Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 📝 Special counsel report on Trump
• 🧠 Neuralink’s human brain implants
• 😬 College enrollment snafu

… and more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.48-minute read (1,191 words).

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“Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.”

–Napoleon Hill (1883-1970)

Early yesterday morning, the Justice Department published a long-awaited report from special counsel Jack Smith laying out the details of his investigation into President-elect Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election result.

What does it contain? The 174-page report drew from interviews with 250+ people and grand jury testimony from 50+ witnesses.

In its main finding, Smith asserted he was confident his team had amassed enough evidence to convict Trump if the case had been allowed to go to trial – a move that was prevented by Trump’s re-election, due to the DOJ’s policy against prosecuting sitting US Presidents.

• More specifically, Smith’s report lays out details of Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the election, including attempts to force the DOJ to advance personal interests, to enlist fake electors in battleground states, and to encourage an angry mob to attack the US Capitol.

Trump denies the report’s conclusions

The president-elect strongly rebutted Smith’s findings in a series of social media posts yesterday, claiming he was "totally innocent" and that Smith’s investigation was based on false information. Trump and his lawyers have previously asserted that Smith's report is a "partisan weapon" aimed at biasing the public by amplifying the government's “narrative" without giving Trump the ability to respond.

Looking ahead…Smith wrote a second report about his separate charges over Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, which is expected to eventually be released. But that report remains private for now, because the case is still active against two Trump aides charged as co-defendants.

Zoom out: Of the four separate criminal cases Trump faced last year, three of them have now concluded ahead of his inauguration with no legal penalties outside of felony convictions on his record. The sole exception is Trump’s ongoing election interference case in Georgia, from which lead prosecutor and Fulton County DA Fani Willis was recently disqualified.

📊 Flash poll: In general, how do you feel about the results of the recent legal prosecution of President-elect Trump?

• Approve
• Disapprove
• No strong opinion
• Unsure/other

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Things aren’t going as sweet as Tennessee whiskey for those in the industry, following a Covid lockdown-driven run-up of sales. In other words: whiskey-makers are experiencing a hangover of their own.

• Sales volumes of US whiskey – including bourbon, Tennessee, and rye – dropped 1.2% in 2023, marking the first fall since 2002, according to industry tracker IWSR.
• That drop steepened last year, with volumes down 4% in the first nine months of 2024.

Many distilleries are scrambling. Health concerns, as well as the popularity of anti-obesity drugs, cannabis, and low- and no-alcohol drinks, is stifling consumer demand, the Wall Street Journal reports. Two years ago, the Family Jones distillery in Denver was selling barrels of bourbon for $2,000/pop – now they’re struggling to move similar barrels for $900.

Not just whiskey. In 2023, the volume of spirits sold in the US declined for the first time in nearly three decades, per IWSR. The wine industry is also dealing with its own existential crisis.

👀 Looking ahead…Pour in some hair of the dog, because whiskey’s future looks about the same as yesterday. A deal between the US and EU that paused proposed 50% tariffs on imports of American whiskey into Europe is set to expire at the end of March. If enacted, it would make it tougher for US whiskey-makers to sell to European consumers.

Computer-brain interface company Neuralink has successfully implanted a third brain chip into a human patient, according to CEO Adrian Dittmann Elon Musk.

Things are reportedly going well so far. The company installed its first brain chip in a human around a year ago. The patient was a 30-year-old male who became paralyzed following a swimming accident; Neuralink’s implant enabled him to successfully play chess and various video games shortly after its installation – though the device lost some of its capabilities after its threads became loose (most functionality was restored following tweaks to its software).

In its second human implant, the company placed the threads deeper into the patient’s brain to avoid another event of retraction, AP reports. The also-paralyzed patient received the device in July, and has since used the implant to play video games and design 3D objects via computer-aided design software.

Scant details exist so far on the third patient.

The future: Neuralink plans to implant 20-30 of its devices in humans this year, per Musk. The company is also working on extending its implant’s capabilities to control an assistive robotic arm, as well as a device that aims to restore sight to blind people.

After that? The focus turns to building telepathic human-AI cyborgs (probably).

🧠 Zoom out: Neuralink isn’t the only member of the brain gang. 45+ trials involving brain-computer interfaces are underway, with the efforts aimed at helping treat brain disorders, overcoming brain injuries, and other uses.

