2

Get While the Gettin’s Good

Why do so many individuals and organizations seem to be cool with the protagonist of today’s top story, even as he plots to damage democracy? Because, in a transactional system, short-term gains outweigh longterm risks. WSJ (Gift Article): The Mystery Money Powering Trump’s Second Term. “The president and his allies have built a network of groups financed by wealthy donors and businesses that is advancing his priorities with little public disclosure.”

+ It may not be pretty, but it works. Trump quietly clears the road for Musk’s Cybercab.

3

Golden Slumber

You may not be able to make money while you sleep. But that doesn’t mean no one is. In fact, your sleep has become big business. Bloomberg (Gift Article): Americans Are Exhausted. There’s a $3,000 Mattress Cover for That. “Buy a pricey Oura Ring or Apple Watch for sleep tracking? Of course. Fill our medicine cabinets with sleeping pills, potions, gummies and elixirs? Obviously. An $89 celeb-approved eyelash-protecting silk sleep mask? Sure. Sound machine? That’s plebe stuff. Real sleepmaxxers prefer Soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds, practically a steal at around $100. Soon you can get your hands on a Kimba, an ‘AI-powered scent therapy’ machine, currently available for preorder; $299 will get you a bedside setup and six months of personalized scents. For big spenders, there’s a $3,000 body-temperature-regulating, manosphere-endorsed mattress cover. Some couples are willing to go even further, outfitting totally separate bedrooms.”

4

Missionary Man

“Pete Hegseth wants a manly military. And he really, really wants you to know how badly he wants a manly military. In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth worried that the military risked becoming ‘effeminate, and apologetic’; he insisted that what liberals really want is “soft men, and a weak military,” and he scolded ‘Pentagon pussies’ who refuse to stand up for soldiers on the battlefield. As secretary of defense, Hegseth has blocked the promotion of female military officers, removed the first woman to lead the Navy, and ordered a review of women’s ‘effectiveness’ in ground-combat roles. He has also used the Defense Department’s social-media channels to post a steady stream of tougher-than-thou videos. The latest entry in this genre came earlier today, when Hegseth announced that he is requiring every service member over 30 to have their testosterone tested annually.” Pete Hegseth Wants YOU to Test Your Testosterone. (How do you say you’re the worst lay ever without just actually saying you’re the worst lay ever…)

5

Extra, Extra

Get the Low Down: “The Food and Drug Administration approved a daily pill on Thursday that can lower cholesterol levels far below what can be achieved with statins, the cheap cholesterol-reducing pills.”

+ Board of Piece: “Even the envisaged pilot scheme – involving a temporary camp for a tiny fraction of Gaza’s 2 million displaced people, with a Palestinian administration, police and a small international security force – is not expected to take shape before the end of the year.” Trump’s Board of Peace drops full Gaza recovery plan in favour of tiny pilot scheme. Meanwhile, the administration’s focus is definitely elsewhere in the region. Here’s the latest on the stepped-up fighting in Iran (and its neighbors).

+ The Young and the Wrested: “President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shook up his wartime government, drawing thousands into the streets Thursday across Ukraine to protest the ouster of his youthful defense minister — seen as an innovator of the country’s successful drone technology but who clashed with the traditional military establishment.” Mykhailo Fedorov is the tech-savvy leader behind many of Ukraine’s drone advances, and he’s very popular from Kiev to Silicon Valley. This is a story to watch. Zelenskyy fires Ukraine’s tech-savvy defense minister in government reshuffle.

+ Speech Recognition: “President Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator is believed to have made tens of thousands of dollars by placing bets on more than a dozen of Trump’s speeches on the prediction market Kalshi.” (Do the people who predicted stories like this win anything?)

+ Trial and Jair: “President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to impose tariffs on Brazil — even though it is one of the few Latin American countries with which the US has a trade surplus — in response to what he said is the unfair prosecution of the former Brazilian president and his close ally, Jair Bolsonaro.” US slaps 25% tariffs on Brazil.

+ Houring Inferno: In what is part of a bigger story about trying to keep temporary, unconfirmed prosecutors in place, Trump fired a new US attorney in Seattle an hour after federal judges appointed him.

+ Backpact: “Mr. Conner and Mr. Newman began their efforts in 2018 with a few armfuls of backpacks. By 2026, they and almost 40 volunteers had distributed more than 180,000 packs to people living on the streets of Manhattan.” The couple, who died within a few days of each other, provided needed supplies, like socks and wet wipes, to people living on New York City’s streets.

6

Bottom of the News

Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal will face off in the World Cup finals on Sunday. But it’s hardly their first meeting. That came back in 2007, when Yamal was five months old (and probably already pretty good at soccer). And we have the (famous and once again viral) photo to prove it. The remarkable story of Lionel Messi’s meeting with a baby Lamine Yamal.

2

Blanched with Fear

Todd Blanche is answering questions from Senators as his Attorney General confirmation hearing gets underway. He’s Trump’s personal lawyer, he has further weaponized the Justice Department, he’s withheld Epstein files and given Ghislaine Maxwell a prison upgrade, he’s targeted the media, he pushed for the fund that would compensate Trump allies (including J6ers), and he’s otherwise wholly unqualified for the job. And with that, he opened the hearings by explaining that as acting Attorney General, he has been “restoring trust” in the DoJ.

+ “On Monday, two days before the Senate hearing to consider Todd Blanche’s nomination to become the nation’s chief law enforcement official, a federal judge strongly suggested that he may not even be fit to practice law. Of all the powers Americans give their government, none can curtail personal liberty like those of the Department of Justice, and this editorial board has listed the ways Mr. Blanche has abused that authority. He has celebrated the Jan. 6 rioters. He has misled Congress under oath. He has said it is Mr. Trump’s ‘right,’ and ‘indeed it is his duty,’ to use the department to investigate people he ‘has had issues with.’” NYT Editorial Board: We’re About to Find Out Whether Republican Senators Can Still Say No. (Don’t get your hopes up...)

+ In other confirmation news, Trump intelligence pick Jay Clayton refuses to say Biden won 2020 election.

+ Think we’re getting closer to a moment when insiders finally stand up to Trump? Maybe. But then again, maybe not. Treasury Unveils New $1 Gold Coin With Trump’s Face on It.

3

Electric of the Trade

“According to the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based policy group, one of every four vehicles sold globally in 2025 was battery-powered. Analysts with Bloomberg have predicted that in the next decade, that number will more than double, putting gas-powered cars — for the first time ever — in the minority of overall new vehicle sales. Overseas, Asian and European manufacturers have spent years preparing for this eventuality, dumping billions into the development of battery technology.” Sadly, American carmakers have been going in reverse, a move that has cost them dearly in the short run, and could be even more costly in the long run. NYT Magazine (Gift Article): The American E.V. Has Been Crushed. Will It Take the U.S. Auto Industry With It? (Instead of plugging into the future, America is sticking its finger in the socket.)

4

Fomo and the Froyo Yoyo

Frozen yogurt always seems to make a comeback. And each time, the new iteration of the product comes with health promises related to the latest dietary trends. And each time, I doubt the health benefits but eat it anyway. Vox (Gift Article): What the current froyo renaissance is really about. “The third wave of froyo resembles the previous crazes in one key way: The dessert is still marketed and perceived as a healthier choice than other treats. Every time it comes out of hibernation, frozen yogurt has revealed something about the diet culture of the moment, and this resurgence is no different.”

5

Extra, Extra

Asking the Impossible: “Three words of advice for President Donald Trump as he tries to extricate himself from the mess of the Iran war: Just stop talking. Let America’s overwhelming military and economic power do the work. Trump’s daily barrage of bluster and braggadocio amounts to negotiating with himself. He declares victory one day, resumes war the next. He praises Iran’s leaders, then calls them ‘scum.’ He foolishly announces a 20 percent fee for protecting the Strait of Hormuz and then rescinds the rash proposal the next day. Trump must imagine this nonstop trash talk gives him leverage. He’s wrong. It makes him look weak in the eyes of Iran and the world.” David Ignatius in WaPo (Gift Article): Trump pushed the reset button. This is Iran Fiasco 2.0. Here’s the latest on the fighting and the bluster that has replaced negotiations from The Guardian.

+ Trafficking in Bullshit: “Trump said Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement should continue traffic stops after two deadly shootings within a week, seeming to contradict a new policy to halt them. To remove criminals from the country, ‘we CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!’ the president wrote on social media.” Trump says ICE should do traffic stops, despite new suspension after shootings.

+ Write Wing: A day after 12 states moved to block the merger, Hollywood Writers Sue to Block Paramount-Warner Deal. And here’s a plot twist that is almost too cliché at this point for any Hollywood writer to include in the story. ProPublica: FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval for Billion-Dollar Deals.

+ Sandwich Generation: “On Thursday night, Donald Trump will blast out his version of what happened in the 2020 presidential election and try to build on the Big Lie that he’s been perpetrating for years — that he, not Joe Biden, should have won. That the election was rigged.” Margaret Sullivan on how the media should handle it. (They’ve certainly had enough practice by now.) What we need right now is a big, juicy truth sandwich.

+ Bank Shot: “The Wall Street giant’s market cap stood at about $935 billion. It would be the first bank to ever join the $1 trillion market cap club.” JPMorgan is closing in on a $1 trillion market cap after posting record profits. (This is a trend. Big banks are experiencing bigly good times.)

+ Influencers: “A decade-by-decade look at the books, music, art and ideas that shaped society.” WaPo (Gift Article): The 25 most influential works of American culture. (Moby Dick is in, NextDraft is left out? Please...)

+ Stuck in the Middle Without You: United’s latest Economy Plus gambit? Kick out the middle-seat passenger for more space.

+ Looking Down: The Atlantic (Gift Article): Winners of the International Aerial Photographer of the Year. (Wow.)

6

Bottom of the News

“He went into the bank with the cat in his arms, and he walked up to a bank employee and said, ‘Can you hold this?’ And then he wrote a note and handed it to a bank teller and it said, essentially, ‘Give me all your cash.’” Cat burglar steals kitten, tries to rob bank in Maryland, gets caught instead. (Anyone who thinks a cat would be a human’s accomplice should be able to get off with an insanity plea...)

+ WSJ (Gift Article): This Chicago Spirit Quadrupled Sales With Ads Likening It to Fermented Back Sweat. “Last year, a campaign called ‘Malört Tastes Like’ featured consumer comparisons to ‘fermented back sweat’ and ‘moist dumpster residue.’” Hey, at this point, whatever it takes to get a decent buzz...

2

Protection Racket

In what could have doubled as a line from Goodfellas, President Trump announced that the United States would be running the Strait of Hormuz and charging a 20% fee on all passing ships, a payment plan which Trump described as America being “reimbursed for protection.” The idea didn’t go over too well. Anywhere. Thus, a day or so later, Trump “announced a reversal of plans to charge a 20% toll on cargo going through the Strait of Hormuz, saying that Middle Eastern countries will instead make investment and trade deals with the U.S.” When it comes to the war and peace negotiations, Trump has been doing more strike that, reverse it than Willie Wonka. We have to hope that blurting out and then taking back statements, plans, strategies, and ceasefires will somehow lead to a desired outcome.

+ “Those Investments will be MASSIVE but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them, and their future. As everyone is aware, we have the largest Dollar Investment into the United States, of any Country in History, but these new Investments will make that Number even larger, and we will see Factories, Plants, and Equipment pour into the United States at Historic levels, which will create additional millions of High Paying AMERICAN Jobs! America is WINNING again, winning like never before. The days of Iran killing hundreds of thousands of people, including 52,000 protestors, are OVER and, most importantly, IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” (Wow, that sounds good. Let’s lock that in before he changes his mind...) Here’s the latest from The Guardian and BBC.

3

Puff Piece

I watch pretty much all of TV. And I’ve noticed a pretty extreme trend. Nearly everyone is smoking. And it turns out that the smoking is not limited to times when the camera is rolling. Cigarettes seem to be on fire again. “Are cigarettes back? Depending on who you ask, cigarettes never really left. But the attitude toward cigarettes and smokers has shifted. After a period of exile to the cultural fringes — when a cig was something you snuck, or that might have gotten you scolded or side-eyed — cigarettes seem to be creeping back to the aspirational center, among both civilians and celebrities. Think of Kylie Jenner lighting a cigarette on her March Vanity Fair cover; Hailey Bieber, a cigarette sticking out of her smile and smoke unfurling in her face, in April’s Interview magazine; ‘Heated Rivalry‘s Connor Storrie posing with a cigarette perched in his pout while prepping for the Met Gala, in GQ. Look at Gracie Abrams, photographed with boyfriend Paul Mescal’s arm around her shoulder and a cigarette in her mouth, or to the woman exuding the most enviable aura around: Dua Lipa, whose pre-wedding Instagram photo dump captioned ‘anyone got a light?’ featured a shot of a cigarette dangling from the pop star’s pursed lips.” WaPo (Gift Article): Cigarettes are back in vogue. How did this happen?

4

Driving Miss Hazy

Autonomous vehicles have taken care of the driving duties. But there’s a nagging problem. The passengers are still human. “Passengers are falling asleep, spilling drinks, dropping food, vomiting, experiencing medical emergencies and, in at least two instances, giving birth in the cars. They stumble out of the vehicles and forget to close the doors, forcing the operators to pay nearby gig workers to do it.” (”I was born in a Waymo” is the first line of a memoir I would definitely read...) Bloomberg (Gift Article): Robotaxi Riders Are Falling Asleep, Sparking Frantic 911 Calls.

5

Extra, Extra

Road Rage: “The order comes after ICE officers killed two people over the past week in Houston and the coastal city of Biddeford, Maine, amid a recent surge in immigration arrests. Both were shot after agents tried to stop their vehicles, according to the Department of Homeland Security.” ICE Ordered to Cease Most Vehicle Stops After 2 Killings in a Week. And, ‘Misuse’ of crowd control weapons on ICE protesters led to blindings and traumatic brain injuries. Meanwhile, Mexico demands criminal investigations into ICE killings.

+ Check and Balances: “Three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E Jean Carroll. Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict.” E Jean Carroll receives $5.6m owed by Trump after court releases damages. (Trump paying for a crime is the ultimate man bites dog story of 2026. So is the fact that the check cleared.)

+ Another Brick in the Fall: “Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the I.C.C. — brick by brick, if necessary.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the United States will dismantle’ the international court that tries grave crimes. (I wonder what worries them about this court?)

+ K Mart: For those scoring at home: Trump Was Paid $2 Million by South Korean Company Facing a Trade Investigation. “The payment illustrates the minefield Mr. Trump has created by maintaining personal financial ties with foreign businesses while he is in office.” (It’s not a minefield, it’s a goldmine.)

