A Senator's Death, Missiles Aimed at Iran, & Ford's Big Mistake

You may have noticed it is Monday morning instead of Sunday — a whole host of technical issues over the weekend, which left us stranded. Coffee's still hot, we're just ‘really’ late pouring it.

Senator Lindsey Graham sadly passed away Saturday night at 71. His office is calling it a "brief and sudden illness." Washington doesn't usually do "sudden" without a longer story showing up later, so don't be shocked if this one keeps developing.

Belgium put the USMNT out of its own World Cup, 4-1, and just like that, three weeks of "America finally cares about soccer" evaporated overnight. Back to the usual: ignore the sport for four years, act shocked when we lose, resume having strong opinions about the rest of the world from a safe distance.

Peace, unity, and international relevance were fun while they lasted. Let's get into it.

There's a $1.5 trillion number floating around Washington, and the White House wants full credit for it. The Trump administration rolled out a plan to kill over 700 federal rules, and OIRA's Mark Paoletta says it'll blow past last year's record $211.8 billion in savings. If the math holds, that's real money back in real pockets — assuming Washington's version of "savings" survives contact with reality. Real numbers deserve real scrutiny, and so does the fine print on who's actually breaking the rules.

Speaking of which, fraud got a case number. The administration launched its first major investigation into H-1B and PERM visa abuse, tying it to labor trafficking and American workers getting pushed out of jobs they were qualified for. Officials went further, linking the scheme to cartels and transnational gangs. None of this is new. It's just finally on paper.

While Washington chased fraud, the Senate quietly lost two of its own in different ways. Mitch McConnell resurfaced after four weeks of silence with a hospital photo and a statement: a fall, not a stroke, not a heart attack, complicated by a case of pneumonia. He's out of the hospital and into rehab, working Senate business from a distance. Rough week to reappear — the same day the chamber lost Lindsey Graham for good.

And while the Senate mourned at home, the threats kept coming from abroad. Trump says 1,000 missiles are "locked and loaded" and aimed at Tehran if the regime moves on him, with orders already given to answer in force if it tries. Deterrence or theater, depending who you ask. Nobody at the funeral banners calling for his death seems to be laughing either way.

Michael Dell picked Independence Day to hand out free money, and honestly, good timing. He and his wife Susan pledged $250 each to the first 25 million kids who sign up for a Trump Account, calling every child a shareholder in "the greatest prosperity-creating engine the world has ever known." Free seed money for capitalism's next generation. Hard to find the catch.

Not everyone's popping champagne over SpaceX, though. Permabear Jeremy Grantham says the $75 billion IPO is the "craziest" in market history, and thinks investors will be laughing at today's $300 price targets in 50 years. Wall Street's betting big on rockets. Grantham's betting bigger on gravity.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, PepsiCo missed the mark. Earnings came in short as American households pull back on chips and soda, proof that even snack budgets aren't safe from a squeezed paycheck. When people start rationing Doritos, you know the economy's talking.

And speaking of money getting harder to ignore, Gen Z wants to talk salary. Openly, loudly, no shame. The generation that grew up online is dragging personal finance out of the shadows, and whatever you think of the delivery, at least somebody's finally comparing notes on what they're actually worth.

Google shattered its own search record during the World Cup. Even in the age of AI chatbots, people still trust a search bar to find out who just scored.

Over at Microsoft, the mood was less celebratory. The company cut 4,800 jobs, most of them in Xbox, and insists AI isn't the reason. The memo says the roles just aren't needed anymore — technically true, technically suspicious.

Meta's got a bigger headache brewing. Four states want $1.4 trillion from the company, claiming Facebook and Instagram were built to hook kids. Meta's calling the number outlandish, but the trial starts next month in Oakland either way.

Toyota, meanwhile, is putting its money where the tariffs are. The automaker's sinking $3.6 billion into Texas to bring Tacoma production home from Mexico, with two thousand new jobs landing alongside it.

Then there's the Alibaba drama. The Chinese tech giant banned its own employees from using Anthropic's Claude Code, calling it high-risk software. The move comes weeks after Anthropic accused Alibaba of running the largest AI "distillation attack" on record — copying its homework, just at scale.

And back stateside, Meta's new Wyoming data center leaked a rare bacterium into Cheyenne's irrigation water. The drinking water was never touched, but the timing couldn't be worse for a company already answering for what it builds and how.

