Hey, everybody. It is Thursday, July 11th, 711. You're listening to the Mo News podcast. I'm Moshe Wannunu. And I'm Jill Wagner. This is the place where we bring you just the facts. And we read all the news and read between the lines so you don't have to. Jill, 711, of course, means free Slurpee Day in America. So check out the local 711 near you for your opportunity. I think there's a whole bunch of rewards, et cetera. But my favorite part of this day is I never really drink Slurpees anymore, but this is the day to get one. Well, my favorite part of this day is my son's birthday. He was a he's a 711 baby. Happy birthday, Grayson. He's two. I don't think he totally knows what's going on, but thank you. Have a listen to the pod. Let me know what he thinks. Um, Moshe, I am back in New York. You are still in DC covering the NATO summit, but a whirlwind 48 hours for me. And you've got about 48 hours left. Then the summit wraps up and you'll be back in New York. The summit, but the big story today and we'll get to it is going to be President Biden's press conference. It's been two weeks since that debate. This is the first time he'll be taking open questions from the media. You can imagine there'll be one major topic on reporters minds today. So we'll be watching that. That's that to happen later this afternoon around 6 p.m. Eastern time. As we say here on the podcast, must see TV. All right, Moshe, let's get to the headlines speaking of Biden just when it seemed like President Biden may have been out of the water in terms of his disastrous debate performance. Several more prominent Democrats are now calling for him to end his campaign. From explicitly Jill, some saying, are you sure that was your decision? Among those, Jill. Not insignificant. Nancy Pelosi. On the Republican side, what is Project 2025? The controversial plans for Trump's second term and what Trump himself has to say about them. All right, a follow up to the story we mentioned yesterday, what White House NSC spokesperson John Kirby says about Iran's ties to anti-Israel protests in the United States. All right, Moshe, most people who have been outside know one thing. It is way too hot. More than 130 million Americans are under alert as heat breaks records and a bridge. We'll tell you where. Finally, it appears lawmakers are close to reaching a deal that would ban them from trading stocks. Will it pass? I'm skeptical. Yeah, one of the only businesses left in America where you can effectively trade on inside information, Jill. The United States Congress. They have a deal in the Senate. We'll tell you about it. Gen X unprepared for retirement even more so apparently than millennials and a sneak peek at the Leotard Simone Biles and Team USA will be wearing in Paris. And I have one word for you, Moshe, crystals. Yeah, don't try to adjust your TV set. They are that shiny. And Moshe is on the same history. We take you on a trip to Wehock in New Jersey, Jill, Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton. We'll break it down for you. What happened on the state history? All right, let's start with politics just when President Biden thought he may have been home free, shaken off his disastrous debate performance and comes those calls for him to step aside. Some more prominent Democratic voices say it is time for him to pass the torch. Let's start with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She chose to wake up early Wednesday and go on morning Joe Biden's favorite morning show to send a signal to him that time might be up. She repeatedly urged President Biden to make a decision about whether to stay in the presidential race, even though the president insists that he should remain at the top of the Democratic ticket. Yes, he wrote a letter saying I'm in it the next day. She's like, are you sure? And he's probably thinking, how much more clear can I be? I've written letters. I've said I'm not leaving. And as the New York Times put it, she telegraphed not panic, but respect in hopes of appealing to the Joe Biden who has taken a breath and step aside in the past, not the Joe Biden who is currently staring down his party, daring Democrats to force him away from an office he spent decades pursuing. Anger has not worked. Fear has not worked. Panic has not worked. Bluntness has not worked. Sadness has not worked. Concern has not worked. Moshe again, that is from the New York Times. Now here is a bit of what she had to say. He has said he has made the decision. He has said firmly this week, he is going to run. Do you want him to run? >> I want him to do whatever he decides to do. And that's the way it is. Whatever he decides, we go with. >> Jill, you hear her there dancing around the answer, not explicitly endorsing him saying he's gonna make a decision. >> By the way, she's 84 years old. And if you remember, she passed a torch on the speakership to a younger generation. She said she wasn't gonna run again and that it was time for a new generation to take over. >> Right, she'll keep her congressional seat, but she decided to move on from her leadership position. >> Now as part of her appearance on Morning Joe, she said, quote, it is up to the president to decide if he's gonna run. We are all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short. He is beloved, he is respected, and people want him to make that decision. But