+ Sister Act: South Carolina’s governor names Lindsey Graham’s sister to serve out his term.

+ To the Victor Belong the Spoils: Here’s a lede that summarizes our era: “The right-wing preacher turned politician Victor Marx has said that he first killed a man when he was 7. He’s not sure how many deaths he’s been responsible for since. Marx has been arrested at least twice for disorderly conduct and has described terrorizing a psychiatrist with talk of murdering him. He told the Colorado journalist Kyle Clark that he can perform exorcisms by phone. On Thursday he was declared the winner of the Republican gubernatorial primary in Colorado.”

+ Sugar on Top: “Our understanding of the Milky Way just got a little bit sweeter. For the first time, scientists have spotted sugar in interstellar space, providing an important clue about the origins of sugar on Earth and possibly the rise of life.” (Next we’ll find out that the Milky Way has Type 2 Diabetes. At least it’s not lactose intolerant.)

6

Bottom of the News

Think Outside the Buns? “State and federal officials are looking into whether Taco Bell restaurants may have been a source of food contaminated with the single-cell parasite.” Probe into explosive diarrheal cases points to Taco Bell and bad lettuce. (Just reading that headline gave me a stomachache.)

2

They’re Just Not That Into U.S.

“As our partners enhance their own resiliency to us, future American administrations must prepare plans for avoiding a more fundamental rupture. Whoever succeeds Mr. Trump will be the first to take office with countries around the world asking not what America can do for them, but rather seeking to do as much as possible without us. The first step to coping with the fallout is realizing just how much — and how permanently — the world has changed.” Jon Finer in the NYT (Gift Article): The World Is Cutting Ties With America. It’s Already Costing Us.

+ In some cases, we’re the ones doing the tie-cutting, and the impact has been immediate and terrible. “Gawande, backed up by recent academic studies, says that the decimation of U.S.A.I.D. around the globe has been responsible for some seven hundred thousand deaths, and that number will likely ascend into the seven figures. The policy is not only immeasurably cruel, Gawande argues; it is also stupid, badly undermining what remains of American soft power and prestige, from Africa to Latin America.” David Remnick and Atul Gawande in The New Yorker on Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and the ‘public man-made death’ that they’ve caused: The Human Cost of DOGE’s War on USAID. So if sensible people know how much damage Musk has done, why do they line up to put money into the companies that enabled him to touch trillionaire status? If Lindsey Graham were still around, he could probably explain it better than I can.

3

Down on Maine Street

Another week. Another deadly ICE shooting. Another case where the officers weren’t wearing body cameras. And another set of protests take to the streets. The latest shooting killed a 26-year-old from Colombia in Portland, Maine. With the recent upheaval in the Senate race, Maine was already receiving a lot of attention. This could put that trend into overdrive. Here’s the latest from the Portland Press Herald.

4

Talking About a Revolution

“Tech industry leaders have been warning for several years that as A.I. grows more powerful, it could quickly take over a large share of human work, leading to widespread joblessness. Economists have tended to greet those predictions with skepticism, noting that technological changes tend to play out more gradually than predicted by industry boosters. Some economists, however, have grown concerned that A.I. is spreading through the economy more quickly and more broadly than past technologies, and that their profession is downplaying the risks. The statement on Monday is the latest sign that such concerns are becoming more widespread. It warns that the effects of A.I. could be ‘larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame.’” Nearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. Threats. “A letter calls for policymakers to do more to understand and respond to potential disruptions from artificial intelligence.” (Is that a good idea? In normal times, yes. But these days, it depends on which policymakers we’re talking about...)

5

Extra, Extra

Waterways and Means: “After more escalatory rhetoric and attacks, President Trump said the United States was renewing its shipping blockade of Iranian ports, and would charge a 20 percent fee on goods passing through the Strait of Hormuz.” Tehran’s top diplomat responds: “POTUS is absolutely right. Whoever provides secure and safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz should be compensated for this service. Iran has always been the GUARDIAN of the Strait and will remain so FOREVER. 20% is of course too much. We will be fair.” Here’s the latest from the NYT U.S. and Iran Edge Toward War Again, and The Guardian.

+ Proof of Life: With a weird newspaper-grasping photo, Mitch McConnell signaled the world that he’s still alive. He’s not the only political leader who’s been MIA. Iran’s supreme leader is dead or comatose. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. “The funeral procession became less a display of regime strength than a reminder of its uncertainty: the new supreme leader, Ali Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, was nowhere to be seen. His absence overshadowed the entire affair.” (Makes you wonder who exactly we’re negotiating with...)

+ Subpoena Armada: “The Trump administration issued subpoenas on Friday to several journalists for The New York Times, after the news outlet reported this week on security concerns involving President Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One.”

+ Do Not Merge: “A group of states is preparing to file a lawsuit to block Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery as soon as this week, according to four people briefed on the plans, a legal challenge that would create a major obstacle for one of the biggest media mergers in history.”

+ Jive Talking: What could make all those political texts even worse? How about them asking you to continue the conversation with AI?

+ You Cannot Be Siri-ous: “At every level, from members of its technical staff to its chief hardware officer, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing Apple’s trade secrets and confidential information ... As a natural result, OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets.” Apple sues Open AI, accusing it of stealing trade secrets. (Luckily for OpenAI, they didn’t steal any of trade secrets about SIRI...)

+ There’s No Fixing the Fixer: Michael Cohen Helped Convict Trump. Now, He’s Making Nice Again.

+ Sam Neill: One of the most recognizable (and consistently excellent) actors, Sam Neill, Leading Man in ‘Jurassic Park,’ Dies at 78.

+ Timing is Everything: Jannik Sinner has never won a match longer than 3 hours in 50 minutes. Yesterday, he won the Wimbledon championship over Alexander Zverev in 3:47. Linda Nosková defeated Karolína Muchová in the Women’s final. 50 Parting Thoughts From 2026 Wimbledon.

6

Bottom of the News

“Before he died, he left strict instructions for the application of the nutty paste for ‘Pindakaasvloer,’ or ‘Peanut Butter Floor’: The installation must use 3.2 pounds of smooth peanut butter — never the chunky kind — for every square foot and it must be spread as evenly as possible, according to a statement from the museum.” Museum Spreads 800 Pounds of Peanut Butter in Tribute to Dutch Artist. (This is actually quite close to the coffin-filling directive I’ve left my kids about my desired burial.)

2

Taking Acception Exception

Back in September of our Covid year, I was sitting outside on the deck with my 96 year-old dad who grew up in Poland during WWII, was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust, and spent years fighting the Nazis as part of a Partisan group. I mentioned that the numbers were looking pretty good for Biden, and Trump was starting to lose his grip (political and mental). My dad said, “Yeah, but he’ll never accept the results.” It was one of many predictions my dad got right over the years. He didn’t live long enough to witness January 6, but nothing about it would have surprised him. He’d seen these kinds of stories play out before. It’s about time that everyone stops being surprised by the extent to which Trump (and his enablers) will go to overturn election results. The latest example: Armed with new powers granted by the SCOTUS majority, “the Trump administration has forced out the three remaining members of an independent, bipartisan commission that supports states in administering their elections, the White House confirmed on Thursday. The move comes as President Trump seeks to cast doubt on the outcome of the upcoming midterms and impose control over how ballots are counted.” NYT (Gift Article): Trump Administration Fires Members of Independent Election Group. “Mr. Trump has been laying the groundwork for months to claim that Republicans would face a tough midterm election, not because of the broadly unpopular war in Iran and plummeting approval ratings on the economy, but because the country’s election system is fraudulent.”

3

Ram Sham

While searching for a different person, federal immigration officers in Houston shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. They later explained that Araujo tried to ram them with his van before they opened fire. Sound familiar? Witnesses of ICE Killing in Houston Dispute the Official Account. “Three men who witnessed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s killing by federal immigration officers in Houston disputed the Department of Homeland Security’s account and said the victim never tried to run over a federal agent. The men, who were inside the vehicle, were arrested during the Tuesday encounter and spoke from immigration detention with their lawyer, Hugo Balderas-Ibarra. They said that Mr. Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican immigrant who was driving to work at a construction site, did not use his vehicle as a weapon or attempt to run over the immigration officers who opened fire.”

+ Texas ICE Killing Darkens: Rep Says Witnesses Pressured to Self-Deport.

+ “A federal immigration agent killed a man from Mexico on Tuesday in Houston, firing into the car that the man was driving. It was at least the 21st shooting by agents involved in President Trump’s deportation crackdown since he took office for his second term in January 2025. Five people, including three U.S. citizens, were killed as a result of those shootings, nearly all of which involved officers firing at people in vehicles.”

4

Weekend Whats

What to Watch: From the creators of For All Mankind comes Star City on AppleTV, which imagines a future (from the Soviet perspective) in which the Soviets got to the Moon first. You don’t need to have watched For All Mankind first to enjoy Star City. But you’ll probably want to start on that show next.

+ What to Read: I first heard about Vijay Gupta’s memoir, Restrung: A Memoir of Music and Transformation from my friend Joel Stein’s newsletter. “By age twenty-five, Vijay Gupta had lived several lifetimes: he played Carnegie Hall at eight, studied at Juilliard and Yale before most had finished high school, joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic at nineteen, gave a celebrated TED Talk seen by millions, and launched a nonprofit. But behind the accolades was estrangement, addiction, and a private unraveling.” In addition to being a great musician, Gupta is also an excellent writer. This is a very personal story about personal achievements, family relationships, and how music really connects us, from symphony halls to Skid Row. (Bonus content: What Skid Row Taught Acclaimed Violinist Vijay Gupta About Music.)

+ What to Doc: Rafa on Netflix is a four-part docuseries on the rise and injuries of Rafael Nadal. This docuseries is part of a trend of docs essentially produced with their subjects, so you don’t necessarily get any hard-hitting insights. But if you’re into tennis, you will definitely enjoy this look at the mental and physical challenges faced by one of the greats. (FWIW, his trainer Uncle Toni has basically the same mentality as my pilates teacher.)

5

Extra, Extra

Cease Ceased: U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that Iran had asked to continue talks and the U.S. had agreed, but that the ceasefire was over. (Of course, we can’t be sure of any of that because of the source.)

+ Playing with Housing Money: Housing affordability bill is about to become law, even after Trump refuses to sign it in PROTEST.” (So he gets to enrage his own party with nothing to show for it.)

+ Nolan Wells: “Nolan Wells was last seen boating with friends around 3 p.m. Saturday on Horn Island, a barrier reef off Mississippi accessible only by boat, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department said. He was wearing blue swim trunks and sunglasses. Wells’ mother reported him missing that night after he did not return on the boat with the rest of the group.” Investigation underway into death of Mississippi 18-year-old who vanished on July 4 boating trip. (This feels like it’s going to become a massive story.)

+ Parasite Unseen: “There’s a lag between when people consume the parasite that causes the illness and when symptoms appear, making it tough for those infected to remember what they ate to pinpoint the problem. Health officials are alarmed by the rapidly growing number of cases, which they say are likely undercounted because some people recover without medical care and are not tested.” Why we don’t know what food is spreading the parasite sickening thousands.

+ The Recline of Western Civilization: “Life is full of ethical dilemmas, some more consequential than others. Should you eat meat? While you decide, the lives of countless animals hang in the balance. Will you use Claude to write your cover letter? While you contemplate, your integrity is at risk. In comparison, seat reclination is small-scale. Only a few inches are at stake, perhaps for just a few hours. And yet that little wedge of space and time looms large: whether you seize it seems to suggest something about how you treat other people, or even conceive of society in general.” The New Yorker: Should You Recline Your Airplane Seat? “Investigating the central dilemma of our time.” (There are still some airplane activities we can all agree are bad. For example: Passenger partly sucked out of window soon after takeoff from Greece...)

+ Messi Business: “They discovered that the name they had chosen in honor of Lionel Messi violated an obscure 1969 Argentina statute prohibiting the use of surnames as first names.” This is why there aren’t thousands of Argentinians named Messi.

6

Feel Good Friday

“You do not have time for this. You do not have time to sit in a 200-degree box, as if you were a slice of leftover pizza. You do not have time to spend a half-hour in a hotter-than-even-standard sauna, then immerse yourself in a bath of water that is extremely frozen if not actual ice, shocking the eggshell of your sanity from the membrane of your gelatinous insides. You — meaning I, who have lately been thinking of myself as a you — truly do not want to do what is called cold-plunging.” Taffy Brodesser-Akner: I Survived a Cold Plunge and All I Got Was Everything I Ever Wanted.

+ “Long-tenured workers like Barzar are Costco’s secret weapon. They are reliable and experienced, able to speed shoppers through a checkout line and serve as mentors to newer workers, passing down the company’s unique culture.” He Earns $33 an Hour as a Costco Cashier. Now He’s a Millionaire.

+ This program gives Black single moms $1,000 a month for a year. The results are undeniable.

+ Female US rower reflects on ‘surreal’ record-breaking journey from California to Hawaii.

+ A tiny eye implant invented by a Stanford scientist is helping blind people read again.

+ Jesse Eisenberg Explains Why His Decision to Donate a Kidney Was Very Easy.

+ How Olivia Rodrigo Is Getting Back at the Trump Administration.

+ In any language: English speakers are tuning into World Cup broadcasts in Spanish. There’s really only one word you need to know. Goooooooal.

2

Hang a Left

“Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invited senior ministers from more than 60 countries to a meeting next week about what the Trump administration views as a major peril: the ‘resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism.’” WaPo (Gift Article): Rubio tries to enlist other nations in antifa fight, but some allies recoil. (I know it sometimes seems like Rubio is one of the comparatively decent ones. But, sadly, it’s time to recoil from that notion.) “The meeting has prompted consternation among career and political U.S. officials, some European allies and independent analysts who do not see the threat in the same terms. Some U.S. officials told The Post that they worry it is part of a Trump administration effort to use powerful counterterrorism tools to crack down on U.S. activists they view as left-wing extremists.”

+ Related: “For much of the past year, DHS has been going after people who criticize President Donald Trump’s immigration policies in emails and social media posts, accusing them of threatening federal personnel or ‘doxing’ agents whose identities are already known to the public. OPR has opened more than 100 investigations into ‘incidents of doxing and threats’ involving ICE.” The Verge (Gift Article): ICE agents are making house calls for online critics.

+ Also Related: Three More People Charged With Damaging Reflecting Pool.

