The head of a massive entertainment empire that also shaped US politics has officially stepped down, and no one has pointed out that it’s just like that HBO show: The Righteous Gemstones. Rupert Murdoch handed the sole chairmanship of Fox and News Corp to his oldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, yesterday.

If you’re more of a PBS-head…Rupert Murdoch is the founder and former head of one of the largest media companies in the US. After inheriting a small Australian newspaper in the 1950s, Murdoch hoovered up struggling British papers, which eventually congealed into a global media empire. His crown jewel is the right-wing Fox News Channel, which commands the highest ratings in cable news. Murdoch, 92, has a net worth of ~$8.3 billion and seems to have finally grown tired of dangling the keys to the kingdom in front of his six children.

The eldest boy wins

In a memo to staff yesterday, old man Murdoch announced the change and said his son Lachlan is “absolutely committed to the cause” of “freedom” and will continue Fox’s legacy. Rupert had signaled this would be the ultimate succession plan when he named Lachlan CEO of Fox News in 2019.

But the hardest part is not over. Lachlan is inheriting an empire riddled with gas fires that no one has a thick enough towel to put out. In April, Fox agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit—the largest known media defamation settlement in US history. And there’s a similar lawsuit from another voting tech company still percolating, as well as two lawsuits from Fox shareholders alleging that company directors, including Rupert and Lachlan, failed to perform their duties by getting the company caught up in defamation cases. Phew.

Plus, the succession drama is just getting started. After Rupert’s death, his shares will be divided among Lachlan and three of his five siblings—Elisabeth, James, and Prudence. And, based on previous brotherly tension between James and Lachlan, the top job could still be up for grabs.—MM

Or should we say…RYSE-ing.

Farmers know how to spot the crème de la crème: It rises to the top. But RYSE Aero Tech is giving them an even better view.

The startup’s ultralight, electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle doesn’t require a license to fly. In fact, RECONs are being flown daily by non-pilots right now.

It’s a perfect way for this $52b equipment buying industry to crop scout and advance farming. They already have $39m+ in preorders (again, farmers know).

The vehicle is expected to make even bigger waves across different military and government sectors. In fact, the ultralight aircraft market is projected to double to $18b by 2028.

Invest in RYSE Aero Tech at just $7/share as they get ready for takeoff.

US jobless claims fell to an eight-month low. Applications for unemployment benefits dropped 20,000 to 201,000 last week, according to Labor Department data released yesterday. That was both the fewest number of claims since January and also among the fewest in the last 50 years. But it may not last for long: The ongoing United Auto Workers strike could force car manufacturers to temporarily lay off more workers, leading to a reversal of what one analyst called “rock bottom levels” of job cuts.

Mr. Zelensky goes back to Washington. The Ukrainian president huddled with Joe Biden at the White House and met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to shore up support for Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia. But, unlike during his 2022 visit, Zelensky’s request to address a joint session of Congress was denied by the new House Speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, who said there wasn’t time for it. Biden recently asked Congress for an additional $24 billion to help Ukraine, but in the meantime used Zelensky’s visit to announce a new aid package that includes significant air defense capabilities.

Cisco bought cybersecurity firm Splunk for $28 billion. The all-cash deal, worth 13% of Cisco’s market cap, is by far the largest in the company’s history. Splunk, which helps businesses monitor their data and avoid hacks, adds to Cisco’s growing ambitions in cybersecurity as the public cloud corrodes its traditional computer networking business. Before Splunk, Cisco’s biggest purchase was cable-box-maker Scientific Atlanta for $6.9 billion in 2006.

Growing friction between the strategically partnered countries spiked this week when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused the Indian government of assassinating a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil.

Trudeau announced Monday that Canadian intelligence has investigated “credible allegations” of the Indian government’s involvement in the June killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist who rallied for an independent Sikh state in Punjab, India. India called the murder accusation “absurd and motivated.”

An escalating ice-out ensued between the two nations:

• Canada expelled India’s top intelligence diplomat. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government responded by expelling a senior Canadian diplomat from India and has called for more Canadian diplomats to leave.
• India suspended all new visas for Canadian citizens, who were the South Asian country’s fourth-largest group of tourists in 2021.

