Morning Brew Daily - Trump Refuses to Sign Housing Affordability Bill & Wendy’s Soars Thanks to Reddit Traders

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

#875: President Trump suddenly cancels the signing of a landmark housing bill that was set to lower costs. The French are suffering one of the hottest heatwaves on record. A viral post on WallStreetBets sends Wendy’s stock to soar. Neal looks into CEO pay, China’s supercomputer, and the rise of divorces among boomers. Finally, why are World Cup fans weirdly obsessed with ranch dressing?  To learn more visit https://www.servicenow.com Grab tickets to our Performance Revue show! https://www.morningbrew.com/events/brew-performance-revue-2026?utm_campaign=performance_revue_2026&utm_source=mbd Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠  Watch Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow⁠ This experience may not be representative of other Wealthfront clients, and there is no guarantee of future performance or success. Experiences will vary. Neal Fryman and Toby Howell, are clients of Wealthfront, receive cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage for paid testimonials in his podcast, creating a conflict of interest. More details available via the referral link. https://wealthfron.com/morningbrew New clients get 3.30% base APY from program banks + additional 0.75% boost for 3 months on your uninvested cash (max $150k balance). Terms and conditions apply. The Cash Account, which is not a deposit account, is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC ("Wealthfront Brokerage"), Member FINRA/SIPC. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank. The Annual Percentage Yield ("APY") on cash deposits as of January 30, 2026, is representative, requires no minimum, and may change at any time. References to the APY for the Wealthfront Cash Account, including any APY increase, are to the APY paid by insured depository institutions that participate in our cash sweep program (the "Program Banks”). Wealthfront Brokerage sweeps cash balances to Program Banks, where they earn the variable APY. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI is uncharted territory, and many leaders are trying to navigate through without a guide to help them. That's why Morning Brew created The Intelligence Shift, a new podcast with PWC. It's all about how AI is fundamentally changing different industries. Host Dan Priest is joined by a top-tier roster of industry leaders who share real stories and real lessons learned. Get guidance from industry experts. Listen to the intelligence shift wherever you get your podcasts. Good morning, Brew, Daily Show. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, France rethinking its lack of air conditioning after temperatures

shatter records. Then why did Wendy's stock suddenly gain 40% yesterday? It's Thursday June 25th. Let's ride. Good morning and happy half Christmas, June 25th. Okay, here's a question. Have you ever scrolled through food delivery options just because you were bored and have no intention of actually ordering food? Now, there's an app for that. In South Korea, An app called Food Never Comes has gone viral that does exactly what its name suggests. You can browse different restaurants, weigh your dinner options, but at the end of the day, when you hit order, no food is ever prepared or delivered. According to Fast Company, it's part of a growing number of so-called dopamine sites in Korea

that give you a shopping high without you actually paying for anything. People were divided on social media with some saying it could curb shopping addiction, but others calling it dystopian. One viral post compared it to playing pretend for adults. they wrote, we're basically experiencing play shopping like a child again. People likened it to drinking non-alcoholic beer. You basically get the same experience and scratch the itch without actually in indulging in the bad parts of it.

But I think you take it a step further when you order instead of not charging you, they should send the money to a savings account so you're truly killing two birds with one stone. I don't get this. This is insane. You probably never done it. I would never spend time on a food delivery app without ordering any food. That seems like the biggest waste of time.

I'm trying to think what apps I open for a dopamine hit. And I think it's usually just like ESPN. Like anything going on? It's not a dopamine hit. You're finding out information. I guess you're just bored. This is completely useless. So it has divided opinion in South Korea.

But I guess this is a growing trend. Dopamine sites that you just open up for that dopamine hit and you're not spending any money. And now word from our sponsor, Service Now. Who wants to do homework? Boo! Who wants the part of their jobs they hate done for them? Yay! Then check out ServiceNow's AI specialists.

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That's service now.com. On Tuesday, the House passed a bipartisan housing bill. The White House hyped as, quote, one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history. On Wednesday, less than two hours before he was supposed to sign it, President Trump canceled the ceremony. It's been a dizzying 48 hours for this bill, which indeed would be the most comprehensive housing affordability law in a generation.