3

Bad Wrap

“On a sloping patch of ground less than a dozen miles from where the wealthy pay to swaddle their bushes, on a day cold enough to freeze a brook running through the woods, one of the men who stitched burlap around hedges disappeared on a Thursday in February.” NYT (Gift Article): Where Billionaires Summer, a Gardener Died in the Snow. “The workers’ plight isn’t new. In 2022, a concierge for some of the Hamptons’ wealthiest patrons gave an interview describing how he had spent two years living in a six-by-six-foot tent in the woods. In 2024, a Guatemalan laborer who was living in the woods was struck and killed on a highway while walking to a bus stop, leading to an outpouring of concern. But advocates for the workers say that the scale shifted in the last year. Where once the tents were clustered together, the workers have now spread out for fear of raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

4

Meander in Chief

“This is not the approach of a president who’s running a war; this is the flailing of a man who’s in over his head and is reacting to events, rather than guiding them. Lest this kind of equivocation lead the Iranians to doubt Trump’s resolve, the president has added that he’s still considering two other terrible ideas: an invasion of Iranian territory, and a campaign of probable war crimes.” Tom Nichols in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Iran, Not Trump, Is in Control of This War. “Trump is now going through something like the stages of wartime grief: Denial that America failed; anger, which has led to renewed attacks; and then bargaining, as if the Iranians could somehow be bought off like a gang of recalcitrant construction workers in New York. None of it has worked. Depression and acceptance await.” (That would actually be a perfect new tagline. NextDraft: Depression and Acceptance Await.)

+ For now, it looks like the ceasefire is officially off. Here’s the latest on the renewed and accelerating fighting from BBC and The Guardian.

+ The resumption of hostilities with Iran led the Secret Service to advise the president against using his new Qatari-donated jet. That means the jet was never ready in the first place. So Trump took the old Air Force One and then lied about the reason. Just another day of madness.

5

Extra, Extra

Bibi Cued: “Rahm Emanuel, a potential Democratic presidential candidate and longtime defender of Israel, warned Wednesday that the country has become increasingly isolated as its leadership has turned it into a ‘territorial pariah,’ in a speech at Tel Aviv University on Wednesday. ‘You cannot fight indefinitely against a world that has stopped believing you have the right to fight. You must instead find a new sustainable path to peace, security, and economic prosperity.’” Here’s the full speech. And from NPR: In a West Bank cave, Israelis and Palestinians hold an out-of-the-ordinary lunch. (You can love and want to defend Israel and think its leadership is terrible. Just like you can love and want to defend America and think its leadership is terrible.)

+ The View From Canada: “The rupture of the world order is going much better than expected. At first there was rage at America’s betrayal, when President Trump called for the annexation of Canada, threatened Greenland, imposed tariffs on its friends and began his campaign to undercut NATO, which continued at its latest meeting this week, in Ankara, Turkey. Now, a strange feeling is emerging in some of the countries that used to be known as America’s allies: Optimistic determination.” Stephen Marche in the NYT (Gift Article): The Zombification of America. “Zombie America creates, at least in the short term, contradictions. In Canada, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, jointly operated with the United States, continues to be our most important alliance. Yet civil servants here have also started training with drones for the possibility of asymmetrical conflict with the United States. Real security can be found only by removing your country from American influence, on every front as far as possible.”

+ The Reign in Maine Circles Drain: “Behind the scenes, his campaign was messy, disorganized and haphazardly run. Mr. Platner did not disclose explosive, politically damaging secrets to key members of his team. And he was guarded by an insular and zealously protective inner circle of advisers who did not always seem to grasp the seriousness — or strangeness — of what quickly became a steady drip of scandal ... Repeatedly, Mr. Platner promised there was nothing else damaging from his past to come. And each time, he was wrong.” ‘A Slow-Rolling Disaster’: Inside the Implosion of the Platner Campaign. (Given his resignation video, it’s not clear that the implosion dust has settled.) Related: US appeals court rejects Trump’s latest bid to delay paying E Jean Carroll $5.8m. (I’m beginning to wonder if politics is attracting our best and brightest.)

+ FanDuel and Your Money Are Soon Parted: “By late November 2024, Thompson had incurred steep losses and resorted to desperate measures to fund his addiction. Then, one afternoon, he flicked open his phone and received a FanDuel reward that momentarily distracted him from his debts: a personalized video message from Philadelphia Phillies superstar Bryce Harper.” FanDuel sent a personal message from Phillies star Bryce Harper to a customer with a gambling addiction.

+ Mail Nurse: “In his job as a nurse and healthcare administrator, Chris decided on appropriate treatments for patients and checked their vital signs. Sometimes, he monitored up to 10 patients in intensive care — and he did it all from Manila, thousands of miles away from the U.S. hospital he worked for.” Your next nurse may monitor you from the Philippines.

+ Error Bags: “The air bag, it turned out, had been purchased on eBay and installed by the Texas dealership that sold him the used car. When he crashed, it sent metal shards flying into Kang’s face.” WSJ Gift Article): Counterfeit Air-Bag Parts Are Killing U.S. Drivers—and the Government Can’t Stop It.

+ Garbage In, Farage Out: “When British right-wing populist leader Nigel Farage announced he was resigning as a lawmaker and triggering a special election in the face of a swirl of allegations over personal financing, he sought the high ground, declaring that the ‘judges of my actions’ should be his constituents. Instead, rival parties dismissed his actions as a stunt and said they would sit out the election, leaving his principal opponent as a garbage-can wearing comedian whose policies include forcing rule-breaking cyclists to ride unicycles.”

+ You Token to Me? M.G. Siegler has been waiting a long time to talk to his computer. And with the latest iteration of ChatGPT, that wait may be over. The First True AI Chatbot. “As in, actually chatting. As in, with voice.”

6

Bottom of the News

Pickle Pie. Cracklin’ Corn Ribs. Butter Brew Mustache Pretzel. Yeah, our brand has suffered a bit of late. But it’s Summer, and America is gonna America! Buckle up: Here is this year’s crop of new State Fair foods.

2

Dropping a Deuce on the Truce

“I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore ... They’re scum. They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people ... If they had a nuclear weapon, they’d use it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.” And with that, Trump announces that the ceasefire with Iran is basically over. (Trump also confused Iran with Japan and Zelensky with Putin during the discussion. So maybe everyone should keep their defenses on alert.) Trump also lashed out at Spain, saying he’s going to cut off all trade with them. In a whiplash-inducing shift, Trump praised Zelensky and said he will let Ukraine build Patriot missiles. (This definitely gives one the sense that US intel is advising Trump that Ukraine has the upper hand in the war. Or maybe there’s a bribe involved.) Here’s the latest from The Guardian.

+ “Mark Carney swept to power on a backlash to President Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st state, which many Americans took for mere shtick. But for the new prime minister, reading intelligence reports detailing the gravity of the crisis, it was a breaking point. In private phone conversations with Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, Trump had threatened to scrap the 1908 agreement delineating their shared border. ‘I tear that up and your whole country unravels,’ Trump told Trudeau in one call.” WSJ (Gift Article): The Canadian Who Steered Europe Away From the U.S.

+ Europe may be moving away from the US government, but it’s not moving away from US software. NATO quietly puts trust in Palantir to move troops and identify targets. “If Russia moves its elite soldiers from the 76th Guards Air Assault Division closer to the border with Estonia, Palantir’s system will flag it. Military officers will be alerted to vulnerabilities in the alliance’s force structure across Europe, and which troops to move from where to fend off a Russian attack. At any one time the system knows how many troops NATO has, where and when, so it can advise what to do next.” (The next world war will be software vs software, with humans caught in the crossfire.)

3

Bacterial Inflection

“Scientists refer to this vast, unexplored terrain as biology’s dark matter. Our bodies are home to more bacteria — on our skin, up our noses, in our guts and mouths and around our genitals — than there are stars in the Milky Way. These microbes have evolved not only with us but inside us, and scientists who study them closely say that hardly a biological process or system exists in which they do not play a role. They helped create our digestive systems and our immune systems. They influence the size and shape of our bodies. At least some research suggests that they also affect our brains, moods, personalities and behaviors. And yet, most of them have still not been identified, let alone studied.” NYT Magazine (Gift Article): Our Bacteria Are Talking. We’ve Just Begun to Understand What They’re Saying. (You can be pretty sure they’re talking shit.)

+ The NYT discovered regularity. Should I Be Taking Psyllium Husk? (For Jewish sons, chugging a first glass of Metamucil with their fathers is a right of passage—it’s like a Talmudic version of playing catch in the backyard.)

4

Berried Treasure

“In just the last decade, berries have completed the journey from fragile, local, seasonal treat to worldwide refrigerator staple and marketing juggernaut ... Most of that growth has been driven by Driscoll’s, a $7 billion California company that began as a multifamily farm in 1904, patented its first strain of strawberries in 1958 and is still controlled by family members. In 1989, its board made what the company calls the Meadowood Declaration, a resolution that seemed preposterous at the time: to make all four berries available, in every season, in every part of the world. Today the company is the undisputed global market leader, shipping four billion containers of highly perishable fruit across 60 countries each year. (The company developed its signature hinged, ventilated plastic clamshell in the 1990s.) According to Circana, a market research firm, Driscoll’s is now the second-highest-earning brand in American supermarkets, behind only Coca-Cola.” Why Are Berries Everywhere, in Every Season? Driscoll’s.

5

Extra, Extra

Chain Yanked: “The global economy is set to slow sharply in 2026 after the war with Iran disrupted energy supply chains and triggered a fresh bout of inflation.” (And the IMF issued this warning before today’s announcement that the truce is potentially off.)

+ K Stop: “’Oh no,’ she recalled the director saying upon hearing the child’s name. The parents, the director said, had declined the vitamin K injection newborns routinely receive to help blood clot. Without it, infants are vulnerable to spontaneous bleeding.” As Parents Reject Vitamin K Shots, Some Babies Develop Devastating Bleeding.

+ Passing Fancy: 30 million people watched USMNT-Belgium, making it the most-watched soccer match in U.S. history. (For comparison, the NBA Finals deciding game drew about 24.5 million viewers.)

+ British Invasion: “I remember thinking to myself: My goodness, how are journalists ever going to come down off this high … the adrenaline roller-coaster ride of such big news almost every day? How are they ever going to return to engaging with dreary minutiae of NHS reform, when we’re giving them such big stories all the time? And I remember genuinely thinking this feels consequential. And dreadful.” How smartphones (and Brexit) broke British politics.

+ In a Rutte: A Danish reporter asked a question to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte that should probably be asked of a few hundred American politicians as well. “Mark, you sit next to Donald Trump in moments where he talks about conquering Greenland, talked about lashing out at allies like Spain, starting trade wars—things that [don’t] seem like the old Mark Rutte would approve of. Does this have any effect on your self-respect when you sit next to him like that and say nothing?” (Spoiler alert: Nah.)

+ No Pitt Stop: The Pitt, Hacks, Widow’s Bay, Pluribus, Beef, and DTF St. Louis are among the leaders in this year’s Emmy noms. Here are some snubs and surprises.

+ Cream Sinks to the Bottom: “The Covid-19 pandemic had supercharged America’s snacking habit: Some 70% of consumers were eating at least two per day, Smucker said. Buying the owner of Ding Dongs and Donettes gave the jam-and-jelly maker entry into a $65 billion market for snacks. Smucker had beat out other suitors for Hostess, most notably General Mills. Three years later, the deal isn’t tasting quite so sweet.” There are a lot of interesting reasons Why Smucker’s $5 Billion Bet on the Twinkie Flopped.

6

Bottom of the News

“Everyone has a strategy so particular to their concerns that following someone else’s might not always work for you. In the end, the challenge and the reward of the buffet are exactly the same: In a limited time, with endless distractions, you must figure out what you really want.” NYT: The Disappearing Las Vegas Buffets Hold a Mirror to the American Soul. (Better than a mirror to the body after I go to one of those things.)

+ Two teens learn the hard way not to do toy gun drive-bys from a Waymo. (Cut to the scene where the other guys in the prison yard ask, “So, what are you in for?”)

2

Splatner

It’s never a good sign when your Nazi tattoo ends up being one of your better attributes by comparison. Graham Platner, the controversial Senate candidate running against Susan Collins in Maine has weathered many political storms. He won’t be able to weather the latest one. Politico: Woman who dated Graham Platner says he sexually assaulted her.

+ “The allegation is the latest in a string of controversies Platner has faced and so far weathered since the oyster farmer and Marine veteran entered the race. But the seriousness of the assault claim has put the Maine contest — and Democrats’ ability to win control of the Senate — at risk, with even some of his strongest supporters questioning whether Platner should continue his campaign.” (Pretty much everyone has called for him to quit the race. The big question is whether this means Maine is down the drain.)

+ “While I’m assigning blame, I shouldn’t leave out myself. Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke, I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was ‘nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.’ If anything, he seems to be significantly worse.” Michelle Goldberg in the NYT (Gift Article): Lessons From the Graham Platner Disaster.

3

Hitch in the Mitch Glitch

Is he alive? If he’s alive, how alive is he? Why is he in the hospital? What treatment is he receiving? In normal times, these aren’t the questions one would be asking about one of America’s most prominent senators. But these aren’t normal times. McConnell Has Been Hospitalized for 3 Weeks, and Aides Won’t Say Why.

4

Picking Shovels

Netflix has a retention problem. You watch the first season of a show, but you don’t come back for subsequent seasons. There are probably a few reasons why this is the case, and one of them could be the business model. “Netflix pays upfront production costs for both originals and outside productions, owns the international distribution, and offers a massive pay bump if the show makes it to season three. This makes sense if your business model is based on gaining new subscriptions. You’re not buying long-running audience-sustaining properties to reliably run ads against. You’re buying newness. So there’s very little incentive in, say, building a solid audience for your live action Avatar: The Last Airbender adaptation, but there’s a huge incentive in announcing you have one.” Ryan Broderick in Garbage Day with a good overview of the second season problem, and how it mirrors other issues in the digital content business. Netflix and the value of streaming shovelware.

5

Extra, Extra

Fire and Ice: “Of course, there have always been heat waves, thunderstorms, power failures and floods. But climate change has been a steroid injection for such disasters, making them stronger and more damaging. And increasingly, as in New Jersey this week, all of these nightmares arrive in tandem, creating compound disasters. In the process, they’re exposing just how unprepared for them we are.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): New Jersey’s Hell Week Is a Warning for Everyone. And the latest weather pattern to worry about: Hail. Inside the United States’ Billion-Dollar Blind Spot. “These balls of ice aren’t just academic curiosities. They are the reason your insurance premiums keep rising.”