Last Week:

We asked how age should factor into who runs the country, and the split says a lot. Forty-two percent said age shouldn't matter at all — competence over candles on the cake. A close second wanted every candidate to take a public cognitive test before Election Day, no exceptions, no excuses.

Read those two answers together and the message is clear: voters don't want a number disqualifying anyone, they just want proof the lights are still on. Given the last few weeks in Washington, hard to blame them.

This Week:

Birthright citizenship just got a green light from the Supreme Court, and half the country's still not buying it. So we're asking straight up: should simply being born on American soil still be enough?

You’ve saved $1.5 million. Now comes the real test.

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That difference can determine whether your money lasts decades or starts breaking down early.

Sequence of returns, taxes on withdrawals, healthcare costs, and whether the 4% rule still applies all play a role.

Fiduciary advisors created a breakdown showing what drives sustainable income and why the same $1.5M can produce very different outcomes.

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Winners:

People who book ‘Window Seats’ and expect a ‘Window’:
Turns out United's been charging extra for a view of drywall, and a judge just wasn't having it. The lawsuit lives on, so maybe someday "window seat" actually means what it says.

‘Some’ Social Security Recipients:
Will get a bonus check this month, courtesy of a calendar quirk. Not a raise, not a bonus, just Uncle Sam's scheduling finally working in your favor for once.

Losers:

State Prosecutors In Charlie Kirk Case:
Had their key piece of video tossed out by the judge for being edited, and nobody could even say who touched it or when. Rough day for the evidence pile.

Anyone with a Car Payment:
The average new car now runs $770 a month, a record, with auto debt up 57% in a decade. Congrats, your Camry's basically a mortgage now.

"I didn't get cheated. You did."

Spencer Pratt isn't walking away quietly after his LA mayoral loss — and he recently dropped a nearly 10-minute breakdown of what he says is really broken in California's election system, from Skid Row ballot harvesting to laws that make catching fraud nearly impossible. He's not done with LA's political elites.

Forget the simple story of easing inflation and looming rate cuts. Bank of America says the real economy has split in two: the top is thriving on strong balance sheets and AI-driven gains, while lower-income households are stuck absorbing sticky prices, higher borrowing costs and rising gas bills. The bank's own card data shows it plainly — top 1% spending is climbing nearly 9% year over year while lower-income spending crawls at roughly half that pace.

Translation: The economy looks healthy on paper because the people doing the spending were never the ones struggling to begin with.

Trump says he's "looking very strongly" at Australia's superannuation system — a mandatory setup where employers put 12% of a worker's pay straight into private retirement accounts — as a blueprint for American retirement, with Bessent and Lutnick already working the details. He's calling it the grown-up version of the Trump Accounts, though nothing's on paper yet and Social Security's own trust fund is projected to come up short by 2032.

Translation: Before Washington fixes the retirement system it already built, it's shopping for a new one.

Mission Regional Medical Center advertised birth deliveries on billboards across the border, prices included: $3,950 for natural, $5,525 for C-section, with a U.S. phone number and a website — since scrubbed — pitching pregnant Mexican nationals on giving birth in Texas. Abbott ordered an immediate investigation and wants any violations sent to the Attorney General for civil action or local prosecutors for criminal charges. The hospital calls the whole thing a "misunderstanding."

Translation: A hospital ran a citizenship sale on a billboard, and now it's hoping "misunderstanding" covers a price list.

Citadel's billionaire founder went off on socialism at a Goldman Sachs symposium, telling Bernie Sanders and NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani to "read a damn history book" before lecturing anyone on how to run a country. Griffin pointed to China's market reforms lifting roughly 800 million people out of poverty as his exhibit A, then noted his firm plans to be a Wall Street fixture for decades — longer, he made clear, than Mamdani will be mayor.

Translation: The guy who moved his headquarters to Miami isn't losing sleep over who's running New York.

DOGE shut down July 4, exactly like Musk promised it would when he called it a temporary agency built to self-destruct. It's claiming $215 billion in savings — but the receipts are thin, no final report is coming, and the number's been disputed by outlets across the spectrum. Government's smaller in some corners, sure. Whether it's actually cheaper is still an open question nobody in Washington seems eager to answer.

Translation: They built a department whose entire mission was to disappear, and the only thing it fully delivered on was disappearing.

Jiaying Chen, 33, allegedly married 14 different men across Clark County since 2019 using a fake ID, telling each one she needed cash for sick relatives back in China, then vanishing once the money hit her account. Prosecutors say the funds went straight to the tables — she lost more than $300,000 at the Wynn in the past year alone. She's pleaded guilty to bigamy and theft over $100,000, with sentencing set for August.