The main objective is to bring down costs by removing red tape for home builders, incentivizing construction, and limiting Wall Street investors from scooping up supply. It was applauded by economists and in something you do not see in Washington, D.C. these days, supported overwhelmingly by both parties. It cleared the Senate 85 to 5 in the House 358 to 32, and Trump was supposed to sign it in a big ceremony Wednesday at noon. But the president decided to throw a Clayton Kershot curveball into the mix In a series of social media posts on Wednesday morning, he declared he wouldn't sign the housing bill until Congress passed a law that tightens voter registration laws around the country.

He said the housing legislation was, quote, of minor importance compared to lower interest rates, and it pales in comparison to passing the Save America Act, which is the voter ID law. So, Toby, a plot twist. Nobody saw coming. But while the bill remains in limbo, it's a great opportunity to talk about what's in it and how it aims to bring down housing prices. It just feels like an own goal, too, because you, you, you. did mention the quote from press secretary Caroline Levitt, the most significant piece of housing affordability legislation in American history. So you say that after, you know, the passage, Republicans are at this press conference talking up the virtues of the bill and how Trump was

supporting it. Trump's political advisor for the midterms called it a signature commitment, which is why the gambit is so troublesome because some of the poll numbers around affordability in the economy is just not looking good for, you know, Trump going to the midterms. So to torpedo a bill that could tell the story that you're helping with affordability, feels like a pretty big risk, especially because it's not even a great piece of leverage when it comes to the other bill. Trump wants to pass because if a president has 10 days to sign a bill,

this is something I actually... Yes, I didn't learn this in schoolhouse rock. I know. That's exactly what I was going to say. The president has 10 days to sign or veto a bill. If he does nothing, it automatically becomes a law. So either Trump has to veto it, which, again, a lot of people say there's a lot of good stuff in this bill, so he's probably not going to do that.

So you're kind of in this limbo period where the leverage that you were creating is not necessarily as powerful as you might expect. All right. So what's in the bill here? How are we going to get more housing? How are we going to bring costs down? These is what the lawmakers have proposed. Well, number one, relax federal regulations on housing development, including removing some of those cumbersome environmental reviews. So you get these home builders building more quickly and reduced costs for construction. example, this bill would eliminate a rule that requires contractors to build manufactured homes on a steel frame with wheels and an axle. So there's stuff in the construction code that you're like, huh, why do we actually need this? And they're trying to strip that out.

It would also have the federal government create sort of a model zoning plan that local officials could look at and say, okay, let's just adopt this for our own locality because this is really where housing gets built. It's at the local level based on local zoning plan. And so the federal government can do all this stuff. But if local leaders don't take initiative and relax zoning plans to allow for more construction, then this doesn't really do anything. And also, finally, it's going to siphon off a bunch of federal grants, billions of dollars in federal grants,

that will go to localities, municipalities, regions that incentivize that want to build more. So it's a quarter of a three-pronged assault on home prices. Economists say, look, it's not necessarily a panacea. Like I mentioned, a lot of this stuff happens at the local level. how much can the federal government do, but at least it's a start. Yeah, the supporters of the bill say that the core root of the problem in America is too few homes and too much regulation and not enough construction. So that's why they were taking this three-pronged approach. But skeptics are saying that it's going to take years for the benefits to materialize.

And some were saying like, hey, if your rent just went up $1,000 in one month, hearing about housing supply may be arriving in a few years from now. That doesn't do very much to you. It's not very comforting. to you, the homes still need to get approved. They still need to get built. So if you're not providing immediate relief for renters, then some critics were saying like, hey, this isn't actually delivering the savings that we should to everyday Americans and the zoning laws being controlled at the state and local level. You're always have one arm behind your back when you're the federal government when it comes to trying to incentivize building. This is a very salient problem for

Americans. If you look at what they care about in polling data, it's, you know, housing, inflation number one, and then housing costs 1A. Rents are up 38% from the start of COVID. And then if you own a home or want to buy a home, national prices for single family homes are about five times the median household income. So this is a huge problem for Americans that Congress on both sides of the aisle is looking to solve. And you know what? Trump was right when he said, look, the main thing is interest rates, right? Like you could still want to buy a home, have enough cash to buy a home, but how do you pay for it over 30 years? And we have more. rates doubling in the past five years, they're still at 6.5%. There's not much Congress can do.