+ Out of Le Pen: “The court shortened her ban on running for elected office, potentially reopening the path for her to run. However, it ruled she must wear an electronic ankle tag for a year, making a campaign both logistically and politically difficult.” French court allows far-right leader Marine Le Pen to run for president with ankle tag. (In this political environment, that might be a plus.)

+ History Buff: “The buff George Washington statue in the National Museum of American History speaks for itself. Taking in the washboard abs and determined expression of the 1840 work by Horatio Greenough, a visitor would be hard-pressed to see anything but a Founding Father rendered as a Greek god. Yet in a searing 162-page report on the Smithsonian museum released on July 4, the Trump administration takes issue with the lack of patriotism in even this exhibit.” A Huge Escalation in Trump’s Smithsonian Meddling.

+ Hey Bub: “The document, the existence and contents of which have not been previously reported but was obtained by NOTUS, is a significant departure from the Trump administration’s public tone, which has focused on encouraging unrelenting investment to unlock exponential growth.” Treasury Has an Internal Report Warning About the Dangers of an AI Bubble.

+ Ring a Bell? Vox: Your Ring camera isn’t stopping crime. But it might be making you paranoid. People generally understand this, but they’ll always choose security options, even ones that don’t necessarily provide security. Well, not all people. US Air Force engineer charged with sawing down flock surveillance cameras receives thousands of dollars from supporters across the country.

+ Allies: An Afghan national who fought with U.S. forces died of an allergic reaction in ICE custody. (Feel safer?)

+ Midtown Evacuation: “A safety manager reported that a steel beam was compromised on the 21st floor, according to Buildings Department records. The Fire Department said that two support columns inside the building were buckling, and several upper floors were sagging ... A ‘frozen zone’ was set up from 40th to 45th Streets between First and Third Avenues.” Mamdani Warns That Midtown Manhattan Building Remains Unstable.

+ Corruption Eruption: IOC lifts ban on Russian Olympic Committee, clearing path for athletes’ return to Games. (They should have waited. This is supposed to be the week for Trump/FIFA corruption.)

+ It’s About the Journey: There’s been a hell of a lot of hype leading up to the release of Christopher Nolan’s latest movie, The Odyssey. It sounds like it lives up to it, and then some. Variety: First Reactions Are Raves for Christopher Nolan’s ‘Astonishing’ Epic and ‘Flawless Filmmaking’: ‘Breathtaking, Bold and Perfection.’ (I haven’t read raves like that since I first launched NextDraft.)

6

Bottom of the News

“Check your bathroom cabinet, as CVS Health has recalled thousands of medicated hemorrhoidal wipes due to a lack of child-resistant packaging.” Here’s a shocker: “As of July 2, CVS was not aware of any injuries related to the recall.”

2

Under the Weather

Here in the Bay Area, we wrapped ourselves in overcoats and huddled under blankets to watch a Golden Gate Bridge fireworks show that mostly just made the low-hanging fog glow. And believe me, we know how lucky we were compared to much of the rest of the country, where (like much of the rest of the world), it was brutally hot. You aren’t the only one surprised by the climate in your neck of the woods. So are the experts, even the ones who predicted the worst. Bloomberg (Gift Article): Extreme Heat Isn’t the Only Climate Impact Shocking Scientists. “While scientists have long braced for climate change, the growing severity of its impacts is shocking them.”

+ Just when you thought there wouldn’t be a solution for climate change... NYT (Gift Article): To Beat the Heat, the Wealthy Are Building Snow Rooms. “A snow room is more or less the opposite of a sauna — a cavelike space of ice and snow. In some, white flakes descend gently from the ceiling to create the feeling of being inside a snow globe.”

3

Poking Fun

“Over the course of the past two decades, the US has lost 2,000 golf courses and 7,000 bars and nightclubs, and Americans now own 1.3 million fewer boats. It’s prohibitively expensive to open a new summer camp and practically impossible to build a beachfront resort or marina. Venue shortages afflict musicians looking for performance spaces, children looking to play in local sports leagues and adults looking to go out dancing. The best time to book a rental for this summer was last summer, and the best time to book for next summer is … well, it may already be too late. America appears to be suffering from a fun shortage.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): The Fun Shortage Is Real, and It’s Making America Miserable.

4

White Lines Blowin’ Through My Mind

“The lightbulb. The internet. The telephone and the iPhone. Since the founding of the United States, we have built airplanes, refrigerators and Costco. We dreamed up the microchip and we gave the world chocolate-chip cookies. But the greatest American innovation that you won’t ever find on a list of America’s innovations might just be one that you see every day. It’s an unsung idea that changed a nation and spread all over the world—and it was driven by one guy.” WSJ (Gift Article): This Simple White Line Is America’s Greatest Unsung Innovation. “In the 1950s, around the time Jonas Salk cracked the polio vaccine, a metallurgist named John V. N. Dorr became the champion of a different lifesaver: a white line on the right side of the road.”

5

Extra, Extra

Unmasked: “Hundreds of masked men carrying banners, including the Confederate flag, marched through Washington DC on the Fourth of July, the 250th anniversary of the US’s inception ... Members chanted ‘Life, liberty, victory!’ and ‘Reclaim America!’ during the Saturday demonstration, according to video posted on social media.” Hundreds of masked white nationalists march in Washington on Fourth of July. (The sick display resulted in what may be the most revealing image of 2026, from Cheney Orr of Reuters).

+ Dealer’s Choice: “What Trump offers is an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution. He can bring jobs back simply by punishing offshoring companies into submission. As he told a New Hampshire crowd—folks all too familiar with the opioid scourge—he can cure the addiction epidemic by building a Mexican wall and keeping the cartels out. He will spare the United States from humiliation and military defeat with indiscriminate bombing. It doesn’t matter that no credible military leader has endorsed his plan. He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.” That is a powerful commentary. Guess who wrote it? JD Vance in 2016. The Atlantic (Gift Article): Opioid of the Masses. (This was before JD became a dealer...)

+ RSVP Minus One: “Iranian state media showed huge crowds at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla — a large prayer complex in Tehran — visiting the casket of Ayatollah’s Ali Khamenei, who was killed on Feb. 28 at the start of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran. The caskets of four of his killed family members were also on display.” Dayslong funeral for slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei begins in Tehran. Not everyone is attending. Time: Khamenei’s Funeral Is Meant to Project Strength. But Iran’s New Leader Has Yet to Appear.

+ Fishing Expedition: “Government officials and agencies closest to the action, at sea and on America’s streets, tell a different story. In hearings, official reports, and interviews they have all but given up the pretense that the campaign has succeeded in reducing the flow of drugs into the U.S., even as 221 people have been killed in more than 60 strikes.” The Results Are In On Trump’s Boat Strikes Campaign.

+ Ven Diagram: “When a giant earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, the United States mounted an enormous relief effort involving more than $3 billion in aid, 7,000 U.S. troops on the ground and a halt to deportations of Haitians to their devastated country.” Things have changed. With $8 Billion in Venezuelan Oil Money, U.S. Gives $300 Million in Quake Aid.

+ Packing Heat: “In the view of critics and even some A.T.F. veterans, the agency, in closely mirroring the demands made by gun owners and manufacturers to lighten their regulatory burden, is enacting changes at the expense of public safety. The moves, they worry, come as the bureau has already been weakened, with hundreds of its officials diverted to immigration enforcement.” Trump Administration Rolls Back Dozens of Gun Regulations.

+ Walk This Way: Can you outrun dementia by walking really fast? NPR: Fast walkers in their 80s cut their risk of cognitive decline by half, a study finds.

+ Humanoidian Slip: “Around small pets, around small children, there’s still work to be done.” The robots are coming. Are we ready? More importantly, are they? The New Yorker: Are Humanoid Robots Ready to Be Deployed?

+A Nietzsche Business: My kids wanted to get into coding. But told them to follow the money and get into a major that pays off. Philosophy. NYT (Gift Article): The Revenge of the Philosophy Majors.

6

Bottom of the News

“The red-white-and-blue popsicles are the ultimate shorthand Americana — a throwback to the simple days of ice cream trucks, July 4th fireworks and humid summer nights. But after the Bomb Pop came on the market in July 1955, some parents revolted over the symbolism of selling a frozen weapon of war to children.” Bomb Pops, the Kansas City invention that defined American summers and patriotic nostalgia. (Greatest popsicle ever.)

+ During his team’s epic win over Mexico, England’s Jordan Henderson got a yellow card and suffered a serious wrist injury. Even though he didn’t play.

2

Vote Moat

Immigration isn’t the only core American value being attacked these days. Among the other ones: Voting. NYT (Gift Article): The Many Ways Trump Is Trying to Tip the Scales for the Midterms. “The relentless assault by the president on the electoral process — both administratively and rhetorically — is likely to sow doubt and lay groundwork for extensive challenges to election results. Agencies and officials across the federal government have, at the direction of Mr. Trump, undertaken dozens of actions grounded in novel strategies and aimed at insulating Republicans from potential losses in November.”

3

Desperate Measurements

“According to some measures, A.I. is contributing to high unemployment rates among new graduates and might already have destroyed tens of thousands of jobs. Other sources suggest companies might actually be adding workers as a result of the technology. A.I. might be contributing to the U.S. inflation problem, or part of the solution to it. It might be responsible for a recent pickup in productivity growth, or might be playing virtually no role — or the productivity boom itself might be a mirage. Researchers can’t even agree on basic questions like how many companies are using A.I. or which workers are most vulnerable to the disruptions it could cause.” A.I. Is Reshaping the Economy. Good Luck Measuring How.

+ “OpenAI has proposed giving the Trump administration a 5% stake in the company as part of a broader arrangement in which leading U.S. artificial intelligence firms would cede similar equity to the government through a sovereign wealth fund vehicle.”

4

Pens and Swords

“I went through the magnetometer to enter the National Mall for President Trump’s Great American State Fair this week, putting my pens, notebook, phone and wallet on the table for inspection. ‘You have to throw away these pens,’ the guard said ... It’s unclear who I would have attacked with my Bic ballpoint, anyway. The musicians who were slated to perform at the fair backed out because of the partisan tenor, and several states also declined to participate. There were no lines to get in when I arrived, and the crowd inside appeared to number in the high two figures. Acres of green lawn were vacant, and three huge tents for concessions were empty. ‘You’re my first customer,’ said the vendor when I bought a $5 bottle of ice water.” Dana Milbank: Trump’s Nutty State Fair Hijacked the Fourth of July. And My Pen.

+ “’It’s as if there were a natural disaster, and we’re looking at the damage after a hurricane. Or think of Manhattan after the World Trade Center was hit by an act of terrorism,’ Charles A. Birnbaum, the president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, told me. ‘If you were just to parachute into Washington, you’d say: Gosh, what happened here?‘ Happy birthday, America.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Capital Is a Mess.

+ OK, in fairness, there are differing perspectives on the big birthday bash in DC. For example: “The woman in the yellow jersey may have said it best when she clapped her hands and shouted to her friend marching by: ‘Everything’s O.K.! Lookin’ good, lookin’ good!’ It was a grand day for the ... parade in the nation’s capital today, and it was a grand parade celebrating the diversity that is America. It was warm under a hazy sun but not one of Washington’s blistering summer days, and 500,000 people, according to the official estimate, turned out to see more than 50 bands, GO floats and 90 marching units.” Oh, wait, this isn’t from the 250th, it’s from the 200th. If you’re feeling a bit bicurious, here’s a look back. 500,000 View Capital’s Bicentennial Parade. That event didn’t devolve into an authoritarian-esque, ego-driven campaign rally. In fact, Gerald Ford didn’t even attend. He was playing golf.

5

Extra, Extra

Different Sides of the Same Coin: “Morten Christensen made a big bet on digital tokens sold by the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial last year, hoping that a surge in value might be enough to help him retire. Instead, the value of those tokens tanked. While Christensen and many like him lost big, the president made a fortune, netting $800 million from that crypto project.” WSJ (Gift Article): Trump Made $1 Billion on Crypto Deals While His Fans Lost a Fortune. (Tying the corruption to affordability seems to be a possible sweet spot for midterm messaging.) I covered Trump’s crypto haul yesterday. “Donald Trump finally found a business he could succeed at. Presidential Corruption.” You’ve been Crypt Off.

+ Standing Guard: “Rescuers pulled a 43-year-old security guard alive from a collapsed basement early Thursday, ending a grueling days-long operation that became a symbol of hope after the devastation of twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela eight days earlier.”

+ Putin Attacks Kyiv: “Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha described the assault as a ‘night of horror’ and referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a ‘war criminal.’ ‘Putin can only wage a vile and terroristic war against civilians, women, and children. Because in his war against Ukraine’s Defense Forces he cannot achieve a single result.” Russia Launches Drone and Missile Attack on Kyiv.

+ Excommunication Breakdown: “An estimated 16,500 people gathered in Ecône for the ceremony, including members of New Force, an Italian neofascist political party, and National Future, a new far-right force threatening the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s chances of winning a second mandate in general elections next year.” Vatican excommunicates all members of ultra-conservative rebel group SSPX. “Schism caused by Society of Saint Pius X ordaining four bishops without consent presents first crisis for Pope Leo.”

+ Burning Question: “One major concern stemming from wildfire prediction markets is arson.” Will betting on wildfires lead to arson? (Or to ask the same question another way: Have we lost our f-cking minds?)

+ Silver Spoon? AOL, Vimeo, Eventbrite, and Evernote. Web names from the internet past? Actually, they’re all part of a corporate roll-up that just went public. Bending Spoons IPO prices above range at $18.4 billion valuation.

+ A Loss For Words: “Every serious legal mind must inevitably face a fundamental choice: Read the Constitution and apply its words as the bedrock laws of the land, or transcend its tired text and interpret the super-secret invisible version that tells you exactly what you want to hear. Sadly, many Americans remain trapped in the former dimension of understanding; that dim-witted first stage of constitutional awareness where one looks at the document, finds the relevant words, and believes the words mean something.” McSweeney’s: The US Constitution Is for Simple Folk Still Burdened by the Belief That Words Have Meaning.

6

Bottom of the News

“Two Russian ‘rooftoppers’ who staged an apparent marriage proposal at the peak of the Empire State Building’s spire were reportedly arraigned in New York on Thursday on a slew of charges including reckless endangerment ... They spent the first night of their reported engagement in separate cells close to lower Manhattan’s New York City criminal court ... charged with burglary, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, criminal trespass, criminal tampering, disorderly conduct, and possession of burglar’s tools.” As stressful as this all sounds, I still don’t think it adequately prepares them for the first year of marriage.

