Happy Friday! A group of scientists published a paper yesterday finding that older mice lived six to nine percent longer after having their blood vessels hooked up to younger mice’s circulatory systems for three months.

We know we’re all in our twenties, but do not even think about it.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Federal prosecutors Thursday announced a superseding indictment in the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, charging an additional aide—Carlos De Oliveira—and issuing three new charges against Trump. The additional charges allege Trump ordered his original co-defendant, Walt Nauta, and De Oliveira, a maintenance worker at Mar-a-lago, to delete surveillance footage showing Nauta and De Oliveira moving boxes of documents after the first Justice Department subpoena seeking the records in May 2022. Prosecutors also added an additional charge of illegally retaining national defense information, related to the document describing U.S. war plans Trump allegedly showed aides in a recording taken at his Bedminster golf club.
• Members of former President Donald Trump’s legal team met with members of special counsel Jack Smith’s office on Thursday, days after Trump announced he had received a target letter suggesting he was likely to be indicted in Smith’s probe of efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Washington, D.C. grand jury hearing evidence in the investigation met Thursday, but did not return any indictment. CNN reports that Trump’s counsel did not learn any additional information about the timing of any potential charges.
• The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated Thursday that real gross domestic product—which is adjusted for inflation—grew at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter of 2023, exceeding economists’ consensus expectations and the first quarter’s 2.0 percent annual pace. Consumer spending cooled in Q2 but was still strong, growing at an annual rate of 1.6 percent from March to June—down from 4.2 percent in the previous quarter—while business investment jumped significantly. The data was released one day after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank’s staff no longer views a recession as imminent.
• The Supreme Court on Thursday greenlit an emergency request from the group behind the Mountain Valley Pipeline to move forward with construction. The project—championed by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and supported by the Biden administration—has sparked fierce opposition from climate activists who have urged the White House to block it.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to send free grain to six Moscow-allied African countries at a Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg yesterday, days after Russia pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal last week, imperiling global grain supplies. Yevgeny Prigozhin—the chief of the Wagner mercenary group who launched a short-lived rebellion against the Russian regime last month—was photographed at the summit. 
• The Senate voted 86-11 on Thursday to pass its version of the annual defense authorization bill, setting up a showdown with House Republicans. The legislation is broadly similar to the lower chamber’s version of the bill, but the Senate—which has a Democratic majority—declined to include measures passed by House Republicans that would limit the Pentagon’s ability to provide troops access to abortion and gender-related surgeries or hormone treatments. Republican senators also voted down a bid to amend the bill to reauthorize the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief for five years. 

A Few More Trump Charges for Good Measure

Marv and Harry. Horace and Jasper. Splatter and Dodge. Greg and Tom. No matter which comically inept henchmen duos make your personal Mount Rushmore, you have to admit Waltine and Carlos have put forth a compelling case.

We’re referring, of course, to Waltine Nauta (a longtime aide to former President Donald Trump) and Carlos De Oliveira (an employee at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida). Although they weren’t quite texting one another things like, “Hey bro, just making sure we’re still on to do the crimes tomorrow,” they came pretty darn close—making special counsel Jack Smith’s job significantly easier.