him, while she and other Dems have approached Biden with kid gloves, at least ten elected House and Senate Democrats have explicitly called for Biden to go. Late Wednesday, Vermont Senator Peter Welch put out an op-ed in the Washington Post telling him to withdraw. And speaking of opinion pieces and other one getting a ton of attention yesterday from actor George Clooney, he wrote in The New York Times, he is, by the way, a high profile Biden supporter just last month. He hosted a major fundraiser for Biden, the biggest of the campaign season. On Wednesday, Clooney writing that op-ed for the Times, calling for the president to leave the race. He wrote, quote, it is devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden, I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser, was not the Joe, quote, big effing deal Biden of 2010. He wasn't even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man that we all witnessed at the debate. Yeah, this is Ocean's 2024, a new sequel by Clooney here. He knows that he loves Biden, and this is about age and nothing else. A lot of attention here, Jill, but we should know George Clooney has influence, hosting those fundraisers, has a lot of influence in Hollywood. That's a place that Biden depends on for money. And so not insignificant, they're Clooney going out there and making that call. Notably, the White House reaction to Clooney was that he wasn't even there for the whole fundraiser. And intimating that Biden has more stamina that Clooney because Clooney left the fundraiser early, to which people are like, are you kidding me? Anyway, that was the response we heard from the White House. As you mentioned, only a handful of elected Democrats have called Biden to step aside here. We should note, Jill, while the NATO Summit happens here in Washington, there's three dozen world leaders here. His own party doesn't want to embarrass him publicly. But once NATO is over, first thing on Friday, you could start to see the floodgates open here, in terms of more and more senators and members of Congress calling on him to go. One question I have, and I've been talking to some Democrats in the know here, how much do we think Joe Biden actually knows about all of this? How much are his advisors telling him about everything that's going on? Do I have to say, is he watching the news and seeing the reactions? That's unclear at this juncture. And so while we are all watching development of development here, while he approaches NATO, has some other things, is being briefed on all the various things the president has to do, how much is he aware of the fact that more and more people in his own party are very concerned here? And the big thing here, Jill, is it's not about even Biden's victory. It's about that he is doing so poorly. They worry about a landslide. That was the word that Senator Michael Bennett, he's a moderate Democrat from Colorado. He went on CNN in the last 24 hours and said, listen, based on the data I'm seeing, Biden could do so poorly. He could bring down the house, any chance that the Dems take in the house and bring down the Senate for potentially a decade here. This is a key year for the Democrats in the Senate and that they lose a number of races given who's up for reelection in the coming cycles, Jill. Democrats could be out of power on Capitol Hill for a very long time. And that's what they're worried about here with Biden. So while the likely replacement here is Kamala Harris, and it's unclear whether she can even beat Donald Trump the cycle, they feel that she potentially gives them a better shot here, at least I'm keeping the Senate potentially winning the house versus Biden. Why? Well, a very basic thing. She can make an argument against Trump. She can push back on his arguments. The concern here from Joe Biden, while he released a letter to Capitol Hill, he's not talking to people in person. He's not actively making a case and proving that two weeks from that debate that he can be out there, that he can be forceful, that he can make the case against Trump here. And that's one of the big issues. So we'll be watching that press conference later today. Biden certainly has a lot of support within the Democratic Party. We shouldn't discount that at all. But it appears here that while we thought that he stopped the bleeding, we woke up on Wednesday morning with Nancy Pelosi bright and early before 6 a.m. telling us, no, no, no, the bleeding hasn't stopped. And she did it in a very delicate way because the forceful stuff hasn't worked. And so they're hoping by playing them up, talking about how Biden is one of the greatest presidents in American history. He's accomplished a lot. They're sort of giving him that, what's what's it called? Jill, a compliment sandwich. Well, all for him, but also a compliment sandwich. Let's say some really nice things about him. Throw in the middle. Are you sure about this? And then remind him at the end that like he did a really great job. And that's effectively what we're at. You know, I'm in a children's book critique group. And that is how we are encouraged to give feedback. Compliment, critique, compliment. Well, that's that's how Democrats at Capitol Hill have decided to approach Joe Biden this week. And motion works for me. Just saying. Well, motion is possible, though, as you talk about whether or not the