Jax Morning Brief — Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Jax Morning Brief — Iran Deal in Limbo, Anthropic Tops a Trillion, JTA Cuts Routes

Good morning, and welcome back from the weekend. It's Monday, June 1st, 2026. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: President Trump spent the weekend in the Situation Room on the Iran deal and walked out without signing it, telling his own negotiators, quote, time is on our side. ANDREW: And Anthropic is closing in on a one trillion dollar valuation, eclipsing OpenAI, just as the SpaceX roadshow lands next week with a forty five billion dollar Anthropic compute contract baked into its prospectus. We will get into what that means for the AI capital cycle. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: A quick look at the markets. The S and P 500 closed Friday at 7,580, up two tenths of a percent. The Dow finished at 51,032, up nearly three quarters of a percent on the day. The Nasdaq added two tenths to close at 26,972. All three indexes notched fresh record highs intraday, and the S and P booked its ninth straight winning week, the longest streak since 2023. The ten year Treasury yield closed Friday at 4.45 percent, and the thirty year fixed mortgage rate is tracking at 6.56 percent according to Mortgage News Daily. Weekend at a glance, Jenny. Markets are pricing in a soft, constructive Iran outcome and a Fed that does nothing in two weeks. Both of those assumptions got more fragile over the holiday. JENNY: Andrew, walk us through the Iran weekend. What actually happened? ANDREW: So the setup going in was that US and Iranian negotiators had agreed to a framework on Thursday. Sixty day ceasefire extension, the Strait of Hormuz reopened and de-mined, Iran allowed to sell oil freely, US blockade lifted, broader nuclear talks to continue. All it needed was the President's signature. Trump huddled with advisers in the Situation Room Friday afternoon, ended the meeting without announcing anything, and then on Sunday wrote on Truth Social that negotiations are, quote, proceeding in an orderly and constructive manner, and that he has told his negotiators not to rush into a deal because time is on his side. JENNY: So is the deal dead, or just slow walking? ANDREW: Slow walking is the read. Vice President Vance said on the Sunday shows that the two sides are close but not there. But there is real friction. Trump personally edited the text last week, hardening the language on enriched uranium and frozen Iranian assets, and Tehran's foreign ministry spokesman publicly pushed back over the weekend, saying the Strait of Hormuz has nothing to do with the United States and that any reopening will be coordinated with Oman, not Washington. That is not the language of a country about to sign. JENNY: And meanwhile, Trump is also threatening to, quote, finish the job. ANDREW: Right. Fox News quoted him over the weekend warning Iran the US will finish the job if the deal collapses, while Israel expanded its Lebanon offensive. So you have the President saying we are close, we are not rushing, and we are ready to fight. Markets are choosing to hear the first two. Brent crude stayed below ninety dollars a barrel through the weekend, and the ten year held under 4.5 percent. If either of those breaks Tuesday, the market read flipped. ANDREW: One more national story before we move on. The Senate is back in session today, and the seventy two billion dollar ICE and Border Patrol reconciliation bill is the first thing on the floor. Trump had set a June 1st deadline, which the chamber has already missed. Majority Leader John Thune now has to choose which provisions to drop, the 1.8 billion dollar DOJ anti-weaponization fund that several Republican senators have called a slush fund, or the one billion dollars for White House ballroom security that the parliamentarian already partially struck under reconciliation rules. Watch for Thune's signal by midweek. JENNY: Okay, Andrew, let me pull us over to the AI desk because there is a lot happening there too. The headline going into the weekend, Anthropic closed a sixty five billion dollar Series H at a 965 billion dollar valuation, putting it ahead of OpenAI's 852 billion dollar mark from March. CNBC was first to publish the final numbers. ANDREW: Run rate, Jenny? JENNY: Forty seven billion dollar revenue run rate, up from thirty billion at the start of the year, and ten billion in actual revenue last year. The round was co-led by Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia, with strategic checks from Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. That last list is what stood out to me. Memory chip suppliers buying into your equity round is essentially a long dated capacity reservation. They want to lock in the customer relationship for the next hardware cycle. ANDREW: And this is widely expected to be the last private round before an IPO. JENNY: Fortune is reporting that, yes. Which feeds directly into the second AI story we have been tracking. SpaceX's IPO roadshow kicks off the week of June 8th. The S-1 was filed May 20th, targeting a 1.75 to 2 trillion dollar valuation. If it prices anywhere near that, it is the largest IPO in history. And inside the prospectus is a forty five billion dollar three year compute commitment from Anthropic to SpaceX's Colossus 1 data center, 1.25 billion dollars a month through May 2029. ANDREW: And there is a wrinkle that surfaced over the weekend. JENNY: Yes. Elon Musk publicly contradicted his own filing. He said the Anthropic Colossus deal is a 180 day lease with 90 day mutual cancellation, capped at 7.5 