Future” (NYT)

We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.

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Why the infuriatingly catchy Kars4Kids jingle got yanked off the air in California

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Why the infuriatingly catchy Kars4Kids jingle got yanked off the air in California

The frustratingly unforgettable Kars4kids jingle, which has been worming its way into listeners’ brains for decades, is officially banned from the airwaves in California.

While the 1-877-KARS4KIDS song has been called one of the most memorable jingles in history, a court has ruled it is misleading.

A California man took the group behind it to court, saying he donated an old car to Kars4Kids, thinking its value would be used to help underprivileged children. He didn’t know the money generated was used to support Oorah, a Jewish organization that helps fund young adult trips to Israel.

An Orange County court judge ruled late last week that the New Jersey-based group’s advertisements were misleading because they omitted the company’s religious affiliation and hid the charity’s true mission.

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The charity organization violated state laws against false advertising and unfair competition, the court ruled.

“The failure to disclose that funds benefit adults and families — and that this support is contingent upon a specific religious affiliation — is a material omission,” the ruling states.

Kars4Kids must pull its advertisements from the state within 30 days. Any new advertisement in California must clearly disclose the nonprofit’s religious affiliation and specify for whom the money will be used, the court ruled.

A Kars4Kids spokesperson said the ruling is deeply flawed, and the organization will appeal.

“We believe this case was nothing more than a lawyer-driven attempt to siphon off charitable funds for their own gain,” the spokesperson said. “The law and the facts are clearly on our side.”

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The jingle first aired in the 1990s and has been loved and loathed by listeners ever since.

It has been the subject of talk show commentary and featured in “The Simpsons.”

Most donations go to help Jewish youth and families, the company’s chief operating executive, Esti Landau, said during her testimony.

Oorah runs a matchmaking program for Jewish youth and funds gap year trips to Israel for 17- and 18-year-olds. The company also used donations to purchase a $16.5-million building in Israel.

“The evidence also shows that children, especially needy or underprivileged children, are not the recipients of the proceeds of the donations,” the ruling states.

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Kars4Kids has made it easier to donate old cars to benefit children and families across the country, which includes continued support throughout young adulthood, the company spokesperson said.

This isn’t the first time Kars4Kids has faced accusations of misleading listeners. Oregon, Pennsylvania and other states have also found the charity organization has misleading solicitation practices.

Californians account for a quarter of the company’s funds, yet the nonprofit has limited programs in the state, according to court documents. The organization claims to help thousands of children, including hundreds in California, according to a Kars4Kids spokesperson.

The charity’s infamous tune was catchy enough to convince California resident Bruce Puterbaugh to donate a 2001 Volvo XC. The car was nonoperational and not under his name, but was left in his care.

The car was valued at $250, and Puterbaugh said he felt deceived when he found out the money wouldn’t help young children. He originally sued the company in 2021.

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“I feel taken advantage of by the ad and information that was not there,” Puterbaugh said in his testimony.

A donor would have to navigate the nonprofit’s website to learn about its religious mission.

“These omissions are inherently deceptive,” the court ruling states. “Broadcasting this jingle repeatedly over two decades is fraudulent.”

A Kars4Kids spokesperson said that the company’s website clearly states its Jewish affiliation.

The court sided with Puterbaugh and ordered the nonprofit to pay him $250 as restitution for his donated vehicle.

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Some Medicare Patients Can Now Get Free CBD

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Some Medicare Patients Can Now Get Free CBD

The Trump administration has been making headlines for taking steps to loosen restrictions around cannabis, including legalizing it for medical use. Now it is beginning an experiment that places cannabis even more squarely into mainstream health care: thousands of Medicare patients soon will be able to get CBD, a nonintoxicating component, for free.

“ONE in FIVE adults used it in the past year, and many say it improved their chronic pain enormously,” President Trump wrote on social media last month in a post cheering the program.

The aim is to gather real-life evidence showing whether CBD can improve patients’ quality of life and, by extension, reduce health care costs, administration officials say.

CBD products are already popular with some Medicare-age patients. A 2024 study in Clinical Gerontologist found that 14.3 percent of patients 65 and older had used them in the past year. Patients usually purchase over-the-counter gummies and tinctures to ease anxiety, insomnia and chemo-related nausea.