That is a federal reserve issue. That is an inflation issue. As long as inflation continues to run higher than average, then the Federal Reserve is going to have to keep interest rates high, the 10-year yield, which the mortgage rates track is still going to say above comfortable levels, and those mortgage rates will still say high. So it is a very intractable problem that Congress took maybe a few first steps to solve, and we'll see whether President Trump's gambit to get this other thing signed will work out. But you're right, after about 10 days, this thing becomes law unless he does veto it. Let's move on. For decades, France treated air conditioning with the same contempt as ketchup on stake. It was viewed as a symbol of environmental failure rather

than a normal modern comfort. But after the country recorded its hottest day on record yesterday, that view is beginning to change. Thousands of schools were forced to close. Hospitals struggled through stifling conditions and 40 people drowned since last Thursday after taking to the water to escape the extreme heat. The AC debate rages across Europe but is especially stark in France, which remains one of the least air-conditioned developed countries in the world. Just one in four households have AC compared with 50% in Spain and Italy and around 90% in the United States. Critics defend their positions arguing that air conditioning consumes too much energy relies on dangerous refrigerants and can actually make cities hotter by dumping warm air outside.

More cool-headed proponents counter that those concerns matter less when things like schools are shutting down and hospitals are overheating because it shows extreme heat is becoming a major public health threat. But yesterday may have been a tipping point. The leader of France's Green Party, which has historically opposed AC, said this week that there are places where we just can't do without it now. Neil, it was 104 degrees in France yesterday in June. Yeah, first I just want to emphasize how hot it's been.

On Tuesday, France had its hottest day on record. And then on Wednesday, it was even hotter, broke another record. Some parts of southwestern France was at 11.7 degrees Fahrenheit. That's 44.3 degrees Celsius for those keeping track at home. Less than 1% of planet Earth was hotter than France's hottest places on Tuesday. Basically, there are only a few parts of the world that were hotter than France. The Sahara Desert, the Middle East, and the U.S. Southwest in the desert there. And it's not just France that's sweltering right now.

England, the UK had its highest, set an all-time record for the month of June. And then over the weekend, it's going to move east to parts of the continent through Sunday. About 400 million people across Europe are forecast to experience 90-degree heat. And of that, 150 million people can expect 100-degree heat. you're sitting here in the United States where we are well air conditioned and you're thinking about people without air condition, it absolutely boggles the mind that you can go through this kind of heat wave without cooling off. Right. France has recorded 52 official heat waves since 1947. Half of them have occurred in the past 16 years. So clearly there's a trend of

hotter years affecting Europe in a general in Europe is especially vulnerable to this because they also have a population that is aging. The number of senior citizens in the EU has increased 40% over the past two decades. So when we talk about it being a public health issue, senior citizens are the most vulnerable because it puts a lot of pressure on the body if you are laying in your bed at night and you can't cool down.

The World Health Organization estimates more than 200,000 Europeans have died from heat over the last four years. It's a pretty staggering number and something that Europe has clearly thought about. The last bastion is AC. They've tried a lot of other things. They try to add more shade to their streets.