billion dollars in obligations, not a forty five billion dollar three year commitment. Those two characterizations cannot both be true. Tech Times and others have been chasing reconciliation language. The S-1 is what governs, but the public disagreement between the seller and the customer six days before a roadshow is the kind of thing that gives institutional buyers pause. ANDREW: So what is the bottom line for listeners? JENNY: Two things. One, the AI capital stack is now functionally vertical. Chipmakers are equity investors, compute providers are public market candidates, and the model labs are the customers and the talent magnet. There is very little air in the system. Two, IPO investors are about to be asked to underwrite multi billion dollar AI contracts whose actual terms the parties cannot agree on in public. That is new, and it is worth flagging. JENNY: One more from the AI desk, quickly. Anthropic also updated Project Glasswing this week. That is the cybersecurity coalition built around Claude Mythos Preview, the very capable security model that Anthropic has restricted to about forty partners including AWS, Apple, Microsoft, Google, JPMorgan Chase, and CrowdStrike. The update, Glasswing members are now allowed to share their findings, tools, and code developed using Mythos with each other. Earlier rules had locked that down. Mythos has already flagged more than twenty three thousand potential vulnerabilities, with seventeen hundred plus confirmed by external firms. ANDREW: Including a seventeen year old remote code execution bug in FreeBSD, as I recall. JENNY: Correct. Andrew, what is happening on the mortgage side this morning? ANDREW: Rates eased a little into the long weekend, which is the first piece of good news the purchase market has had in about six weeks. The thirty year fixed closed Friday at 6.56 percent according to Mortgage News Daily, two basis points lower on the day, and the lowest daily print in roughly two weeks. The Freddie Mac weekly survey, which lags, came in at 6.53 percent, the sixth straight weekly increase and the highest since August. So the daily index is telling you the trend has flipped softer, while the weekly survey is still catching up to last week's high. JENNY: So if I am trying to lock a rate this week, what does that mean? ANDREW: It means the bond market is doing the work for you, but you are leaning on a single assumption. The ten year Treasury yield needs to hold under 4.5 percent. As long as it does, the thirty year fixed drifts toward the low 6.5s. If the Iran framework collapses and crude spikes, the ten year backs up to 4.7 percent in a session and you are looking at 6.75 on the thirty year by Friday. The asymmetry favors locking sooner rather than later, even with the recent cooling. ANDREW: The other piece of the mortgage picture is the Mortgage Bankers Association print from last Wednesday. Purchase applications down four tenths of a percent week over week, refinance applications down eighteen percent. That refi number is the headline, and it is almost entirely a rate story. The average contract rate on a conforming thirty year jumped to 6.65 percent in that survey, and refis simply stop being economic above 6.5. The next MBA print drops Wednesday morning. If the purchase index turns positive, that is your tell that buyers are accepting the new range. JENNY: And the next major test is the new Fed chair's first FOMC, right? ANDREW: Two weeks from tomorrow. June 16th and 17th. Kevin Warsh was sworn in May 22nd and has now gone roughly ten days without a single public comment, no speech, no PCE reaction, nothing. Fed funds futures are pricing a 97 percent probability of no change on rates. So the rate decision is a non-event. What matters is the Summary of Economic Projections, the dot plot, and whether Warsh holds the post meeting press conference at all. He has signaled privately he wants to dramatically cut Fed communications, possibly ending the post FOMC presser entirely. If that happens, the market reaction will not be small. JENNY: That is something to watch. Let me take us local. JENNY: Weather wise, Jacksonville is looking at a high of 88 today, low of 74, considerable cloudiness, and a stray shower or thunderstorm possible later this evening. Standard early June for the First Coast. JENNY: The biggest local story heading into the new month came out of the JTA board meeting last Wednesday. Andrew, the Jacksonville Transportation Authority is staring down a 17.5 million dollar budget deficit for fiscal year 2027, and the board has approved a plan to close that gap by cutting service and raising fares. The Jax Daily Record and News4Jax both covered it. ANDREW: Where do the cuts land? JENNY: Frequency reductions on every bus route that matters to commuters. All four First Coast Flyer routes go from a 20 minute headway to a 25 minute headway. Seven additional bus routes drop from every 30 minutes to every 60 minutes. ReadiRide service is being effectively replaced with subsidized Uber fares. And the NAVI, the downtown autonomous shuttle that has been free since December 2024, will now cost one dollar per ride starting January 2027. Service cuts begin October 1st, fare increases hit January 2027. ANDREW: Are these cuts deep enough to actually close 17.5 million? JENNY: The math works on paper. The service cuts are expected to save 13.62 million dollars. The fare increases generate another 1.57 million. The rest comes from administrative reductions. The board approved the 139.2 million dollar FY27 budget on a 7 to nothing vote. But this is the second consecutive year of service contraction at JTA, and