president's fully aware of kind of the mood in Congress and just on the ground. It is possible that he's aware, at least of Nancy Pelosi, because at NATO on Wednesday, a reporter, while they were taking the so-called family portrait with the leaders of all 32 NATO countries, a reporter yelled, is Nancy Pelosi still behind you? And it looked like Biden gave kind of like a thumbs up sort of like a fist pump. You were there. What happened? Yeah, it's unclear whether he actually heard the reporter. We should note that there's few opportunities to actually get questions into Joe Biden. That's one of the criticisms that the media has of him. And some people see purposeful strategy from the White House to make him not as available as previous presidents. So when there are major public events that the media is allowed into, then some members of the media will shout questions, even if they're totally unrelated to the matter at hand. In this case, 32 world leaders taking a photo together, someone shouting at Biden about Nancy Pelosi. So maybe he asked one of his advisors, like, hey, what's this thing about Pelosi? What happened with Nancy Pelosi? We don't know. We don't know. That said, clearly, reporters are eager to get some questions in to the president. He's only answered questions effectively on a national stage from that ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos. The question will be, what happens in the coming days here? We did label this on the podcast and in the newsletter on Monday. This was survival week for Joe Biden. We wake up on this Thursday on the last day of NATO. Okay, what does tomorrow look like? What does the weekend look like? And the pushback that people are getting within the party among Biden supporters is like, hey, it's too late for this. We've got the convention coming up. Like, there's four months till the election. Other people saying, there's four months till the election. Like, other countries have elections in a couple of weeks. Like, we can do this. We can find a creative way to mobilize the country, get all the attention of the Democratic Party about who's next. Have the Democrats their own apprentice like a battle between the governors, Kamala Harris. He likely would then immediately say Kamala Harris should be the nominee. That's all unclear at this point because he's still as pretty adamant that he's going to have this job. But it looks like we're going to have another weekend here of potential serious discussions within the Biden circle. Given what you're seeing and the Kid Gloves act that we saw from Pelosi and others, if that might turn ugly next week, if they continue to feel that Biden is not actually seriously considering here, whether he should remain in this race. Jill, one more note, Monday night, he's got a prime time interview with Lester Holt. So he's done Seth nopless. NBC News anchor Lester Holt will have him for a prime time special, 9 p.m. Eastern Monday night. Okay, now to the Republican side and the much talked about Project 2025. Many of you have been asking about this on Instagram. So let's start with what it is. Project 2025 is a 920 page proposal from the conservative Heritage Foundation research think tank. It outlines step by step suggested plans for a second Donald Trump administration. The far right blueprint calls for, among other things, a sweeping overall of the executive branch. Project 2025 is a proposal composed of four parts. First, a policy guide for the next presidential administration, a LinkedIn style database of personnel who could serve in that next administration. Training for the pool of candidates and a playbook of actions to be taken within the first 180 days in office. And it's led by two former Trump administration officials, yet it has become so controversial that even Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from it. So again, this isn't Trump's official agenda per se, but some key former Trump officials are behind it. And a number of people tied to his active presidential campaign. Okay, so what is in Project 2025? It is basically a wish list of conservative ideas, some that have been pushed by Republicans for years, others that are new. A key tenant of the project is what's called schedule F. It's an executive order that would let the president potentially strip tens of thousands of longtime federal employees of employment protections, fire them, and then replace them with ideological loyalists. Right now, the government is mainly made up of lifetime non-political civil service employees. Conservatives believe that they are liberal, the so-called deep state, and undermine their goals. They want to convert many more roles to political appointees. Yeah, Jill, we should note that at the tail end in the fall of 2020, Trump tried to implement schedule F. I didn't get that much attention at the time because we were amid the campaign. He lost the election several weeks later, but they want to come back and do this with a vengeance the second time around. And they want to be able to replace a lot more government employees with ideological allies. So many more political appointments, people who believe in the Trump agenda, who can run the various agencies and departments of the government and implement some of his agenda here. And so that's one of the more controversial notions here, which we understand will