They want better insulation for their houses. They want urban greenery everywhere, but at a certain point, there's only so much those mitigation efforts can do when you're facing down record heat year after year. And this has become a huge political issue. Marine Le Pen, who runs the far right party national rally. She's a presidential hopeful. She said, I'm going to, my plan is to put, like, just flood the zone with air conditioning. She said, quote, it is absurd to have people die because of the heat. If I am elected president, I will put into place a mass. air conditioning plan starting in places with the most vulnerable populations, hospitals,

care homes, and schools. So her party wants to make air conditioning a huge issue and attack the other side for not doing widespread air conditioning rollouts. On the other side, you have a far left leader who said absolutely not. Installing air conditioning everywhere would only mean increasing the damage, which means more carbon emissions leading to long-term heating. And also there have been some studies that show that air conditioning in houses actually puts heat outside. raising the temperature by two to four degrees. But it looks like public opinion and the tide is shifting. Go back to 2003,

15,000 people died from a heat wave in France. That was supposed to spark a huge air conditioning rollout in the country. But in the decade since, it simply hasn't happened. You keep seeing heat waves in France and across Europe, and they look at their air conditioning distribution for homes and also schools. 14% of schools have air conditioning. 40% of health care facilities have air conditioning. This seems to be a wake-up call moment.

moment for them. Moving on, for many years, Wendy's stock has looked like Wendy's hair, red. But yesterday, everything changed. Shares exploded higher, rising as much as 42% before settling up around 25% after the company named former Potbelly exec, Stephen Cyrillius, as its CFO. Wait, wait, a 40% move for a CFO? What is this? A dude, a freak in the spreadsheets? Well, there's more to this story, and it traces back to Reddit. A singular Posts on the Wall Street Betts Forum pushed the struggling fast food maker into mean stock territory after a user posted a screenshot of the stock, which is down 72% over the past five years, with the caption, We Need to Save Wendy's. And just like that, the game was afoot. More than

14 million shares changed hands before the stock even opened yesterday, which is more than AI Darling's Intel and Micron. Part of the reason for the rapid embrace of Wendy's is that it takes all the mean stock boxes. Stock recently hit a 13-year low. so it appears cheap. It has a familiar brand name, and there's some short interests as well. Toss in a Reddit post and some fresh never-frozen beef, and that's all the ingredients you need to create a meme stock in this day and age. Neil, Wendy's has been down bad, but now it's down a little less bad. Wendy's is indeed need of saving, whether by this new Pop Bellies guy or by the Reddit Army. The final quarter of 2025 was its worst quarter in 20 years. Same store sales in the U.S.

declined 11% and you're thinking, okay, yeah, fast food has been under pressure. There's been inflation, but looked at McDonald's earnings, looked at Burger King. They saw a small growth in sales over the same period. So this is clearly a Wendy's problem. They have tried to diagnose what's going on and I brought in a new leadership team, mostly from Pop Bellies, because they just got a new CEO who is from Pop Bellies and then they also brought in the CFO from Pop Bellies. So I guess whatever happened in Pop, they're trying to do at Wendy's, but clearly there are a lot of problems going on that they need to fix. I love that that's their turnaround plan. They're like Pileys did pretty well, actually, over the last decade. Let's just bring that leadership team in as

well. They are definitely trying to do multiple things, improve menu quality. They think their value perception got way out of whack because even though Windy's is maybe a little higher up on the income chain than something like a McDonald's, your customers are still extremely price sensitive. So the fact that that value prop disappeared is something that is absolutely going to sink you. It is fascinating, though, because people still like Wendy's just not here in the United States because international sales jumped 8.1% in the past quarter. So that is far better than what was going on in the U.S. where sales were declining. So for whatever reason, they have a taste for Wendy's abroad, but not so much in the United States.

You're surprised that international people like American fast food? I thought we put that discussion to rest in the past week. It's clear that they love it. So there's a new CEO in there, Robert Wright, as I said, who used to lead Pop Belly, who did this big sale. to they got taken private. But I'm just so surprised that Wendy's has not done well in recent months because they have this interim CEO and his name was Ken Cook. How can a guy named Ken Cook not bring Wendy's to extreme financial success and they actually

explode sales? Ken Chef, actually. Ken Chef. They need to go one level higher. But yeah, I think it's very funny too that the Wall Street Betts part of it had no substance at all. Like obviously we've seen stocks jump on even less than this. before. But if you go back to the GameStop era, there was at least a thesis attached to it.

