Good morning! Happy Thursday to all who celebrate, and a very happy 120th birthday to the city of Las Vegas! Let’s all hit the buffet and get some cheap Botox to celebrate.

WORLD

🌍️ Trump tours the gulf states

That’s the Persian Gulf, not the Gulf of Mexi-merica. The president is on day three of a four-day swing through the Middle East. It’s the first major overseas trip of his second term (not counting Pope Francis’s funeral), and has so far been loaded with pomp, circumstance, and, of course, his favorite: deals.

• More than 30 business leaders came along for the trip, including the CEOs of IBM, Amazon, Boeing, OpenAI, Coca-Cola, Uber, and Nvidia.

Saudi Arabia: President Trump received an honorary escort from the Royal Saudi Air Force before a formal lunch at the palace with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Biden wasn't this guy's biggest fan). The two men inked a deal for the U.S. to sell the Saudis $142 billion in weapons, which the White House said is the largest of its kind in U.S. history.

Qatar: The president was welcomed in Qatar by mounted camels and red Tesla Cybertrucks. He and Boeing’s CEO met with the emir of Qatar and signed a $96 billion deal for Qatar Airways to buy 160 Boeing jets and GE aircraft engines. Trump also visited U.S. troops at Qatar’s Al-Udeid Air Base.

• Washington is still going haywire over Trump’s plan to accept a $400 million plane from Qatar. Trump plans to gut it and retrofit it to serve as a next-gen Air Force One — a process that could take years.

• Questions still remain about the tentative plan to transfer the plane to Trump’s library when he retires (where it could remain in his active service).

United Arab Emirates: The U.S. is working on a deal that would allow the UAE to import 500,000 of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips. Trump will meet with their president today, who recently promised to invest $1.4 trillion in the U.S. economy over the next decade.

Syria: Trump on Wednesday met with Syria's new president, who is a former jihadist. Until December, the U.S. government had a $10 million bounty on this guy's head. But he won the Syrian Civil War, so here we are. Trump lifted decades-old U.S. sanctions on Syria that had largely prevented it from taking part in the global economy by banning American companies from doing business there. He also urged Syria to open relations with Israel.

Elsewhere in the world: Russian President Vladimir Putin will not travel to Turkey today for peace talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. An aide will attend in his place.

GOVERNMENT

⚖️ The Supreme Court will hear arguments today in a case stemming from President Donald Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship. Trump signed an executive order in January to end the practice of giving citizenship to anyone, regardless of their legal status, who happens to be born in the U.S. That order was promptly tossed by a federal judge. At issue here isn't the policy itself, but the mechanism by which it was iced. The Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to ban lower-tier federal judges from issuing nationwide injunctions blocking federal policies.

🇿🇦 The United States has granted refugee status to 59 Afrikaners (white, Dutch-descended South Africans). Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Afrikaners faced racial discrimination back home and that the South African government has threatened to seize their land -- which it can now do legally. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa isn’t happy about this, though. He responded by calling the refugees “cowards,” and his party released a statement slamming the move. About 4.5 million, or 7%, of South Africa's 62 million people are white.

🍦 Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s fame was arrested Wednesday on Capitol Hill while protesting the testimony of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was there for back-to-back hearings in the House and Senate. RFK was grilled by members from both parties on vaccines, budget cuts, and his department’s reorganization. He declined to say whether he'd vaccinate his own children against polio today and confirmed that 10,000 HHS employees had been laid off.

TRIVIA

It goes without saying that some world capitals are better known than others. We’re all pretty familiar with London and Paris. Funafuti and Ulaanbaatar, though? Not so much. Of course, France is a bit more important than Mongolia. But not every important capital is easy to remember, which brings us to today’s question: What is the capital of Saudi Arabia?

Hint: Neither Dubai nor Abu Dhabi is in Saudi Arabia. Our city starts with an R.

POLITICS

😲 Drama breaks out at the DNC

Imagine getting fired after just three months on the job. That’s the embarrassing reality facing two young vice chairs of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) after one of them started trying to defeat incumbent Democratic members of Congress. The other guy? Well, he’s pretty much just collateral damage.

The unlucky two: David Hogg is a 25-year-old gun control activist and Parkland shooting survivor. Malcolm Kenyatta is a 34-year-old Pennsylvania state representative. Back in February, these two gents were elected as two of the DNC’s four vice chairs, alongside two women.

The controversy began last month when Hogg was revealed to be working with an outside group to help young candidates defeat longtime (read: ancient) Democratic members of Congress in the primary. Right or wrong, trying to defeat the very people the DNC is trying to (re)elect obviously didn’t sit well with, well, just about anyone.

• Fortunately for Hogg, that doesn’t actually break any rules.

• Unfortunately for Hogg, it seems his election in February did break some rules.

One of the losing candidates, Kalyn Free, complained that the ballot in the vice chair election was set up in a way that violated the Democratic Party’s gender balance rules. This week, the DNC Credentials Committee agreed and voted to redo the February elections of Hogg and Kenyatta. To make that a reality, the full Democratic National Committee will still need to approve the plan.

Reactions: Free’s complaint was filed before Hogg’s activities were revealed, so the DNC says this whole thing is unrelated to his primary meddling. Hogg disagrees and claims the party is clearly trying to push him out. But Malcolm Kenyatta is having none of it and said he’s been pushed “over the edge” by Hogg’s “very casual relationship with the truth.”

• Should new elections be held, Hogg and Kenyatta would be eligible to run again. They could both win, too. But, like, if you had to guess which one miiiight go down?

Elsewhere in politics: Last year, Missouri voters enshrined the right to an abortion into the state's constitution. Next year, they'll be asked to undo that decision and reimpose a statewide abortion ban.

BRIEFS

● Ed Martin, the Justice Department's new pardon attorney, said he’s looking at some of President Biden’s last-minute pardons to see if they’re “null and void.” He also noted that he doesn’t buy the theory that Biden’s use of an autopen invalidates the pardons.

● ESPN will offer all of its content for $30 per month on a new streaming service. Fox wants in on the action, too. The upcoming Fox One app will have Fox broadcast, Fox Sports, Fox News, and more. Meanwhile, Max is changing its name back to HBOMax.

● A man charged with trying to assassinate Donald Trump last year wants two of his charges dismissed. Ryan Routh is accused of illegally owning a gun as a convicted felon. His lawyers say the Second Amendment “doesn't just apply to law-abiding citizens.”

● More than 1,000 Starbucks baristas from 75 U.S. stores are on strike. They're protesting the company's new dress code, which requires specific clothes beneath the green apron: a solid black shirt up top and khaki, black, or blue denim on bottom.

● Some members of former President Biden’s Cabinet didn’t think their boss would be capable of responding to a 2 a.m. emergency. According to a new book from CNN’s Jake Tapper, Biden aides also discussed putting him in a wheelchair if he won reelection.

QUOTE

ANSWER

The capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is Riyadh. With a metro area population of nearly 8 million, it’s also Saudi Arabia’s largest city. For now, at least, pending construction of (the very on-brand) The Line city-in-a-building and its potential 9 million inhabitants.