Good morning! We’re just going to rip the bandaid off early and say it: No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch. A rumor spread on social media (where else?) that Vance admitted to such an act in his book, “Hillbilly Elegy.” The AP ran an article fact-checking the rumor (it’s false), which only served to spread the insanity. Realizing their mistake, they quickly took the article down… which only poured gas on the fire.

In even stupider news, the Ohio Supreme Court says you shouldn’t expect nugs boneless wings to be, well, boneless.

SPORTS

🏓 Ping pong to remain Olympic sport in insult to tennis

It’s the summer of a presidential election year and we all know what that means. Now is the time when we all come together with one voice and pretend ping pong is a sport. The Summer Olympics have arrived.

Paris 2024: The Opening Ceremony kicks things off today at noon Eastern and coverage runs pretty much full-time through the closing ceremony on August 11th. Athletes will parade down the (newly poop-free) Seine River in 94 boats alongside performers.

• NBC paid $7.75 billion in 2014 for exclusive U.S. broadcast rights til 2032, so you can bet they’re juicing this coverage. You can catch it on about every NBC-affiliated network from the Golf Channel to Peacock for streaming.

Hosting costs cities a fortune. Paris’s price tag is about $9.7 billion, compared to an estimated economic impact of between $7.3 billion and $12.1 billion. You don't need to be a math pro to see the risk in that.

• Paris is building as little as possible in a desperate bid to save money. Tokyo spent $13.7 billion in 2020. But Rio in 2016? A cool $23.6 billion.

• French taxpayers are on the hook for between 34% and 56% of that. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is tossing in a measly 14% of the bill.

Due to the huge cost and tanking popularity, finding a host city isn’t always easy — only two cities applied for 2024. And the other, Los Angeles, will host next time around.

The IOC is a non-profit based in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded in 1894 ahead of the first modern Olympics in 1896. Today, it organizes the Games and governs the 206 official National Olympic Committees (NOCs).

• That includes every U.N. member state, a handful of unrecognized states (like Taiwan), and some non-sovereign territories (like Puerto Rico). There’s also a global Refugee Team.

• Due to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is banned from the Olympics. But 15 Russian athletes will compete as Individual Neutral Athletes with no team and no flag.

As for the sports, the IOC and the host city decide what to include. Long gone are hits like painting, music, tug-of-war, and motorboating (with a boat). Paris will see the debut of breakdancing as a sport and the continued recognition of tennis and, yes, its tabletop cousin.

Security at the Olympics is, um, complicated. The Games have been attacked in the past (1972, 1996), and any large event is a target for terrorism.

• France will deploy 35,000-45,000 police along with 10,000 soldiers and 20,000 security guards.

• Another critical mission is defending against cyber attacks (or, you know, an intern at CrowdStrike).

Future: The Olympics are set to return to the United States soon, and not just for Los Angeles 2028. On Wednesday, the IOC awarded Salt Lake City hosting rights for the 2034 Winter Olympics.

Despite crashing TV ratings, plenty of people will attend the Olympics. Paris sold a record 8.6 million tickets this year. And some athletes want to compete so badly that they’ll amputate part of their finger if that’s what it takes (yes, that guy’s Australian).

WORLD

🏛️ Netanyahu addresses Congress, calls protestors idiots

Israeli Prime Minister (and Pennsylvania high school grad) Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress this week. For nearly an hour, Netanyahu stood in the House chamber emphasizing the longstanding friendship between Israel and the United States. He vowed "total victory" over Hamas and the "complete destruction" of Hamas's military capabilities. He praised President Biden for being a self-described "proud Zionist."

• He condemned American anti-Israel (or pro-peace or pro-Palestinian, or pro-Hamas...) protestors as Iran's "useful idiots."

• Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib silently protested in the House chamber with a small "WAR CRIMINAL" sign. Tlaib said Netanyahu should be arrested and called his appearance "utterly disgraceful."

The speech won praise from many Republicans but derision from many Democrats, with Nancy Pelosi calling it "the worst" ever foreign leader speech to Congress.

• Guests at the speech, in the House Gallery upstairs, included a freed hostage, Israeli soldiers, and “Iron Man 2” star Elon Musk.

Protests ran wild outside during his speech. They burned American flags, spray-painted statues with "Hamas is comin'," and marched with offensive effigies of Netanyahu. Others released maggots in the prime minister’s hotel.

• Kamala Harris condemned the burning of the American flag along with any protestors who may associate with Hamas.

• Donald Trump suggested the protestors should be arrested for defacing monuments as Speaker Mike Johnson slammed them for raising Palestinian flags in place of American flags.

U.S. Park Police arrested 10 and blamed the Interior Department for understaffing them with just 29 officers to face thousands of protestors.