2

Dangerous Delusions

“Putin appeared to be making up facts as he went along. No encirclement around Rubtsi (population: 350 ) has been reported by any reliable source in Russia or Ukraine, and there is no river called Stary Oskol in that region. The Russian president’s obsession with the details of the fighting appears to have crossed the line into delusion.” Simon Shuster in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Putin Is Slipping Into Delusion. “Does that mania for war make him any more likely to cut his losses and accept a negotiated peace? Probably not. His interview on Monday illustrated what many in Ukraine and Europe have long concluded about Putin’s state of mind. He has convinced himself that the attritional math of the war favors Russia, and he will continue to press the numerical advantage of his forces regardless of how long the lines for gasoline in Moscow might get.”

+ Long lines for gas are hardly the only costs being paid for this insane invasion. NYT (Gift Article): Troop Casualties in Ukraine War Top 2 Million. “The study, published on Wednesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Russia has borne the heavier toll, with 1.4 million troops killed or wounded since February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.”

+ Here’s the story of one of those deaths. The Prom Went On in Kyiv, but Masha’s Date Danced Alone.

3

Birthrights and Wrongs

“This is a shocking development that should upend all expectations that this court can be trusted to apply the most basic constitutional guarantees when a Republican president seeks to nullify them. If a theory flatly rejected by all serious legal scholars and historians can come one vote away from success, no rights are safe. Everything is on the table.” The Supreme Court’s 5–4 Vote in the Birthright Citizenship Case Is a Scandal.

+ To really understand how extreme (and extremely nuts) the (slim) minority opinions were in this case, I recommend these two segments from Lawrence O’Donnell’s episode on the case. Here’s Laurence Tribe on the law. And Pulitzer Prize-winning Yale historian David Blight on the history.

4

A Plausible Argument

“The possibility that artificial intelligence will steal all our jobs has been hyped by industry leaders. It has roused politicians to sound the alarm. It now ranks at or near the top of the public’s concerns about the new technology.” Is it the right thing to be worried about? I’ll have an answer for that question when AI replaces me. Zeynep Tufekci with some interesting takes on the matter in the NYT (Gift Article): The Unstoppable Force of A.I. Hype Is Meeting One Immovable Fact. “Air Canada disabled its chatbots after they mistakenly promised a customer a refund — and the customer sued and won. McDonald’s scuttled the bot taking orders at its drive-throughs after a number of viral videos showed it to be wildly dysfunctional. In one case, the bot mistakenly added hundreds of dollars of chicken nuggets to a customer’s order. These scary — OK, OK, funny — incidents aren’t the result of coding errors. They’re the result of an essential, inescapable fact about the artificial intelligence that has become so common in so many aspects of our daily lives: Large language models are not reasoning machines. They’re plausibility engines.”

5

Extra, Extra

250 Ways To Leave Your Govern: “Inevitably, the Trump administration has destroyed the nation’s 250th-anniversary celebrations. I was 11 in 1976, during the bicentennial, and that July 4, I was at a summer camp in North Carolina. I remember celebratory flag-raising and patriotic songs, as well as sparklers in the evening. At the time, we didn’t think there was a permanent cultural divide between red states and blue states. In retrospect, I’m sure some of my fellow campers came from families with views different from mine. It didn’t matter to our celebration of the bicentennial, mostly because we were 11. But it also wouldn’t have mattered even if we were adults, because everyone knew that the bicentennial was for all of us. The tall ships, the fireworks, the Freedom Train that carried a moon rock around the country—all of these were symbols we shared, no matter which part of America we came from. President Gerald Ford didn’t try to make the events of that year about himself or his base, or his tribe, or his bank account. This year is different, because the White House is inhabited by people who don’t believe in the ‘abstractions’ that we usually celebrate on the Fourth of July. And this affects the rest of us, whether we want it to or not.” Anne Applebaum nails it in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Trump’s Anti-Patriotic Trap. (I think the best bet is to focus on the local and enjoy your friends and family this Fourth. I’m going to watch the SF fog light up in different colors the same way I do every year. Hopefully, America’s 252nd-and-a-half birthday is going to be the greatest party in history.)

+ Strike Struck: As the Pentagon stays quiet, AP reconstructs a US strike that killed over 100 Iranian children. “In almost any other conflict, these haunting truths would be seared into national memory. Yet more than 120 days since at least one U.S. missile struck an Iranian primary school, there remains no final accounting of what happened.”

+ Deport to a Storm: “The plane carrying 146 Venezuelans deported from the United States arrived at Venezuela’s main airport last Wednesday — just eight hours before the ground began to violently shake. Venezuelan officials welcomed the deportees — 120 men, 19 women and 7 children — and recorded carefully staged videos celebrating their arrival after spending weeks in U.S. detention centers. Most, if not all, were then ferried away from the cameras to a state-run holding facility, where they settled into bunk beds and were told they would be released the next day, after being processed.” Killed by the Venezuelan Quakes Just Hours After Being Deported From U.S.

+ Unnatural Disaster: “Venezuela’s man-made disasters didn’t take long to exacerbate the natural one. For 28 years and counting, Venezuela’s rulers have stolen or squandered much of the oil revenue of the most oil-rich country in the world. Oligarchs pocketed the petrodollars of the late-aughts oil boom and left the nation somehow poorer and more indebted. In the hours just before the earthquakes struck, the regime released a total figure for the amount that it owed its creditors: $240 billion. The humanitarian consequences of this wastefulness were well documented before last Wednesday. Now they have acquired a fresh urgency.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Vultures Arrived Before the Rescue Teams. “The lack of preparation is unforgivable. Worse, the regime led by Delcy Rodríguez—under the heavy-handed management of the Trump administration—has taken active steps to make matters worse. The government deployed the military to the disaster areas not to help but to diffuse any expression of public discontent.”

+ Establishing a Trend: First, it was New York. Now it’s Colorado. Politico: Anti-establishment avalanche buries a pair of Colorado Democratic stalwarts.

+ Anthropics Or It Didn’t Happen: “The Trump administration and Anthropic have reached an agreement to restore access to the company’s most recent general-access artificial-intelligence model, resolving a fight that showed how the White House is intervening to address security concerns in the fast-growing industry.”

+ City on a Mission: “Mission Dolores was founded by Spanish missionaries the same year the U.S. declared its independence. It has borne witness to its own version of the American story—not the one you learned in school but one with much to say about what it means to be American.” Esquire: The San Francisco Church That Holds America’s Secrets.

+ A Tough Cell: “Scientists have long dreamed of discovering the alchemy by which chemicals can be turned into life. On Wednesday, a team at the University of Minnesota announced that it had taken a major step toward that vision. Blending together dozens of ingredients, the researchers have synthesized simple cells that feed, grow, reproduce and compete with one another for food. If these cells are not yet fully alive, they have most of the hallmarks of life.” NYT (Gift Article): This Cell Feeds, Grows and Reproduces. And It’s Manmade. (Call me when it can distill the news...)

6

Bottom of the News

Attention Kmart shoppers: “One customer shared photos of a T-rex balloon she purchased for her child, only to discover something unexpected about the item’s design. ‘Bought this balloon for my daughter’s birthday, and there’s something a little off-putting about the blow hole.’” (Hey, even inflatable dinosaurs deserve some pleasure in this life. But if your T-Rextion lasts more than four hours...)

2

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

“During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised again and again that he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Of course he didn’t. We are now more than 1,580 days into this war and it still rages. But here is the irony. Trump’s own actions, none of them meant to help Ukraine, may have brought the end of this war closer than anything that came before ... One of his first moves was to choke off American money and weapons. He demanded that Ukraine pay America back for Biden’s aid through a one-sided minerals deal. And he humiliated Volodymyr Zelensky in front of the world in that Oval Office meeting, telling him, ‘You don’t have any cards.’” It looked like a disaster at the time. But it turns out that not having Trump on his side may have been just the card Zelensky needed. Bill Browder: Despite his best efforts, Trump may just have won the war for Kyiv. “Once Washington no longer bankrolled Ukraine, Washington could no longer give Ukraine orders. The leash was off. The United States could no longer demand that Ukraine spare targets inside Russia. That single change has altered the course of the war.”

+ For example: Putin Faces Increased Pressure as Moscow Is Again Attacked by Drones.

3

Antisocial Climbers

“Two climbers—an experienced mountaineer and his girlfriend, a novice—set out to take on Austria’s tallest peak in the dead of winter. After the woman was found frozen to death near the summit, a court in Innsbruck had to decide whether the hike was merely a tragedy, or a case of homicide by neglect.” The always excellent William Finnegan in The New Yorker: No Return: “Did an experienced alpinist leave his girlfriend to die at the top of a mountain?” (Alt link.)

4

The Best Things Since (and Before) Sliced Bread

Let’s focus on something about America we can all celebrate. Our food history. “When Thomas Jefferson travels to Paris in 1784, he brings along James Hemings, an enslaved man who has worked at Monticello since childhood. Hemings studies French cooking, and when they return, he cooks at formal events hosted by Jefferson.” What came out of that trip? Mac and Cheese. (Yup, thank you, France!) In the 1810s, we got canned food. In the 1840s, the gold rush brought us something even more valuable: Chinese restaurants. 1880s: Coca-Cola. The 1920s brought us a great invention and equally great “American linguistic yardstick for innovation:” Sliced Bread. Then came Cheetos and McDonald’s. All that said, our winning streak may be over. In 2026, we’re all about suppressing appetites and looksmaxxing. But before you go from hungry to hangry, let’s celebrate. NYT (Gift Article): The Pursuit of Hungriness: 250 Years of American Food Innovation.

5

Extra, Extra

Sliding Into Your DMs: Early on, one of my biggest worries about AI was that evil politicians would use it to identify what people wanted to hear, tweak the truth to match those desires, and then deliver targeted, personal messages to manipulate the public. I was a little off the mark. It’s not just the evil ones who are doing it. NYT (Gift Article): How A.I. Is Changing the Way Politicians Run for Office. “Behind the scenes, campaigns are using the technology to analyze voter data, craft campaign materials and write custom messages.”

+ Ooh, Aah, Ooh, Awful: “It is general knowledge in our practice that for $2 million, you can have a pardon.” The White House Considers Granting 250 Pardons for the Nation’s Birthday. (Sometimes, it’s unclear if we’re marking a birthday or a funeral.) Meanwhile, Trump’s July 4 fireworks to start much later and last much longer. And they’ll follow a Trump speech. He can’t even take the Fifth on the Fourth.

+ More Signal Noise: “The identities of nearly all of the group members are visible, revealing even broader use of Signal by top Trump-administration officials than was previously known. The names of the groups are also telling, including one called ‘Iran/Ukraine Planning’ and another labeled ‘State USAID.’ The records raise the possibility that top administration officials failed to follow federal laws that require the preservation of government records.” Hegseth, Rubio, and Caine Had an Auto-Deleting Signal Chat.

+ Assistant (to the) General Manager: “Congress passed the consumer protection law, the No Surprises Act, with wide bipartisan support in 2020. It aimed to prevent unexpected charges for patients treated in the emergency room by a doctor who didn’t take their insurance.” Well, it didn’t quite work out as planned. $22,000 Per Hour: Assistants Use a Legislative Loophole to Outearn Surgeons. (Seems like good news for Dwight Schrute.)

+ Millionaire Apparent: The world added nearly a million new millionaires in 2025 — but most people got poorer.

+ Search for Rescues: “Jennifer Raymond waited until the dead of night to make her move. On April 12, the animal welfare advocate pushed through thick brush and cut a hole in her Fortuna neighbor’s fence, trespassing with one goal: to uncover the truth about the animal rescue next door.” It didn’t take much digging. She bought a NorCal Victorian, and then found a mass dog grave next door.

+ Put Some Pep in Your Step: FDA panel on peptides will include experts who promote the unproven chemicals favored by RFK Jr.

+ Gray Area: “Ford executives said they have hired 350 veteran engineers — some of them were former employees, while others had been working at suppliers — after artificial intelligence and automated systems failed to deliver the desired quality level ... To be clear, this doesn’t mean Ford is abandoning its AI plans entirely. Instead, it’s using the rehired employees — referred to as ‘gray beard’ engineers — to train younger staff and reprogram AI tools.”

6

Bottom of the News

Penalty kicks are stressful, stupid, genius, luck, skill, joyous, painful, ridiculous, and ridiculously awesome. They are the human condition. And we’ve already had some crazy ones in the World Cup knockout rounds. So you may be wondering how goalkeepers win penalty shootouts. “It’s not like you’re going, ‘Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.’” (It actually looks like they’re going eeny meeny at most...)

+ The World Cup is getting amazing. The World Cup After Hours with James Corden is a fun watch and makes many of the storylines more accessible for part-time football fans.

2

Hunter v Gatherers

There are still a few non-AI industries that are booming. For example: Corruption. “When Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Kazakhstan’s president at the St. Regis Hotel last September in New York, President Trump jumped in by phone as the men sealed a deal on a top priority for Washington.” But it wasn’t only a top priority for Washington. It was also a top priority for the Lutnicks and the Trumps. “Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history.” Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit. Yet, we spent a lot more time writing articles about Hunter than these gatherers...

+ Trump bought as much as $5 million in Axon stock before ICE sought a $220 million Taser deal. But don’t worry. No conflict here. “The White House has said that Trump’s assets are held in a trust managed by his children.” (Phew...)

3

Kingdom Coming

“The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday overturned a 91-year-old precedent that has prevented presidents from removing members of independent agencies at will. The decision represents a significant win for the Trump administration and a major expansion of the president’s control over parts of the governmentonce seen as a check on his powers.” (The 6-3 decision did limit the president’s ability to fire members of the Fed because even the Court’s extreme majority doesn’t want this lunatic to ruin their 401Ks.)

+ Sotomayor’s dissent: “The Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once-coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws ... [the country’s founding Framers] “never intended to give the President ‘the complete set of powers that the English Crown held, let alone more.’”

+ Supreme Court Upholds Mississippi Late-Arriving Mail-In Ballot Law. (By a 5-4 decision, they decided voting still counts.)

+ And a little reminder of who’s getting these royal powers: Supreme Court Lets $5 Million Sex Abuse Verdict Against Trump Stand.

+ NYT (Gift Article): The Major Supreme Court Decisions in 2026.

4

Back Room Deals

In an aging America, more elderly homeowners want to stay in their own homes for the duration. In an economically divided America, more young people are looking for good deals on a rental. Hence, a roommate opportunity. NYT (Gift Article): Older Adults Turn to ‘Golden Girls’ Housing. (Instead of Golden Girls, I’m going to opt for ‘The Office’ housing, and live out my final years making That’s what she said jokes on a beet farm.)

