Catch up on the top industries and stocks that were impacted, or were predicted to be impacted, by the comments, actions and policies of President Donald Trump and his administration with this weekly recap compiled by The Fly:

COVID VACCINE TRIALS

 The U.S. government plans to fund the Phase 3 studies of three experimental coronavirus vaccines starting this summer, Peter Loftus of Wall Street Journal reported, citing an interview with John Mascola, director of the vaccine research center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Moderna's (MRNA) vaccine is set to be first, starting in July, followed in August by one co-developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca (AZN) and in September by Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ) candidate, Mascola told the Journal. Pfizer (PFE), with partner BioNTech (BNTX), has one of the more advanced vaccine candidates and could begin its Phase 3 trial as early as July, a person familiar with the matter told the Journal. Pfizer isn't participating in the NIH testing program, Loftus added.

FACEBOOK ADS

Unlike Twitter (TWTR) and Snap (SNAP), which have toughened their stances against President Trump's online statements that contain misinformation or promote violence, Facebook (FB) has held firm on its decision to leave his posts alone, The New York Times' Tiffany Hsu and Cecilia Kang wrote earlier this week. In recent days, many companies have cautiously returned to advertising, after having pulled back during the height of the pandemic in the U.S., but some have decided not to advertise on Facebook, now that it has become clear that Zuckerberg will give the president a wide berth, the authors noted.

SNAP CEO FIRM ON RESTRICTING TRUMP

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told CNBC on Thursday: “We’ve always said Discover is a closed platform, and we choose the types of content we want to promote on our platform. We’re well within our First Amendment rights to decide what shows up on there.” Snapchat announced last week that it will no longer promote President Trump’s content within its Discover feature, though his account remains public and users who want to follow him can still do so and will still see his posts.

U.S.-RUSSIA NUCLEAR TALKS

U.S. special presidential envoy for arms control Marshall Billingslea will meet with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov in Vienna on June 22 for a new round of arms control talks, Bloomberg's Nick Wadhams reported, citing a State Department official. The talks could include the possibility of extending the New Start nuclear-weapons treaty, set to expire in February, if Russia commits to bringing China into broader negotiations, but so far Chinese officials have balked at trilateral talks, the report said.

RECESSION

 The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research has determined that a peak in monthly economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in February. "The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in June 2009 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 128 months, the longest in the history of U.S. business cycles dating back to 1854. The previous record was held by the business expansion that lasted for 120 months from March 1991 to March 2001," the agency said in a statement.

FACIAL RECOGNITION

On Friday, President Trump retweeted a comment from Richard Grenell that Microsoft "should now be barred from federal government contracts - there should be consequences for not selling technology to police departments." On Thursday, Microsoft (MSFT) President Brad Smith confirmed at a Washington Post Live event that the company plans to await federal regulation before selling facial recognition technology to police. Microsoft's position is in line with similar decisions by Amazon (AMZN) and IBM (IBM).