Today’s Big Story

The Dollar Is in Trouble

The U.S. dollar suffers worst start to year in more than five decades, report claims

The U.S. dollar has had its worst start to a year since 1973, weighed down by President Donald Trump’s erratic trade policy, a worsening outlook for the country's ever-growing public debt, and concerns about the independence of the Federal Reserve.

According to the New York Times, the United States’ currency has weakened more than 10 percent over the past six months when compared with a basket of currencies from the country’s major trading partners. The last time the dollar weakened so much at the start of the year was 1973, after the United States had made a seismic shift that had ended the linking of the dollar to the price of gold.

That means it’s more expensive for Americans to travel abroad and less attractive for foreigners to invest in the United States, sapping demand when the government is trying to borrow more money. On the flip side, the weaker dollar should help U.S. exporters and make imports more expensive, though these typical trade effects are in flux because of the tariff threats.

“The dollar has become the whipping boy of Trump 2.0’s erratic policies,” currency strategist Francesco Pesole, who works for global banking company ING, told the Financial Times. The tariffs caused chaos on Wall Street, with over six trillion in market losses, as you might recall. Trump says he is not planning to extend the tariff pause, telling Fox News during a taped interview broadcasted Sunday: “We’ll look at how a country treats us—are they good, are they not so good—some countries we don’t care, we’ll just send a high number out.”

Import tariffs typically strengthen the currency. However, Newsweek points out that Trump's disordered approach to trade, coupled with U.S. debt concerns and his pressure on the Fed to cut interest rates, has continued to drive the dollar down.

Senate’s Long Day Turns to Night

The GOP closes in on passing Trump’s tax bill, but holdouts remain

And here I thought I was bad about going right up to my deadlines. The Senate’s long day of voting churned into a really long Monday night, with Republican leaders grasping for ways to shore up support for President Donald Trump’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts while fending off proposed amendments from Democrats who oppose the package and are trying to defeat it. As of early this morning, the outcome was not yet in sight. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota told the Associated Press that Republicans are “figuring out how to get to the end game.”

Trump has been pressing Congress to pass the bill by July 4, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt implored Republicans to “stay tough and unified” as they rushed to meet the deadline. “The White House and the president are adamant that this bill is passed, and that this bill makes its way to his desk,” Leavitt told reporters. But with a 53-47 majority, Senate Republicans can lose only three votes—and two Republicans have already indicated they will oppose it.

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina took to the Senate floor twice Sunday night to excoriate his party’s legislation, saying it would break Trump’s promise not to cut Medicaid benefits and would put more than 600,000 people in his state at risk of losing their health insurance. Vice President JD Vance nearly had to cast the tiebreaking vote Saturday night to start debate on the bill before Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin switched his vote, and Republicans will need him to trek to the Capitol if three Republicans vote “no.”

4th of July Record-Breaking Travel Forecast

Here’s what to know about the 72.2 million people heading out for the long weekend

The Fourth of July is one of the busiest travel days of the year. In fact, according to AAA, an estimated 72.2 million Americans are likely to travel at least 50 miles away from their homes during the upcoming Independence Day holiday. While some families are planning road trips, others will be jumping on a plane to head to far-flung destinations. And the agency warned that it’s expecting more than 18.5 million travelers at airport security checkpoints during the period of July 1 through July 7.

The record-breaking crowd is more than a 2.4% jump from last year. “Following Memorial Day’s record forecast, AAA is seeing strong demand for road trips and air travel over Independence Day week,” Stacey Barber, vice president of AAA Travel, said in a release. “With the holiday falling on a Friday, travelers have the option of making it a long weekend or taking the entire week.”

So this is your reminder to get to the airport early. And if you’re road tripping, with those unprecedented numbers, timing your departure times strategically has never been more important. Experts told Condé Nast Traveler that in general, afternoon hours will be the most congested on roads, so travelers should aim to depart in the early morning. Or just stay home, grill some hot dogs and light some fireworks.

The Frustrations of Customer Service

Endless wait times, excessive procedural fuss and lots of AI confusion

You know the drill: You try to call customer service and start hitting the “0” for operator and interrupt the recorded greeting by barking “representative”! These systems are heavily automated—all in an attempt to solve common problems before they need to involve a costly human worker. There are chatbots on websites that spit out pre-written answers, phone trees that ask you to press numbers or say your problem out loud, and paths that often end in prerecorded messages. One option that has been helpful for some is the ability to get a call back from an agent instead of waiting on hold for extensive periods of time. The next step, of course, is adding in more artificial intelligence tools.

But that’s already causing some confusion. Real-life representatives are being accused of being AI robots so much, that they can’t even do their job of helping customers. One explains to Bloomberg, “I tell them, ‘I promise, I’m a real human.’” To demonstrate, she might cough or giggle, vocal tics she believes AI can’t replicate. For other companies, they’re using AI, but only to mask the accents for overseas call center employees, making their speech more understandable to American clients on the other end of the line.

But as helpful as these agents claim they’d like to be, there’s a whole system of subterfuge, that’s part of a tactic called “sludge”. The Atlantic compiled horror stories of gym-quitting labyrinths, Airbnb hijinks, illogical conversations with companies and confounding interactions with the IRS. And everyone agreed: It was all somehow getting worse.

The Long Read

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