Meetings: Netanyahu met with Biden and Harris separately yesterday. He'll meet with Trump today in Florida. Both Harris and Trump told (or plan to tell) Netanyahu some variation of “end the war” and “hurry.”

And here’s a quick look at some other news:

• 🍅 The Senate is working on two bipartisan "online safety" bills. The bills would ban ads targeted at minors and force social media companies to take more control over how kids use their platforms. Opponents have concerns over possible online censorship.

• 🗳️ The House (Republicans and six Dems) sent a political message and passed a nonbinding bill slamming VP Harris for not securing the border. They’re out on the August recess now and won’t return to D.C. until September 9th.

POLITICS

🔵 Joe Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office. He said he plans to spend his last six months in office working hard instead of running for a second term, adding “I revere this office but I love my country more.”

• The Trump campaign called it a "prime-time campaign commercial" and, per a federal "equal time" rule, claims the networks that aired Biden’s address owe Trump similar air time.

🔵 Kamala Harris is still riding high after getting thrown the Democratic nomination on Sunday. Her campaign dropped its first video yesterday and she’ll appear on “Drag Race” tonight.

• Barack Obama supposedly wanted Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly to take the nomination over Harris at the Democratic convention. That’s no longer in the cards, so he’s set to endorse Harris’s campaign soon.

🔵 Democrats who may want to challenge Harris need to get on that ASAP. The DNC passed a rule giving hopefuls until tomorrow to declare their candidacy. Delegates will then hold a virtual vote by August 7 to officially nominate her ahead of the convention’s August 19th kickoff.

🔴 Republicans are attacking Harris for her role in the Biden administration’s border policies, bringing up her 2021 appointment as Biden’s point person on certain immigration issues. The press at the time called her the “border czar" (a common but informal title). They’re now denying they ever said this, with Axios even editing old articles to remove the term.

🔴 Melania Trump is ghost writing a memoir to be released sometime this fall. The cleverly titled "Melania” will tell the “powerful and inspiring story” of the first immigrant to serve as first lady since 1829.

⚪ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. hasn't done much campaigning lately. His last public campaign rally was over two months ago on May 19. His poll numbers continue to slide and he’s only on the ballot in eight states so far. Despite the problems, his team says he's "in no way dropping out."

🔴 The FBI searched the home of a former candidate for Congress in Indiana over extremely sus campaign finance reports and donors that don’t seem to exist. Gabe Whitley executed a common political grift in which a person runs for Congress in a race their party will never win and lives on donations from people who don’t know any better. This guy, a Republican, has a Democratic roommate who did the same thing. Whitley, by the way, isn’t particularly talented at this — He lost the primary to a literal dead man.

TRIVIA

Don’t tell the Canadians, but the Summer Olympics are much larger than their Winter counterpart. This year’s Games in Paris have 10,714 athletes competing compared to just 2,871 in the 2022 Winter Olympics. But at least the Winter Olympics get their own year now — they used to take place the same year as the Summer Games. In what year did the Summer and Winter Olympics last take place in the same year?

Hint: The Summer Games were in Barcelona that year, with the infamous arrow shot to light the torch.

WORLD

🇨🇺 Cuba: Surprising no one in Miami, Cuba admitted that a full 10% of its population left the country in 2022 and 2023. That's over a million people, most of whom sought asylum in the United States. The Cuban people clearly don't see improvements to the island's food shortages and economic woes coming anytime soon.

🇺🇸 NORAD: NORAD, the joint U.S.-Canadian air defense operation, intercepted four Chinese and Russian bombers near Alaska. The (ballsy) planes were in international airspace and posed no threat. But they were near the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone, which requires a quick ID of all aircraft for national security reasons.

BRIEFS

• Southwest Airlines is dumping 50 years of rat racing tradition and switching to assigned seating, which it says 80% of customers prefer

• ChatGPT maker OpenAI plans to take on Google more directly and release a search engine called, believe it or not, SearchGPT

• Rep. Jennifer Wexton became the first person to use an AI voice clone on the House floor after a neurological disease left her voiceless

• California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the state to start clearing out homeless camps after getting the Supreme Court’s go-ahead

• The British monarchy is getting a $60 million annual budget boost due to higher profits on its multibillion-dollar property portfolio

QUOTE

SNACKS

🏺 Ancient Olympics: Smithsonian magazine takes a look at nine weird things about the ancient Olympics. The craziest one? The athletes competed fully nude and slathered in oil.

🤑 Mansions: We love a good look behind the curtain, don’t we, folks? Check out this Architectural Digest tour of the various Kennedy family homes.

ANSWER

If you clicked on that YouTube link in the hint, you saw the answer: 1992. Curling fans got a double dose of Winter Olympics action in the early 90s, with competitions in both 1992 and 1994 as they split from the more popular Summer Olympics.