go through a lot of legal issues. I imagine there'll be a lot of lawsuits, etc. We'll be hung up for a while, but it's unclear here where the Supreme Court, given a 6-3 conservative majority, might land, and we should note there's a lot more here beyond that in this 900-page document. Right. So here are some of the other ideas, abolishing the Department of Education, also abolishing NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to Project 2025. NOAA's six offices, which include the National Weather Service, are the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry, as they call it. Project 2025 also calls for the Department of Homeland Security to be dismantled, with its agencies combined with others or moved under the purview of other departments altogether. The Department of Homeland Security reminder was created after 9/11, back in 2001. Another federal agency on the chopping block, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects consumers from fraud. The view from this group is that these are all part of bloated government. Most important to note that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that was created after 2008, the Great Recession, as it's called. Their agenda also wants to target diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI initiatives. It calls for work requirements, for able-bodied, childless adults on food stamps. And in terms of immigration, they are calling for a secure border with increased enforcement of immigration laws, mass deportations, and the border wall is back. It's calling for construction of the border wall, and even less legal immigration. Yeah, also on the agenda here, more sweeping tax cuts, eliminating the U.S. role in NATO, developing new nuclear weapons, reversing the FDA's approval of abortion pills like Miffa Priestone, which we should note actually that particular item not supported by Donald Trump individually. They also talk about outlawing pornography completely in the U.S. So a long list here that we just went through. Many of these things have always been on the agenda for conservatives, for Republicans, some of them unrealistic, some realistic, some we haven't seen before. It's unclear where Trump falls on all these issues, because he has purposely vague on a number of them, and he's tried to distance himself from it. Late last week, as the chatter is getting really loud now on Project 2025, he put out on social media, quote, "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who's behind it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying, and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them," he says. It's a bit beyond belief, though, given how intertwined the world of 2025 in Trump is. In addition to the fact that 2025, often when they talk about it, the creators of it are talking about the Trumpification of government. One of the brainchilds behind it, the President of the Heritage Foundation is a guy named Kevin Roberts. He said in a recent interview that the nation is in the process of a second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be. Now, that comment, in particular, got a lot of attention. That's probably what led to Trump's condemnation, to Trump distancing himself from it, even though, again, a number of the people involved in his campaign, including his campaign manager, have been linked to Project 2025. And we should note that some of these people worked in his previous White House. Some of these people actually put some agenda together ahead of his previous administration in 2016. And they note that he actually implemented a number of their policy recommendations, two-thirds of them, the first time around. So they believe they have a good track word with him. They believe that despite what he might be saying on social media, for election purposes, that he plans on implementing a number of their measures. And again, it is extremely long here. Some of those things are going to require congressional approval that he's just not going to get. Some of those things will come into legal issues. It's again unclear which aspects of it he will implement. At the same time, be prepared to be hearing about Project 2025 a lot from Democrats, who are saying, listen, there's some wild stuff in this in terms of devolving certain departments, outlawing pornography, a bunch of programs that social conservatives like when it comes to abortion, the birth control pill, et cetera, that will be particularly controversial. So that's why, again, it'll be interesting to see here where Trump distances himself from this, and how this plays out on the campaign trail, given all the links between 2025 and the Trump campaign. All right, plenty of news coming up, but we want to thank a couple of our sponsors here. It is summertime, and we're always looking to max out on being outdoors. And given the heat, avoid more of it in the kitchen. Some of the many reasons we are loving factor meals this season, factor delivers chef crafted, never frozen meals. 