Good morning, and welcome to July. In today’s edition:

• ⚖️ What is the Chevron doctrine and why did the Supreme Court overturn it?
• 🗳️Election results from Iran and France
• 📈 Just how much is AI is powering the stock market?

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.77-minute read (1,269 words).

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"Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them."

–Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)

On Friday, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to overturn a 40-year legal precedent known as the Chevron doctrine, in a decision that expands the power of federal judges to overturn regulations from the executive branch.

Some quick background: The Chevron doctrine, established in a 1984 Supreme Court ruling, instructs federal courts to defer to the legal interpretations of executive branch agencies when laws enacted by Congress aren’t crystal clear.

Over the past four decades, the doctrine has been the basis for thousands of court decisions to uphold federal regulations stemming from laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Affordable Care Act.

But the Chevron doctrine is now a relic of the past. In Friday’s decision, the Court’s six conservative-leaning justices ruled that US law requires federal courts to defer to executive branch agencies for any factual and policy determinations – but not when it comes to legal interpretations. The Court’s majority said Chevron had improperly granted that power to government experts, instead of judges.

• In the dissenting opinion, the Court’s three liberal-leaning justices argued that abolishing Chevron wrongly diminishes the role of expert agencies and reduces the democratic accountability of policy decisions, since authority is shifted from officials appointed by the president to unelected judges with lifetime appointments.

The impact: The Court’s decision means parties who are dissatisfied with federal agency decisions – typically businesses and property owners – can now seek to overturn those regulations by persuading judges that officials exceeded their authority.

Looking ahead… Analysts expect legal challenges to a wide range of major regulator decisions, with potential targets including rules related to vehicle emissions, Medicare/Medicaid, student loan forgiveness, labor protections (overtime pay, unionization, discrimination, etc.), and more.

📊 Flash poll: Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the Chevron doctrine?

• Yes
• No
• Unsure/other

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🇮🇳🏏 India won the men’s T20 Cricket World Cup. India defeated South Africa in the finals on Saturday, becoming the first-ever team to win the title without dropping a single match. It marks India’s second T20 World Cup victory, tied for the most all-time with England and the West Indies. With their performance this year, 12 teams – including the US – qualified for the next T20 World Cup in 2026.

🇮🇷🇫🇷 A pair of major national elections were held over the weekend. In Iran, residents headed to the polls to elect a new president, with less than 40% voter participation marking the country’s lowest-ever turnout. None of the four candidates secured 50+% of the vote, prompting a runoff election between the top-two finishers on July 5. Separately, France held the first round of its parliamentary elections on Sunday, with early results showing the conservative National Rally party earning ~34% of the vote (ahead of the other two major coalitions).

🇲🇾 Malaysian fugitive financier Jho Low is relinquishing $100+ million in assets to the US. The turnover involves a luxury apartment in Paris, paintings by Andy Warhol and Claude Monet, and $67 million in offshore bank accounts. Low’s settlement with the US government is part of a decade-long effort to force him to return ~$1 billion of the ~$4.5 billion he allegedly stole from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund.

The golf carts transporting frustrated Americans from shanked ball to shanked ball are increasingly becoming Chinese-made. US imports of Chinese golf carts and other recreational buggies have 6x’d over the past six years, rising from $148 million in 2020 to $916 million in 2023.

American manufacturers are asking the US government to intervene. On Friday, Club Car and Textron, which makes E-Z-GO and Cushman carts, filed a public comment with the US Trade Representative seeking 100% tariffs for Chinese competitors.

• The companies say Chinese golf carts and buggies have grown in popularity in the US partly because they’re shipped under a product classification where the tariff is lower than those coded as normal-sized EVs (which are about to be subject to an 100% tariff when coming from China). This allows the vehicles to cross the border at a lower tariff rate, then undergo modifications in the US, per the companies.
• Simultaneously, the companies say large Chinese government subsidies act almost like a cheat code for Chinese manufacturers, enabling them to continuously sell products at a loss in order to gain market share from US companies, which (usually) need to turn a profit to survive.

🤔 If this argument sounds familiar… In May, the Biden administration announced higher tariffs on $18 billion worth of Chinese imports due to concern over exploitative labor practices (read: slavery) as well as enormous government subsidies that provide Chinese companies with an unfair advantage over their American counterparts.

+Dive deeper: Tariffs on Chinese EVs are set to increase from 25% to 100%. Even that may not be enough to keep them off the US market.

“Obviously, there was a big problem with Joe Biden’s debate performance, and there’s also just a tremendous reservoir of affection and love for Joe Biden in our party… So, we’re having a serious conversation about what to do.”

• Following President Biden’s widely panned performance in Thursday night’s debate – where Biden at times appeared to lose his train of thought and delivered rambling answers at low volume – some Democratic lawmakers and analysts are suggesting Biden drop out of the 2024 presidential race in favor of a younger candidate. This sentiment is now also shared by roughly half of registered Democratic voters, according to post-debate polls from CBS News/YouGov and Morning Consult. However, sources close to the Biden campaign say the president currently has no plans to step aside – and since Biden has already won a majority of delegates to the Democratic national convention, he can only be disqualified from the presidential race if he personally decides to drop out. Top Democratic lawmakers also gave a series of interviews yesterday expressing their support for Biden’s 2024 campaign and denouncing the possibility of replacing him on the ballot.

Five years from now, you’ll probably wish you’d bought this stock. Jeff Bezos surprised investors when he revealed that one emerging technology could be the key to Amazon’s future success.

In fact, Bezos argues that “it’s hard to overstate the impact” of this game-changing technology.

