Good morning and welcome back to The Elective. As always, thanks for reading. A rundown of bangers we missed during our break:

• Cameras caught French President Emmanuel Macron getting smacked in the face by his wife.

• Two Secret Service agents were suspended after getting into a literal fistfight with each other. Outside Barack Obama’s house. At 2:30 a.m.

• Americans’ confidence in the economy is rising after five months of decline, and Trump pushed back the deadline for crushing 50% tariffs on European Union imports to July 9.

• Elon Musk is out. His time as a special government employee ended Wednesday, just before reaching its legal limit of 130 days.

BUDGET

💰️ One Big Beautiful Bill and budget takesies backsies

In 2015, House Speaker Mike Johnson was a newly elected freshman trying to pass his first bill through the Louisiana state legislature. Ten years later, he successfully navigated a political minefield and razor-thin margin to pass President Donald Trump’s budget through the U.S. House of Representatives. Time flies when you’re … doing whatever it is that politicians consider fun.

OBBB: Elon Musk doesn’t like it. And some fiscal conservatives aren’t thrilled. But President Trump’s sweeping 2026 budget, deemed the One Big Beautiful Bill, passed the House last week by one vote — 215-214. The bill extends Trump’s OG 2017 tax cuts, adds work requirements for able-bodied adult Medicaid recipients, ends taxes on tips, and more.

• To become law, it’ll have to pass the Senate, too. But Republican senators have vowed to rewrite big chunks of the bill to better fit their wants.

• This is a budget reconciliation bill that, unlike normal laws, can’t be filibustered. Support from 51 senators will do just fine here.

• Then, the two houses will work out their differences and pass identical versions of the bill for the president to sign.

Next up? Rescission. Trump’s Big Bill takes care of next year’s budget. But what about cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)? All those cut programs and offices were being funded by this year’s budget. That’s where rescission comes in. Next week, the White House will ask Congress to take back $9.4 billion in funding cut by DOGE.

• Most of this comes from the obliterated U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

• The CPB is the government’s funding mechanism for NPR and PBS.

• Per House Speaker Mike Johnson (R), House Republicans are “eager and ready” to claw back this cash.

Rescission: The White House has to formally ask Congress to vote to rescind unspent money. After that, it’ll have to pass both houses. As with the budget bill above, this will require a normal 51-vote majority in the Senate.

Elsewhere in Budget Cut Land, all 800 remaining employees at Voice of America (VOA) are expecting layoff notices this week. VOA is the government’s international news network, created in 1942 as an anti-propaganda tool.

GOVERNMENT

💉 Spicy story incoming. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has removed the COVID vaccine from the CDC’s recommended vaccination schedule for healthy kids and healthy pregnant women. At the announcement, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya claimed, "There's no evidence healthy kids need it today, and most countries have stopped recommending it for children.” The shots are still available and are still approved by the FDA for these groups. But many insurance companies base their policies on the CDC list, so you might need to pay out of pocket. It should be noted that the CDC does still recommend the COVID shot for healthy adults who aren’t currently working out how best to spell Kinzzleigh.

🐄 Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) plans to resume cattle imports from Mexico. Imports were suspended indefinitely on May 11 after a deadly New World screwworm infestation was detected about 700 miles south of the border. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins warned that the last time we dealt with this issue, the cattle industry “took 30 years” to recover. So, it’s safe to say they’re taking this seriously. Since no new cases have been found further north, however, the USDA’s chief veterinary officer thinks we’ll be back in business … by the end of the year.

👷 The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) will stop considering race and gender when awarding $37 billion in federal highway and transit contracts. A federal judge ruled last September that the program, created in 1983, violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause by treating people differently based on their plumbing and skin color. Two companies sued after the Biden administration renewed the policy. The Trump administration on Wednesday said it will end the program rather than fight the ruling in court.

NEWS

🔓 President Trump pardons reality stars

As Mufasa knows — okay, maybe a bad example — it’s good to be king. And if that’s not an option? Knowing the king is the next best thing.

