Good morning! They don’t call Washington, D.C., “Hollywood for ugly people” for no reason. Now it seems the Hollywood part of that equation is dwindling. Saturday’s annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner won’t have the traditional comedian emcee or the celeb attendees. The weekend is still jammed with glitzy (well, glitzy-ish) events, but the focus will instead be on celebrating journalism and the free press.

Anyway, now that we’re all experts in ancient Vatican religious rituals after watching “Conclave” this week, let’s take a look at the news.

EDUCATION

🍎 Welcome back, student loans!

Well, the bad news is that student loan payments are back. They were already back, but now they’re back back. The other bad news is that there’s nothing any of us can do about it. This is going to kill the avocado toast industry.

Beginning Monday, May 5, the U.S. Department of Education will resume collecting payments on federal student loans that are in default. The pandemic-era pause on payments ended in September 2023, but ignoring those payments sent borrowers into default. Typically, that would mean consequences like a tanking credit score and garnished wages. Instead, well, nothing happened. That’s about to change.

• If borrowers in default (more than 270 days late) don’t begin making payments, The Man is prepared to get his cash via garnished wages, tax refunds, and more.

• More than 5 million borrowers are currently in default. Resuming collections and allowing repayment plans to begin again could bump that to 10 million.

Whyyyyy? Outstanding federal student loan debt is worth about $1.6 trillion. Education Sec. Linda McMahon wrote that not paying that back “isn’t a victimless crime.” She noted that college loans have no collateral — your degree can’t be repossesed like a car — and that not paying your debts to the government only screws over other taxpayers. “Debt doesn't go away; it gets transferred to others.”

• McMahon said she’s not letting colleges off the hook, either. Schools that made “empty promises to students” and jacked up tuition to match federal loan caps will be held accountable. How that’ll work wasn’t mentioned, though.

The Federal Student Aid Office says it’s ready for the incoming onslaught of questions and calls with extended hours and will provide "every form of assistance" legally possible.

GOVERNMENT

🔥 Well, it hasn't been a great week for Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth. A former staffer resigned and knifed his old boss in an op-ed, saying the Pentagon is in "total chaos." Then there's the story about Hegseth sharing operational details in a second Signal chat group (featuring his wife) last month. Now he's taking hits for spending a few grand updating the green room next to the Pentagon's press room. That said, he's got support from the only person who matters here. President Trump is all-in on his man and is seen as unlikely to fire Hegseth (or any other Cabinet official) this early in his term.

✂️ RIP to the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). Despite its business-y name, the MCC is a foreign aid agency created by Congress in 2004 that doles out economic grants to poor countries. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) offered the agency's ~300 employees buyouts amid plans for a "significant reduction" in its programs. The long-term plan is still in the works, though, and major changes will likely need Congress's permission. But some Trump officials want to merge the MCC with similar agencies such as the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.

💰️ Fed Chair Jerome Powell is out of the woods for now. The stock market jumped Wednesday after President Trump backed off a bit, saying he has "no intention" of firing Powell. In more economic news, Trump might be slashing tariffs on China. Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent expects a mutual de-escalation in the trade war so negotiations can proceed. In a major speech yesterday, Bessent emphasized global trade, noting that "America First does not mean America alone."

HEALTH

🥤 FDA moves to nix use of synthetic food dyes

Take a good, long look at that bowl of Froot Loops (no, it’s not “Fruit” and yes, we had to look it up) because they might soon get quite a bit less colorful. The FDA announced plans this week to ban a host of petroleum-based food dyes that it says contribute to the “child chronic disease epidemic.”

The news came from Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Marty Makary, the Commissioner of Food and Drugs (aka: head of the FDA). According to Makary, American children have spent “the last 50 years” living in “a toxic soup of synthetic chemicals.”

• He was quick to admit that this isn’t a “silver bullet.” Instead, he called it “one important step” in improving the health of America’s kids.

Studies over the years have shown links between these dyes and cancer, ADHD, organ issues, and cognitive problems in children. Experts disagree on the extent of this problem, but regulations and restrictions on their use are common in Europe and Canada.

• Obviously, not everyone is on board with this conclusion. A food industry trade group said the dyes have been “rigorously studied… and have been demonstrated to be safe.”

Eight dyes are on the chopping block. Two of them, Red Dye 2 and Orange B, will be banned outright in the next few months. But those are rarely used today. Most of the focus here is been on six more common synthetic dyes: Red Dye 40, Yellow Dye 5, Yellow Dye 6, Blue Dye 1, Blue Dye 2, and Green Day Dye 3.

• These bad boys are used in just about everything. Candy, cereal, soda, jelly, cookies, juice, spices, popcorn, cheese, ice cream, sausages… the list goes on. Apparently, it’s not that single drop of real blueberry that’s making those Pop-Tarts so blue.

How will this work? The FDA has to approve all food color additives. That approval will be revoked for the two soon-to-be banned dyes. The other six got it easier, with the FDA pledging to work with the food industry to voluntarily stop using them by the end of 2026. TBD on how that works out. But the agency plans to accelerate the approval of new fruit-and-vegetable-based replacements.

• In January, the late-stage Biden administration threw down a last-second ban of another colorant, Red Dye 3, that doesn't kick in until 2027-28. The Trump administration hopes to move that deadline up by one year.

TRIVIA

Happy 225th birthday to the Library of Congress! President John Adams signed a law creating it on April 24, 1800. After the fledgling library was burned by the Brits (boo!) during the War of 1812, Congress started over by purchasing Thomas Jefferson’s personal collection of 6,487 books. How many items are in the Library of Congress’s collection today?

Hint: They’ve got about three items for every person in Italy.

BRIEFS

● Elon Musk's "time allocation" to DOGE will "drop significantly" next month. He'll still spend one to two days per week on Trump's cost-cutting reform effort, but will refocus his attention on his day job as Tesla CEO after the company's sales plummeted in Q1.

● The Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday on whether parents should be able to opt their kids out of lessons that include LGBT themes. Justices seemed sympathetic to the parents, who are a mix of Christians and Muslims from Maryland.

● The European Union is slapping Apple and Meta with a combined $800 million fine for breaking its new antitrust law, the Digital Markets Act. The Trump administration has accused the E.U. of unfairly targeting American tech companies.

● India is blaming Pakistan after militants killed 25 Indian men in the disputed Kashmir region on Tuesday. Now their already fraught relationship is getting worse. India has closed the border, axed a water-sharing treaty, and kicked Pakistanis out of the country.

● President Trump is directing the little-known U.S. Election Assistance Commission to add a proof of citizenship requirement to voting registration forms. Whether the president can control an independent agency like this will have to be settled in court.

● Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent and DOGE chief Elon Musk got into a shouting match outside the Oval Office that was so loud witnesses compared it to a WWE brawl. The two men hate each other and clashed recently over Trump’s pick to lead the IRS.

QUOTE

ANSWER

As of their latest public update, the Library of Congress’s collection contains more than 178 million items. They’ve got millions of books, posters, photographs, audio recordings, and newspapers. They also have some downright bizarre items like James Madison's flute, Abraham Lincoln's pocket junk, Beethoven's literal hair, aaaand every single public tweet posted between 2006 and 2018.