The CEO of ARK Investments takes Bezos further: in 2021, she predicted this technology would be worth $80 trillion by 2030 – which would be as large as:

• 42 Amazons
• 25 Microsofts
• 27 Nvidias
• 37 Alphabets
• And 519 IBMs

What in the world could be worth 42 Amazons? Find out here at The Motley Fool.

🤖📈 Stat of the Day: The stock market has officially closed the books on Q2 2024 – and, like Greg Jennings, artificial intelligence put the team on its back. Within the S&P 500, companies related to AI – including Nvidia, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft – gained 14.7% in value last quarter, while the rest of the index lost 1.2% over the same period. Overall, the S&P 500 rose 3.9% in Q2.

🤔 Did You Know? An estimated 13% of the US population consumes pizza on any given day, with that figure doubling to 26% for males aged 12-19, per federal data from 2007-2010.

📰 Worth a Read: A Den of Spies: Vienna Emerges as Hub for Russian Espionage → (WSJ)

• ☝️ The Royal Entomological Society announced the winners of this year’s Insect Week photography competition, which showcases the best shots from amateur photographers around the world.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Slumber

• 💰 US markets fell on Friday (S&P: -0.4%; Dow: -0.1%; Nasdaq: -0.7%). | 📉 Nike cut its full-year guidance and said it expects sales to fall ~10% in the current quarter; the company's stock dropped 20% on Friday (creating the exact opposite shape of its swoosh logo on charts), good for its worst one-day performance in history. | 🪵 Lumber futures are down 27% since mid-March; the price of 2x4s is generally a reliable leading indicator for the housing market.
• 📝 Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, owner of Redbox and Crackle and a subsidiary of the company behind the books every ‘90s kid read on the toilet, filed for bankruptcy.
• 🚜 Rural retailer Tractor Supply is eliminating DEI roles, withdrawing its carbon emissions goals, and walking back its Pride support. | 🚬 Tobacco giant Reynolds American is reportedly launching a line of fruit-flavored vapes that don't contain any nicotine.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🍿 Domestic box office: Inside Out 2 came in at #1 for a third straight weekend with $57.4 million, and also became the first film to top $1 billion globally since Barbie; A Quiet Place: Day One came in second with $53 million in its debut; Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, an Old West movie directed by Kevin Costner, earned $11 million in its debut.
• 🏀 NBA free agency officially began at 6 pm ET yesterday; James Harden re-signed with the Clippers for two years, while Chris Paul was waived by the Warriors and will reportedly sign with the Spurs.
• 🗣️👀 51.3 million people watched the first presidential debate of the 2024 election on Thursday night, down from 73 million viewers in 2020 and 84 million in 2016.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Chewy.com

• 🤖 Google Translate is adding 110 languages – nearly doubling its total – after the platform was trained on Google’s PaLM 2 AI language model.
• 🦣 The last wooly mammoths went extinct ~4,000 years ago due to a sudden freak event like an extreme storm or plague, instead of a gradual die-off due to inbreeding or human hunting, per a new study.
• 🥛 A new FDA study shows a pasteurization approach widely used in the dairy industry is effective at killing bird flu in milk; the agency says the results show drinking pasteurized milk is safe, despite an ongoing outbreak of bird flu among cows.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🌀 Hurricane Beryl, which formed Saturday evening, has rapidly intensified into a major Category 4 storm; it’s projected to hit Barbados and the Windward Islands this morning. | 🏘️ State Farm General is seeking to raise residential insurance rates by 30+% for millions of Californians.
• 🚨 A Uvalde County grand jury indicted former school district police Chief Pete Arredondo and another former district officer on child endangerment; it marks the first criminal charges over law enforcement’s delayed response to the 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
• ⚖️ The Supreme Court issued two major decisions on Friday outside of the Chevron doctrine; Justices upheld a law criminalizing homeless encampments, and narrowed the scope of a law being used to prosecute January 6 rioters and former President Trump.

CLICKBAIT

• 🤔🏖️ Is an all-inclusive resort cheaper than rent? One man tried it.

Monday: July 1; Canada Day; Bobby Bonilla Day; Wimbledon begins

Tuesday: 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act

Wednesday: Despicable Me 4 hits theaters

Thursday: Independence Day, aka the Fourth of July; UK holds parliamentary elections

Friday: June jobs report

On Friday, we covered the first debate of the 2024 presidential election season, and showed some early reactions to the showdown between President Biden and former President Trump.

❓ Our question to you: Did you watch at least some of the debate?

• 👍 Yes: 57%
• 👎 No: 43%

➕ Follow-up questions for “Yes” folks: Did the debate change your mind on either candidate?

• Yes: 14%
• No: 86%

In your opinion, which of the two candidates delivered a better debate performance?

• President Biden: 13%
• Former President Trump: 56%
• Unsure/other: 31%

+Note on sample size: We received 4,808 votes.

The US hasn't received a new panda bear in over 20 years – until this past weekend, when two bears arrived in San Diego, marking a renewed era of panda diplomacy between China and America.

• San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria says he's “overjoyed” that pandas are returning to the San Diego Zoo, which has cooperated with China on pandas for nearly three decades but hasn’t hosted any such animals since 2019.

Guess the definitions of the following Greek/Latin root words.

1. Amic
2. Brachi
3. Carcin
4. Ech
5. Fort

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1. Amic = Friend (e.g., amicable)
2. Brachi = Arm (brachial)
3. Carcin = Cancer (carcinogenic)
4. Ech = Sound (echo)
5. Fort = Strong (fortify)