Good morning! The U.S. math team (six high school mathletes) just curb-stomped China at the 65th International Mathematical Olympiad. And by curb-stomped we mean “won by the skin of their teeth.” But a win’s a win and this one broke China’s four-year win streak.

2024

👴 Biden calls it quits, endorses Harris

Don’t cry because it’s Joever. Smile because it’s happening. Two-thirds of Democrats got their wish yesterday when President Biden became the first incumbent to skip out on reelection since Lyndon Johnson in 1968.

What happened? President Biden dropped a nuclear bomb Sunday afternoon saying he believes "it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term."

• He quickly followed with another endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement.

• Neither of Biden’s statements indicated a reason for his decision. But… we all know. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to unravel this mystery. Biden will “speak to the Nation later this week” with more details.

Support: Most major Democrats quickly lined up in support of Harris. But a few key players — Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries —praised Biden with zero mention of Harris. All 50 state Democratic party chairs threw their support behind Harris, too.

• Barack Obama's statement said, “We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead. But I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.”

Candidates: Many of Harris's possible rivals quickly endorsed her, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

• West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, one of D.C.’s most moderate Democrats, went the other route. He's considering challenging her for the nomination.

Process: Per DNC rules, a candidate needs support from 300 (of 4,000) Democratic National Convention delegates to appear on the convention's presidential ballot. Harris already has over 500 on her side.

• DNC Chair Jaime Harrison says Democrats will "undertake a transparent and orderly process” according to party rules. So the "blitz primary" is out.

Cash: The Biden campaign account has already been renamed “Harris for President” with the Federal Elections Committee (FEC). But there's some complicated disagreement on whether she can legally slap her name on Biden's mountain of cash. Expect Republicans to make legal hay out of this until the question is resolved in court.

• Harris raised about $50 million yesterday in online donations, so she’s well on her way to funding this thing regardless.

Republicans from the Trump/Vance campaign to Speaker Mike Johnson are pushing the line that Biden needs to resign the presidency if he’s mentally unfit to run a campaign. That’s not going to happen, of course, but it helps boost their message that Harris was part of a shady cover-up of Biden’s health.

• Republicans may not be broken up about this change. Early polling indicates Harris runs a smidge weaker against Trump than Biden did.

TECH

💾 CISA confirms Crowdstrike outage scale

Best of luck to anyone trying to fly right now and RIP to anyone who owns Crowdstrike stock. To the IT people having to fix this mess, well… see you in August. Friday’s global tech outage is under control but repercussions will be felt for weeks

Crowdstrike is a cybersecurity company whose clients include many of the largest companies in the world (including most of the Fortune 1000). They pushed out an overnight security update that caused affected Windows computers to crash upon booting.

• Banks, airlines, TV networks, 911 centers, and fast-food menus around the world received the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. While it hit many critical business computers, less than 1% of all Windows machines went down.

• Southwest Airlines dodged the bullet because they’re still running Windows 3.1, which came out back in the technological Jurassic Period of 1992.

• Frontier and Spirit Airlines customers were unaffected, too, as they never expected their flights to take off in the first place.

CISA: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (part of Homeland Security) confirmed that the outage was due to a stupid corporate decision rather than a cyberattack. But malicious actors are trying to take advantage of the situation using old-school email phishing methods.

DOT: The Department of Transportation considers these flight problems “controllable” by the airlines. As a result, flyers are entitled to full refunds if they don’t want the six-stop, overnight, week-late flight the airline offers.

And here’s a quick intro to some other news:

• 🏗️ Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will advise Japan’s Nippon Steel as it tries to buy U.S. Steel in the face of bipartisan U.S. government opposition

• 🔥 A fire destroyed the historic 1890 sanctuary of First Baptist Dallas, a downtown megachurch run by Pastor Robert Jeffress, a close ally of Donald Trump

• ⚓ The U.S. Navy exonerated 256 Black sailors who were unjustly punished after a 1944 explosion. President Biden said the decision rights a “historic wrong.”