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Let's start with the follow up to a story that we first told you about yesterday. The director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, is warning that actors tied to Iran's government are providing funding and stoking anti-Israel protests on US soil in an increasingly aggressive campaign. She says Iranian government actors have sought to quote opportunistically take advantage of anti-Israel protests. They use social media platforms and issue threats and even provide financial support to protesters. So most you had a chance to talk to the White House National Security Council spokesperson, John Kirby, about the issue in the halls of the NATO conference yesterday. What did you learn? Yeah, we saw him at the White House on Tuesday, saw him at NATO on Wednesday, and he gave us some time. So we're very grateful to Admiral Kirby for all of that. This was of high interest when we posted on Instagram yesterday. Kirby says they do have new intelligence about the role Iran is playing here, how they're trying to stoke division here in the US. He did make a point though, and we should note of saying that the US government supports free speech, supports protests, and there are a number of protesters who are genuine in their feelings and are not being funded by Iran or trying to serve Iran's role here. But he did say that they need to be careful because they have evidence that Iran is involved in seeing this protest. You know, you are seeing American flag burning. You are seeing calls for death to America. It's some of these protests in America, which is sort of out of the playbook of Iran. So not surprising when this came out. He wouldn't go into too many details here, but he said it's real, it's happening. Take a listen. That said, what the director of national intelligence put out yesterday was a statement to make it clear that we have information that Iran has been trying to fomit some of those protests support, encourage some of those protests, even to the point of providing financial support in certain in certain ways into certain individuals. What's really alarming about this? I mean, that's not that that's not alarming enough, is that the Iranians aren't being transparent. And those who may have been influenced by Iranian information activities or even offers a financial assistance may not even know that it's coming from Iran. Do we know which organizations or individuals potentially were the recipient of? I think I think I can't go any further than the director of national intelligence did here in terms of putting information out there. But we have a good sense of who's behind this. I mean, we wouldn't have made that public if we didn't feel very confident in the intelligence. But it's an it's an important reminder what she did yesterday of how pernicious the Iranian regime is and the way they are trying to sow discord and disunion here in the United States. Jill, I also had a chance to ask him about the new Iranian president who was elected over the weekend possessed in, who's talked about reaching out to the West saying that he wants engagement. So I asked Kirby, listen, are you guys looking forward to this? Do you think that they're turning over a new leaf? So to speak, this guy is a so-called reformist. He shook his head very briefly and said they don't expect much. That ultimately, it's the Supreme Leader of Iran, who draws foreign policy. Iran is very active in the way that it's pursuing its nefarious purposes across the region and against the US. So they're open minded, but they're not expecting any changes. Now to the oppressive heat hitting much of the country from USA Today and the Washington Post Americans across much of the country are thinking the same thing as temperatures keep breaking records and heat indexes soar into the triple digits. It is way too hot. More than 135 million people across the lower 48 were under heat alerts Wednesday, including on both coasts and in some of the country's largest cities. In many cases, the alerts have been up for days and will continue until the weekend. They come after a punishing opening to July in which hundreds of heat records were set in the West, Phoenix, Vegas and Jose Spokane, Washington, Boise, Idaho, all under excessive heat warnings. In the East, there are heat advisories and warnings that span from South Carolina to DC, where you are all the way up to Massachusetts. Heat indexes taking into account both air temperature and humidity should reach 105 to 110 along large parts of the I-95 corridor. Yeah, Jill, even for places used to high heat, they're breaking new records in places like Vegas and the desert Southwest. They've actually seen a huge number of tourists inflex to Death Valley, where they're surpassing 130 degrees. By the way, fair warning, don't go to Death Valley to take a photo in front of the temperature sign. Apparently, there have been a number of first responders who've had to respond to people who are trying to go there for the photo op, for the Instagram or the TikTok. You probably can go enjoy the 120s in Vegas. No need to go to Death Valley anytime soon. Just ask AI to put a picture together for you. I mean, this one isn't worth it. Yeah, no need to go there. Motorcycle-less died. Another one was hospitalized. Temperatures are so high that a rescue helicopter couldn't even fly because the temperature reached above 120 degrees. The helicopter couldn't fly. In Vegas, the burn care team at the University Medical Center is treating a massive spike in pavement burns. Those burns typically happen after someone lies on pavement, which in recent days, some of the pavement in the Vegas area, 170 degrees