Good morning! If you’ve got $6 million burning a hole in your pockets, here’s a great way to spend it. Sotheby’s has an auction today for a 20-foot stegosaurus fossil from the late Jurassic period. The rest of us will have to check out the Prime Day deals.

2024

📛 Trump doubles down on Midwestern VPs named --nce

Bad news, Millennials. A 39-year-old just won the vice presidential nomination of a major political party (he turns 40 next month).

Donald Trump named Ohio Sen. JD Vance (no relation to Bob) his pick for VP at the Republican convention on Monday. Delegates quickly approved the choice after also voting to make Trump the party’s official presidential nominee.

Vance: JD Vance was elected to the Senate just two years ago. He first rose to fame in 2016 for writing the bestselling book “Hillbilly Elegy” about growing up poor in Appalachia.

He served in the Marine Corps after high school before graduating from Ohio State and later Yale Law School. Vance later spent a few years in San Francisco working for Silicon Valley OG Peter Thiel.

• Thiel backed Vance’s Senate race to the tune of $10 million. Those tech connections are paying off this year, too.

• Elon Musk might be in for a crazy $45 milliona month. Musk and Thiel’s Paypal cofounder David Sacks is in. As are the two namesakes of Silicon Valley’s biggest VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz.

• Most importantly, the Winklevoss twins who got screwed in “The Social Network” are on board.

Family: Vance met his wife, Usha (the daughter of Indian immigrants), at Yale. They have three young children.

Politics: Trump’s selection of Vance is a demonstration of Trump's confidence in his electoral chances in November. Many polls show Vance is the weakest of the VP finalists. But Trump could be thinking about legacy.

• Vance is a Trumpian conservative who will carry those policies forward in 2028 better than a more traditional Republican would.

• He’s friendly with labor unions. He’s anti-Ukraine funding (but pro-Israel). He supports the Biden FTC’s actions to break up possible monopolies. And he favors Trump's immigration policies.

Democrats immediately tagged Vance an extremist who would “do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6.” They called him anti-choice and too inexperienced to become president.

• They’ve also hit on Vance’s anti-Trump past. In 2016, he called Trump "reprehensible” and an “idiot” and even compared his now-boss to Hitler.

Future: Should Trump and Vance win the election, JD Vance will be the youngest vice president since Richard Nixon in 1953. Ohio’s Republican governor would appoint his replacement in the Senate.

In other Trump/Vance news:

• 🤕 A week after getting partially Van Gogh’d, Trump will hold an indoor rally in Michigan on Saturday where JD Vance will make his campaign trail debut.

• 🤞 The Secret Service’s disastrous job last weekend was apparently the “stepped up” version. The agency recently boosted Trump’s security after getting a tip that Iran was trying to kill him.

GOVERNMENT

💰 President Biden

The rent is still "too damn high." With median national rent up 23% since 2021, President Biden is pushing a new housing plan to tackle the growing cost of housing. He wants to hit "corporate landlords" who "raise rents more than 5%" with tax penalties.

• His proposal would also set up a process for the Bureau of Land Management to sell gobs of federal land at bargain-bin prices for housing development.

• The rule would apply to major landlords with more than 50 units. That covers about half the country's rental market, according to the White House.

• It wouldn't apply to newly built or recently renovated units.

President Biden's economic advisor said the rent cap would only last two years, as a "bridge" while more housing supply is built. But the White House admitted that Congress isn't likely to take up the plan this year. It's more of a second-term blueprint.

The opposition: Many economists and housing advocates say rent caps don't work and often have the opposite of their intended effects. They say it raises rents, decreases supply, and causes landlords to ignore upkeep on affected units.

In other Biden/Harris news…

• ⚖️ President Biden is also working on a comprehensive plan to reform the Supreme Court. His proposed changes include an ethics code and term limits. Some will require congressional approval but others face the daunting odds of a constitutional amendment.

• 📊 The Biden/Harris ticket got a little good news. In their best showing since May, the updated statistical model from FiveThirtyEight has them winning the election in 53% of simulations.

• 🗡️ The effort to push Biden into retirement is back on after losing some attention over the weekend. House Democrats are urging the DNC to axe its plan to officially nominate Biden over Zoom in two weeks. Doing it at the convention would give anti-Biden forces more time to hatch their plan.

POLITICS

🔴Donald Trump's legal load is a little lighter today. A federal court threw out the government's criminal case against him over alleged mishandling of classified documents. Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case, saying the attorney general’s appointment of the special prosecutor, Jack Smith, was unconstitutional. Her ruling is likely to be overturned on appeal. But this won’t affect much either way as the case wasn’t set for trial until after the election.

🔵Sen. “Gold Bar” Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was convicted yesterday of taking bribes in exchange for steering federal policy in favor of the governments of Egypt and Qatar. He now faces calls to resign from, well, everyone, and threats to expel him if he doesn't go. Should Gold Bar Bob call it quits, Democrats will still control the Senate by one seat — 50 to 49.

⚪ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will finally get Secret Service protection after months of begging; all it took was the near assassination of another candidate.

• RFK also apologized to Trump after part of a phone call between the two leaked. The clip shows them chatting vaccines as Trump lays it on thick, seemingly pushing for RFK’s support.

🔴Republican Convention: Onetime candidates Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis spoke last night. JD Vance will keep the party going and speak tonight while the big man himself will close things out tomorrow.

• Teamsters union President Sean O'Brien (Bawstin accent and all) spoke at the RNC on Monday. O’Brien says his union may skip out on its traditional Democratic endorsement this time around.

🔵Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) might soon get a taste of her own medicine. Bush, one of the House’s most progressive Democrats, won her seat after knocking out the last guy in the Democratic primary. Now she trails her own primary challenger by 23% in a new poll.

TRIVIA

Vice presidential hopeful JD Vance served in the Marine Corps from 2003 to 2007. That makes him the first major-party presidential or VP nominee to be a vet since John McCain in 2008. But that service used to be more common. Of living current and former presidents and vice presidents, how many served in the military?

Hint: There are 11 total.

BRIEFS

• Estonia’s prime minister resigned her gig leading the country to take the job running foreign policy for the European Union

• SpaceX will move its HQ from the L.A. area to Starbase, TX, while (non-Space) X will move from San Francisco to Austin

• Adele will take a "big break" from music when her Las Vegas residency ends, saying her "tank is quite empty"

• Minnesota's ban on adults under 21 from getting handgun carry permits is unconstitutional, says a federal appeals court

• Ingrid Andress, the singer behind the literal worst-ever national anthem performance, says she was drunk and is headed to rehab

• The International Monetary Fund estimates global GDP will rise by 3.2% this year, while the U.S.'s will jump by 2.6%

QUOTE

SNACKS

🌙Moon: The moon has caves. The confirmation of long-held scientific suspicions could prove crucial in protecting future human settlements from solar radiation and wild temperature swings.

📈Movies: Netflix’s 2020 movie “Hillbilly Elegy,” starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams, is shootingsoaring up the charts and the book is now #1 on Amazon after its author, JD Vance, won the Republican VP nod this week.

📷 Photos:Take a photo tour of the Secret Service looking cool through history.

🤣Watch: Check out Shane Gillis impersonate Trump for a solid 2.5 hours on this week’s episode of “Kill Tony” alongside Adam Ray as Biden.

ANSWER

Four living presidents and VPs are military vets.

1. President Jimmy Carter (who is somehow still kicking after being in hospice for over a year)

2. President George W. Bush

3. Vice President Al Gore

4. Vice President Dan Quayle (who proves that VP fame doesn’t last forever)