Good morning! Sadly, the on-street livestream portal between New York and Dublin has already been taken offline. The creators believed it would be an eye-opening cross-cultural experience. They never imagined what would become its primary uses: mooning each other, flashing each other, and taunting New Yorkers with videos of 9/11.

A 17-year-old girl from Chicago, like many people her age, just graduated. Except her graduation was from college. And this wasn’t a bachelor’s degree. Or a master’s. Dorothy Jean Tillman II received her doctorate in integrated behavioral health. At 17.

ELECTIONS

🧳 Tales of congressional carpetbaggers

In the event of a nuclear war, Congress would’ve lived in his resort (more on that below). Now he’s set to join their ranks. Billionaire (-ish) West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice won the Republican U.S. Senate primary in a landslide over carpetbagging U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney.

Carpet-what? Rep. Mooney is a carpetbagger — someone who moves to a place just to run for office. He held office in Maryland until 2013. Twenty months later, he won election to Congress. In West Virginia.

• Realizing he couldn’t win much as a Republican in such a Democratic state, he moved just over the border into West Virginia. He won a six-way Republican primary (tantamount to election in West Virginia) to represent one-third of the state in Congress.

Despite representing the state in Congress for a decade, the carpetbagging label never went away. Born-and-raised West Virginian Jim Justice smacked him by ~35%.

Most carpetbaggers lose for obvious reasons. Some — particularly those with a pile of cash — can win. Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton had never once lived in New York when she won a Senate race there in 2000.

• Dan Bongino lost a race in Maryland in 2014. In 2016, he lost a race in Florida.

• Dan Rodimer lost a race in Nevada in 2020. A brazen four months later, he (new accent in tow) launched a campaign in Texas (and was later charged with murder).

• Current Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert’s 2022 win was the closest in the country. This year, she moved clear across the state to try out a more conservative district.

• In Oklahoma, businessman Paul Bondar is challenging longtime Rep. Tom Cole despite openly admitting to just having moved to the state to run for office.

Allegations of carpetbagging have long dogged candidates who aren’t native to the area in which they’re running. Massachusetts-born George Bush, Sr. defeated this label in the 1960s with the refrain “Texan by choice, not by chance.”

Project Greek Island: Jim Justice owns The Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. In 1962, Congress built a massive fallout shelter 720 feet beneath the hotel. Stocked with food, clothes, and medical supplies, it was designed to keep America’s government running in the event of nuclear war. It was kept fully stocked for 30 years before being shut down in 1992.

GOVERNMENT

🚗 Biden hits some Chinese products with huge taxes

Don’t expect to buy a BYD Han anytime soon. The cars aren’t for sale in the U.S. yet. If they were? Their price would’ve just doubled. President Biden yesterday slapped Chinese electric vehicles with a 100% tariff (a tax on imports). It’s not just cars, either. Rubber gloves, solar cells, cranes, batteries, and more took similar hits.

Why the tariffs? The White House said China’s “unfair trade practices concerning technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation are threatening American businesses and workers.”

• The U.S. imports well over $500 billion of Chinese goods. These tariffs only affect about $18 billion of those.

Doesn’t Congress need to approve this? They already did! Sort of. Congress approved this in the Trade Act of 1974. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai will implement the changes. Not all tariffs will jump to 100%.

• Syringes: 0% > 50%

• Battery parts: 7.5% > 25%

• Solar cells: 25% > 50%

• and more…

The new rate for some products will hit this year (EVs). Others wait until 2026 (permanent magnets).

• Supporters of this decision believe it will boost America’s green tech manufacturing sector and protect workers from being overrun by cheaper Chinese goods.

• Opponents worry it will force Americans to pay higher prices and raise inflation.

Future: These taxes are likely to stick around. In 2018 and 2019, then-President Trump hit Chinese imports with $300 billion in tariffs. Should he win back the White House, Trump plans to boost those tariffs globally.

Elsewhere in government:

• ☢️ President Biden signed a law banning the import of enriched Russian uranium. American companies spend ~$1 billion each year on this, so the ban is seen as cutting off support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

• 💰 Congress is working on a bill that would force President Biden to send all congressionally approved military aid to Israel. He recently announced he’d withhold certain types of weaponry.