5

Extra, Extra

Aftershocks: “A 21-year-old man was pulled from rubble in La Guaira state after being trapped for 106 hours.” There are still a few miracles coming out of Venezuela, but mostly it’s grief for the victims and the missing, and a building anger toward the government. Here’s the last from BBC and The Guardian. And here is a collection of photos. Rescue and Recovery in Venezuela.

+ Driving Wedge: “It is rare that a single scientific paper shapes how people think about a challenge as daunting as climate change. But one, known as ‘Wedges,’ published 22 years ago by researchers at Princeton University, told an irresistible story. It made solving climate change seem possible, even simple.” But here’s the rub. The study was funded by BP. ProPublica: How Oil Execs Shaped a Landmark Climate Study.

+ Hit the Pine, Meet: “President Donald Trump said the Islamic Republic had requested a meeting with U.S. counterparts and that they planned to convene Tuesday in Doha, Qatar ... Tehran insisted it has not agreed to meet with the U.S.” And we don’t know who to believe. AP: US and Iran pause strikes but disagree over next steps on talks.

+ Buttigieg Case: “You’ve probably heard of ‘swatting.’ It’s a cruel and dangerous kind of hoax that has started happening more frequently in recent years ... Now imagine the same concept, but with Child Protective Services instead of a SWAT team. Hadn’t thought of that? Me neither, until a few days ago when a police officer and a CPS worker showed up at our home and politely asked to speak with me.” Pete Buttigieg: A Terrible Thing Happened to My Family. This is truly crazy. And NYT(Gift Article): “The former transportation secretary recounted being kept away from his 4-year-old twins overnight after an anonymous report accused him of posing a threat to them.”

+ We Had 250 Years to Prepare! “Propaganda has a way of being blissfully unconcerned with material reality, and the state fair is no exception. When I arrived Thursday morning, workers were still assembling fencing, and I spotted bits of metal on the floor in Kentucky. North Carolina had no power. At one point in the afternoon, the ‘Faith & Family’ pavilion—where the booths included the Museum of the Bible, Hillsdale College, and an evangelical-Christian stall labeled The Great Awakening—was entirely in the dark.” The Great American State Fair Isn’t Very Great. (It’s also basically empty...)

+ Puttz: “Interviews with 19 sources reveal two incidents of lewd language and unwanted advances, and the behavior that led to his departure from two additional golf clubs.” Phil Mickelson’s Long History of Misconduct.

+ A Little Bird Told Me: “A scientist who decoded the vocalizations that a bird uses to communicate has won a $100,000 prize for making progress towards a world in which humans can talk to the animals.”

6

Bottom of the News

“Americans tend to interpret discomfort as a failure of infrastructure, whereas Europeans seem much more willing to regard it as part of life. These contrasting views have resulted in far too much air-conditioning on one side and not remotely enough on the other.” Thomas Chatterton Williams: The Overlooked Reason Europe Doesn’t Have AC. Maybe this will convince them they need more: Heat forces yodelers at annual Swiss festival to sing in fountains.

2

Inmates Running Asylum

“The United States government has repeatedly extended these T.P.S. designations because these countries remain too dangerous to permit safe return. During this time, T.P.S. has allowed hundreds of thousands of Haitians and thousands of Syrians to live and work lawfully in the United States. But no longer.” NYT(Gift Article): This Decision Is a Slap in the Face to Immigrants Who Followed the Law. (Like many things in this era, it’s also a slap in the face to core American values.)

+ “Immigrants began making plans to sell or rent their homes, secure bank accounts and figure out thorny issues like child custody arrangements. Business owners started calculating how many days they can continue to employ workers whose legal status is set to expire. And nursing home leaders warned they would have fewer beds to offer if health aides are forced to leave the country.” WaPo (Gift Article): Nursing homes, factory owners and immigrants brace for fallout from Supreme Court ruling. “Some of those immigrants have lived in the United States for decades and said they feared being sent back to conflict-ridden homelands that they barely know and whose languages some do not speak.” (Feel safer?)

+ As I explained yesterday, this ruling and Trump’s asylum policies are as much about race as anything else. The White Elephant in the Room.

3

Om

The internet lost one of its favorite sons this week with the passing of Om Malik. Om was a web pioneer, had a philosopher’s touch when writing about tech, and was one of the first people to turn blogging into a business. More importantly, he was a really nice and caring guy whose impact can be seen in tributes from the many people he helped, advised, and supported over the years. Reading these tributes brings me back to the early days of the internet when we had so much hope for the web and the creative revolution it empowered. Back then, it really was a community, and that community gathered online once more to pay tribute to one of our own. In many ways, the early internet lost its soul. Om never lost his.

4

Weekend Whats

What to Watch: The Bear is out with its final season on Hulu. You might want to start with the newish series prequel episode that leads nicely into the final season: Gary.

+ What to Book: Elizabeth Strout is always great, as she is in her latest novel, The Things We Never Say, which meets one man at the intersection of very public changes and extremely private secrets. Bonus, it was copyedited (as are all of her novels) by the excellent Benjamin Dreyer!

+ What to Movie: “An anxious law school dropout (Matthew Shear) stumbles into a job babysitting his psychiatrist’s three granddaughters and falls for the girls’ mother (Amanda Peet), an actress in a rocky marriage.” Fantasy Life.

5

Extra, Extra

Nuclear Meltdown: “A desultory, grievance-filled speech on what should have been a joyous occasion. The last-minute cancellation of a rare bipartisan bill signing in favor of yet another push for doomed, unpopular legislation. A loud confrontation with members of his own party followed by sneering remarks about some of the nation’s oldest allies. And a nonsensical accusation that, if we have it right, blames the algae-filled Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool not on his rushed renovations but on knife-wielding vandals … and maybe Barack Obama. And that was just yesterday.” Jonathan Lemire and Russell Berman in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Meltdown. (He’s taking the country with him...)

+ Stink Flamingo: “Every day, for nearly a month running, tens of thousands of Albanians have taken to the streets, a peaceful mass movement seeking nothing less than a complete overthrow of the government.” MoJo: How Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Sparked a Movement to Overthrow the Government of Albania. “Their vision of swank resorts in protected areas set off a ‘Flamingo Revolution.’”

+ In the Room Where Shit Happened: John Bolton, former Trump national security adviser, pleads guilty in classified documents case. (According to experts, this case had some merit. Not as much merit as the classified documents case against Trump, but some...)

+ Venezuela Quakes: “Rescue workers are overwhelmed. They are pulling people out with their bare hands.” Thousands are still missing in the search for survivors following Venezuela’s back-to-back earthquakes. Here’s the latest from BBC.

+ Out With the Good: “In recent months, President Trump, upon advice from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, has relieved or forced the retirement of some of the finest officers that have ever served this nation.” William H. McRaven: Americans Deserve Answers From Hegseth.

+ Tricky Dick Measuring Contest: JD Vance, an admirer of Richard Nixon: “If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”

+ Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Catch me a Catch: “Dropping vaccination rates have caused some infectious diseases to roar back, putting infants, the elderly and immunocompromised people at particular risk, per public health experts. Data reported by the CDC shows that non-medical exemptions for childhood vaccines have reached an all-time high. At the same time, CDC reports show whooping cough and other vaccine-preventable diseases rising — and in the case of measles, growing to outbreaks not seen in decades.” But once-solved diseases are not all that’s in the air. So is love. WaPo (Gift Article): Anti-vaxxers are coupling up on apps for ‘Unjected’ singles. (This could really save Darwin some work...)

6

Feel Good Friday

“For the nation’s semiquincentennial, we asked Times Opinion columnists and writers to pluck a moment from this complicated history that represents the best of what this country can be. What are the accomplishments, movements and ideas that continue to inspire us? Here are 16 nominations for America’s highlight reel.” NYT (Gift Article): It’s America’s Birthday. What Are We Celebrating? (For one thing, we don’t look a day over 249.)

+ “Rob, who repairs virtually unfixable bicycles for free and gives them away in his community, is working to keep bikes out of landfills. But he’s also working on something else: feeling useful again, and figuring out what his brain is capable of after a catastrophic accident.” After a brain injury, he found purpose fixing bikes no one else would bother with.

+ Buildings May Soon Have ‘Immune Systems’ That Fight Airborne Disease.

+ “Thirty-five nations are working together to build a massive magnetic fusion device in France to prove the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy.” Photos: Building the World’s Largest Fusion Reactor.

+ Dua Lipa Opening Physical Library for Banned and Censored Books.

+ Dad Gave Up His Dream Car to Raise 6 Sons. Decades Later, His Youngest Bought It Back. (Maybe my kids can find my old Walkman...)

+ “You didn’t buy it because it looked enticing. Not because of its retro pink-and-gold packaging, and certainly not because of the photos on the box, which make the muffins look like tortilla-chip-sprinkled cups of raw ground beef. You bought it because your oldest kid is about to graduate from high school, and you’re shaky on your feet. You’re lucky you didn’t pull the box off the shelf and collapse into a freezer full of toaster waffles.” Trader Joe’s Strawberry & Corn Flake Muffin & Loaf Cake Mix.

2

Decisions, Decisions

In other SCOTUS decisions announced today, the Court Rejected a Lawsuit Alleging Roundup Weedkiller Caused Cancer and overturned a Hawaii gun law “that barred carrying concealed weapons without permission onto private property open to the public.”

+ Here’s a look at The Major Supreme Court Decisions in 2026.

+ Few SCOTUS decisions have had as big an impact on modern America as Citizens United. We’re seeing that impact play out bigly as we approach the midterms. WaPo (Gift Article): Meet the megadonors pouring more than $1.3 billion into the 2026 election.

3

French Toasting

Americans who travel to Europe and complain about the shortage of AC and the lack of ice in their beverages might be relieved to learn that even the French are starting to come around. But it wasn’t your complaining that convinced them. “A summer escape to Paris, at least in the American mind, evokes a certain set of images: quiet strolls along the canals, long hours in bookstores and museums, a pleasant park bench, a glass of wine. Those pleasures are now contending with one of the most brutal and dangerous heat waves that Europe has faced in decades, a muggy, enervating stretch of weather that has forced millions of people across Europe, many of them in homes without air-conditioning and with few options for refuge, to endure triple-digit temperatures.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): Perhaps France Should Reconsider AC. (The tricky part is that more AC causes more climate change which causes the need for more AC, and so on...)

4

We Won’t Swallow Our Pride

This headline probably won’t surprise you much: FIFA clashes with Iran, Egypt over rainbow symbols at World Cup Pride Match, considering the two countries playing the game criminalize homosexuality. But you might be surprised that we have a Pride controversy in San Francisco. It started when four Giants pitchers responded to Pride Night by writing Bible verses on their caps. And it’s only gotten worse from there as the Giants organization has utterly failed to address the situation for their inclusive fanbase in a city where the rainbow flag was first unfurled on this day in 1978. “The team’s president of baseball operations and face of the franchise refused to comment on the Pride Night fallout, which was the result of three pitchers adding a Bible verse to their Pride cap and another choosing not to wear the hat for the June 12 game. Posey declined to speak about his own experience as a member of the team that has celebrated and recognized the gay community for the past 32 years.” Ann Killion: Buster Posey didn’t just fail to meet the moment, he made Giants’ Pride controversy worse. There’s a decent chance Posey and other Giants brass are covering their ass to avoid the wrath of Trump’s justice department. But these fraught times are precisely the reason why it’s so important that leaders, especially in San Francisco, stand up for inclusivity and decency. I’m a season ticket holder and an addicted fan, and I turn the channel whenever one of the Giants’ Phobic Four takes the mound, and I know others who have turned off the Giants altogether. The team can’t ignore the fans and the Pride Day controversy. It may be your team, but it’s our town.

5

Extra, Extra

Venezuela Quakes: “At least 188 people were killed and more than 1,500 injured in back-to-back quakes on Wednesday, the president of Venezuela’s national assembly said. The toll from the quakes, which struck the country’s populous northern states, was virtually certain to rise as rescuers began to reach the hardest-hit areas.” Here’s the latest on the earthquakes that hit Venezuela. And from The Guardian: Some of the scenes of destruction.

+ Post Dobbs: “You might have guessed that when more than a dozen states banned abortion, there would be fewer abortions happening in those states and that the overall number of abortions would go down. That’s not what has happened.” 4 surprising things to know about abortion in America since Dobbs.

+ A Trip Up Memory Lane: Apple is so big and so powerful that they can usually hold off trends like higher memory prices. Not this time. “Apple Inc. shares fell after it raised prices of all Macs, iPads, home devices and the Vision Pro on Thursday, seeking to offset cost hikes caused by an unprecedented shortage of memory chips and storage ... An Apple spokesperson said that ‘the rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage’ and that the company has ‘never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.’”

+ For Whom the Toll Tolls: “The Islamic Republic estimates that charging for security, safety and environmental services in the strait would bring in $40 billion a year in revenue for states involved, according to officials familiar with the matter. The idea, if implemented, would give Tehran cash flow and control that it didn’t command before the war.” WSJ (Gift Article): Iran Estimates $40 Billion Windfall From Reopening Hormuz With Gulf States. Remember, nothing about the new deal that emerges can be assessed without comparing it to the deal Trump foolishly tore up. Here’s some background on that in a good interview of one of the people who negotiated it, John Kerry.

+ OMG: “Texas is on the verge of passing a sweeping, new state book list, which will establish for the first time a common set of books that millions of students across the state must read, including excerpts from the Bible.” NYT (Gift Article): Texas Public School Students May Soon Be Required to Read the Bible.

+ The Grass Got Greener: “I’ve been working on a golf book for the past two years, and I can tell you the phone-app wrecking of the sport is getting worse. Jabronis have realized they can’t do anything at an NFL or NBA game to improve their chances of cashing in, but they sure can at a golf tournament, where the traditional cocoon of silence before a shot is just waiting to be trashed.” Rick Reilly: Heckling from app-wielding bettors is wrecking golf. The age of betting on everything is going to impact more than just golf.

6

Bottom of the News

“Lebowski used to stand out because he didn’t hold a steady job. Today, that makes him mainstream. Some 10% of California adults are unemployed or underemployed, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. On top of that, another 11% of the state’s workforce is primarily self-employed, and nearly two-thirds do independent contracting or own unincorporated businesses, like the Dude.” The Big Lebowskization of California. “Aging. Jobless. Drinking Canned White Russians and Smoking Pot. Golden State Residents Resemble the Dude.” (There’s really no need to get personal...)