Like, hey, I think this is undervalued and then everyone rallied around it. Literally was one post with a screenshot. There was no other text on the post other than let's save Wendy's guys. And it was off and running. So it just shows what market forces makes stocks move today. It's not the same forces that made stocks move in the days of old. All right. We're going to take a quick break and come back with Neal's numbers right after this. There's two types of people in this world. The ones that entertain and the ones that observe. No, there are investors white-knuckling through market dips

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brokerage is not a bank, base API as of January 30th, 2026, and subject to change details in the episode description. AI is only as good as what you put into it. So it needs more protein? No, nothing needs more protein. But that's why Shipstations AI isn't a general purpose tool. It's specialized, trained on decades of real shipping data and billions of actual orders. It can adapt to your unique business, alerting you to low stock recommending carrier selections and rates in automating tasks so you can stay one step ahead. The sooner you switch, the sooner you start saving time and money. Get started today and get 60 days free at shipstation.com with code MBDS. That's shipstation.com code MBDS.

Shipstation.com. Code MBDS. Taxes and fees apply. Energy. Energy. Energy. Energy. What are you doing? Trying to increase my energy through sheer force of oil. I think trying ultra pouches might be a little easier, buddy.

Their plant-powered pouch is designed to sharpen your mind and lift your energy, all without caffeine, nicotine, or crash. How is that supposed to work better than chanting? Their blend of Infinity PX, L-theonine, Alpha GPC, and vitamin B6 and B-12 help you achieve a calm, steady, flow state focus. I pop a watermelon poutes for a little extra. extra jolt in the morning. New customers can get 15% off with code MBD at take ultra.com. That's take ultra.com code MBD. Welcome to Neal's numbers, where I pick three stats from the week's news that will

help you graduate from one of Canada's top business schools with really good grades. For my first number, it pays to be a big time CEO. Last year, more than 25 executives made over $100 million, the most of any year since 2021 and almost 12 made over 200 million, according to the Wall Street Journal's annual rankings. Number one, you won't be surprised to hear, is Elon Musk, the world's first trillionaire. In 2025, his total compensation from Tesla came to $158 billion, which is 16 times the combined value for the other 391 execs in the journal's rankings. Number two is more surprising, Shank Mitra, the CEO of the Real Estate Investment Trust Well Tower, received. received compensation worth $821 million, which is one of the largest pay packages of the last

decade. In fact, you don't even need to be the CEO of Well Tower to afford a PJ. Three other execs there got pay packages worth more than $100 million each. Another interesting finding from the rankings, you don't need to run an established mega-cap company to be rewarded handsomely. According to the journal, over half of the CEOs that made over $100 million last year, led companies not in the S&P 500, including Dillon Field of Figma, $864 million, and Kaz Najatian of Open Door, 741 million. Toby, after a couple of years, lying in wait, looks like the moonshot pay package is back in vogue.

My immediate thought when you see numbers like this is, is the pay package correlated with how well the stock performs, and Wall Street Journal kind of plotted it on an X and Y axis? It's not correlated at all. Like, it's just a bunch of random dot point. So the highest paid CEOs aren't always necessarily the best performers. I mean, one of the best examples is Robin Hood had the best shareholder return in all of their rankings that returned 204%. CEO Vlad Tenev had $3 million in total compensation.

Of course, he was coming off a much larger pay package a few years earlier. But that's a data point showing that it's not always correlated. Some of it is semi-correlated, though. Warner Brothers Discovery CEO, David Zaslav. brought in $165 million. That company ranked fourth in shareholder performance. Same with Hawk Tan. He brought in $205 million in compensation.

Broadcom ranked seventh in performance. So you would love it to be a line that follows between what you're paying your top dog and what the top dog is bringing in for the company, but that's not always the case. For my next number, the U.S. is no longer super when it comes to supercomputers. and a new ranking of the world's fastest supercomputers, a rig from China best at America for the first time since 2017. It adds to the growing concerns that China's tech innovation is catching up with or in some domains even surpassing the United States. The supercomputer that got China the crown is called Lineshine, an enormous computing system in the tech hub of Shenzhen. In the test, Lineshine was found to be 20% faster than El Capiton in California, which had dominated the ranking since 2024.

