Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 📝 The Republican Party unveiled its 2024 platform
• 🏄 Athletic Brewing is riding the nonalcoholic wave
• 🍦 Ice Cream College

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.93-minute read (1,314 words).

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"The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us."

–Voltaire (1694-1778)

On Monday, the Republican National Committee published a new party platform for the 2024 election season, laying out their vision for the next four years should former President Trump win in November.

The 16-page platform lists 20 top-line party goals, in a style echoing much of the language Trump uses on the campaign trail. These include plans to:

• “Seal the border” and carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history”
• Enact “large tax cuts” for workers and eliminate taxes on tips
• Prevent any cuts to Social Security or Medicare, as well as attempts to raise the retirement age
• “Keep men out of women’s sports”
• “Secure our elections” by enacting laws requiring same-day voting, voter identification, paper ballots, and proof of citizenship

Other areas of interest: When it comes to abortion, Republicans’ new platform forgoes calls for a federal ban on the procedure for the first time in four decades. Instead, this year’s platform stresses that states have the ability to pass laws protecting the rights of unborn children.

• The GOP platform also doesn’t mention Project 2025, a sweeping plan to overhaul the federal government proposed by conservative groups that Trump has distanced himself from in recent days.
• However, some of the officials in charge of shaping this year’s GOP platform were also consultants on Project 2025, and in one instance authored a chapter in the plan.

How does it compare to Democrats’ 2024 platform? Short answer: it’s not officially clear. The Democrats are waiting for a closer date to their August 19-22 convention to release a formal platform.

• But, based on Biden’s campaign promises thus far, Democrats’ 2024 platform is widely expected to include plans to address climate change, restore the nationwide right to abortion, raise taxes on the wealthy and large corporations, expand voting access, and enact stronger nationwide gun control laws.

Looking ahead… Delegates will vote on the GOP’s proposed 2024 platform at the Republican National Convention next week, where they’ll also formally accept Trump as the presidential nominee.

📊 Flash poll: If the November election was held today, which candidate would you vote for?

• President Biden
• Former President Trump
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
• Another third-party candidate
• Not planning to vote/Too young to vote
• Unsure/other

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🚀 The European Space Agency (ESA) completed the maiden launch of its Ariane 6 rocket. Ariane 6, standing 207 feet tall, was built by a joint venture of Airbus and Safran as part of a nearly $4.5 billion ESA program. The rocket’s debut yesterday follows years of delays caused by technical issues, the Covid pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine war. The ESA hopes Ariane 6 will make the space agency more self-reliant when it comes to launching satellites, and potentially help it challenge SpaceX’s dominance in the global market.

🇦🇷 Argentina, a major lithium producer, is further ramping up production. Buenos Aires reportedly plans to open four new lithium mines in the coming months, which will increase Argentina’s overall lithium mining capacity by ~80%. Lithium is seen as a key part of the global transition to greener economies, since it’s used to manufacture the lithium-ion batteries present in EVs, cellphones, laptops, and other electronics. Analysts say Argentina is on track to jump from the world's fourth-largest lithium producer to second place globally by 2030.

🇪🇸 Barcelona locals protested mass tourism by spraying visitors with water. Nearly 3,000 people gathered in Barcelona over the weekend to protest against overtourism, which they say has spiked the cost of living and caused environmental damage. City officials recently announced a series of measures to curb the impacts of overtourism, including plans to increase a nightly tourist tax and end tourist apartment rentals by 2028.

The recently crowned king of nonalcoholic beers just added a little more gold to the hoard – and didn’t even have to slay a dragon to get it.

Athletic Brewing, a nonalcoholic beer company, announced yesterday that it has raised $50 million in a fundraising round led by General Atlantic.

The deal values Athletic – whose name was chosen both to reflect the lifestyle of its customers and because it’s easy to shout in a noisy bar (seriously) – at $800 million, double its valuation from two years ago. And for good reason.

The nonalcoholic brewer, which generated $90 million in revenue in 2023, has been growing faster than an always-hungry teenager:

• Athletic (founded 2017) currently holds ~19% market share within nonalcoholic beer, according to NielsenIQ data.
• In 2023, the company sold more than 258,000 barrels of beer – a performance that, despite not selling any alcohol-containing products, was good enough to make it a top-20 US brewery. It also recently passed Heineken and Budweiser to become the #1 seller of nonalcoholic beer in US grocery stores.

Moving forward, Athletic plans to use the fresh capital to continue expanding both its sales and production capacity to meet rising consumer demand.

📈 Nonalcoholic beer is currently the fastest-growing segment of the beer market. And its growth is being largely driven by young people. More than 40% of Americans say they’re actively trying to drink less alcohol in 2024; that percentage jumps to 49% for millennials and 61% for Gen Z.

“These powerful middlemen may be profiting by inflating drug costs and squeezing Main Street pharmacies.”

