Good morning! It’s a wild world out there. Coldplay is partying like it’s 2007 again, we all just got implicit permission to ignore those annoying HR surveys, Meghan’s show clocked in at #383 in the Netflix rankings, and the political world is arguing about whether free speech is dead or Colbert was maybe just losing CBS $40 million a year. And, to make matters worse, our vacation plans are off after North Korea banned foreign tourists from its new beachside mega resort.

CONGRESS

💰️ Congress takes back $9 billion in funding from PBS, others

Subaru drivers and the ghost of Mr. Rogers are furious. For the first time since the Stone Age 1999, Congress has officially given money to a bunch of federal agencies, waited a few months, told ‘em “jk,” and taken it back … to the tune of $9 billion. Topping the list of casualties? NPR, PBS, and USAID.

The process is called rescission. Congress gives money to the executive branch so federal agencies to do their thing. The president presides over the operations of those agencies. If he decides they don’t quite need that much cash, he can ask Congress to take it back via a “rescission.” That’s what we’re talking about here.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is a private, nonprofit company created by Congress in 1967. It’s not a federal agency, but it does receive its funding from the government. It then passes that money on to two primary recipients: NPR and PBS. The rescission package took back $1.1 billion — the entirety of CPB’s government funding for the next two years.

• NPR and PBS get only a small part of their revenue from the CPB. But a larger portion comes from dues paid by local NPR and PBS affiliates. Where do the locals often get that money? The CPB.

• Both networks will survive. But 18% of local NPR affiliates could close, with rural stations most at risk. And the big boys are already making cuts, too.

Why cut this stuff? Many conservatives have accused NPR and PBS of liberal bias (imagine the government funding Fox News). They point to weird stories about queer ducks and country music being racist and say the networks have long ignored stories that might harm Democrats. Then, of course, there’s the issue of NPR CEO Katherine Maher being a Biden 2020 campaign volunteer.

• Some also say public broadcasting is no longer needed in the internet age.

• But CPB supporters say the stations are critical sources of local news in an era of disappearing newspapers.

USAID is, or was, the home of the federal government’s foreign aid programs. The Trump administration has moved all the foreign aid to an office within the State Department. And Congress backed that move last week by pulling $7.9 billion in funding.

• PEPFAR, George W. Bush’s popular program for AIDs relief, is safe despite a request by Trump to cut it.

Speaking of President Trump, he was just diagnosed with old people cankles, otherwise known as chronic venous insufficiency (CVI). CVI is normal at his age (79), and his doctor said he should be fine and has no underlying conditions. Of course, Biden’s doctor also swore his brain hadn’t turned into pudding, and we all know how that turned out.

• Elsewhere in Trumpworld, the president filed a $10 billion libel lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal’s publisher and the company’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch (yes, he’s also the Fox News guy).

• The suit comes in response to a bombshell story claiming he wrote a sweet lil birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein back in 2003.

GOVERNMENT

🚄 California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a lawsuit against the federal government after the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) canceled $4 billion in funding for his state’s high-speed rail project. Newsom characterized the cuts as illegal “political retribution.” But the FRA said California’s “inability to complete” the project amounted to a breach of their funding deal. The project began in 2009 and has since seen busted budgets, delays, and reductions in scope. The segment now under construction, connecting Bakersfield to Merced, is expected to open by the early 2030s. The FRA is an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation that enforces rail safety, helps fund the Amtrak service, and aims to improve the availability of passenger rail.

🤝 Ten Americans are free today after a prisoner swap between the United States and Venezuela. The U.S. released more than 200 Venezuelans whom it had recently deported to a mega prison in El Salvador for (allegedly) being gang members. Venezuela claims the 10 Americans tried to overthrow its government. That claim is disputed, and some of the men say they were illegally kidnapped while on vacation next door in Colombia. The U.S. State Department brokered the deal, in which Venezuela also released an unspecified number of its own political prisoners.

⚓️ The U.S. Navy is building two maintenance facilities for the Philippine military along the country’s far western edge. China’s not happy about this. But the Philippines and China keep getting into fights amid disagreements over who controls a string of nearby islands in the South China Sea. And the U.S. is treaty-bound to defend the Philippines. The U.S. Embassy in the Philippines said the project would help maintain a “free, open, and resilient Indo-Pacific.”

TRIVIA

You can’t drive until you’re 17 in the United Kingdom, but 16-year-olds will soon have the right to vote. The timeline isn’t set, but the new rule should kick in by 2029. Back in the United States, bragging about getting to vote is still the exclusive domain of nerdy high-school seniors. But that hasn’t always been the case. Until the 26th Amendment was ratified, Americans couldn’t vote until they turned 21. In what year did the U.S. lower the voting age from 21 to 18?

Hint: The change was motivated in part by the military draft and the Vietnam War.

POLITICS

🗳️ ‘I just love South Carolina,’ White House hopefuls swear

Minnesota state Sen. Nicole Mitchell’s political career is toast — she’s headed to prison after a felony burglary conviction — but the show goes on for the political world’s 2028 hopefuls.

• Mitchell’s conviction comes months after a colleague was arrested for, um, worse things than burglary. Something must be in the water in all those lakes.

Democrats are already visiting early primary states, supporting congressional candidates, and gunning for speaking gigs. And it’s not because they enjoy potluck dinners and mid-July visits to small towns in the South.

• California Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed he’s like, totally “not thinking about running” despite his visit to the early primary state of South Carolina. That was just a party-building effort.

• Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a 2024 veepstakes loser, told NBC last week that he’ll “take a look” at running, but only due to concern for his kids. He followed up over the weekend with his own test-the-waters trip to South Carolina.

• Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has headlined fundraisers for the Democratic Party of New Hampshire, another important early-primary state. His $3.7 billion Hyatt Hotel fortune should come in handy.

• Also in the “pretending not to run” mix? Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, and California Rep. Ro Khanna.

Republicans pretending they don’t want to be president have a tougher road ahead with poll-topping Vice President JD Vance in the mix. But that didn’t stop Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin from making a totally-not-a-campaign-stop in the super important early primary state of Iowa.

Over in Japan, the conservative party that’s run the show for all but five of the past 71 years, lost its majority in the upper house of parliament on Sunday. The results won’t change much, though, and Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba will remain in power.

BRIEFS

● President Trump signed a major bipartisan crypto bill into law on Friday. The industry-backed GENIUS Act creates rules for stablecoins (asset-backed cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of the dollar). Two related crypto bills are currently awaiting Senate votes.

● Moscow’s four major airports closed over the weekend amid a barrage of Ukrainian drone attacks. Russia’s defense ministry said it downed more than 230 drones, sparking cancellations and delays for hundreds of commercial airline flights in the region.

● Some nutjob in Los Angeles has been charged after allegedly plowing his car into a crowd of people outside a club at 2 a.m. on Saturday. Nearby, an accidental explosion at a training facility killed three L.A. County sheriff’s deputies.

● Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs on Saturday toured wildfire damage near the Grand Canyon. Sparked by lightning on July 4, the National Park Service initially let the fire burn. It’s since charred 18 square miles, and Hobbs wants answers on the NPS’s strategy.

QUOTE

ANSWER

Motivated in part by the military draft that sent a bunch of them to war, American 18-year-olds won the right to vote in 1971. Don’t expect the U.S. to follow the U.K.’s lead on dropping that to 16, though. A recent-ish poll found that a whopping 84 percent of us oppose letting the broccoli-haired brigade vote.