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3 weeks ago | 
morningbrew.com | Dave Lozo
Staffing shortages at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are creating significant concerns about the quality of the market-moving inflation data, according to economists who spoke to the Wall Street Journal. BLS is stretched thin: On President Trump’s first day back in office this year, he implemented a hiring freeze for federal employees, leaving the BLS shorthanded.
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3 weeks ago | 
morningbrew.com | Dave Lozo
Facing the threat of being forced to shut down factories as their stockpiles dwindle, US automakers are seeking solutions to gain access to magnets made with rare earth metals. The magnets, critical in EV manufacturing, come almost exclusively from China, which stopped exporting them to the US in April in response to tariffs imposed by President Trump.
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3 weeks ago | 
morningbrew.com | Dave Lozo
You can finally stop bothering the kid in the drive-thru and put down that petition. After months of teasing and years of begging by fans, yesterday McDonald’s announced the return of its deeply missed Snack Wraps, starting on July 10. McDonald’s rebooting a beloved chicken item that was discontinued in 2016 signaled that the chicken wars have evolved into a wrap battle. Popeye’s launched its own limited-time chicken wrap on Monday.
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3 weeks ago | 
morningbrew.com | Dave Lozo
Meta will provide AI tools for brands to create ads from scratch and target users on its social media platforms by the end of next year, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, putting an ETA on an important goal for CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Here’s what Zuck’s envisioning:Companies looking to interrupt your Instagram or Facebook scroll can currently use Meta’s AI tools to tweak existing ads.
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4 weeks ago | 
morningbrew.com | Dave Lozo
At long last, Taylor Swift owns the rights to all of her music. The singer, songwriter, and star of Cats announced yesterday that she bought back her catalog from private equity firm Shamrock Capital. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Swift reportedly shelled out ~$360 million, which is close to what Shamrock paid to acquire the library in 2020.
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1 month ago | 
morningbrew.com | Dave Lozo
Less than a week after President Trump suggested he was endorsing a deal to resolve the saga of Nippon Steel’s $14.1 billion takeover of US Steel (previously blocked as a security risk by President Biden’s administration), Nikkei reported that the US government could receive a “golden share” as a condition for approving the “partnership.”What is a golden share, other than a play a coach might call in an Air Bud movie?
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1 month ago | 
morningbrew.com | Dave Lozo
Less than a week after pledging to scale back his government duties to become “super focused” on running his companies, Elon Musk took a respite from posting quote tweets with exclamation points to oversee the launch of SpaceX’s Starship rocket last night. The ninth flight of the 400-foot rocket got farther than the prior two tests, but ended in fiery failure for the third straight time.
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1 month ago | 
morningbrew.com | Dave Lozo
“Claude blackmailed an employee” may sound like dialogue from a mandatory HR workplace training video set in France, but it’s actually a real problem encountered during test runs of Anthropic’s latest AI model. Anthropic considers the two Claude models released on Thursday, Opus 4 and Sonnet 4, the new standards for “coding, advanced reasoning, and AI agents,” and said that Opus 4 exceeded Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, OpenAI’s o3 reasoning, and GPT-4.1 models in coding duties.
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1 month ago | 
morningbrew.com | Dave Lozo
Ethan Hunt will accept a truly impossible assignment this weekend—defeating a mischievous Disney alien at the US box office. Disney’s live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch is expected to obliterate Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning over Memorial Day weekend, with the family movie projected to take home as much as $140 million and the Tom Cruise franchise’s (possible) finale looking at $80 million in domestic ticket sales.
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1 month ago | 
morningbrew.com | Dave Lozo
When it comes to taxes, even members of the same party can struggle to agree, as the fight over the specifics of President Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill in the House shows. But on Tuesday, the Senate voted 100–0 to pass the No Tax On Tips Act, a stand-alone measure similar to one of that bill’s most popular provisions. Eliminating taxes on tips has provoked more agreement among both parties than the expulsion of former Rep. George Santos ever since Trump promised it on the campaign trail.
