After a tense month of candidacy panic for Democrats, the coconuts are falling into place: Left-leaning leaders on Wall Street and Capitol Hill have flocked to VP Kamala Harris’s camp in the day-and-a-half since President Joe Biden bowed out of the election and endorsed her, ginning up a wave of support for the #HarrisSomeone2024 ticket.

Here’s who’s backed Harris so far:

• The majority of Democrats in the House (186/212) and Senate (41/47) and all Democratic governors in the US have pledged support, according to the New York Times. And as of yesterday evening she had the support of enough delegates to clinch the nomination, the AP reported—though they won’t make it official until August.
• LinkedIn co-founder and Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman was also one of the first to voice support for Harris yesterday. Billionaire Biden backers Alex and George Soros and a litany of private equity and investment banking executives have also joined what Bloomberg called the “KHive.”

Campaign cash is flowing again. Biden dropping out of the election was like a dam bursting for Dem fundraising: After last month’s slow-motion Democratic dumpster fire presidential debate, donors to the pro-Biden super PAC Future Forward told the New York Times they’d withhold $90 million if he wasn’t replaced on the ticket. Abigail Disney (yes, that Disney) said yesterday she’ll resume donations to the Democratic Party after pausing for the same reason.

In the first 24 hours after Biden dropped out:

• Future Forward received $150 million in new funds for Harris, Politico reported.
• The Harris camp also raised $81 million, setting a single-day record for presidential campaign fundraising (and almost doubling the war chest it’ll inherit from Biden’s camp).

Could Harris woo Big Tech? Tech execs told Wired that they expect more Silicon Valley leaders to endorse Harris since her replacing Biden is seen as a potential unburdening of what has been for Big Tech antitrust enforcement, The Information reported. In the past, Harris has voiced support for regulation over breaking up big companies, and some big business critics say she didn’t rein in tech giants enough as California’s attorney general.—ML

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Delta struggles to bounce back from the global IT outage. While other airlines were mostly back to normal yesterday following the global IT fallout from CrowdStrike’s faulty software update, Delta was still stuck like a passenger on a canceled flight. The airline canceled at least 900 flights yesterday, accounting for about two-thirds of all cancellations worldwide (including the majority of canceled US flights). The airline has been singled out by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who said his agency received hundreds of complaints about Delta, and Delta’s CEO apologized to affected passengers. Delta’s difficulties appear to stem from the outage impacting its crew tracking system, the same system that bedeviled Southwest when it stumbled after a storm.

Secret Service director refused to answer big questions before Congress. Republicans and Democrats might not agree on much, but they were united yesterday, with lawmakers from both parties calling for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle’s resignation. While testifying before the House oversight committee for more than four hours, Cheatle said she accepted responsibility for the failures that led to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump but declined to answer many questions seeking specifics about what had happened, citing an ongoing investigation.

Google puts its hand back in the cookie jar. Four years after saying it would eliminate the cookies advertisers rely on to track web surfers from Chrome, Google has decided not to. Google’s decision to backtrack on the much-delayed plan to get rid of the tracking tech comes after both advertisers and regulators gave Google’s replacement plans some serious side-eye. The search giant said it will roll out a new plan that relies on users’ informed choice to determine whether they want to allow cookies as they browse.

Cash provides people with a lot of flexibility—that’s one of the main takeaways from the Wu-Tang Clan classic “C.R.E.A.M.” and from a $60 million study of universal basic income (UBI) backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

The AI cheerleader has been a proponent of UBI for years, fueled by his belief that AI will eventually eliminate traditional jobs, and he put his money behind it, partially funding the largest US basic income pilot program ever. The findings are now trickling in.

How it worked: The program enrolled 3,000 people across Texas and Illinois with an income below $28,000. From November 2020 to October 2023, a third of the participants received $1,000 a month for three years (the rest received $50 a month for three years).

For those who got $1,000, the study found:

• They spent $310 more per month on average, mostly on rent, transportation, and food.
• On average, people worked 1.3 hours less per week.
• Recipients went to hospitals, doctors, and dentists more often.

But…researchers said there was no direct evidence of improved physical and mental health. While stress and food insecurity reduced for the first year, it leveled out in the second and third years, and participants’ long-term financial position stayed the same.—CC

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Americans will soon pay less to stay in touch with incarcerated loved ones, per a new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule.

The agency recently capped the cost of communicating with inmates—an expense that can add up to hundreds of dollars a month for their families. The move was welcomed by prison reform activists, who have long pointed to studies showing that regular contact with the outside world improves incarcerated people’s health and reduces recidivism.

• The maximum price of a 15-minute phone call to or from large jails was slashed from over $11 in some cases to just 90 cents. And at small jails, it’ll be capped at $1.35, down from a ~$12 upper limit.
• The rule also sets a first-ever cap on video call pricing and bans additional communication service fees.

Why are calls so pricey?

The vast majority of prison and jail calls are facilitated by three companies. Critics say that the lack of competition has led to exorbitant prices. They also blame call-charge-sharing schemes, in which call providers give jails a cut of the proceeds—a practice the new FCC rule prohibits.

The industry retorts that costly call security measures drive up prices.

It’s not just calls…incarcerated people still face exuberant charges for services like electronic messaging and reading e-books.—SK

Turns out people really do prefer spending less money for things. About 93% of McDonald’s locations voted to extend the burger chain’s $5 Meal Deal promotion, which was scheduled to end this month. The chain said customers are lovin’ it—and it’s getting them back into the restaurants after many stopped craving McNuggets following price hikes. The day the fast-food giant debuted the deal, June 25, was Mickey D’s biggest Tuesday of the year at that point, with 8% more visitors than the average, and visits remained above average for at least the rest of the week, according to data from Placer.ai.