Good morning! Apologies for the lack of an email on Friday. We had an email server problem that prevented delivery. Today’s issue will be a tad longer as a result — we took the best of Friday and smashed it into this bad boy.

Denmark's government recalled three flavors of instant ramen for the crime of… being too spicy. The Danes urged consumers to avoid the products, which are sold globally, saying they’re so spicy they could be poisonous. The vikings would be so ashamed of how far their people have fallen.

GOVERNMENT

👴 North Dakota passes congressional age limit

It’s probably super unconstitutional. But somebody will have to sue for us to find out. The good people of North Dakota voted overwhelmingly last week — 61% to 39% — to pass a law preventing old people from running for Congress.

• Candidates who would turn 81 during the House or Senate term they're running for will be forbidden from running.

• Were this law already in place nationally, it would (shockingly) only have prevented six current U.S. senators from running for their current terms.

Why is it probably unconstitutional? Back in 1992, Arkansas passed a law hitting members of Congress with term limits. In 1995, the Supreme Court threw it out. The court said states couldn’t make new rules on who can run for federal office beyond the slim list already in the Constitution. “Person who already served three terms” was viewed as a new rule. Here’s that list:

That’s it. You can be a convicted felon. You can literally be in prison. You can be 102. You can even use speaker phone in public places. As long as you can check the three boxes above, you can run for Congress.

North Dakota's new law is bound to be challenged in federal court. Considering the above precedent, that challenge is likely a slam dunk.

On a related note, presidents and VPs have similar qualifications. Be at least 75 35. Be a citizen from birth. Live in the country for at least 14 years. And don’t have already have been elected twice.

In other congressional news…

• ⚾ Team R crushed at the Congressional Baseball Game. Republicans defeated Democrats 31 to 11 in the annual fundraising event at the MLB’s Nationals Park.

• 👩‍💼 The Senate’s annual Seersucker Thursday tradition went off without a hitch yesterday, but only nine Senators took part.

• 😶 The House narrowly voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to give them docs related to a Biden investigation.

POLITICS

⚪ CNN and the two campaigns agreed to some ground rules for the network's June 27 presidential debate. There will be no studio audience, no opening statements, and, critically, the candidates’ mics will be muted when it’s not their turn to speak. Perhaps that will help prevent a repeat of the 2020 dumpster fire.

🔴 The campaign of Donald Trump, who turned 78 on Friday, launched its "Black Americans for Trump” effort and stopped at a Black church in Detroit. Trump received the endorsement of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, whose prison sentence for fraud he commuted in January 2021 before leaving office.

• Donald Trump met with some big-time CEOs (Apple, Chase Bank, and more) hours after Biden's chief of staff met with the same group. Trump vowed to cut regulations and slash the corporate tax rate to 20% from the current rate of 21%.

• Trump also held two meetings with Republican lawmakers — one Senate, one House — near the Capitol. He reportedly focused on the economy but also nudged them toward a "leave it to the states" strategy on abortion.

• He later met with Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and teased him as a possible VP pick. But some Trump allies claim the leading pick is North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum because of his “good hair.”

🔵 The Biden campaign raised $30 million on Saturday at a star-studded Hollywood fundraiser. The event featured Presidents Biden, Obama, and Clinton alongside George Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Jimmy Kimmel. Biden warned of the “scariest” parts of a possible second Trump term.

• Joe Biden extended his promise not to pardon his son Hunter’s recent felony conviction. He extended that yesterday, saying he also will not commute his son’s sentence. A pardon axes the conviction and everything that goes with it. A commutation just reduces the sentence.

• Kamala Harris got some good and some bad polling news. Only a third of voters think she could win a national election. At the same time, she trounces her potential opponents in a 2028 Democratic presidential primary more than two-to-one.

⚪ An AI chatbot named VIC — Virtual Integrated Citizen — is running for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Technically the guy behind the bot is the candidate. But he swears that should he win, VIC will call the shots.

⚪ Take it with a grain of salt, but a new Florida poll has Trump leading the state by just 6%, down from 9% in April. Republican Sen. Rick Scott's lead nearly evaporated from 17% in April to just 2% in this survey. Both Republicans still lead the polling averages by more comfortable margins but Dems need all the good news they can get out of Florida.