Reality stars Julie and Todd Chrisley were convicted in 2022 of bank fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to seven and 12 years of hard time. They walked out of prison on Wednesday, hours after receiving pardons from President Donald Trump.

Who? The Chrisleys starred in "Chrisley Knows Best" (and a few spinoffs) on USA Network from 2014 to 2023. Their reality empire came crashing down after convictions for defrauding banks out of more than $36 million and skipping out on the IRS.

Why? As you might expect, the Chrisleys have always maintained their innocence and say an IRS officer gave false testimony at their trials. Their appeals all failed, but daughter Savannah is a staunch Trump supporter. She spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2024 and claimed her parents were targeted due to their "conservative beliefs."

• Trump didn't give a reason for the pardon, but noted he thought the Chrisleys had been "given a pretty harsh treatment."

• For federal crimes, the president's pardon power is absolute. It cannot be undone by any court or other official.

Anything else? Trump also pardoned ex-Staten Island congressman Michael Grimm, who was convicted of tax evasion in 2014. Ex-Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover, meanwhile, got his 1973 life sentence for murder commuted.

TRIVIA

It’s no secret that basically every wealthy country in the world has pretty much stopped having kids. In fact, a lot of places these days are only growing in population due to immigration. Others, like Italy and Greece, are straight up shrinking. One side effect of a lack of kids? An abundance of old people, which brings us to today’s question: Which country has the highest percentage of people aged 65 and older?

Hint: Today’s big winner (loser?) is also the last remaining country with a reigning emperor.

WORLD

🌍️ Around the world in 80 seconds

You’ve got to imagine filling this job next time around is going to be tough. Last October, the Israeli military killed Yahya Sinwar, who was the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. So his brother, Mohammed Sinwar, took over as head of the Palestinian terror group. You’ll never guess what just happened. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Wednesday that a May 13 airstrike on Gaza took out Sinwar the Second. Best of luck to the next guy in line.

NATO: A key promise of membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defense pact is that member nations will have military budgets equal to at least 2% of their GDPs. Most aren’t keeping that promise, though, and Donald Trump ain’t happy about it. In fact, he wants more. The president is pushing a change in NATO policy to boost that target to 5%. And NATO chief Mark Rutte thinks members will go along with it, so long as cybersecurity upgrades and military-adjacent infrastructure can count toward 1.5% of it.

Russia: Trump is running out of patience with Putin over efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. The president is “very disappointed” with Russia’s stepped-up attacks and says he’s “not going to allow” them to continue. On Tuesday, Trump warned Putin that he’s “playing with fire.” By Wednesday, that had become a two-week warning to get serious about peace talks. Round two of negotiations kicks off in Istanbul on Monday.

• Meanwhile, Ukraine can now strike deep into Russian territory.

• The U.S. and its European allies have lifted their longstanding ban on Ukraine using donated Western weapons on long-range targets.

• Russia, of course, slammed the move as “dangerous.”

BRIEFS

● Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants the death penalty for two illegal migrants who were arrested after a “reckless” jet ski jaunt turned into a fatal hit-and-run. The victim was kayaker Ava Moore, 18, who had just been accepted into the Air Force Academy.

● GameStop bought $500 million worth of Bitcoin, hoping to boost its balance sheet after years of declining sales. Likewise, Trump Media & Technology Group (aka: Truth Social) hopes to raise money from investors to buy $2.5 billion in Bitcoin.

● Your aunt’s third-favorite TV judge was sworn in as the top federal prosecutor in D.C. Jeanine Pirro vowed to tackle violence during her interim tenure as U.S. attorney. Before her TV career, Pirro was a judge and elected district attorney in New York.

● NPR and three of its local stations are suing President Trump over his proposed funding cuts. They argue, in part, that his order violates their freedom of speech by targeting them based on a perceived liberal bias.

QUOTE

ANSWER

If you’re really into sushi, anime, and excellent public transit, you’d better check out Japan while you still can. Because if absolutely nothing changes, Nintendo’s homeworld will be a tiny shell of itself just a few hundred years from now. More than 28% of Japan’s population is 65+, and about 10% of them are older than 80. For comparison, those numbers are 17% and 2% for the United States.