In the grand scheme of things, the Reflecting Pool saga doesn’t amount to much, but since it’s getting so much attention, it might be worth ascribing some meaning to an otherwise meaningless story. First, it’s a reminder that Trump was never all that good at those things he was known for definitely being good at (real estate, construction, building things, the still long-awaited infrastructure week). Second, it’s an example of the onslaught of seemingly irresistible stories that come at such a feverish pace that they bump other (often more important) stories from our battered public consciousness. The swamp, it turns out, is draining us. (For example... Algae story: not big. Failed war in Iran: big). Third, the increased security and fencing put around the Reflecting Pool to protect it from supposed vandalism typifies the longstanding Trump tradition of using real resources to solve fake issues. Every second wasted on an imagined problem is a second not spent on a real one. Fourth, the media’s overcoverage of this story isn’t actually its biggest failing. It’s that we’re getting headlines like this: Was the Reflecting Pool vandalized? Experts cast doubt on Trump’s claims. And this: Trump Blames Vandals for Reflecting Pool Problems. Internal Records Tell Another Story. Headlines STILL present a possibility that a nonstop liar could be telling the truth. It’s fully insane. It’s Onion-esque, but real. I half-expected the byline to be Al G. Bloom. And fifth, what could be more illustrative of this era than a narcissist so malignant that he actually ruined his own reflecting pool?

Circling back to that night in 1990, my dad and I won a lot of money, the Taj Mahal eventually went bankrupt, and that phony real estate developer Donald Trump was never heard from again. (If that sounds like fake news, I blame the vandals who accessed my laptop keyboard...)

2

A Teachable Foment

“This was a discovery war. Both sides treated it as a live rehearsal, learning the things you can only learn by fighting: what the missiles and drones can really do, where the air defenses hold and where they leak, how the next one might be fought. More conflicts are coming, soon enough, and everyone fought this one with that in mind. The problem is the asymmetry in what was learned. We learned tactics, which depreciate. The other side learned something strategic, which compounds. They learned that the West is not built for discomfort. One oil shock and a single election cycle’s worth of patience, and the most powerful military coalition on earth stood down a regime it had on the ropes. And consider who the opponent was. Iran was close to the weakest adversary we could have faced: isolated, under sanctions for decades, its air defenses degraded, no nuclear weapon yet in hand, no major power fighting at its side, and a regime its own people had risen against months earlier. The conditions will never be this favorable again. If this is what our resolve looks like against Iran, the question every capital is now asking is the obvious one. What does it look like against China, with a peer military, an integrated economy we cannot simply sanction, and the patience of a state that thinks in decades?” Dror Berman with a very interesting look at what we, and the world, just learned. A Discovery War, Not a Peace Deal.

+ “It reflected not only the errors of an unusually feckless administration, but the accumulation of poor decisions and inadequate or misdirected investments by the Pentagon and Congress, civilian and military leaders alike. It was caused only partly by the distractions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but resulted even more from decades of loose thinking and self-serving assumptions about the changing character of war.” Eliot A. Cohen in The Atlantic (Gift Article): War and Consequences.

3

Afford Expedition

“The latest developments leave the first major piece of housing legislation to reach the president’s desk since the financial crisis in limbo after it passed Congress by wide margins and, for now, deny Trump and congressional Republicans a key affordability-related win ahead of November’s midterm elections.” Trump abruptly halts housing affordability legislation, holds bill hostage in effort to pass voter ID law. (Even legislation that is good for the GOP isn’t as important to the administration as legislation that can unfairly tilt the election.)

+ Very likely related: Federal judge bars Trump from implementing proof of citizenship requirement to vote.

4

Continental Break Fast

“Emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from human activity are driving the planet’s long-term increase in temperatures, which is helping hot spells reach ever-greater extremes of severity and duration. But local factors determine how all that excess heat is distributed around the world, and why temperatures are rising faster in some places than others.” NYT(Gift Article): Why Europe Is the Fastest-Warming Continent.

+ And when we say warming, we mean warming. On Wednesday, at least 94 million people in Europe were expected to experience temperatures above 95°F. It’s effing June.

5

Extra, Extra

Apocalypse, Now: “Five years into the civil war, far from the reach of international aid groups, we found a heartland that felt lost in an apocalypse. From the skies above dusty villages and patchworks of farmland plowed by emaciated oxen, the Myanmar military’s instruments of death killed with chaotic impunity. In its isolation, Anyar suffers from crippling shortages, too, of weapons, guerrillas and, increasingly, hope.” Hannah Beech and Daniel Berehulak with some incredible, and incredibly depressing, reporting as we reach year five of Myanmar’s civil war. NYT (Gift Article): The War Forgotten by the World Is an Apocalypse Now.

+ Give it Arrest: “A growing number of conservative leaders are starting to argue that the only way to stop women from ending their pregnancies could be to arrest them.”

+ Pay to Play: WSJ (Gift Article): How a $45 Million Donation Brought Larry Ellison Deeper Into Trump’s Circle. (I mean, the explanation is right there in the headline...)

+ On a Wing and a Mayor: “All the winning candidates share Mr. Mamdani’s progressive economic platform, and they each ran campaigns that focused intently on ending American support for Israel, a sign of how far public opinion has shifted on the issue, even in New York.” Mamdani Emerges as Kingmaker, Pushing His Slate to a Primary Sweep.

+ Bet Offensive: Still don’t believe me when I keep saying that prediction market apps are a detriment to society? Maybe this will convince you. Mark Zuckerberg Directed Meta to Create a Prediction Markets App.

+ Reversing History: “The welcome bags include a report commissioned by Mr. Trump during his first term that downplays the role of slavery in the country’s founding, and a children’s book accusing South Africa’s government of ‘favoring the Black population.’” NYT (Gift Article): A Look Inside the Welcome Bags Planned for White South African Refugees.

+ Tall Order: What Messi lacks in height, he more than makes up for in statue height. “In Cutral Col, a remote town in Patagonia, Messi was honored with (literally) the largest monument to his greatness, yet. Local artists unveiled an 85-foot statue of the soccer legend.” (We all know there’s only one foot that matters...)

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Bottom of the News

Basic Training Meets Basic Science: “The outbreak flared just two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth abandoned a decades-long requirement for flu shots.” Military branches restore flu shot requirement after virus swept through base.

2

Our Days of Infamy

Over the weekend, I visited the WWII Museum in New Orleans. The examples of leadership, unity, strategy, and deep alliance building you see in that museum stand in such sharp contrast to this American moment, dominated by what I described last week as the Trump Doctrine, which combines amorality and incompetence to empower enemies and betray allies, as it dilutes American power in a Dunning-Kruger stew of bluster, arrogance, and stupidity. It’s hard to imagine FDR feuding with an ally over a lie he told about a photo request or interrupting negotiations led by an already in-over-his-head vice president with threats to start bombing again. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” Mr. Trump said of the peace deal last week. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD.” Not exactly the day of infamy speech there. As Vance Leads Iran Negotiations, Trump Creates Disruptions in His Path.

+ So far, we’re getting conflicting details from Iran and the US when it comes to control of the Strait, frozen Iranian assets, and nuclear inspections. So basically everything. Here’s the latest from the NYT.

+ All Trump’s bluster aside, it’s hard to envision an outcome in which Iran’s monstrous regime isn’t more monstrous moving forward. NYT (Gift Article): Iranian Singer Sentenced to 74 Lashes for Performing Without Hijab.

3

Reflecting the Times

The seriousness of the Iran disaster and the damage it (along with much else) has done to America’s global standing is somehow sharing headlines with the president passing the buck for his Reflecting Pool clown show onto imaginary vandals. “’They put, somebody said, fertilizer in the water,’ Mr. Trump said. ‘If you put fertilizer in the water, you get algae. But somebody said they might have put fertilizer. They did something to create the algae.’” Trump on the Shabby Condition of the Reflecting Pool: Not My Fault. It’s worth noting that even Narcissus himself didn’t f-ck up the reflecting pool.

4

Moving the Goal

“If you’re remotely soccer-aware, you’d already heard of the majesty of a Leo Messi-led Argentina, the artistry of a Kylian Mbappé-led France, the relentlessness of an Erling Haaland-led Norway. But until you see those nations, and those stars, in action, you can’t really comprehend how amazing they truly are. America is now getting the full Messi-Mbappé-Haaland experience, and it’s every bit as astounding as we’ve been told. How lucky are we to get to see generational glory play out right in front of us?” The Big 3 are somehow delivering more than anybody could have imagined.

+ “The two mid-half pauses for hydration (and advertisements) have been met with increasingly loud boos from crowds who are frustrated at FIFA turning matches into de facto four-quarter affairs. And the best way to get them to stop booing is, apparently, to get them to start singing.” The not-so-silent war being fought in World Cup stadiums: Stadium DJs vs. hydration break boos.

+ “For fans and players, [hydration breaks are] not worth much at all, and have engendered complaints they break up the flow of the game and topple decades of strategy.” For Fox Sports, they’re worth a lot. A whole lot.

+ “Human annotators in Brazil, Cambodia, and the Philippines are tracking every movement in the football tournament for teams, broadcasters, and the betting industry.” The AI-powered World Cup runs on thousands of data workers.

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Extra, Extra

Fake Dues: “In his videos, George Makihara appears to have a lucrative side hustle making bets on Polymarket. In January, the college student posted a video that showed him winning $100,000 on a wager that President Trump would publicly say the word ‘McDonald’s’ that month. The bet was one of 145 that Makihara appeared to place on Polymarket’s website between January and mid-May, based on his videos—bets adding up to almost $410,000. But none of those bets were real.” WSJ (Gift Article): They Looked Like They Were Getting Rich on Polymarket—but None of It Was Real. Pay attention to who the prediction markets are targeting: “Makihara, who declined to comment, is one of dozens of mostly college-age creators Polymarket paid to film themselves making fake trades and sometimes scoring fake wins.”

+ Lettuce Try Again: “Six Prime Ministers have now resigned since the Brexit vote, in 2016. The sight of the lectern being carried out onto Downing Street, followed by the short, poignant farewell address, has taken on a ritual familiarity, with each departure colored by particular dismay.” The New Yorker: The Torture Chamber of British Politics Crushes Its Latest Prime Minister. And from TNR: Ten Years After Brexit, Every Grim Prediction Has More Than Come True.

+ Dread Nought Decision: A SCOTUS obsessed with religious rights appears to have limits. Color us shocked. “The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a devout Rastafarian who sought damages after Louisiana prison officials cut his dreadlocksdespite his claim that it violated his religious rights ... The ruling saw the conservative majority depart from its regular support for religious claims, although recent high-profile wins tended to involve conservative Christians.”

+ Eifel Towering Inferno: The European heat waves are getting hotter, coming earlier, and arriving in places not used to them. Forty drown in France as people seek relief from Europe’s heatwave.

+ Behind the Scenes: “Mr. Davis worked to develop his business instincts — and his ear — by studying the Billboard charts and analyzing what made a song a hit. He came to believe in the power of what he called contemporary music: the unabashedly commercial pop that results when a record executive plays matchmaker in the studio, connecting the right singers with the right material.” The studying paid off. NYT (Gift Article): Clive Davis, Hitmaking Titan of the Music Industry, Dies at 94. And, the absolutely great TV director James Burrows (Taxi, Cheers, Will and Grace) died at 85.

+ Real Company, Meme Stock: “SpaceX is obviously not Dogecoin. Its rocket business is a genuine success story, as is Starlink. But the company’s appeal, particularly in the face of setbacks, is also reliant on a combination of story and Musk’s own image in ways that are not necessarily connected to reality. Musk has frequently set unrealistic timelines for projects, including putting a spacecraft on Mars by 2018.” Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Myth of SpaceX.

+ It’s Never Too Late To Stop: “While divorce rates have been dropping across age groups in recent years, the exception to that trend is among Americans ages 65 and up. The reasons are complicated, but it’s becoming clear that some Gen Xers and baby boomers are increasingly unwilling to stay in what sociologists call ‘empty shell marriages.’”

6

Bottom of the News

“For most of human history, the threats our nervous system processed were local. A neighbouring tribe. A drought. The illness of a child we personally knew. Information about distant places would barely arrive, and if it did, it was mainly irrelevant. In 2026, the same neurological system is being asked to absorb a war in one region, a financial shock in another, a climate disaster in a third and a violent crime in a fourth, all before lunchtime.” Why 40 per cent of people are avoiding the news. OK, OK, so I’m pushing a product no one wants. Maybe there’s a workaround. Or at least a reach-around. Apparently, newsletters are The Hot New Place for Singles.

2

Sticks and Drones

Ukraine knows all too well the American administration’s doctrine of going soft on enemies while holding back support for allies. Trump essentially pushed for a surrender in that war, too. Luckily, Ukrainians (and their European allies, who understand that Putin is also not “nice” to deal with) aren’t going along with that program. Ukraine Bombards Moscow With One of the Biggest Drone Attacks of the War. “No deaths were immediately reported. But the large-scale assault seemed likely to feed fears among Russians that the Kremlin’s ability to isolate society from the impacts of the war was sharply eroding.”

+ Inspired by Ukraine, and worried by China: Taiwan teaches its citizens how to fly drones.

3

Hacky Track

“With some small, high-stakes exceptions—such as software used on the International Space Station or nuclear submarines—code is written and deployed without much rigorous testing. If a bug is reported, it gets patched ... Such a relaxed security posture has been more or less fine because discovering vulnerabilities is hard and skilled hackers are few in number: Either nobody found the bugs or nobody was able to exploit them. But traditional cybersecurity methods don’t cut it anymore.” AI might feel like it gives you some superpowers. But it also gives them to the bad guys. Matteo Wong: Assume You Will Be Hacked.

4

The Tenacity of Hope

Meanwhile, back in decent America, the Obama Presidential Center opened today in Chicago. It turns out some presidents don’t have any trouble attracting A-list talent (Bono, Bruce, The Roots, Stevie Wonder, Jennifer Hudson, Eddie Vedder, etc) or former presidents to celebrate unity and what makes America actually great. Here are live updates from NBC, and the stream from YouTube. It takes a little more audacity to have hope these days. This might help.

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Extra, Extra

High Court: “The U.S. Supreme Court found Thursday that the government’s prosecution of a marijuana user from Texas for owning guns was inconsistent with the Second Amendment. The decision was unanimous.” Supreme Court sides with a marijuana user who was barred from owning guns. (On the plus side, his aim probably isn’t all that good...)

