When Spirit Airlines shut down before dawn on May 2, work for pilot Steve Giordano was just beginning.

Giordano, managing partner of the Nomadic Aviation Group, told CNBC he organized a massive repossession of more than 20 Spirit planes that lessors wanted returned.

In just over a week, he said he and his team ferried 23 Spirit planes from airports around the country to the Arizona desert. Just hours earlier, those bright yellow Airbus jets had been flying Spirit customers.

Giordano, who runs Nomadic with co-founder Bob Allen, was starting to hear in the late morning on May 1 that his team would be at work soon. “We finally got the trigger pulled to start moving crews at 6 p.m.” on May 1, he said. Spirit shut down at 3 a.m. ET the next morning.

So Nomadic and hired pilots — some of whom were previously flying for Spirit — began ferrying the aircraft out West with no customers on board to special airports outside of Phoenix and Tuscon, Arizona, where they’ll be stored for now.

Retired or otherwise unused aircraft are often parked out in the desert because the climate reduces the risk of corrosion or other damage. Airlines parked thousands of them there when travel collapsed in the Covid pandemic.

Major airline shutdowns in the U.S. are rare, and Spirit’s collapse was the biggest in decades. Earlier this month, Spirit began the long process of dismantling the discount carrier in bankruptcy court.

Part of that liquidation process involves returning planes to the lessors, which is where Nomadic Aviation comes in. According to a court filing, Spirit had 114 Airbus A320 planes, and 66 of them were leased.

Giordano said he was so busy before one Spirit repossession flight that he forgot to eat.

“By the time I got to the airplane, I’m like, ‘Oh no, I’m really hungry and there’s not going to be any options until we get to Arizona,'” Giordano said. “One of the mechanics said, ‘Hey, all the galley carts are full.’ So it had all the normal Spirit snacks. I think I had some Milano cookies. … I had a couple snack boxes with cheese. It was basically free and unlimited.”

Not everything was free for the…

For now, prediction market traders aren’t too worried about the hantavirus.

Kalshi data shows only a 21% chance of the hantavirus outbreak will be a concern this year. The prediction markets platform opened its market on the hantavirus on Wednesday night, noting it will be resolved if the World Health Organization verifies that the virus is “a public health emergency of international concern” in 2026.

Compared to other markets opened on the same day, trading in this market has been high. On Friday, volume related to the outbreak hit over $174,000, the highest out of any market that opened in that time.

The WHO identified the virus as an outbreak on May 4, according to the Associated Press, a few weeks after several passengers on a Dutch-flagged cruise ship sailing the Atlantic Ocean grew ill. An outbreak is when there are a higher number of people catching diseases than what is expected within a specific community, geographic location or season, the WHO’s website states.

The fatal and viral respiratory disease is transmitted through urine, feces or saliva of infected rodents and by touching contaminated surfaces, according to the WHO.

Spanish health officials said Friday that a woman in the country’s southeastern region has symptoms consistent with hantavirus, Reuters reported. In the Netherlands, three people with symptoms of the virus tested negative.

That said, the WHO said the public health risk for the virus is low. 

“While this is a serious incident, WHO assesses the public health risk as low.” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the media. “It’s possible that more cases may be reported.”

The WHO reported that there were a total 147 passengers and crew members on board the cruise ship. A former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official and another person familiar with the matter told CNBC this week that six states are monitoring passengers who were on the cruise and have since returned to the U.S.

Those states are Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas, Virginia and New Jersey. Health departments from Arizona, Georgia and Texas said the former passengers have not shown symptoms. 

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and a minority investment.

A group of House Democrats pressed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in a letter sent late Monday on why the agency has not cracked down on bets placed on war and other government actions via offshore prediction markets.

The letter to CFTC Chair Michael Selig, obtained first by CNBC, questions the agency’s role in regulating prediction markets, which have surged in popularity of late and drawn the ire of a growing number of lawmakers.

“Recent high-profile instances of alleged insider trading on prediction market platforms relating to U.S. government actions — including the military’s intervention in Venezuela and our recent attack on Iran —have fueled concern that the CFTC does not have adequate control over these fast-growing markets,” wrote the group, led by Reps. Seth Moulton and Jim McGovern, both Massachusetts Democrats.

Well-timed bets on the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran have raised concerns about the possibility of insider trading. On popular prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, users can buy event contracts on things like who will win the NCAA men’s basketball national championship or how long the Department of Homeland Security shutdown will last.

Kalshi is based in the U.S. and says it bans controversial bets on topics like war and is regulated by the CFTC. Polymarket is an offshore company — though it is available in the U.S. on a limited basis — and has been the venue for some headline-grabbing event contracts. Both companies recently announced self-imposed guardrails to curb insider trading on their platforms.

But the House Democrats say more could be done to regulate even those offshore trades. The CFTC’s internal rules, as well as the Commodity Exchange Act allow the agency to regulate when “swap activities outside the United States have a direct and significant connection with activities in, or effect on, commerce of the United States,” the lawmakers wrote.

“These provisions make it clear that the CFTC has the authority to police insider trading in swaps markets and should apply its existing rule prohibiting bets relating to terrorism, assassinations, and war,” the group wrote.

The CFTC and Polymarket did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Democratic Reps. Gabe Amo of Rhode Island, Greg Casar of Texas, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Dina Titus of Nevada and Yassamin Ansari of Arizona also signed. They questioned why the agency had not so far taken any public action against such bets, and whether it feels it has the authority to regulate insider trading on prediction markets. And they asked if the CFTC had been made aware of “any conflicts of interest between major market participants and family members of Executive Branch officials, including the…

An Arizona-based battery startup led by a former General Motors executive is moving from making products for all-electric vehicles to making products for the aerospace and defense industries amid the war in Iran and growing demand for U.S. drones by the Trump administration.