POLITICS

🔵 The ultra-wealthy Rep. Dave Trone spent an incredible $60 million of his own money losing Maryland’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate last night to Angel Alsobrooks. That extra $2 for the venti doesn’t sound so bad now.

🔴 Donald Trump received some great polling news from the New York Times. They’ve got him up in five key swing states, including by a whopping 12% in Nevada.

• Trump’s hush-money trial continues in New York. House Speaker Mike Johnson attended yesterday to show his support for his party’s nominee.

🔵 Joe Biden narrowly leads in Wisconsin according to the above New York Times polls. But the president trails in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada.

• The president and his campaign aren’t worried, though. They don’t think polls accurately measure Biden’s support and cited previous incorrect polls.

🔵 Bob Ferguson wants to be governor of Washington. So does Bob Ferguson. And Bob Ferguson. A Republican operative convinced two random Bob Fergusons to challenge the state’s same-named Attorney General (a Dem) in the 2024 governor’s race. Unfortunately for fans of shenanigans, both were forced to drop out under threat of prosecution from their opponent.

⚪ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. submitted nearly 250,000 signatures — double the requirement — in an attempt to get his name on the presidential ballot in Texas. Good campaigns dramatically overshoot the signature requirement in case loads of their signatures are invalid.

🔵 Things aren’t looking good for Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar (D). He was indicted last month for allegedly accepting $600,000 in foreign bribes. Now three other people have pleaded guilty to helping facilitate the bribes.

TRIVIA

The U.S. Constitution is the oldest written national constitution in the world. It was ratified in 1788. But one state has it beat. Which state’s constitution predates the U.S. Constitution?

Hint: This is one of the more populous of the original 13 colonies.

WORLD

🇨🇦 Canada: Did India assassinate a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil last year? Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thinks so. He called the 2023 murder of a Sikh activist a "violation of our sovereignty." Three recent arrests may raise more questions than answers.

🇫🇷 France: The 77th annual Cannes Film Festival began yesterday as MeToo allegations rock the French film industry. On the docket? A drama that resulted in a prison threat and the exile of its Iranian director and a 1980s-era Trump biopic.

🇬🇪 Georgia: Mass protests were ignored and a brawl broke out in parliament as the Republic of Georgia passed the controversial "foreign agent" law. The bill mirrors a Russian law designed to stifle dissent and jeopardizes Georgia's dream of E.U. membership.

🇺🇸 United States: The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom condemned America's BFF. British police arrested a woman for silently praying outside an abortion clinic in a protest "buffer zone." She was later released. But her arrest drew attention to the U.K.'s definition of protest.

BRIEFS

• Vasectomy rates for men under 30 have spiked by 58% since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, researchers found

• The meme stock rally is back — GameStop is up more than 200% this week after increased Q1 profit a guy… posted a meme

• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is losing Melinda — she’ll step down and take $12.5 billion to spend on “women and families”

• A controlled explosion from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cleared the largest remaining part of Baltimore’s collapsed Key Bridge

• A federal court ruled that Tennessee game wardens are forbidden by the Fourth Amendment from entering private land without a warrant

• Pro-Palestinian campus encampments are winding down as schools end for the summer, negotiate their end, and force them out

QUOTE

SNACKS

🎤 Music: Miss out on the Eras Tour due to high ticket prices? A flight, hotel, and ticket to a European show could be cheaper than a single U.S. ticket.

👂 Silence: Bored in Minnesota? Check out the world's quietest room. With negative decibels, you can hear your blood flow and your eyes blink.

🤑 Streaming: Netflix, Apple TV+, and Peacock want in on the bundle fun. Viewers will soon get a three-in-one subscription for a “vastly reduced price.”

📺 TV: Season 2 of Amazon’s extremely expensive (and extremely mid) “Rings of Power” show kicks off on August 29. The first teaser just dropped.

ANSWER

The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was approved in 1780 while the Revolutionary War still raged. It’s since been amended a cool 121 times.