Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 🤔 How RFK Jr.’s departure will affect the 2024 presidential race
• 🧑‍🚀 SpaceX is attempting the first commercial spacewalk
• ✂️ The Fed signals a rate cut is imminent

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.97-minute read (1,324 words).

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"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

–Chuck Close (1940-2021)

On Friday, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. officially suspended his 2024 campaign and endorsed former President Trump, potentially boosting the Republican candidate hours after Democrats concluded their convention.

More details: Kennedy, who appeared alongside Trump at a rally in Arizona hours after suspending his campaign, said he’ll remove his name from the ballot "in about 10 battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler," while remaining on ~30 other state ballots.

• In explaining his decision, Kennedy said the principles that persuaded him to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent last year – including the protection of free speech, ending the war in Ukraine, and addressing chronic illness in children – have now led him to support Trump in the 2024 race.

Between the lines: Kennedy has seen his support among American voters drop by roughly half since President Biden exited the race. RFK Jr. consistently polled around 10% between March 1 and mid-July of this year – but starting on July 21, when Biden dropped out and endorsed VP Harris, Kennedy’s support has gradually fallen to its current level of 4.7%, per FiveThirtyEight.

Looking ahead… Analysts say Kennedy’s exit from the presidential race will likely boost support for Trump compared to Vice President Kamala Harris, but the size of that boost is still uncertain.

• A Cook Political Report survey of seven battleground states published earlier this month found Trump was the second choice of 45% of Kennedy voters in these states, compared with 26% for Harris. Overall, Kennedy was supported by ~5% of likely voters across these states, down from 8% in May.
• According to FiveThirtyEight's G. Elliott Morris, Harris led Trump in the company’s model by 3.3% last week in a hypothetical race featuring Kennedy. When Kennedy was removed, Harris’ lead dipped slightly to 3.1% – though the model didn’t account for RFK Jr.’s endorsement of Trump.

Big picture: Overall, Harris is currently leading Trump by a slight margin in polling aggregators from RealClearPolitics (+1.5%), FiveThirtyEight (+3.6%), and The Hill/Decision Desk HQ (+3.6%). But Trump is currently projected to defeat Harris by a 287-251 margin in the Electoral College based on individual state polls, per RCP.

📊 Flash poll: In your opinion, will RFK Jr.’s decision to drop out of the race and endorse Trump have a material impact on the result of the 2024 presidential election?

• Yes
• No
• Unsure/other

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💥 Israel and Hezbollah exchanged major missile strikes on Sunday. Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel early yesterday morning, around the same time ~100 Israeli warplanes struck targets in Lebanon (a move Israel framed as a preemptive strike). Both sides say their attacks were aimed only at military targets, reporting three military casualties apiece. Analysts say the low number of announced casualties lowers the likelihood of a formal war between Israel and Hezbollah, which Western officials have worked to avoid in recent months.

🇫🇷📲 French police reportedly arrested Telegram co-founder/CEO Pavel Durov. According to multiple reports, Durov’s arrest on Saturday is tied to Telegram's loose content moderation policies, as well as its unwillingness to cooperate with French law enforcement on investigations relating to drug trafficking, child sexual content, and other criminal activity on the encrypted messaging app. Telegram, with close to 1 billion users, is one of the world’s largest messaging apps, with particular influence in Russia, Ukraine, and former Soviet Union republics.

🇪🇺 Apple users in the EU will soon be able to delete preinstalled apps – including the App Store itself. Last week, Apple confirmed it will enact sweeping app deletion changes by the end of this year to comply with the EU’s new Digital Markets Act. Under the new changes, EU Apple users will be able to delete the App Store, Messages, Camera, Photos, Safari, and any other pre-installed app (with the exception of Settings and Phone) and replace them with options from third-party companies.

The world hasn’t seen a new kind of space-focused walk attempted since Michael Jackson’s legendary Motown 25 performance – until now.

This week, SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission is scheduled to try something never done before: sending private citizens on a spacewalk.

Background: Only government astronauts from the US, the Soviet Union/Russia, the European Space Agency, Canada, and China have conducted spacewalks. Since 2000, 270+ have been performed on/around the International Space Station – each with the astronauts donning an American or Russian spacesuit.

The…dawn of a new era?

When the first Polaris Dawn crew member steps foot outside the spacecraft, they’ll be testing a new spacesuit made by SpaceX.

• Spacesuits are tricky to nail: they have to provide life support and protection from space (radiation + average temp of -454.8°F), but can’t be too bulky (as fully pressurized suits usually are) since astronauts need to move around.
• The spacewalk’s primary goal is to learn as much as possible about SpaceX’s suit, which could prove key in sending astronauts to the Moon and Mars. NASA developed its current generation of spacesuits in the 1980s.

🧑‍🚀 Looking ahead… The five-day mission is scheduled to blast off tomorrow between 3:38 am–7:38 am ET. The team of four – Jared Isaacman, billionaire founder of Shift4 who's both funding and captaining the mission, retired Air Force pilot Scott Poteet, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon – is scheduled to perform ~40 experiments in total, with the spacewalk occurring on Day 3.

While Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and Apple TV get the bulk of the headlines, expert investors believe a small, under-the-radar company may dominate the second wave of the cord-cutting revolution.

The Motley Fool – the same financial company that called the streaming revolution when they recommended Netflix at just $1.87 a share – has compiled a complete dossier on this revolutionary new platform.

Get their special report here.

“The time has come for policy to adjust.”