India is Canada’s biggest source of immigrants and was its 10th-largest trade partner in 2022, but tensions have been brewing for years over Canada’s sympathy for the Sikh separatist movement, which India considers a terroristic threat. Before Trudeau took the claims public, he brought them to Modi at the G20 summit earlier this month, and the two countries paused trade talks shortly after.

Tightrope mode: The US, UK, and Australia are taking their ally Canada’s allegations seriously while also trying to maintain their diplomatic relationships with India.—ML

The new Brightline rail route opens today, linking Miami and Orlando in the first major city-to-city private US train line in four decades.

The trip takes 3.5 hours—about 30 minutes faster than driving—and a round-trip fare costs between $158 and $298. Aside from being huge news for people who want to start their day at the Magic Kingdom and end it dancing at E11EVEN, the new route represents significant progress in the push for more high-speed rail in a country that is still very fond of its autos:

• After expanding transit in the Sunshine State, Brightline is now working on another route for especially tan people—a train connecting SoCal and Las Vegas that could be ready as soon as 2028.
• Amtrak is testing a faster train for its Acela line as part of the New Jersey High-Speed Rail Improvement program.
• The state of California and a company in Texas want to build high-speed rail lines of their own, though both projects have encountered problems with land ownership and funding.

Move over, Vanderbilt. While Amtrak has long dominated the US railway system, a wave of privatization could soon take over. Brightline has made rapid headway since it started operating in 2018, and many other pending projects consist of public-private partnerships.—CC

Stat: We have some bad news for your one NFT friend: The digital collectibles are pretty much worthless now. Using data from NFT Scan, the crypto platform dappGambl found that 95% of the 73,257 non-fungible token collections (e.g., Bored Ape Yacht Club) it analyzed are worth 0 ether. In other words, if NFTs were physical objects, it’d be time to put them on the same garage shelf where your Beanie Babies went to die. The report estimates that 23 million people are now the owners of worthless digital files. The crash is mainly for one reason: There just isn’t enough demand to keep up with supply.

Quote: “The practice of equine tail docking was discontinued earlier this year.”

The Clydesdales can stop watching their backs, because Budweiser no longer cuts off the tails of the iconic horses, the company said in a statement this week. The beer brand had been under pressure from animal rights activists to end the practice, which was done for cosmetic reasons and to keep the tails from interfering with carriage equipment. Budweiser has used Clydesdales as a marketing tool since 1933, when August A. Busch Jr. and Adolphus Busch gifted their father a dozen horses to celebrate the end of Prohibition.

Read: AI models portend a potential sea change in how weather forecasts are made. (The Washington Post)

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s Weekly News Quiz has been compared to how perfectly Matt Damon jumps through that window in The Bourne Ultimatum.

It’s that satisfying. Ace the quiz.

Watch: A deeply satisfying YouTube channel devoted solely to videos of a hydraulic press smooshing household items.

Eat: Lose some carbs but keep that signature taste with this recipe for an everything bagel salad (with lox).

Behold: Whale sharks, mobula rays, and more creatures of the deep in Ocean Photographer of the Year’s 2023 winners.

Read: Succession showrunner Jesse Armstrong’s column on how his team made the hard decision to end the HBO series at the peak of its acclaim.

Learn: Our Difficult Conversations at Work course is back on Sept. 25, but if you can’t make the live session, we’ve made it available on-demand. Register today.

Investing: Everyday people investing in multimillion-dollar paintings by artists like Banksy and realizing impressive returns? Check—thanks to Masterworks. Morning Brew readers skip the waitlist.*

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Jigsaw: Remember when the James Webb Space Telescope spotted a question mark in space? We turned that photo into a digital jigsaw puzzle. Play it here.

Friday puzzle

Arrange the numbers from 1 to 15 in a row such that the sum of every two adjacent numbers is a square number. (A square number is 1, 4, 9, 16, etc.—just any number multiplied by itself.)

9, 7, 2, 14, 11, 5, 4, 12, 13, 3, 6, 10, 15, 1, 8

Source

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: hoovered up, meaning “to consume something quickly and eagerly.” Thank you to Pam from Trenton, Georgia, for the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.