in that heat. The pavement burns have increased by more than seven times from last summer. Over on the East Coast in New York, a bridge literally couldn't take the heat anymore and couldn't close anymore. This is the third avenue bridge that connects the Bronx in Manhattan. It was shut down when it got stuck due to overheating machinery. The New York Fire Department literally had to water down the hydraulics to cool the bridge in order to make it function again. The bottom line is that our infrastructure simply was not built to withstand heat like this. Case and point, I mentioned earlier this week on the podcast, I took the train from New York to DC and the speeds had to be lowered because of the heat. We just couldn't go as fast as we normally would. Our train was delayed. At one point, we were smelling burned rubber, not comforting. On my way back on Wednesday, more delays because of the heat again. I think this is just the beginning of what we're going to start to see. While this summer could break records for the hottest summer of all time, when meteorologists and climate experts say we look back at the summer of 2024, we'll say that was the coolest summer in recent memory. The good old days of 2024. I hope everyone is staying hydrated. I hope everyone's staying cool. You have some functional nearby AC near you if you're being impacted by this. From CNBC, a bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday launched a renewed effort to ban members of Congress from trading stocks. A group of Democratic and Republican senators came together on this this week. Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri said, "Congress should not be here to make a buck. There is no reason why members of Congress ought to be profiting off of the information that only they get the proposals. The latest chapter in a year's long saga in Congress to pass regulations that limit lawmakers' ability to buy and sell stocks. And the first one though, to get formal consideration by a Senate committee, there will actually be a hearing on this later this month. Ethics experts say that legislators' access to the kind of information they receive gives them the potential of having an unfair advantage to the investing public. Wednesday's amendment to an existing stock trading ban bill would immediately forbid members of Congress, the president, and the vice president from purchasing stocks and other covered investments. It would give lawmakers 90 days to sell their stocks." So there's a bunch of websites that actually track how much the members make here. Many members gel outpacing the stock market. Last year, the S&P index was up about 24%. But there's this social media account called unusual whales that tracks the trades. And they found all these members that made 40% return, 50% return, 200% return, Congress from Brian Higgins. Nancy Pelosi did a 65% return last year. Among Democrats, Republicans, you're seeing both parties have members in the Senate, in the House, who are making bank wildly sit in office. And so this is a major concern. We should note in 2023, by the way, Democrats on average did much better than Republicans. But it appears here, the effort is bipartisan, saying we got a crack of that on this. This is a very bad look, but they've had an uphill battle for a while. I remember at CBS, I covered a major change Obama made a decade ago saying ethics are back, etc. Now that law that's been in effect only finds members $200 if they fail to disclose sometimes millions in dollars that they're making. There was one congressman recently who made about $9 million was fined $600 for not disclosing it. So they're trying to do much more here. We're trying to be much more impactful. This was really supercharged by the fact that out of the pandemic, you saw some members of Congress who were getting briefings ahead of COVID, trade certain stocks, Jill, and make a lot of money based on information clearly that they may have had. We don't know much more than that because there have been no real investigations into this. When it comes to the Senate ethics committee, the FBI did launch an insider trading investigation into three senators from that previous session. They ended the probe without making any charges. Again, no ethics investigations. So hopeful here that this passes Congress and we start to crack down on this behavior. Right. But as we've mentioned in the past, the roadblock here is that it's the Congress members who have to make this decision about themselves. They are their own police when it comes to this sort of thing. This story from Axios, the slacker generation might have been slacking off when it came to planning for retirement. Gen X consistently ranks in surveys as the least prepared group for when they stop earning. The first members of Gen X were born in January of 1965, which means they turn 59 and a half this month and can start withdrawing money from 401k and other retirement accounts without paying a penalty. As Gen Xers get older, they are getting increasingly worried about looming financial problems in retirement. 