Sion Power expects to commercialize high-energy lithium-metal battery cells for drones and other defense-related products later this year after focusing on the development of all-electric vehicles for much of the past decade, according to CEO Pamela Fletcher.

“We’re targeting to commercialize this technology,” Fletcher told CNBC exclusively. “We had hoped, and thought, that would be in automotive, and I think that possibility still exists, but the faster path, and frankly, a big need, is out there in this defense space.”

The decision is a unique example of how companies that bet on the unrealized adoption of all-electric vehicles are pivoting to different segments. Other companies have moved to the stationary storage and aerospace sectors to utilize unused battery production capacity for EVs.

Automakers in the U.S. have significantly pulled back from pure EVs and taken billions of dollars in write-downs following slower-than-expected adoption of the vehicles and changes by the Trump administration to incentives that supported them.

Sion Power’s planned “Licerion HE” lithium-metal battery cells will support both primary, or single-discharge, and secondary, or rechargeable, battery applications, according to the company.

The battery cells are designed for next-generation drones, autonomous systems and other mission-critical platforms that require maximum energy in the smallest, lightest possible footprint, according to Fletcher.

“Lithium-metal technology, which is what we developed, has high gravimetric energy, which means it’s a lot of energy in a lightweight pack,” said Fletcher, who began leading the company in 2024. “It works really well for things that fly.”

Fletcher said Sion Power’s lithium-metal cells are engineered to deliver energy densities exceeding 500 watt-hour per kilogram, compared with approximately 300-350 Wh/kg for today’s most advanced lithium-ion technology.

Such batteries can power drones or missiles as well as their on-board systems such as cameras, sensors and processors for combat, surveillance and other needs.  

Sion Power has a 110,000-square-foot facility in Tucson, Arizona, with pilot manufacturing capabilities. Fletcher said it’s currently producing Licerion HE cells for defense applications and converting its production cell line from automotive battery cells to defense products, which are smaller.

The company will continue to develop cells for other segments, such as EVs, but its main focus and growth…

Arizona’s attorney general has filed misdemeanor criminal charges against Kalshi, accusing the predictions platform of running an illegal gambling and election wagering operation in the state.

These are the first criminal charges to have been filed against Kalshi, though the company is embroiled in multiple lawsuits and investigations and has received dozens of cease-and-desist letters across the nation.

Prediction platforms like Kalshi have drawn comparisons to online sports gambling as they allow users to wager on the outcomes of events in pop culture, politics, sports and more.

Multiple states have argued that legalizing and regulating sports betting is under the jurisdiction of local regulators and outside the authority of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates event contracts and the prediction markets.

States including Michigan and Massachusetts have filed civil lawsuits aimed at stopping operations or compelling Kalshi to meet gambling license requirements.

In the Arizona filing, Attorney General Kris Mayes charged Kalshi with 20 counts of accepting various bets in Arizona without a license, including wagers on state elections, which is separately and explicitly forbidden under Arizona law.

“No company gets to decide for itself which laws to follow,” Mayes said in a statement.

Kalshi draws distinctions between the event contracts it offers and what sportsbooks and casinos offer.

“Sadly, a state can file criminal charges on paper thin arguments,” the company said in a statement to CNBC. “States like Arizona want to individually regulate a nationwide financial exchange, and are trying every trick in the book to do it. As other courts have recognized and the CFTC affirms, Kalshi is subject to federal jurisdiction.”

Last week, Kalshi filed for a preliminary injunction to try and keep Arizona from enforcing its state laws.

On Tuesday, federal judge Michael Liburdi denied Kalshi’s request for a temporary restraining order and ordered Kalshi to demonstrate why the case should be in federal court given the state charges against Kalshi.

Kalshi has preemptively sued to stop other states from taking punitive action, a strategy Mayes described as bullying states, “running to federal court to try and avoid accountability.”

Gaming attorney Daniel Wallach meticulously tracks suits and countersuits against the predictions platforms. He described the preemptive lawsuits as Kalshi’s modus operandi.

“That ‘win the race to the courthouse’ strategy has proven to be an effective tactic thus far,” Wallach said, pointing to Kalshi’s legal victories in getting preliminary injunctions in New Jersey and Tennessee.

Wallach is not involved in any of…

A federal grand jury issued a subpoena for records of the Arizona state Senate’s audit of 2020 election results in Maricopa County, the Senate president said Monday. The county is a Democratic stronghold that President Donald Trump lost that year, contributing to his loss of the state to former President Joe Biden.

“The FBI has the records,” wrote Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican, in a post on the social media site X, which said he received a subpoena for those records last week and that he complied with it.

The issuance of the subpoena suggests that the Department of Justice has expanded its investigation into the 2020 election results and much-debunked allegations by Trump and supporters of his that he was cheated out of victory that year by widespread ballot fraud.

The subpoena came about five weeks after the FBI raided an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia, and seized ballots from the 2020 election.

Fulton County, like Maricopa County, was the focus of claims by Trump that he was swindled out of victory in 2020.

Trump touted a report by the right-wing media site Just the News about the subpoena.

“Great!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “FBI secretly seizes election records from Arizona’s largest county as voting probe expands.”

Biden’s victory in Arizona and Georgia helped give him the edge over Trump in the Electoral College, the entity that determines the winner of presidential contests.

CNBC has request comment from the Department of Justice about the subpoena.