Good morning! A mayoral candidate in Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo, got kicked out of a debate for going full Wrestlemania on his opponent. After the other guy insulted his manliness, José Luiz Datena came from the top rope with a chair and thwacked the dude. Maybe American politics are more tame than we think.

President Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday isn’t until October 1, but celebrations began last night with a star-studded concert in Atlanta. It’s never too late to party early.

WORLD

📟️ Thousands injured as Hezbollah’s pagers explode

For most people, pagers went out of style like 25 years ago. The two exceptions? Doctors in hospitals and, until yesterday, terrorists. Up to 4,000 people were injured and around 11, including a young girl, were tragically killed when 5,000 pagers exploded simultaneously in Lebanon yesterday afternoon.

• The pagers were owned by members of Hezbollah, an Islamic nationalist group based in Lebanon (Israel’s neighbor to the north).

• Everyone from the Arab League to Guatemala to Switzerland to the United States has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

• Despite the similar names, Hezbollah is distinct from Hamas. Hamas is the (designated) terrorist group currently at war with Israel in Gaza.

American officials confirmed that Israel is responsible. As part of a joint operation between Mossad (Israel’s CIA) and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), agents reportedly intercepted shipments of the Taiwan-made pagers before they reached their destination in Lebanon. They planted small explosives and remote-controlled triggers inside or near the batteries in each device and sent ‘em on their way.

• Yesterday afternoon around 3:30 p.m. local time, they hit the red button.

• The State Department confirmed that the U.S. “was not aware of this operation and was not involved.”

Israel and Hezbollah aren’t technically at war. But Hezbollah is tight with Hamas and Iran — Israel’s two big enemies. They’ve launched thousands of rockets across the border, forcing evacuations in northern Israel. And Israel has launched military strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hundreds have died as a result.

• Not surprisingly, Hezbollah has vowed to respond, saying “This treacherous and criminal enemy will certainly receive its just retribution for this sinful aggression.”

• Among those injured, albeit mildly, was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations referenced the near-daily attacks from Hezbollah, warning that, at some point, “you have to put a red line and understand that you have to take action.”

This isn’t the first time that Israeli intelligence operations have made Hollywood spy movie writers blush. Back in 1972, Mossad operatives got revenge for the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics by planting a bomb inside a phone in Paris.

• A similar plan, this time using a cell phone, took out a Hamas leader in 1996.

• In 2020, an Iranian nuclear scientist was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun.

• In July, a Hamas leader died in Tehran, Iran when the guesthouse he was staying in exploded. Israeli operatives had planted the bomb months earlier expecting he’d eventually return.

UNITED STATES

🤖 The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designated Neuralink’s “Blindsight” brain implant a “breakthrough device.” The FDA is the arm of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in charge of everything from new medications to cheese to, uh, cybernetic implants. The designation greases the regulatory wheels for promising treatments. It’s the FDA’s FastPass. Neuralink’s owner, Elon Musk, claims Blindsight “will enable even those who have lost both eyes and their optic nerve to see.” Yes, when he’s not busy with sus tweets, Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, the Boring Company, and having enough kids to populate a whole church basketball league, Musk also owns Neuralink (and he co-founded OpenAI).

✈️ Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines are good to merge after winning permission from the airline regulators at the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) yesterday. The $1.9 billion merger cleared the Department of Justice (DOJ), which regulates larger mergers to prevent anti-trust violations, last month. Mayor Secretary Pete and the DOT gave the go-ahead but added a few strings. The new airline, which will keep using both brand names, will need to preserve certain rural flights, keep island-hopping routes, and (most importantly) make sure your airline points don’t lose any value. Not so lucky? JetBlue’s rejected purchase of Spirit “Airlines.”

💰️ Big bank mergers are getting tougher thanks to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The guys insuring your deposits just finalized new policies bringing extra scrutiny to bank mergers with more than $100 billion in combined assets. The FDIC says these mergers hurt competition. Opponents, however, say the new rules will only make it harder for medium-sized banks to compete with the Big Boys like JPMorgan.

P.S.: The monetary policy nerds at the Federal Reserve are probably going to cut interest rates (for the first time since 2020) by 0.25% to 0.50% today. So that’s fun.

POLITICS

🏛️ Second Trump attempt throws D.C. off balance

The second Trump assassination attempt has thrown Washington, D.C. out of whack right as things were settling down post-debate. Congress is already rushing to pass a budget ahead of the September 30 deadline. Now they’re also considering a budget boost for the Secret Service.

