Good morning. In this edition:

• ⚖️ House v. NCAA settlement approved
• 💂 National Guard in LA
• 🧑‍🚀 Astronaut dirty laundry

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.32-minute read (1,149 words).

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"Take the attitude of a student. Never be too big to ask questions. Never know too much to learn something new."

–Augustine "Og" Mandino (1923-1996)

For centuries, universities across the US have been collecting money from students. But now the shoe cleat is on the other foot.

On Friday, a federal judge approved a landmark settlement that allows schools to directly pay players for the first time in NCAA history starting July 1, in a move that officially redefines the financial landscape of college athletics.

Here’s the playbook

The decade-long House v. NCAA settlement essentially allows athletes to receive a cut of billions of dollars worth of broadcast revenue generated by college sports—though they aren’t officially classified as employees.

• Moving forward, each school can pay athletes up to 22% of the average Power Five school’s athletic revenues each year, with full discretion over how the funds are distributed.
• This annual cap, enforced by the newly created College Sports Commission (CSC), is expected to start at ~$20.5 million in 2025-26 and increase every year during the deal.
• The new revenue payments are on top of scholarships and other benefits student athletes already receive.
• Additionally, the NCAA will pay ~$2.8 billion in back damages over the next 10 years to athletes who competed in college at any time from 2016 through present day.

NIL—reduced to nil?

The settlement also involves new rules designed to limit the influence of boosters and NIL collectives. Starting this summer, any endorsement deal between a booster/NIL collective and an athlete that’s worth $600+ will be vetted by a CSC clearinghouse to ensure it’s for a "valid business purpose," rather than a “pay-for-play” incentive.

But…Many analysts and college sports insiders reportedly have doubts about whether the new rules governing boosters and NIL collectives will be effective at protecting competitive balance. Some believe athletes at the NCAA's richest schools will continue to receive rapidly increasing paychecks, while others believe the rule will spur new lawsuits from NIL backers.

Looking ahead: Expect more lawsuits to clear up items left unanswered by the settlement, including whether athletes should be considered employees and whether NCAA rules allowing just four years of eligibility are legal.

📊 Flash poll: What are your personal feelings regarding the House v. NCAA settlement?

• Approve
• Disapprove
• Unsure/other

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OpenAI is increasingly approaching universities with the goal of securing deals that embed its AI tools in every facet of campus life, according to a new NY Times report.

If the company’s strategy succeeds:

• Students would receive personalized AI assistants to help guide and tutor them from orientation day through graduation.
• Professors would provide customized AI study bots for each class (with the ability for voice mode to be turned on for more conversational learning).
• Career services would offer recruiter chatbots that allow students to practice job interviews.

In its sales pitch to create “AI-native universities,” OpenAI points to research from Microsoft that indicates 71% of leaders would rather hire someone less experienced, but with AI skills, than someone more experienced but without AI skills.

Some schools are embracing the push…including Maryland, Duke, and Cal State University, which announced earlier this year that it’ll make ChatGPT available to each of its 460,000+ students to help prepare them for “California’s future AI-driven economy.”

…while others look more like this: 🙅‍♀️. Among other things, AI detractors point to hallucinations that can be harmful for learning, as well as early research that indicates outsourcing certain tasks to chatbots can diminish skills like critical thinking.

Not just OpenAI: The push to send chatbots to college is getting more competitive than intramural flag football. In a bid to draw more student users, Google and xAI, Elon Musk’s AI startup, are also offering their respective premium AI services for free to college students during exams.

Not to throw cold water on anyone’s routine: but if you’re looking to build muscle, frigid baths immediately after a workout just ain’t it, according to a study recently published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports and & Exercise.

Shrinking properties

As part of the study, the researchers had a dozen healthy young men perform a leg workout. Once finished, each participant immediately submerged one leg in a bucket of warm water (80°F) and another in a bucket of icy water (30°F) for 20 minutes.

• To test the gainz, the men were given a protein shake containing a biochemical tracer, which allowed the researchers to track the protein as it traveled in the volunteers' bloodstreams.
• Ultrasound imaging revealed that blood flow in the cold-plunged leg was considerably lower than that of the warm leg, and stayed that way for hours. This constriction cut off a lot of protein from reaching the strained leg muscles, reducing muscle-building.

But…The new research is a small study, focused specifically on strength gains (though it tracks with other data on this topic). It’s also unclear whether and how timing and other details matter—cold plunging hours after a workout instead of immediately, for example.