Translation: Vegas odds finally caught up with someone — just not the way the casino intended.

Southwest posted a jab at seatbelt-sign sprinters on Threads — "You won't get off the plane faster by standing up .001 seconds after the seatbelt sign turns off" — and the internet did not take it well. Tens of thousands of likes and thousands of comments later, passengers are defending their right to stretch, pee and grab bags the second wheels touch down.

Translation: An airline that overbooks flights and loses luggage decided this was the hill to lecture people on.

New data shows quick-service traffic sliding four of the last five months while grocery stores' hot bars and deli counters quietly eat their lunch. Years of menu price hikes narrowed the cost gap between a drive-thru meal and a rotisserie chicken from Kroger, and 70% of consumers now say home-prepared groceries are the better value. Fast-casual chains like Chipotle and Cava are holding steady; classic QSR isn't.

Translation: Americans didn't stop wanting convenience. They just found it cheaper two aisles over from the milk.

Kurt Kromm, 60, spent 11 years fixing robots at Ford's Kentucky Truck Plant before getting fired for supposedly stealing a $1.95 cookie during a diabetic low-blood-sugar break. He'd actually paid — the kiosk just glitched — and it took a month, notarized bank statements, and Aramark's own confirmation before Ford admitted it. By then Kromm had already taken a better-paying job elsewhere. Ford cut him a $28,000 back-pay check. He's still waiting on the apology.

Translation: Ford paid $28,000 to avoid saying two words — "we're sorry" — for a cookie that cost less than two bucks.

Jonna Mendez, the CIA's former Chief of Disguise, says one habit gives Americans away overseas every time: leaning on walls, doorways and railings. It's so distinctly American that officers had to be "de-Americanized" before going undercover, unlearning the casual posture that comes naturally to a country that's never much cared for standing at attention.

Translation: Even our spies have to work at not looking American. Everyone else just does it standing up straight.

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Senate Returns to Washington
Monday, July 13
The Senate reconvenes after the Fourth of July recess, facing an empty seat left by Lindsey Graham's death and a majority leader recovering in rehab.
Why You Should Care: Leadership is short-handed and the chamber's grieving. Whatever gets done — or doesn't — this week says a lot about who's really running things right now.

Big Bank Earnings Kick Off
Tuesday, July 14
JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Bank of America report Q2 results, officially opening earnings season.
Why You Should Care: Banks see the economy before the rest of us do. Their numbers tell you whether the "resilient economy" headlines match what's actually happening in people's accounts.

FIFA World Cup Final
Sunday, July 19
MetLife Stadium, New Jersey. The final caps off a month-long tournament, crowning a champion between France or Spain and England or Argentina.
Why You Should Care: USMNT's out, but the Cup still delivered — roughly $41 billion in global economic impact, $17 billion of it right here in the U.S. Six weeks, fans from everywhere, all spending American dollars.

Requiring proof you're a citizen to vote in an American election shouldn't be controversial. It shouldn't need a debate. And yet here we are, watching Washington treat basic election integrity like it's some radical experiment instead of common sense.

The SAVE America Act does one simple thing: it makes voters prove they're actually allowed to vote. A passport, a birth certificate, something real — not just a checked box and an honor system built on trust alone. If you need ID to buy a beer, cash a check, or board a plane, you can produce one to help decide who runs the country.

Election integrity isn't a talking point, it's the whole ballgame. A vote only means something if the system behind it is airtight. Right now it isn't, and pretending otherwise doesn't make anyone safer, it just makes the problem harder to fix later.

Knowing who's actually eligible to vote protects everyone, including the millions of legal citizens whose votes get diluted every time the system looks the other way. This isn't about suspicion. It's about verification, the same basic principle we apply to nearly everything else that matters.

Fraud doesn't need to be widespread to be a problem. It needs an open door. The SAVE Act closes it before it becomes a bigger story than a few flagged names in a database.

It also restores trust. A huge chunk of the country already doubts election results, not because of one scandal but because the guardrails feel thin. Proof of citizenship is the kind of visible, common-sense safeguard that rebuilds confidence instead of demanding blind faith in a broken process.

And it holds the system accountable on both ends. Voters prove they're eligible, and election officials get clear, consistent rules instead of a patchwork of 50 different standards nobody can keep straight.

We're fully behind this one. Some fights aren't complicated — this is one of them.

What's your take? Reply and let us know where you stand.