Lineshine impressed researchers not only for its speed, but also by how it was constructed. Lineshine utilizes regular microprocessors known as CPUs rather than graphics processing units, GPUs that traditionally power supercomputers. That's a key distinction because the U.S. has placed export controls on top-end GPUs made by NVIDIA and AMD to China, but CPUs have gone to HALPASS. This loss to China could cause a rethink of that arrangement. This isn't the first time a U.S. supercomputer has been bested on the world's stage. Japan was number one from 2020 to 2022. But the fact that this defeat came to main geopolitical

rival China at a time when the stakes feel so much higher with AI stings a lot more. Now, this in a vacuum is not that big a deal because if you go back to like what AI systems are running on, they're not really running on supercomputers. Most of just like the normal GPU clusters that AI companies in America make are far more efficient. But when you zoom out to what it represents, it represents one, China innovating around bottlenecks. That is something that a lot of people were scared of when you put in these export restrictions is they'll just find a way to do it without it and maybe speed up their innovation cycle. So that's one issue. And then the two, it is a historic reversal. For decades, it was basically like America innovates. China comes in

with cheaper ways of doing it and they copy whatever America was doing. If that starts reversing and they can do it for cheaper, that is a total rethinking of what we thought Western versus Eastern technology was kind of looking like. So it undermines that assumption. So in a vacuum, not that big a deal, but when you zoom out, it could be a very, very big deal. For my final number, the rate of divorce across groups has been declining in recent years, except for one, boomers. The New York Times reports that Americans in their more advanced years are pulling the plug

on so-called empty-shell marriages that have lost their sparkle. Here are the numbers. Nearly 40% of divorces now occur between people, 50 and older after rates doubled between 1990 and 2010. Surprised, here are some explanations from sociologists for the rise in gray divorce. The main one is, and I'm going to put this crudely, you used to die before you realize you don't like each other anymore. Lifespans are going up, people are living longer, and maybe we weren't built for monogamy that last 50, 60, 70 years. Justin Garcia, the executive director of the Kinsey Institute, told the New York Times,

we as a species are in longer relationships than our ancestors ever were. Another reason, expectations of marriages are shifting. A half century ago, spouses mainly linked up to form a competent household based on traditional gender roles. Now people are settling less and looking for that soulmate, even those already in marriages. Toby, apparently people get sick of each other after a while. There's also just more fish in the sea or at least more means to catch those fish because online dating app usage has obviously expanded over the last decade.

It's also expanded for seniors as well. 14% of Americans in their 60s and 12% in those in their 70s have used dating apps. So maybe you feel like there's still options for you out there after divorcing. But on the other side of things, like it's still a very, you know, big thing to happen very late in your life. There's definitely tradeoffs that come with the rise of gray divorce as well. psychologically, it often takes longer to recover because you've been in a relationship for so long. Men are more likely to find new partners after divorce later in life than women are. So there is definitely some drawbacks to it as well as the fact that, yeah, you are empowered now to

go and not stay in a so-so marriage because there's no longer those pressures that used to be around marriage. Maybe I should raise my age range on hinge. I know. 70 plus on on Hinge. That is pretty impressive. Moving on, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Micron reported earnings yesterday, and it put up prime Jordan numbers. Micron brought in nearly $42 billion in Q3, way above the 36 analysts expected, and way, way above the mere $11 billion they made a year ago. The results show that the AI trade is still alive and well, especially when it comes to the memory chips Micron sells. The Idaho-based company is now up 267% this year and 719% since this time last year. Neil, Micron

is growing at a rate that we haven't even seen out of Nvidia in its prime. If you look at earnings per share, which is how much profit a company makes for each share of its stock, micron seen 1,215% earnings growth in one year. According to Trading View,

even at Nvidia's peak, they weren't touching 1,200% growth. One of the best earnings reports some had ever seen. What was our top story on Tuesday? Was it, you know, the tech sell-off, global jitters,

because perhaps there's an AI bubble Well, less than 48 hours later, we're looking at the stock market this morning. NASDAQ is up over 2%. Micron put all those fears to rest. I mean, in our defense, we did say all eyes are turning to Micron earnings on Wednesday. We had that caveat in there. My favorite thing about Micron, it's based in Boise, Idaho. It has to be the most valuable company that's ever come out of Idaho.

