Good morning! Congratulations to the University of South Carolina women's basketball team for notching their third national championship in eight years. The men play tonight about 7 hours after Eclipse 2024.

Congress is back in Washington after a two-week break for Easter during which they ostensibly met with constituents back home.

CLIMATE

🌳 Biden launches climate rival to JFK’s Peace Corps

Are you looking to be a part of something bigger than yourself that’s also vaguely based on a Dr. Seuss classic? Look no further.

President Biden announced last September the creation of the American Climate Corps. His program is modeled after the 1930s-era Civilian Conservation Corps. That was a manual labor jobs program that eventually employed about 5% of the U.S. male population.

• Congress declined to fund the Climate Corps, so Biden scraped together existing funds from other areas to get it off the ground.

• This is a joint effort between seven other agencies: AmeriCorps, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Interior, and Labor.

Participants will engage in wildfire prevention, nature conservation, and clean energy installation, and the general tackling of climate change.

The Corps Corps: The Climate Corps is a knockoff reminiscent of the Peace Corps founded by President Kennedy in 1961. Peace Corps volunteers travel around the world to aid developing nations.

• AmeriCorps volunteers serve in a network of government programs and nonprofits. With roots dating to 1965, it’s billed as a domestic version of the Peace Corps.

• The Marine Corps dates to 1775 and, well, this one’s a bit different than the others. But it is a corps.

These are all volunteer national service programs. Mandatory national service is a popular idea in some circles (particularly among those too old to take part).

Looking forward… The program plans to train 20,000 young people this year and increase that to 50,000 in the future. President Biden’s 2025 budget proposal requests $8 billion to fund it over the next decade. The White House says a jobs board will go live this month.

SCIENCE

🌑 Biden Trump Eclipse 2024

The big day is finally here. The day we’ve all been waiting for since the last time this happened in… Oh. 2017. That said, the next total solar eclipse visible to a sizeable chunk of the continental United States won’t be until 2045.

Today’s eclipse could lend a $6 billion boost to the economy of areas in its path. Airbnb says rentals are at 92% occupancy today — more than three times higher than usual.

• Just as in 2017, some states are activating the National Guard to assist with traffic flow and hyper-congestion in small towns.

• The governor of Arkansas even declared a state of emergency.

A small group of prisoners in Upstate New York successfully sued (on religious freedom grounds) for their right to see the eclipse. The rest of the state’s prisoners will be on lockdown.

A few ground rules from the good folks at NASA:

• Don’t look at this thing without special glasses (you could go blind).

• Taking a pic with your phone could fry the sensor.

• If you want to be a pal, NASA could use your help documenting it.

If you’re in (or near) the path today, enjoy the three-to-four minutes of darkness. If you work in a roadside diner there, best of luck. And, to tie this into electoral politics, Donald Trump won the path of this eclipse by 6.8% in 2020.

POLITICS

🔴 Last month, Joe Biden broke fundraising records when he raked in $26 million at a single star-studded event (at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, no less). Not only did Donald Trump just break that record, he nearly doubled it. The Trump campaign raised an astounding $50 million at a single event in Palm Beach, Florida. Team Biden still leads the money race, though, with $192 million in cash on hand. Trump is sitting on $93 million.

🔵 Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) wants President Joe Biden to reverse his administration's ban on new natural gas exports. Shapiro says the industry is "critically important" and Biden's policy will cost him votes in the tightly contested swing state. Pennsylvania was decided by ~1% in both 2016 and 2020.

⚪ No Democrat has won the senior vote since 2000, while no Republican has won the youth vote since 1988. A wave of new polls indicates that may change this year. Biden is struggling with young voters as Trump struggles with the 65+ crowd. This could be poor polling. But it’s a good tradeoff for Team Biden: Young people vote at significantly lower rates than the old.

🔵 Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva (D) announced he’s been diagnosed with cancer but will continue to serve and will run for reelection this year. Grijalva is the "dean" of Arizona’s congressional delegation (its longest-serving member).

🔴 Defender of democracy or sore loser? The Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, will not receive the support of his vanquished primary rival, Treasurer Dale Folwell. Robinson faces Attorney General Josh Stein (D) in November. While North Carolina is a Republican-leaning state, Dems have won 7 of the last 8 elections for governor.