49 percent of Gen Xers in a 2023 survey say they worry retirement may not be an option. That is up significantly from 42 percent just two years prior. Yeah, like a planning inflation is an issue. So basically 50 percent of Gen X things that prepare the other half, things that are unprepared here. And when you compare them to other generations, there's a new BlackRock survey out that shows that 40 percent of Gen Xers say they use the financial advisor for retirement planning compared to 54 percent of millennials and boomers and even 47 percent of Gen Z. So Gen Z boomers, millennials all using financial advisors, less Gen Xers doing that, less prepared here. And only one out of four Gen Xers have any kind of defined benefit pension that is according to the Social Security Administration compared to about 40 percent of leading boomers. So Gen X, listen, you guys don't get talked about enough, but we're talking about you right now. We're worried about you. And we're thinking about you here on the Mona's podcast. And finally, from NBC News, we're getting a sneak peek at the leotards that gymnast Simone Biles and Team USA will wear in Paris. And let's just say there's a lot of sparkle. The uniforms have about 10,000 hand-placed crystals that weigh almost a pound. Gene Diaz, the design director for the uniforms, says that they started to work on the Paris Olympic leotards more than two years ago. She says it all started by collecting feedback from the gymnasts in contention. She said they overwhelmingly unanimously told us that for the Olympics, they want to wear red, white and blue, and the more crystals, the better. Yeah, hopefully that pounded crystals doesn't impact them on the various bars they have to fly off of and the floor exercise and whatnot. But I have high confidence in them. Apparently, this quote-unquote, "high-fashion take on design" is partially because of the host city. The Olympics as here are in Paris, Paris being the fashion capital of the world. And so that's where we're at. One of the things we can look forward to in the next couple of weeks as the Olympics get started here. Big question is, do the gymnast like it? Biles and other teammates got to see the uniforms for the first time on the Today Show. And they all seem very excited, Jill. And in case you want to see a picture of the uniforms, we have a picture at the top of our newsletter this morning. Yeah, if you don't already get it, mo.news/newsletter, mo.news/newsletter, if you're not getting our newsletter every morning. All right, now time for On This Day in History. We go back 220 years ago on this day. We talk in New Jersey was the place. Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, engaged in a duel. Aaron Burr shoots Alexander Hamilton. You might have seen the show on Broadway or heard about the show. The rivalry went back for a while. Hamilton blocking Burr in his pursuit of the presidency several years before that. Then from being governor in 1804, Burr was not so happy about that. Outraged over disparaging remarks that Hamilton made at a dinner party where Hamilton said the following words about Burr. He's a dangerous man. Burr said, let's duel about it. And so Hamilton said yes. And so on this day, Burr shoots Hamilton. Hamilton dies. Sadly, Hamilton's son had died in a duel a few years before that. You can catch the rest of it on Broadway, Jill. All right, sticking in the 1800s here on this day in 1859, Big Ben, the great bell inside the famous London clock tower chimed for the first time. Little sports history for you on this day in 1914. Babe Ruth, perhaps the greatest Yankee of all time, made his major league baseball debut as a member of the Boston Red Sox. He would actually play several seasons for them. Short on cash, they would sell him in 1920, even though they knew he was really good. Big mistake, as I think Julie Roberts said in Pretty Woman, Jill. Big, big mistake by the run up Boston Red Sox. Huge. Huge. 1960 on this day, Harper Lee's Tequila Machinberg was first published. And Jill, you might remember this theme song. Reading Rainbow with LaVar Burton premiered 41 years ago today and actually aired for 23 seasons until 2006. Jill, I got many people of a certain generation very excited about reading. Is there anyone who's doing that now? Like who is the LaVar Burton of 2024? Is it the Miss Rachel? No, no. Miss Rachel is pre-reading. As far as reading, I imagine there's got to be some YouTubers. Jill, as your, as Alex gets older, you'll let me know who that is on YouTube or one of you who listens and has kids, you know, between, I don't know, first grade and sixth grade. Let us know if there's a LaVar Burton reading Rainbow equivalent these days on social media. Moshe, I wish that my daughter was watching YouTube and watching reading programs on YouTube. I mean, she's basically watching like skincare routines at the age of five. So yeah, wish me luck. LaVar Burton of the Generation, making you go to school. We need you. And finally, music news on this day, 29 years ago. Shage released his third studio album, BoomBostock, on this day. Shaggy, real name, Orville Burrell. Doesn't have quite the same ring as Shaggy, but baby BoomBostock. That was Orville Richard Burrell today with that hit, BoomBostock. Nope, no, definitely not the same ring as Shaggy. Shaggy. All right, we want to thank you for listening to the Mo News podcast. If you like what you hear, share this with your friends, it will help us grow. Follow us and subscribe so you don't miss an episode and review us in the App Store. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Mo News podcast. [Music]