• The suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, was charged with two federal gun crimes. First, he’s a convicted felon who’s not allowed to have a gun. Second, he illegally scratched the serial number off his rifle.

• Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) says Florida will launch its own (much cooler) investigation and wants to charge Routh with attempted murder.

The House will vote today on Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R) six-month budget plan. The plan mostly keeps current debt-ridden budgets in place, which some Republicans oppose. Democrats, who control the Senate, also hate this thing for a tacked-on, Trump-backed voting provision.

• Senate Democrats and Republicans, meanwhile, are blocking each other’s IVF protection bills.

Kamala Harris sat down for her second solo interview — her first with the national press — when she spoke with the National Association of Black Journalists yesterday. She said she’s “working to earn” the votes of Black men shortly after a wild NAACP poll showed her struggling with the group.

• She took the chance to slam Donald Trump’s rhetoric on Haitian migrants and said he needs to “understand” that “words have meaning.”

• Trump’s interview with the same group last month didn’t go quite so well after he took to questioning Harris’s biracial identity.

Moderation: Some congressional Democrats think Harris’s recent move to the center is just meant “to win the election.” They say she’s still a progressive at heart. Assuming that’s true, we’ll chalk it up as good news for progressives and bad news for moderates.

Microsoft security analysts say Russia is shifting its “cyber influence operations” to attack Kamala Harris. They said last month that Iran was doing similar work to undermine Trump.

Could Donald Trump get a big endorsement from the ginormous Teamsters labor union? Like most unions, the group typically backs Democrats. But its new president, Sean O’Brien — who has a very on-brand name for a labor leader from Boston — had a tense meeting with Harris on Monday. And he recently emphasized the diverse political views of the workers he represents. The endorsement is anybody’s game at this point and could land as soon as today.

TRIVIA

Donald Trump is not the first American president, current or former, whose golf game was interrupted by violence. One president mostly gave up the game after an incident during his round at Augusta National Golf Club. Which president was playing golf when a man took seven hostages in the course’s clubhouse?

Hint: We’re looking for a Republican.

POLLS

📊 Competing polls in the tipping point state

There’s a good chance that Pennsylvania is 2024’s tipping point state. That is, the state that gives a candidate the final few Electoral College votes they need to win. Now two new polls show a close race there falling in opposite directions.

• 🔵 A Suffolk University poll has Harris leading by 3% in Pennsylvania.

• 🔴 But InsiderAdvantage has Trump leading by 2% in Pennsylvania.

Pollsters’ results differ based on how they weigh the responses they get. They often weigh their data — by age, sex, party, education, and more —to get a better sample of what they think voters will look like this year. They were way, way off in 2016 and 2020. But they pretty much nailed it in 2022. So who’s right and who’s wrong? We’ll find out in 48 days.

• On the “good job, everyone” side, both polls show Sen. Bob Casey (D) leading Dave McCormick (R) by the same 4% margin.

Over in Missouri, a poll has Lucas Kunce (D) locked in a competitive Senate race against Sen. Josh Hawley (R). The Democrat trails by just 4% in super-Republican Missouri. But… it’s an internal poll. It was paid for by the Kunce campaign. An independent polling firm shows Hawley leading by a more comfortable 11%.

BRIEFS

• Six Kansas cult leaders convicted of forcing children to work 16-hour days without pay

• American pastor David Lin released by China after 18 years “wrongfully detained”

• Boeing freezes hiring, pay raises, and most jet orders as machinists’ union strike brings company to halt

• U.S. military completes withdrawal from Niger after once-friendly relationship sours

• Meta bans Russian state-owned media from Facebook, Instagram for deceptive tactics, propaganda

• Amazon employees must return to office five days a week starting in early 2025

• With more U.S. aid unlikely, E.U. considers loaning Ukraine $44 billion

• Diddy denied bail, will stay in jail til trial after “not guilty” plea

QUOTE

ANSWER

Back in 1983, Ronald Reagan was playing a round at Augusta National — the home of the Masters — when a man crashed his truck through the gate. Armed with a .38-caliber revolver, a down-on-his-luck dude named Charlie Harris disarmed Secret Service agents, took seven hostages, and demanded to speak with the president. Check out the full story here.