• Yesterday, the FTC published the first report from its ongoing investigation into US pharmacy-benefit managers (PBMs), or companies that manage prescription drug benefits on behalf of employers and health insurers. In the report, FTC officials highlight how unchecked consolidation has led to the three largest PBMs controlling ~80% of all prescriptions filled in the US, along with the six largest PBMs controlling ~95% of the market. Moreover, the largest PBMs are all owned by insurers which, in turn, also own specialty, mail-order, or retail pharmacies. The report says the current arrangement may be (🤔) contributing to higher drug costs for American patients, since it allows a small handful of companies to influence which drugs are available – and at what price.

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• ☝️ Euro 2024: Spain defeated France 2-1 yesterday behind a goal from 16-year-old winger Lamine Yamal, securing their record-high sixth straight tournament victory; Sunday’s championship match will feature Spain against the winner of today’s Netherlands-England faceoff.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Beam

• 💰 US markets closed mixed (S&P: +0.1%; Dow: -0.1%; Nasdaq: +0.1%); the S&P and Nasdaq notched record-high closes (yet again).
• 🏦 Fed Chair Jerome Powell suggested the case for interest rate cuts is becoming stronger in remarks yesterday to Congress, but said more progress on inflation is needed before any cuts can occur; Powell also suggested a further cooling in the labor market could be undesirable.
• 🚗 Chinese EV giant BYD is constructing a $1 billion manufacturing plant in Turkey; it aims to start production by the end of 2026.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎾 Wimbledon: The men’s and women’s semifinal matchups will be finalized later today, following the conclusion of the last quarterfinal rounds. (More: The Taylor Fritz cheering drama, explained)
• 🎮 Microsoft is planning to hike the price of its Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription in September; the move will come in tandem with the launch of a new “standard” subscription that doesn’t include day-one access to first-party Xbox games.
• 🏌️ Keegan Bradley will captain the US Ryder Cup team for the 2025 edition of the biennial tournament against Europe; Bradley was selected as captain after Tiger Woods turned the role down.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Xero Shoes

• 🛰️ Space startup Gravitics earned a $125 million contract to expand Axiom Space’s planned space station.
• ⚠️ Many off-the-shelf tampons contain over a dozen toxic metals, including lead and arsenic, per a new UC Berkeley study.
• 💉 Eli Lilly’s diabetes drug Mounjaro (aka tirzepatide) is associated with “significantly greater weight loss” than Novo Nordisk's Ozempic (aka semaglutide), according to the first major head-to-head study. | 💊 A range of medications, including generic versions of Viagra and Cialis, were allowed on the US market using data the FDA has identified as potentially problematic (read: fake), calling into question their safety and efficacy, per a Bloomberg analysis.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🧑‍⚖️ The bribery trial of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who stands accused of accepting bribes including gold and envelopes of cash from 2018-2022, began closing arguments yesterday.
• 📲 The US and several allies announced the seizure of a sophisticated Russian propaganda mill behind ~1,000 covert social media accounts on X.
• 🏛️ Two Democratic Senate committee leaders sent a letter to the DOJ seeking a special counsel investigation into whether Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas broke federal tax and ethics laws. (Read more)

CLICKBAIT

• 🎾🤑 Why Serena Williams tried to deposit her first $1 million check at a drive-thru ATM.

⏳🙄 Stat of the Day: The friend group always has one that takes their sweet, sweet time – and for the Washington Nationals, it’s their closer, Kyle Finnegan. Finnegan, who’s only pitched ~37 out of his team’s 800+ innings this season, has more pitch-clock violations by himself (nine) than the full pitching staffs of nearly half of the MLB’s 30 teams.

🤔 Did You Know? Penn State University is also home to “ice cream college” – a weeklong annual crash course all about the science behind the frozen treat. Each year, it’s full of employees from major ice cream companies like Hudsonville, Hershey, and Baskin Robbins. (Even Ben & Jerry – the actual humans, not the company – have taken a version of the class.)

📰 Worth a Read: Revolution in the air: how laughing gas changed the world → (The Guardian)

Early last week, Oklahoma highway patrol officer Ryan Vanvleck pulled over an unusual vehicle: a UFO with an obstructed license plate.

🛸 Take us to your leader... The aliens ladies behind the wheel were en route to the annual UFO Festival in Roswell, New Mexico, when Ryan pulled them over. 

• After snapping a few photos, the officer sent them on their way with only a warning.

How it works: We provide an incorrect stat. Then you guess whether the actual number is over or under the given value.

1. 🫀 50,000 miles: Length of a human's circulatory system if laid out flat.
2. 💧 100 days: Number of days it takes water to travel the entire length of the Mississippi River.
3. ❄️ 400: Number of words Scots have for “snow”.

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1. 🫀 Over, 100,000 miles
2. 💧 Under, 90 days
3. ❄️ Over, 421 words