🔵 New York’s fire alarm-pulling Rep. Jamaal Bowman might be looking for a new job come January. He’s fighting a strong Democratic primary challenge. And a new poll just dropped showing Bowman’s opponent with a humongous 17-point lead. One caveat: this poll is from a group supporting the opponent.

TRIVIA

On the topic of national service… the U.S. military is what’s known as an all-volunteer force. But it wasn’t always this way. Military conscription (aka: a draft) was in use for much of our history. In what year did the U.S. military draft end? 

WORLD

🇲🇽 Mexico/Ecuador: Mexico just severed diplomatic ties with Ecuador. Ecuadorian police busted into the Mexican Embassy and arrested the former VP of Ecuador. This guy should've been untouchable. Hiding in embassies is a tried-and-true method of avoiding the law by claiming political asylum. Since embassies are considered foreign soil, Ecuador broke international law six ways to Sunday with this move. Many countries, the U.S. included, condemned the intrusion.

🇮🇱 Israel: Days after removing the officers responsible for the mistaken attack on aid workers, Israel's military has pulled out of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. But this isn't a retreat or ceasefire, says Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. They're moving on to prepare for operations in Rafah — allegedly the final stronghold of Hamas.

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is scaling back plans for its $1.5 trillion Neom project. The most famous part of Neom — a 106-mile-long self-contained city called The Line — will have a mere 300,000 residents by 2030. The original plan called for 1.5 million.

🇷🇼 Rwanda: President Paul Kagame said the international community failed in its response to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He spoke at a ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of the attacks that killed 800,000 Rwandans. Former world leaders, including Bill Clinton, attended the event.

🇸🇰 Slovakia: Former Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini won election as Slovakia's next president. The office is mostly ceremonial. But his victory is a political win for his country's pro-Russian (but left-wing) prime minister.

🇭🇹 Haiti: Heavily armed gangs now control 80% of Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince. Firearms aren’t manufactured in Haiti. And importing them is banned. So where are the guns coming from? Recent data show that 85% of these weapons are illegally smuggled from the United States.

BRIEFS

• A 35-year-old man was arrested yesterday for setting fire to the Burlington, VT office of Sen. Bernie Sanders

• Norway, the U.S.'s NATO ally, unveiled a plan to massively increase defense spending by 83% over the next 12 years

• Tesla CEO Elon Musk claims the company — the world's most valuable automaker — is unveiling the "Tesla Robotaxi" on August 8

• As Congress again debates aid to Ukraine, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his country will lose the war without it

• Southwest Airlines joined the broken Boeing club after the panel covering an engine wooshed off after takeoff

• Maryland Gov. Wes Moore says they’re “working around the clock” to ensure the Port of Baltimore is fully functional by the end of May

• Struggling EV startup Canoo spent $1.23 million on a private jet rental for its CEO — more than twice its annual revenue

• If you’ve bought weighted groceries (meat, veggies, etc.) at Walmart since 2018, you might be in for a payday due to a class action lawsuit

• French funding of projects in a huge, disputed region of northwest Africa called Western Sahara is drawing the ire of nearby Algeria

QUOTE

SNACKS

🎮 Gaming: Gamers are breathing a collective sigh of relief. Apple now allows retro gaming emulators in the App Store. Official games are typically copyright-protected, though. So you’ll be stuck with homebrew games of debatable quality unless retro gaming companies decide to get in on this action officially.

💰 Cash: If your grandpa has any old comic books lying around, you may want to go take a look. A copy of Action Comics #1, the 1938 first appearance of Superman, just sold at auction for an eye-popping $6 million. Less than 100 copies are known to exist despite an original print run of 200,000.

🐐 Read: It's never too late to move to a tiny French village and become a part-time goat farmer. Rep. Jim McDermott, 87, retired from a long career in Congress in 2017 and did exactly that. Civrac-en-Médoc, France is now home. Population: 661.

ANSWER

The unpopular draft ended in 1973 as the Vietnam War winded down. The final enlisted soldier in active duty service eventually retired in 2011.

Though no draft currently exists, young men are still required to register with the Selective Service within 30 days of turning 18.