🔴 Well that’s embarrassing. Indiana's Republican nominee for governor picked a state representative as his running mate for lieutenant governor. Indiana Republican convention delegates promptly ignored that decision and nominated an activist pastor instead.

🔴 A Republican congressional candidate in Nevada is suing his defeated primary opponent for allegedly sending out deepfaked audio and creating a website calling him “incestuous.”

⚪ 🟡 Some very on-brand trouble is brewing with the Libertarians. The Colorado Libertarian Party doesn't want its own presidential candidate on the state’s ballot. Over in New Hampshire, the party can’t remove him from the ballot and will “withhold support” instead.

TRIVIA

Former French President Francois Hollande announced on Saturday that he’s running for Parliament in next month’s elections. It’s rare for an American president to leave power and run for something again (that isn’t the presidency), but it has happened three times before. Most recently… 150 years ago. Which former president was elected to the Senate in 1874?

Hint: He served as president from 1865 to 1869.

WORLD

🌐 G7: G7 leaders (what's that?) agreed to throw Ukraine a $50 billion bone made up of investment returns on frozen Russian assets. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Ukraine signed a 10-year security pact to share intelligence and strategy (but not troops).

 🇺🇸 United States: The Supreme Court unanimously agreed (9-0) to toss a lawsuit trying to prevent access to abortion pill mifepristone. But the justices didn’t rule on the drug itself. They just said that the medical group that brought the lawsuit didn’t have the legal right to sue (that’s called standing).

🇺🇸 United States: The Supreme Court also unanimously agreed — they do that more than you’d think — that you can’t trademark somebody else’s name without their permission. More decisions drop this week. The court’s summer break starts soon and they always save the best for last.

🇺🇸 United States: Finally, the Supreme Court overturned (6-3) the Trump-era ban on bump stocks. A bump stock attaches to the butt-end of a rifle and uses the gun’s recoil energy to bounce it back toward the shooter’s trigger finger, increasing the firing rate. The court said the Trump-era ban illegally changed the law without Congress’ input. State-level bans remain in effect.

BRIEFS

• VP Kamala Harris attended a summit in Switzerland on Ukraine’s future. She pledged full U.S. support for a "just and lasting peace."

• Amid cancer treatment, the artist formerly known as Kate Middleton was back on royal duty on Saturday at Trooping the Colour

• Attacks on Red Sea shipping traffic by Houthi rebels in nearby Yemen haven't let up, hurting the economic interests of 65 countries

• Tesla shareholders yesterday voted to reinstate CEO Elon Musk's $56 billion pay deal after a Delaware judge tossed it in January

• The Port of Baltimore is fully reopened after the Key Bridge collapsed in March and should be back to full capacity next month

• The United Nations claims Israel's military and two Hamas-aligned militant groups have harmed "unprecedented numbers" of children

• The Federal Reserve’s Minneapolis branch says the Fed needs more evidence that inflation is nearing its 2% goal before cutting interest rates

• Netflix is hunting for a partner to help it produce the two NFL games it’s planning to air on Christmas Day this year

• Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania caused a crash on the highway due to traveling at a “high rate of speed.”

QUOTE

SNACKS

🤓 Competitive Excel: For the Ben Wyatts of the world, it’s not too late to qualify for the 2024 Microsoft Excel World Championship in Las Vegas.

🏏 Cricket: Take a look inside the life of the Oracle engineer who plays cricket for Team USA… in his spare time. Team USA is on a tear at the World Cup right now (against countries who actually know what cricket is).

🤠 Music: Country star George Strait broke the record for largest ticketed concert in U.S. history. His Saturday show at Texas A&M's football stadium was packed with 110,905 fans, beating the Grateful Dead’s 1977 record of 107,019.

🌭 Professional Eating: MLE champ (that’s Major League Eating) Joey Chestnut is out at this year’s July 4 Nathan’s hot dog eating contest and will instead compete with rival Takeru Kobayashi live on Netflix on Labor Day.

ANSWER

That would be Mr. Unpopular himself, President Andrew Johnson — the VP who had big shoes to fill after Lincoln's assassination. He was elected to the Senate from Tennessee in 1874, took office in 1875… and promptly died five months later.

The other two former presidents who ran for another office also both died in that office:

1. President John Quincy Adams served in the House for 17 years until his death.

2. President John Tyler won a seat in (spicy alert) the Confederate House of Representatives in 1861 but died in early 1862 before the thing got off the ground.