I mean. By a long time. I think the other big one is Albertson's grocery store. I was going to go to some potato company, but I couldn't even name one. So I think it's safe to say that Micron is the most. most valuable. Yeah, Micron absolutely crushing it and stocks are surging this morning. By the dip, reigns supreme.

Finally, international tourists here for the World Cup. We love you, but stop trying to bring ranch on planes. That's the message from TSA, which has posted several times on social media, reminding travelers they can't bring ranch salad dressing of more than 3.4 ounces on airplanes. Of the many wonders, foreign visitors have discovered here this summer, ranch has been at the top of the list. One Swede posted on X, why did no one tell me, ranch sauce is like crack, then in all caps, Europe, we need ranch ASAP. Many have taken matters

into their own hands, scooping up ranch bottles from grocery stores and stuffing it in their carry-ons, prompting TSA to draw the line. On one Instagram post, the agency wrote days since last ranch incident, zero, and felt the need to discourage people from chugging ranch outside the security checkpoint, which apparently has been happening. Toby, think we all knew intuitively that ranch is an American treasure, but it's nice to see that validated. I love what Kraft has done because they saw an opportunity and capitalized on it. Earlier this week, Kraft launched a limited edition TSA-compliant ranch kit, which includes a court-sized clear bag approved by the TSA,

enough ranch packets to equal a standard bottle in a ranch-themed luggage tag. So basically saying, we know you guys are doing this. Here's how you can do it safely, not get your ranch confiscated by the TSA. It's a great World Cup story. but I think I might be in the minority here. I don't like ranch that much. Do you actively dislike it or do you just not? You're not on it.

I would never put it on a salad. Like I hate ranch actually. It's not for salad. Well, it is. It's for pizza. That's a caveat. I love it on pizza, but I literally cannot eat it on anything else. And I would love people to weigh in on this.

Do some people genuinely love ranch just? Kind of taboo to say you don't like ranch. I know. I know. I'm very European of me. But I am interesting. like if you go to a UK grocery store like Tesco, like if I just go there and I look in the salad dressing aisle,

like there isn't ranch there. That would kind of throw me for a loop, I think. Gotta go on a road trip, Neil. Or not more than a road trip. I don't know if you can drive over there. Meanwhile, we're on the World Cup. U.S. game tonight. I'm wearing the jersey.

You forgot yours at home. 10 p.m. tonight. We're already through to the next round in a very enviable position in the knockout stages. But if you're up and want to see our boys play, 10 p.m. Eastern tonight against Turkey. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for joining us and have a wonderful Thursday. Before we go, there is a big morning brew event coming up that we are participating in and would love to see you there on August 25th. Some of the biggest brew creators like Dan Toomey, Macy Gilliam, and me and Toby are putting on a comedy show at the Bell House in Brooklyn. The pre-sale is live. So head to the show notes for the ticket link, then use code brew for access. Get them now before they're gone. Yeah, apparently it's called Brew Performance Review, and our peers are going to evaluate us on the things that matter to promotion about our vibes, our ability to hang our special talent.

So very curious to see what they think of Neil and I. It should be fun. Go check it out and link in the description. To share your thoughts on the episode or anything else, send an email to Morningbrewdaily at Morningbrew.com or DM us on Instagram at Ambidily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our supervising producer. Raymond Lou is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham,

and our associate producer is Olivia Lake. Technical direction by Nina Miller. Hair and makeup has been detained for ranch smuggling. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great. Show you, Guy Neal, let's run it back tomorrow. The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world.

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