Zoom out: Previous research has shown post-workout cold plunges can provide beneficial anti-inflammatory properties for aerobic athletes like runners, soccer players, and swimmers, as well as small reductions in stress and improvements in sleep quality.

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BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💼 The US added 139,000 jobs in May, per new gov’t data; that’s above the gain of 125,000 economists had expected; the unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%.
• 🏦 JPMorgan told incoming grads they'll be fired if they accept job offers dated for the future; first-year workers frequently jump from bank jobs to higher-paying private equity gigs, for which offer letters are extended two years in advance.
• 🍏 Apple's 2025 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) starts today and runs through Friday.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

in partnership with Surfshark VPN

• 🏈 Four-time NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers signed a one-year deal with the Pittsburgh Steelers worth up to $19.5 million.
• 🏆 Maybe Happy Ending won best musical at the 78th Tony Awards, while Purpose won best play; see the full list of winners here.
• 🏟️ SCOREBOARD: NBA Finals: The OKC Thunder beat the Indiana Pacers last night to even the series at 1-1. | Stanley Cup Final: The Florida Panthers beat the Edmonton Oilers in double-OT on Friday to even the best-of-seven series at 1-1; Game 3 is tonight. | French Open: Coco Gauff won her second career Grand Slam on the women’s side, while Carlos Alcaraz came back to win his second straight French Open on the men’s. | Sovereignty won the Belmont Stakes, which featured the same 1-2-3 as last month’s Kentucky Derby. | Texas beat Texas Tech to win the 2025 Women’s College World Series and secure the school's first NCAA softball title.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🙏 Bill Atkinson, an engineer who played a key role in developing the Macintosh and other landmark Apple products, died at 74.
• 🚀 Japanese startup ispace’s spacecraft crashed into the Moon’s surface; it marks ispace’s second failed lunar landing attempt in two years.
• 📜 Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls may be older than scientists previously thought, according to a new AI-assisted study.

US, WORLD & POLITICS

in partnership with Going

• 🏙️ President Trump signed a memo deploying 2,000 National Guard soldiers to Los Angeles yesterday in response to protests over federal immigration sweeps that turned violent over the weekend. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• ✈️ An American Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Naples (Italy) was forced to divert because the plane was too big to fit at its destination airport.
• 🇨🇴 Sen. Miguel Uribe, a prospective presidential candidate in Colombia, was shot in the head by a 15-year-old gunman following a political event; Uribe remains in critical condition.

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☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners from the 12th annual United Nations World Oceans Day photo competition, announced yesterday in celebration of World Oceans Day.

🤔 Did You Know? Astronauts onboard the ISS don’t wash their clothes. Instead, they wear them until they become too dirty/smelly, then toss them out of the airlock to burn-up upon reentering the Earth’s atmosphere.

📰 Worth a Read: The Pentagon disinformation that fueled America’s UFO mythology

🖱️ Clickbait: 'Bitcoin Family' hides crypto codes etched onto metal cards on four continents after recent kidnappings

Monday: Trump’s travel ban fully or partially restricting nationals from 19 countries takes effect

Tuesday: NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX hope to launch another private ISS mission

Wednesday: Game 3 of the NBA Finals

Thursday: National Red Rose Day

Friday: How to Train Your Dragon (a new live-action version) hits theaters

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

1. Flict
2. Grat
3. Juven
4. Mar
5. Phys

🦦 Local Oregon tribes and nonprofits received a $1.56 million grant to lead a planning effort to reintroduce sea otters to the Oregon and Northern California coasts. The adorable creatures have been missing on their land for over a century – locals hope they will help restore the state’s dwindling underwater kelp forests and control invasive sea urchin populations.

🧔🏻 The New York Yankees reversed a decades-long “no-beards” rule, allowing players to grow short and well-groomed facial hair for the first time since 1976.

🩰 Anyone can dance…The Washington School of Ballet has become one of the only premier ballet companies in the world to offer a full curriculum for adults seeking to learn, or relearn, the art of ballet.

+Note: These stories previously appeared in Positive DONUT, our weekly newsletter delivering awe (and awww) inspiring stories you won't hear in the news. Sign up for free here.

1. Flict = Strike (e.g., inflict)
2. Grat = Thank (gratitude)
3. Juven = Young (juvenile)
4. Mar = Sea (marine)
5. Phys = Nature (physics)