“Millions of older adults are already integrating cannabinoid products into their health care routines, yet the health care system has almost no infrastructure to understand what they are spending, why they are using these products, or whether these expenditures reduce other health care costs,” said Sasha Kalcheff-Korn, the executive director of Realm of Caring, a nonprofit group that conducts research and promotes cannabinoid therapies.

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Despite Mr. Trump’s ebullient endorsement, many doctors worry about encouraging the use of unapproved supplements to geriatric patients, who typically have multiple medical conditions and already take many medications, some of which could interact with CBD products to detrimental effect. Still, their concerns would be eased somewhat, they say, if patients collaborated with doctors on appropriate dosing, which is another goal of the government initiative.

”I believe that CBD should be available to all seniors as part of their health care, recommended by a provider with knowledge of cannabinoid medicine,” said Dr. Melanie Bone, the director of medical cannabinoid therapies at MorseLife, a senior residence in West Palm Beach, Fla. “It may help with a number of ailments of aging, and has almost no downside. But CBD is not a panacea. The only way to know if it works is to try.”

CBD, or cannabidiol, one of the most prominent compounds in the cannabis sativa plant, is nonintoxicating and known for its soothing effects on the central nervous system. Many CBD products are made from hemp, a legal strain of cannabis that is rich in CBD and has only small amounts of the intoxicating compound, THC. The Medicare program restricts the amount of THC that can be in hemp-derived CBD to 3 milligrams per serving.

In recent years, CBD has become increasingly attractive to older patients. Results from studies are mixed to positive. But many of the doses evaluated contained more THC than those allowed by the Medicare guidelines. Most researchers have noted the need for more rigorous gold-standard trials.

Mr. Trump’s assertion that one in five adults use CBD products, many for chronic pain, which was also included in supporting documents for an executive order announcing the program, appears to conflate self-reported surveys and polls that broadly address adult use of medical cannabis or CBD.

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But a chief benefit of CBD that some studies do underscore is that many seniors use the products to replace opioids for pain and benzodiazepines for anxiety and insomnia, which can have troubling side effects.

The new Medicare program mandates that the CBD be given to patients only by doctors, who regularly review their medical history and reactions to the products.

One of the main goals is to learn whether CBD can help older people feel better enough to get off, or avoid starting, prescriptions for pain, nausea, sleep and anxiety. The hope is that CBD could help prevent more expensive medical interventions that those drugs can lead to. Opioids, for example, can prompt dizziness, constipation, overdoses and trips to the emergency department.

Only a small subset of Medicare recipients — those who participate in a type of health care network called an Accountable Care Organization — will initially be eligible for the benefit. So far, just five large groups have been approved to offer CBD. By January, 2027, CBD will be offered to patients in all 74 ACO groups.

The participating organizations have providers across an array of states, including Oklahoma, Texas, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Arizona. Currently, only patients affiliated with programs in New York and Florida patients have begun receiving CBD products, according to a spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

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Those doctors must buy the CBD products up front, spending up to $500 per patient a year. They must agree to screen patients and products carefully, and collect real-time data on how the CBD affects patients.

They will not be directly reimbursed for the CBD. In the incentive-based structure, these groups receive a budget from Medicare. Those that come in under budget by improving patient quality of life and reducing costs, now additionally equipped with CBD as a tool, will receive a percentage of those savings.

Yes.

Late last year, Congress passed a measure that could remove from the U.S. market most CBD products, including those that doctors suggest for patients.

That is because many CBD products contain far more THC and other synthetic, intoxicating compounds than Congress intended in 2018, when it created the legal definition of hemp, to distinguish it from marijuana. Many of those amped-up CBD items, packaged to look like candy, have led to calls to poison centers.

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In reaction, Congress placed severe limits on hemp last year that are set to take place in November. Under those restrictions, Cornbread Hemp, a Kentucky-based company with a contract to supply CBD for the new program, will not be able to do so, because its products’ THC content is above the new limits. A patchwork of bills introduced in the Senate and the House are trying to slow or rewrite what amounts to a looming hemp ban.

In his social media post last month, Mr. Trump urged Congress to act.

“Please get it done, and SOON,” he wrote.

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