During his Jackson Hole speech on Friday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell signaled a rate cut is coming soon, but declined to give specifics on when or how much. He also signaled the Fed’s priority is shifting from fighting inflation to supporting the jobs market, which, per Powell, is in the midst of an “unmistakable” cooling. An exact quote: “We do not seek or welcome further cooling in labor market conditions.”

👀 Looking ahead… Markets are factoring in a 100% chance of a September rate cut, but are split on its size. As of last evening, trading indicated a 63.5% chance the Fed will cut rates by 25 basis points.

• ☝️ CDC data shows average life expectancy across the US fell by 0.6 years between 2020 and 2021, largely due to a combination of the Covid pandemic and drug overdoses; in 2022, life expectancy at birth was 77.5 years.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Slumber

• 💰 US markets rose across the board on Friday following Powell’s speech (S&P: +1.2%; Dow: +1.1%; Nasdaq: +1.2%)
• 📝 Restaurants aren’t stoked about the FTC’s proposed rule to crack down on “junk fees.”
• ⚖️🏘️ The Justice Department and eight states filed an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage Inc., a property management software company, accusing the firm of enabling landlords to collude and artificially inflate rental prices. (Dive deeper: Is big data driving up rents?)

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🍿 Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine returned to the top of the domestic box office with $18.3 million in its fifth weekend of release; box office newcomers Blink Twice ($7.3 million) and The Crow ($4.6 million) both performed worse than expected.
• 🏈 College football: Georgia Tech upset #10 Florida State 24-21 in Dublin thanks to a last-second field goal; see a full recap of Week 0 action. | 🏌️ Lydia Ko of New Zealand won the Women’s British Open by two strokes yesterday; Ko’s victory comes two weeks after she earned the Olympic gold medal; it also marks her third major title.
• ⚾ Shohei Ohtani became the sixth member of the MLB’s 40-40 club (40 homers and 40 steals in a season) with a walk-off grand slam on Friday; the LA Dodgers' star accomplished the feat 21 games earlier than any player in history. | ⚾ Aaron Judge hit his 50th and 51st home runs of the season yesterday; the NY Yankees slugger is currently on pace to break his own AL record of 62 homers (set in 2022). | ⚾ Lake Mary, Florida defeated Taoyuan, Chinese Taipei to take home the Little League Baseball World Series title.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Spoak

• 🚀 NASA officially decided to return Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to Earth without its two astronauts aboard; instead, the NASA astronauts will wait until February to hitch a ride home on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.
• 🦕👣 An international research team discovered hundreds of matching dinosaur footprints in South America (Brazil) and Africa (Cameroon); dinosaurs made the tracks ~120 million years ago on a single supercontinent known as Gondwana, which broke off from the larger Pangea.
• 💊 Stressed volunteers who knowingly took a placebo pill exhibited a significant decrease in stress, anxiety, and depression after two weeks of “treatment,” per a new study.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🌀 Hurricane Hone made landfall on Hawaii’s Big Island yesterday as a Category 1 storm; no major damages or injuries were initially reported.
• 🚢 Italian prosecutors launched a manslaughter investigation into the recent sinking of a superyacht owned by British tech mogul Mike Lynch, which killed seven passengers on board (including Lynch).
• 💰🗳️ Kamala Harris’ campaign said it raised $540 million in just over a month since officially launching, including $82 million during last week’s DNC; her campaign reported $377 million cash on hand going into August, compared with $327 million for Trump’s campaign (which hasn’t released fundraising numbers since early August).

CLICKBAIT

• ⚛️🚀 How hydrogen could change the future of space exploration.

🏈✈️ Stat of the Day: This year, Washington University football might as well change its mascot to the Globetrotters. The team will travel 8,312 miles for in-conference games in its first season as part of the Big Ten, the most of any football program from a power conference, according to a new report from travel search site KAYAK. To put that into perspective: When factoring in return trips, Washington’s in-conference football schedule involves traveling the equivalent of 66.7% of the distance around the entire Earth.

🤔 Did You Know? The theory that an asteroid impact caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs ~66 million years ago wasn’t proposed until 1980.

📰 Worth a Read: The top-secret World War II mission that killed the heir apparent to the Kennedy dynasty → (Smithsonian Magazine)

Monday: US Open begins🎾; Bipartisan congressional task force visits site of Trump’s attempted assassination

Tuesday: SpaceX aims to launch its historic Polaris Dawn mission

Wednesday: 2024 Paris Summer Paralympic Games begin; Rainbow Bridge Remembrance Day

Thursday: Dragon Con opens in Atlanta

Friday: The Fed’s preferred gauge of inflation is released for July

On Friday, we covered how a federal judge blocked a landmark FTC regulation that would have banned employers from using noncompete agreements to prevent workers from joining competing companies.

❓ Our question to you: In your opinion, should noncompete agreements be legal or illegal for US employees below the senior executive level?

• 👍 Legal: 27%
• 👎 Illegal: 54%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 19%

Click here to read the most thoughtful longform responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 3,620 votes and 379 longform responses.

Bryan Berg is an architect and card-stacking extraordinairre who started breaking house-of-card world records in 1992. 

🃏 The professional card stacker recently broke the record for the tallest house of cards built in eight hours, with his tower ultimately measuring 54 levels high.

• Bryan ran seven humidifiers to ensure the cards cooporated during his building session. He built the masterpiece without the use of any glue, wiring, or metalwork.

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

1. Avi
2. Bell
3. Curr
4. Dynam

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1. Avi = Bird (e.g., aviation)
2. Bell = War (belligerent)
3. Curr = Run (current)
4. Dynam = Power (dynamic, dynamite)