+Dive deeper: How Neuralink’s implant works (video)

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BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📊 US markets closed mixed (S&P: +0.1%; Dow: +0.5%; Nasdaq: -0.2%).
• 💼 Meta is cutting 5% of its workforce in preparation for an "intense year." | ☕🚻 Starbucks will start placing its bathrooms behind an IRL paywall this month. | ✈️ Boeing delivered 348 airplanes in 2024, about a third fewer than in 2023; rival Airbus delivered 766 jetliners last year, its most since 2019.
• 🏦 Capital One is being sued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for allegedly cheating savings account customers out of $2+ billion in interest. | 🐦 Elon Musk is being sued by the SEC for allegedly failing to disclose he had amassed an active stake in Twitter in 2022, which allowed him to buy shares at “artificially low prices,” per the suit.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

in partnership with Tuft & Needle

• 📺 DirecTV is launching MySports, a ~$70/month sports-focused streaming package offering access to live NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL games across 40+ channels.
• 🎉 Catherine, Princess of Wales, is in remission from cancer.
• 🏟️ The NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers are abandoning plans to build an arena in Center City; will stay in South Philly instead.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🏝️ NASA satellites recently documented the sudden emergence and swift disappearance of a “ghost island” in the Caspian Sea.
• 💧⛰️ A massive aquifer, aka a layer of water-saturated rock or sediment, discovered beneath Oregon’s Cascade Range could be the largest in the world, per scientists; it reportedly contains 19.43 cubic miles of water, over half the volume of Lake Tahoe.
• 🌌 One-third of supermassive black holes – those millions or billions of times more massive than the Sun – are hidden behind thick clouds of gas and dust, per a new NASA study.

MISCELLANEOUS

in partnership with Live It Up

• 🏛️ Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to serve as Defense Secretary, participated in a combative Senate confirmation hearing yesterday; Senate hearings for other Trump nominees are scheduled through Thursday. | 🏛️ The House approved a bill that would ban transgender athletes from participating in female sports at schools that receive federal funding. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• 🇺🇸🇨🇺 The Biden admin is removing Cuba from the US government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism as part of a Catholic Church-facilitated deal to free political prisoners on the island.
• 🎓😬 College enrollment data mishap: The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center announced an error in its October report that found a 5% year-over-year decrease in freshmen enrollment for Fall 2024; instead enrollment increased by a yet-to-be-specified amount.

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The number of Google searches for how to delete Meta’s social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, and Threads – has increased 5,000+% over the past week. The uptick comes after Meta announced a new plan to replace its third-party fact-checking system with a Community Notes model and roll back previous limits to the amount of political content in user feeds.

More broadly, America’s social media landscape is also poised to undergo an industry-shaking change. The deadline for Congress’ TikTok sale-or-ban law is set to take effect this Sunday (barring any SCOTUS intervention or speculative hail mary sale) – which has creators and users scrambling for a new social media app to fill the impending dance- and- GRWM- videos- sized hole in their daily schedules.

☝️ Tiger Woods played his first match in his and Rory McIlroy’s new tech-infused TGL golf league last night; it marks the second match of the league’s inaugural season (which runs through March 25).

🤔 Did You Know? Nintendo has had just six presidents since its founding in 1889, with an average tenure of ~23 years apiece.

📰 Worth a Read: If you think you're ‘just not a math person’ then think again.

🖱 Clickbait: Ranking America's 20 most livable cities

🥲 When Pacific Palisades resident Casey Colvin received wildfire evacuation orders while still at work, he spent the next five hours sitting in traffic trying to get home to rescue his dogs. Unable to reach them safely, he feared the worst when his house burned down the next day – that is, until his pooch Oreo was spotted in the neighborhood five days later.

🦔 Hedgehog highways have gained popularity throughout the UK, providing safe passage to any hedgehogs that need to pass through urban areas.

🦖 The Cox Science Center and Aquarium teamed up with the city of West Palm Beach, Florida, last week in an attempt to claim a Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people dressed as dinosaurs. See it, then believe it.

💪 Insane: Pro rock climbers are freakishly strong. (For context: 20mm, the edge they’re hanging from in the video, is about the width – not length – of a peanut.)

🤔 Order matters: There’s a word for why TikTok sounds better than TokTik.

😳 Whoa: Read an investigation into the use of unclaimed bodies for medical research.

🏈 Stay in the game: Office Chair Sports is your weekly huddle for sports recaps, memes, and maybe your next job in sports. Stay in the game without leaving your desk.*

🚀 Small, but mighty: Inside Small Giants is your go-to for startup success. This weekly newsletter reveals steps to make small businesses thrive, sharing game-changing strategies and candid lessons.*

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Can you name the top-five rated superhero movies of all time, according to Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer? (Hint: 4 of 5 are animated.)

1. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
2. The Incredibles (2004)
3. Black Panther (2018)
4. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)

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