POLITICS

🔴 The Crowdstrike outage wasn’t the only tech crash last week. Grindr also reportedly crashed in, very specifically, Milwaukee — the site of the Republican National Convention. Grindr hasn’t confirmed this, but it matches the 66% increase in local traffic during the 2016 RNC.

• On that note, Politico takes a look at the best and worst fashion decisions by speakers at the RNC.

🔵 A New Hampshire state representative made a possibly racist remark about VP nominee JD Vance's wife, Usha. We recommend ignoring any insane comments from New Hampshire state reps. Their state House has 400 members (the U.S. House has 435), so each person only represents 3,500 people and rakes in a $100 annual salary.

🔴 Newly minted VP hopeful JD Vance gets to cruise around in a newly minted Trump/Vance private jet. The 737, paid for by the campaign, sat in a hangar for the past few weeks as Trump debated whose name to paint on the side. Vance broke in his new ride flying to his first rally in Michigan on Saturday.

• A tale of two Thiels: Silicon Valley bigwig Peter Thiel backed ($$$) two Senate candidates in 2022: JD Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona. Vance won. Now he’s got a good shot at becoming vice president in January. Masters lost. He’s now fighting for his political life in the Republican primary for a seat in the House of Representatives.

TRIVIA

In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson bowed out of his reelection bid after it looked like he might lose. He was replaced on the Democratic ticket by his vice president. Which vice president won the Democratic nomination for president in 1968?

Hint: His initials were HHH.

WORLD

🇧🇩 Bangladesh: Internet, cell service, and power are out across much of Bangladesh in the wake of deadly protests. Demonstrators are angry over a new government quota system reserving 30% of coveted government jobs for specific people and the government is cracking down. The U.S. State Department issued a level four "Do Not Travel" advisory in response.

🇮🇱 Israel: The U.N.'s International Court of Justice (“The Hague”) dropped its non-binding opinion that Israel is illegally occupying large parts of Palestinian territory in the West Bank. The ICJ wants Israel to leave and pay reparations to Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clapped back, saying, “The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land." FYI, the West Bank is not Gaza and is, obviously, to the east of Israel. The name refers to the west bank of the Jordan River.

🇾🇪 Yemen: Houthi terrorists in Yemen Found Out. In a shining example of weapons-grade stupidity, they launched a drone attack on Tel Aviv, Israel on Friday that killed one and injured ten. Israel responded by leveling the port of Hodeida in the section of Yemen controlled by Houthi forces.

BRIEFS

• A princess in Dubai (not Jasmine) divorced her husband via Instagram using the controversial “triple talaq” — simply declaring it three times

• American journalist Evan Gershkovich will spend 16 years in a Russian prison after being found guilty of espionage in a sham trial

• Warner Bros. Discovery is considering splitting up to dump its massive debt load on the underperforming cable channels it owns

• Alec Baldwin looks set to sue the prosecutor who allegedly tried to rig a manslaughter case against him by hiding evidence

• Houston Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee passed away — local Democrats will meet to select her replacement on November’s ballot

QUOTE

SNACKS

💰 Netflix: Remember commercials? Everyone's third-favorite streaming service is dumping its cheapest ($11.99) ad-free plan. Turns out they make more money from ads than from the extra few bucks you pay to go ad-free. They also refuse to join a bundle with other streamers à la Disney+, Hulu, and Max.

⛳ The Open: Xander Schauffele continued his hot streak and won his second major of 2024. This time he beat Justin Rose (a Brit) by two strokes to win the world’s oldest golf tournament, The Open Championship (known as the British Open in countries that have landed on the moon). His prize for four days of play? $3,100,000.

🌪️ Twisters: In honor of Glenn Powell’s latest Glenn Powell movie, CBR takes a look at the greatest disaster films since 2010. “Sharknado” sadly didn’t make the cut, so we’re not sure this list is worth much. But we’ll let you be the judge.

ANSWER

Despite popular support for another candidate, Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey (his parents were big “H” people, apparently) won the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He went on to lose that race to Richard Nixon. Humphrey returned to the Senate in 1971 and served there until his death in 1978.