Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 🗳️ Political AI deepfakes
• 🌀 First named storm of 2026
• 🚨 White House UFC attack thwarted

…and much more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~3.38-minute read (873 words).

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“Be approximately right rather than exactly wrong.”

–John Tukey (1915-2000)

Campaign ads featuring AI-generated images and videos once sounded more like political satire than reality.

Now they're becoming a regular feature of American elections, with candidates and outside groups using AI to promote, attack, and grab voters' attention.

In recent months, AI-generated campaign content has depicted Texas Senate candidate James Talarico singing about transgender children, Michigan Senate hopeful Mike Rogers as a superhero rescuing civilians, and Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt as Batman battling an incumbent portrayed as the Joker.

It comes from both sides of the aisle

Republican primary candidates in Kentucky used AI-generated ads depicting GOP Rep. Thomas Massie in a fictional “throuple” with progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.

• In Georgia, AI-generated campaign ads have portrayed Republican candidates shooting guns, fighting each other, and shoveling money into furnaces.
• Andrew Cuomo used AI in a mayoral campaign ad in NYC depicting himself performing a variety of jobs, from subway conductor to stockbroker.

It’s easier than ever to use AI deepfakes. Cybersecurity firm DeepStrike estimates the number of deepfakes shared online increased from ~500,000 in 2023 to ~8 million last year, while some researchers say changes to social media moderation have made manipulated content easier to spread.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are still grappling with how to regulate the technology. Roughly 30 states have passed laws restricting election-related deepfakes, though legal experts say enforcement can be challenging since political speech receives strong First Amendment protections.

Looking ahead to November: The 2026 midterm elections are shaping up as a dead heat at this point. While Democrats currently lead Republicans by a margin of 47.9%–42.9% on a generic congressional ballot, per RealClearPolitics, the party's path to victory in November has become more challenging following recent redistricting efforts in several GOP-led states.

Democrats now need to outperform their 2024 national results by 4.9 percentage points to win back the House, up from 3.1 points before the latest round of map changes, per a new Axios analysis.

📊 Flash poll: If the November elections were held today, which party’s candidate would you vote for?

• Republicans
• Democrats
• Third party
• Unsure/other

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BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🚀🤖 SpaceX agrees to buy AI coding agent Cursor for $60 billion in all-stock deal; SpaceX shares rise an additional 5% Tuesday, briefly overtaking Amazon to become one of the top-five most valuable US public companies (~$2.9 trillion at intraday peak).
• 🏦 Robinhood to cut ~10% of its workforce (~290 employees) in the brokerage firm’s first major layoff in three years.
• 🍕 Yum Brands agrees to sell the bulk of Pizza Hut’s global operations to private-equity firm LongRange Capital for $2.7 billion; separately, Yum China Holdings agreed to acquire Pizza Hut’s mainland China business for $1.2 billion.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚽ World Cup: Striker Kylian Mbappé becomes France’s leading all-time scorer on the world’s biggest stage, notching two goals in France’s 3-1 win over Senegal; Norway’s star striker Erling Haaland scores two goals in World Cup debut (a 4-1 win over Iraq).
• 🏆 Grammy Awards announce changes to Best New Artist and Album categories, in addition to adding five new awards.
• 🙏 Singer Bonnie Tyler is out of medical coma but in intensive care after emergency intestinal surgery.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🌀 Tropical Storm Arthur is expected to form early this morning and make landfall tonight near the Texas-Louisiana border; it would represent the first named storm of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season.
• 🌎 Southern California’s San Andreas and San Jacinto fault systems are at their highest levels of stress in 1,000 years, new study reveals.
• 🍽️ Completely eliminating sugar from a low-fat diet may have negative effects on gut and metabolic health, per new mouse study.

US, WORLD & POLITICS

• 🚨 Planned attack on the White House’s UFC event on Sunday was thwarted by law enforcement after a concerned mother called the police, court documents show; five people were charged in connection with the alleged plot, in which the group hoped to detonate explosive drones over the White House and shoot into the crowd with snipers.
• 🗳️ Primary elections were held yesterday in Alabama, Georgia, and Oklahoma (for House and Senate), as well as the Washington, D.C., mayoral race.
• 🏛️ DOJ charges 15 protesters in Minnesota with conspiracy to impede federal officers during the winter immigration enforcement action known as Operation Metro Surge.

☝️ Scientists snapped the first-ever photo of a tiny fox that was feared extinct, after one wandered near a highway on Mexico’s Cozumel Island. The elusive Cozumel fox, a pint-sized predator that’s ~40% smaller than its mainland gray fox relatives, hasn't been officially spotted in 20+ years.

🤔 Did you know? Humans and giraffes have the same seven cervical vertebrae neck bones. Giraffes are just dramatically longer, creating those iconic six-foot necks.

📰 Worth a read: Why more people are going gray (on purpose)

🖱️ What we’re clicking:

• McDonald's menu item returns after 30+ years
• The most important space bromance is back
• Why do my fingers prune in the swimming pool?

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Can you name the top-three highest rated Disney films of all time, according to IMDb?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

🌭 Germany resident Tommy Schmidt built a giant bratwurst and bun out of 65,000 Lego bricks to claim the Guinness World Record for the largest Lego brick sausage. Now, if he just had a giant bottle of ketchup to go with it...

1. Spirited Away (2001); 8.6/10
2. The Lion King (1994); 8.5/10
3. TIE: Coco (2017) & Wall-E (2008); 8.4/10

Source

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*Disclaimers: Zonari, A., et al. npj Aging, 2023.

Based on a double-blind, third-party 12 week clinical study with 22 participants aged 47-65.