+ How The Doge Bites: “Their mother died in January, their father in February. Now these brothers are in the process of figuring out the basics of living alone ... Both parents were HIV positive but had been able to survive because of the daily medications they took to prevent the virus from progressing. When the U.S. overhauled foreign aid at the start of President Trump’s second term, there were major cuts to global health — and disruptions to the U.S.’s flagship efforts to combat HIV/AIDS globally called PEPFAR or the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.” NPR: These 3 brothers lost their parents to AIDS. Now they struggle to make it on their own.

+ What’s Up, Grok? “This enthusiasm feels unprecedented. Health care is typically among the last fields to adopt a new technology; I still use a pager, and I send faxes on a regular basis. (Younger readers can ask Claude to explain what these things are.) A tendency toward simple tech is in part a product of doctors’ safety-focused culture: We know that any ill-timed glitch has the potential to turn deadly. But these days, clinicians are allowed—encouraged, even—to run wild with the latest software.” AI Is Taking Over Hospitals. (It’s only a matter of time before AI says there are no appointments available for a few months...)

+ See If I Care: “Some had parents who never said ‘I love you’; who never tried very hard; who never took an interest. Others had parents who hurt them. Many were harmed in the usual, derivative ways — with belts and closed fists and neglect and humiliation — but some had parents who were more inventive in their infliction of pain. A woman whose father would swing her sister around by her ponytail. A man whose drunken mother used to wake him up at night to tell him that he was a ‘piece of shit’ for hours on end, so he couldn’t sleep.” NYT Magazine (Gift Article): The Pain of Caring for a Parent Who Abused You.

+ On Parade: Here are some highlights from the Knicks parade in NYC. Owner James Dolan announced that the Knicks would be the first NBA team to visit the Trump White House. I guess we’ll find out how the players feel about that.

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Bottom of the News

American diplomacy ain’t dead yet. Ranch dressing has been such a hit with World Cup visitors that the TSA felt the need to remind people about how much liquid can be stored in carry-on baggage. Please avoid chugging your ranch.

+ Scheduling reminder: NextDraft will be off until Tuesday. Have a good weekend.

2

Nice Going...

“We’re dealing with people that I think are very rational, I mean, they were nice to deal with.” That’s how Donald Trump described his Iranian counterparts, the regime members he was determined to remove (until he wasn’t). I’m guessing victims of the regime’s terror, countries like Israel that the regime has long been determined to destroy, and soldiers tasked with risking their lives to fight against it, are surprised to hear how nice they are to deal with. But not as surprised and saddened as the Iranian people. At the beginning of the war, Trump said, “To the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand.” Instead, “the war without has since compounded Iran’s war within, in ways that the world has hardly reckoned with.” Laura Secor in The Atlantic (Gift Article) on The Betrayal of the Iranian People. “’Now is the time to seize control of your destiny, and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach,’ Trump told the Iranian people the night he started the war. ‘This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.’ What a misreading of the moment that was. War has instead done what it usually does: empowered the powerful, rallied the faithful, and allowed an apparatus of repression to present its imperatives in terms of national security.” (Read the first couple paragraphs of this article and see if nice is the first word that comes to mind...)

+ “Just this winter, Trump had promised the Iranian people that the tyrants who ruled them would be gone. But now? ‘I never cared about regime change,’ he told reporters, waving away his failure to achieve a primary strategic goal by denying that it had ever been a goal at all.” Tom Nichols: Trump Does Not Understand the War He Lost. (It turns out that reality is not so nice to deal with.)

+ Meanwhile, Trump now says, MOU with Iran ‘not final,’ we’ll go ‘back to dropping bombs’ if talks fail. “If I don’t like it, if they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head, okay?”

+ “Iran affirms that it will never seek, develop, or acquire nuclear weapons.” That’s the key line from the agreement that Trump tore up during his first term. And he’s been bombing and bombastic in an effort to get us back anywhere close to that deal again. Here’s the Memorandum of Understanding, annotated by the WSJ (Gift Article).

3

Boom Box

Forget cloud nine. Today’s cloud goes to eleven. Data centers are generally unpopular these days. Particularly so among those who live within shouting (or thrumming) distance of one. NYT (Gift Article): The Cloud Has Sound: The Unrelenting and Unseen Cost of A.I. Data Centers. “Yes, the cloud has a sound, and some who live closest to data centers that emit the noise have reached their wit’s end trying to block it out. Residents in three small cities last month filed lawsuits against data centers specifically about noise.”

+ When it comes to these lawsuits, some datacenter owners have a very big thing on their side. The US government. D.O.J. Seeks to Halt Air Pollution Lawsuit Against xAI Data Center.

4

Words Worth

“For the past six years, Casey Harrell’s life has felt like a slow-motion car crash. At 42, he began to lose his voice to the neurodegenerative disease ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. His world shrank as his ability to sing to his young daughter, give a presentation for work or tell a joke eroded. Three years later, researchers at the University of California at Davis placed experimental implants in his brain. He gained something incredible: ‘The ability to talk from my brain.’” WaPo (Gift Article): Two years, 2 million words: How a brain implant transformed an ALS patient’s life.

5

Extra, Extra

Snap Decision: “As a House committee debated President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy bill last year, Republican backers repeatedly emphasized that its changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, wouldn’t affect vulnerable people.” Apparently, hungry kids aren’t vulnerable anymore. ProPublica: More Than 770,000 Children Are No Longer Receiving SNAP Benefits After Trump Changes Federal Food Program.

+ Friendly Fire? “President Donald Trump on Wednesday derailed the confirmation process of his own nominee to head the nation’s intelligence agencies, an extraordinary move that upended Senate efforts to renew a crucial surveillance program that expired last week and fueled fresh tensions with fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill.” Trump delays his own national intelligence nominee. (It’s all about pushing the voter ID bill because it’s all about finding ways to tilt the midterms.)

+ Going Steady: After all the attacks on Jerome Powell for not cutting interest rates, the first Fed meeting with Kevin Warsh at the helm ends with rates holding steady. And they may rise later in the year.

+ Serial Sentencing: “The sentence, the maximum the New York law allows, was handed down by Judge Timothy Mazzei after a morning of grueling victim’s family impact statements on the effect Heuermann’s murder spree had on the children and relatives of his victims.” Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann sentenced to life in prison without parole.

+ Messi Job: “Soccer, like much of life, is a team sport, and teams don’t go far unless there’s unselfish cooperation, etc. Everyone knows what to say: no player is bigger than the group, blah, blah, blah. Same in the workplace—don’t eat all the doughnuts in the kitchen, Jason, they’re supposed to be for everyone, blah, blah, blah. Every coach, every boss, you’ve ever had says stuff like this. They’re right. They’re mostly right. Some days…it really is all about the stars.” And the stars showed up big time in early World Cup games, including a ridiculous hat trick from Messi. Messi! Mbappé! Haaland! The World Cup Gets a Starry, Scoring-Filled Spectacular.

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Bottom of the News

“We’ve been here for over 30 years, and we’ve never seen anything like it ... We tripled St. Patrick’s Day.” How do you outdrink St. Patrick’s Day in Boston? Inviting Scots to town is a good start. (These are the only kind of World Cup hydration breaks that no one is complaining about.)

+ Gromit: Wallace’s long-suffering canine companion to tell all in memoir.

2

Need Some Cyber Space?

You might imagine that the best place to train to be a cybercrime fighter would be right here in front of your laptop. But, there may be a better place. The FBI built its own replica small town to simulate real-world cyberattacks. “Dubbed the Kinetic Cyber Range, the FBI’s small purpose-built town opened in February 2025 and features fully furnished houses, a hotel, a gas station and grocery mart, a courthouse, a hospital, and a power company — complete with roads and traffic lights — designed to mimic a real U.S. community.”

3

Orange is the New Green

“The profound vulnerability of countries throughout Asia, Europe and elsewhere that depend on imported energy is supercharging the hunt for alternatives. In some places, like South Korea and Japan, that has led to an increased use of dirtier fuels like coal. But over the longer term, this energy shock — the second in just four years — is likely to accelerate a transition to renewables like solar and wind as well as nuclear power.” Could Trump have inadvertently become the leader on renewables? NYT (Gift Article): The Iran War Permanently Altered the Global Economy. Or as Ian Bremmer explains: “We could look back on this in 10 years and see that orange is the new green. Trump will have done more for renewable energy unintentionally than any other president in U.S. history.” Maybe Bremmer is right: Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool turns green after surface painted.

+ “The United States, for its part, looks weaker in the eyes of the world. The American military has shown itself unable to quash a much smaller opponent even as it burned through many of its long-range precision missiles and interceptors. The outcome damages this country’s ability to deter other potential adversaries. To begin to repair the damage, the United States would be wise to mend alliances in Europe, the Middle East and Asia that have been frayed by the war’s military and economic effects. The Pentagon will also need to modernize and prepare for the wars of the future. Neither is likely to happen under President Trump.” NYT Editorial Board (Gift Article): President Trump Lost This War. (This provides a pretty good summary of what just about every expert is saying. Even GOP officials aren’t getting on boardwith the memorandum of understanding - and no one has even been able to see it yet.)

+ Aside from the Iranian people who were promised that “help is on the way,” the person most concerned about this deal is probably Bibi Netanyahu. For years, he looked like one of the few Trump partners who wouldn’t end up under the bus. Maybe there are no exceptions. From saying Netanyahu has no f-cking judgment, to freezing him out of negotiations, to complaining about him at this week’s G7, Bibi seems to be getting run over by the wagon he hitched himself to.

+ Trump insists that the relationship with Bibi is still good, adding, “Without me there would be no Israel, because no other president was willing to do what I did.” Here’s the latest from The Guardian.

+ A headline for the ages from Politico: Trump is turning his attention back to Ukraine — and Kyiv’s allies are worried. (Somehow, Ukraine has managed to overcome both Putin and Trump over the past year and a half. It’s an incredible story.)

4

In Convenience

“The town that hosts the world’s largest convenience store smells like ass. For many decades, Luling, Texas, was regionally famous for its excellent barbecue, locally grown supersized watermelons, and the unpleasant rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulfide, the toxic and highly flammable byproduct of its abundant oil wells. Some locals swear they can’t detect the odor; others profess to love the smell of their own farts, bragging that it’s the ‘smell of money.’ But today, Luling might be best known for a very, very large gas station. Four miles southeast of the town of about six thousand, rising out of the brush alongside Interstate 10, is the mother of all convenience stores—the flagship of Buc-ee’s, a Texas-based chain of ‘travel centers’ that has become a cult phenomenon and one of the state’s most eminent brand ambassadors. The 75,593-square-foot travel center—with its 120 gas pumps, more than two hundred employees, fifty-one bathroom stalls, nineteen urinals attended 24/7 by workers who flit in and out of an ‘employees only’ janitor’s closet, food court of cowboy-hat-wearing staff chopping brisket, clerks chirping ‘Welcome in” to every visitor, stacks of deer corn, $1,499 deer blinds, and racks of in-house gummy bears and jerky—has the distinct odor of caramel-coated Beaver Nuggets. But really, it smells like money.” In The Baffler, Forrest Wilder takes us on a unique summer road trip: Leave it to Beaver.

5

Extra, Extra

There’s No Gravity Up Here: “We can say with certainty that this valuation makes absolutely no sense today. People are buying SpaceX ​in ​the expectation that others will buy too and push the price ​higher - that’s speculation.” Whatever you call it, the stock is going up. SpaceX vaults past Microsoft and Amazon’s market value as post IPO momentum builds.

+ In Fact It’s a Gas: “For years, federal health officials have warned about the risks associated with a supplement derived from the leaves of kratom trees that adherents say can kill pain or boost energy. Sold in gas stations across America, kratom has been linked to liver toxicity, seizures and thousands of deaths.” So this won’t surprise you. How an Addictive Gas Station Drug Found Allies in Trump’s Cabinet.

+ Death Notes: “The picture drawn most clearly by this new information is not the elaborate conspiracy that his murder would have required; rather, it is an unfortunate though not improbable convergence of longstanding institutional failures, human errors and chance events, which created an opportunity for Epstein to act on what was by then a well-established desire that he had already tried and failed to realize.” NYT Mag (Gift Article): The Untold Story of Jeffrey Epstein’s Death. (Now, let’s release the untold stories from his life.)

+ If There Are No Objections... “The Justice Department’s senior leadership closed an investigation of Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery before career staffers who were concerned about the acquisition had an opportunity to object, according to people familiar with the matter.” (I’m beginning to think there’s some corruption going on at the Justice Dept.)

+ Tarped: “President Donald Trump’s name came off the Kennedy Center in the dead of night Saturday. More than 60 hours later, almost no one has seen it gone.” Trump’s name is off the Kennedy Center, but a tarp is hiding the proof.

+ News Re-Cap: Giants baseball has hit a real low point. And it’s not because the team has been terrible. In a controversy that only seems to be building, “several Giants players responded to Pride Night on Friday by writing Bible verses on their caps.” Grant Brisbee: Giants pitchers’ Bible verses on Pride Night caps show how they’ve missed the point. A lot of fans are furious. So is just about every beat writer. Giants pitchers didn’t just deface Pride uniforms. They alienated their fans and city. Mike Krukow, our beloved broadcaster: “I would just hope they would understand the demographic of San Francisco and respect people for who they are. What you do to your uniform, that has weight to it. You can offend people. And why would you do that?” (A question for the era.)

+ Winning Tie: “It took Cape Verde goalkeeper Vozinha all of his 40 years on Earth to make his World Cup debut. The long, long wait was worth every fleeting second. Vozinha recorded seven saves Monday, holding Spain’s star-studded lineup to a shocking 0-0 draw.” In the shock of the World Cup so far, 40-year-old Cape Verde goalkeeper keeps favorite Spain to 0 goals at World Cup. (He also managed to pick up about 7 millionInstagram followers.) And from The Guardian: How Algeria won over a Kansas town – and became the World Cup’s unlikeliest love affair.

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Bottom of the News

A company once ahead of its time is trying to turn back the clock. “Although the phone has Internet connectivity, it blocks web browsers and social media.” Commodore’s newest gadget is a flip phone that blocks social media and browsers.

+ In 1992, “McDonald’s replaced the fried apple pie with a baked version in most of the U.S., responding to growing consumer awareness of fat and cholesterol consumption.” McDonald’s is serving fried apple pie again for America’s 250th birthday. (Sounds pretty good, but I’m still celebrating with a Safeway Cake.)

+ Self-pleasure before bed is linked to falling asleep faster and sleeping better. (OK! OK! ... I’ll try it.)