The Daily Brief — July 2, 2026
Fewer jobs in June, Kyiv struck, Trump’s new jet
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US Adds Just 57,000 Jobs in June
The US economy added 57,000 jobs in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning. Economists had expected roughly 100,000.
In May, the total number of jobs added was 129,000, revised down from the initial estimate of 172,000. The Labor Department said the combined downward revisions for April and May — 31,000 and 43,000, respectively — mean employment across those two months was 74,000 lower than first reported.
The unemployment rate dropped to 4.2% from 4.3% in June.
Russia Strikes Kyiv, Killing at Least 21
Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles at the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv overnight in an 11-hour attack, killing at least 21 people and wounding dozens more. More than 50,000 people sheltered in subway stations after air raid warnings, The Kyiv Metro said.
Moscow said it targeted military and energy sites in retaliation for Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil facilities, but Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukraine have repeatedly hit civilian areas. Yesterday’s barrage collapsed part of a nine-story residential building.
Emergency crews have started digging through the rubble of collapsed and charred apartment buildings in search of victims.
The two countries have been at war since 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
US Won’t Renew Trade Deal With Mexico, Canada
The US will not renew a trade pact with Mexico and Canada, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said yesterday. President Trump negotiated the US–Mexico–Canada Agreement during his first term. The agreement sets the rules for how the three countries trade with one another — tariffs, manufacturing rules, and other terms — and governs about $2 trillion in trade a year.
Mexico and Canada had pushed for a 16-year extension of the agreement but the US refused.
The pact will now remain in effect, but instead of an automatic 16-year renewal, the three countries will meet once a year to negotiate changes to the deal. The trade agreement will expire in 2036 unless the three countries agree to renew it before then, or unless a country withdraws with six months’ notice.
Trump officials cited the US trade deficit with both countries as a reason not to renew. The US had a $46 billion trade deficit in goods with Canada and a $197 billion deficit with Mexico last year, according to the Office of the US Trade Representative.
Newsbreak
While much has been written about the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, battled the British, and framed the Constitution, the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters they left behind have too often been left out of the story. In Founding Mothers, the late #1 New York Times bestselling author and journalist Cokie Roberts brings us the untold stories of women who fought the Revolution as valiantly as the men. Drawing upon personal correspondence, private journals, and even favored recipes, Roberts reveals the often surprising stories of fascinating women in the American Revolution, including Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Deborah Read Franklin, Eliza Pinckney, Catherine Littlefield Green, Esther DeBerdt Reed, and Martha Washington — proving that without our exemplary women, the new country might never have survived.
Trump Takes First Flight on New Qatar-Gifted Plane
President Trump took his first flight yesterday on the new Air Force One, a Boeing 747 gifted by Qatar and worth about $400 million. He traveled to North Dakota for the opening of the newly built Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.
The plane no longer has a light blue hull; the design has been replaced with a navy blue belly and red and gold stripes. The plane also has plush carpets, lie-flat seats, wood paneling, and a presidential seal on the seat belts. The Air Force has not disclosed the exact retrofit cost, saying only that it came in under its $400 million estimate for the security and communications upgrades. Outside aviation experts had put the actual cost far higher — as much as $1 billion.
Ownership of the plane, now held by the Pentagon, will transfer to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation after Trump leaves office, an arrangement that would let him keep using it personally rather than return it to the government’s fleet.
Colorado Governor Fires Clemency Board Members
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis fired two members of the state’s clemency board yesterday, saying they had violated a confidentiality order by revealing the board’s deliberations about a convicted felon and 2020 election denier. The 11-member clemency board, appointed by the governor, reviews requests for pardons and commutations — reductions in prison sentences — behind closed doors and sends its recommendations to the governor, who makes the final decision.
The deliberations concerned Tina Peters, a county clerk who was convicted on four felony counts for allowing an unauthorized person to tamper with voting machines in an effort to prove the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. In fact, Joe Biden won Colorado that year.
The two clemency board members, Hannah Seigel Proff and Azra Taslimi, told The New York Times that the board had twice unanimously rejected an early release for Peters. In a separate letter to the two board members, Polis wrote that they “breached the required duty of confidentiality by publicly divulging board members’ votes.” After being convicted of four felonies, Peters, 70, received a nine-year sentence. Polis commuted her nine-year sentence in May, citing a Colorado appeals court ruling that found the trial judge had punished her for constitutionally protected speech.
She was released from prison June 1, having served less than a quarter of her sentence. After her release, Peters has continued to make the debunked stolen-election claims.
Ex–CIA Director Brennan Sues DOJ Over Records
Former CIA Director John Brennan sued the Justice Department yesterday, asking a federal court to order the preservation of records tied to two criminal investigations targeting him.
Brennan’s legal team wrote to the court that the administration has been “using criminal process and prosecution to punish the President’s perceived adversaries.” His lawyers say he’s being unfairly targeted and that the records would be needed to challenge any future indictment as vindictive prosecution.
Brennan has been the focus of two Justice Department criminal investigations since the start of Trump’s second term. One is about whether he lied to Congress in 2023 about the intelligence community’s 2016 Russian-interference assessment, and the other is a “grand conspiracy” probe into whether Obama- and Biden-era officials worked to keep Trump out of office.
Colorado's clemency board deliberates behind closed doors and sends recommendations to the governor, who makes the final decision — a structure that concentrates accountability in a single elected official while insulating the deliberative process from public scrutiny.
When two board members disclosed that the board had twice unanimously rejected early release for Tina Peters, they were fired not for reaching a different conclusion than the governor, but for letting the public know that a unanimous advisory body had been overruled.
The gap between what an appointed board recommends and what an executive decides is precisely the kind of institutional information that residents of Colorado might reasonably expect to have access to when evaluating how clemency power is being exercised on their behalf.
It's interesting that Cokie Roberts wrote a book showcasing strong women when she showed such poor support of Sister Dianna Ortiz's harrowing abduction in Guatemala during their interview. I hope she based her book on better facts than she did her interview.