the through line is that the fare reduction pilot that started in late 2024 did not produce the ridership recovery the agency was banking on. So the agency is now unwinding the pilot and trimming routes that ridership data shows are not pulling their weight. ANDREW: One thing I want to flag. JTA cut roughly eighty senior staff in March to close a 14.2 million dollar gap, and now another 17.5 million in FY27. So the structural issue is bigger than the route map. JENNY: That is exactly right. The Council Auditor's office has been pushing for a longer term sustainability review, and you will hear that come up at the next JTA board meeting. JENNY: A quick second local story. The Culinary Institute of America campus decision is now two weeks out. City Council approved a 35 million dollar incentive package on emergency basis on May 26th, that is 8 million in workforce funding, 27 million from the Downtown Riverfront Residential Incentives Contingency Fund, and a 1 million dollar pledge from the Tourist Development Council. The CIA's board of directors meets June 15th and 16th to decide between Jacksonville, Atlanta, Charleston, and Nashville for its southeast campus. If Jacksonville wins, the school anchors 25,000 square feet inside Corner Lot's 160 million dollar hotel and convention hall at 330 East Bay Street. ANDREW: That is a real test of the downtown incentives strategy. JENNY: It is. And it is the second large public subsidy decision in three months tied to a single riverfront block. Worth watching closely on the 15th. ANDREW: Before we let you go, one thing to watch this week. Friday morning at 8:30 Eastern, the Bureau of Labor Statistics drops the May jobs report. This is the last major labor read before Kevin Warsh's first FOMC, and the consensus going in is for payrolls in the high one hundred thousands with unemployment holding at four and a tenth. If the number prints hot, north of two hundred thousand, the case for any rate cut later this year evaporates and the ten year backs up through 4.5. If it comes in soft, under one hundred thousand, you will hear the first real cut talk of the Warsh era. Either way, mortgage rates are going to move Friday, and that move will set the tone for the rest of June. JENNY: That's your Morning Brief for Monday. Have a great week. ANDREW: We'll see you tomorrow.

Jax Morning Brief — Anthropic Crosses $965 Billion, Iran Deal on Trump's Desk, Rates Climb Again

Good morning. It's Friday, May twenty-ninth, twenty twenty-six. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: Anthropic just raised sixty-five billion dollars at a valuation just shy of a trillion — overtaking OpenAI as the most valuable private company on the planet. ANDREW: And US and Iran negotiators have a draft ceasefire extension sitting on the President's desk this morning. We'll get to what's still unresolved. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: A quick look at the markets. The S and P 500 climbed about six-tenths of a percent yesterday to close at 7,563 — a new all-time high, even with the hottest inflation print in nearly three years landing the same morning. The Nasdaq also pushed to a fresh record. The Dow was the outlier, slipping about two-thirds of a percent on weakness in industrials. The ten-year Treasury yield sits at 4.47 percent, and Freddie Mac's weekly survey puts the thirty-year fixed mortgage at 6.53 percent, up two basis points from last week and the highest reading since August. More on that in a few minutes. ANDREW: Jenny, let's start where the money is moving. The AI story is the story this week. JENNY: It really is. Anthropic announced yesterday it has closed a sixty-five billion dollar Series H funding round at a post-money valuation of nine hundred sixty-five billion dollars. That puts it ahead of OpenAI, which was last valued at eight hundred fifty-two billion in March. Anthropic's valuation has now more than doubled since February. According to CNBC and TechCrunch, the round was co-led by Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia, with Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron writing strategic checks on the chip side. ANDREW: Help me put nine hundred sixty-five billion in context. What's actually behind that number? JENNY: Revenue, mostly. Anthropic disclosed that its run-rate revenue crossed forty-seven billion dollars earlier this month — up from roughly thirty billion at the start of the year. Most of that growth is coming from Claude Code, the company's coding assistant, which has become the default tool inside a lot of enterprise engineering teams. Fortune is calling this likely the last private round before an IPO. And the strategic investor list is the tell — Samsung and the memory makers are essentially pre-paying for capacity. ANDREW: So the read is, this is less a bet on a chatbot and more a bet on AI as infrastructure. JENNY: Exactly. And the same morning Anthropic announced the round, OpenAI quietly published something called its Frontier Governance Framework. It's a public document that explains how OpenAI's safety practices line up with California's new Transparency in Frontier AI Act and the EU AI Act's Code of Practice. It's not a product announcement — it's a regulatory positioning move. OpenAI is trying to get ahead of compliance expectations before Sacramento and Brussels start enforcing them. ANDREW: Two very different posture plays in one news cycle. Anthropic is raising money at a near-trillion-dollar mark; OpenAI is publishing a governance manual. Both companies trying to claim the same ground from different angles. JENNY: And on the model side, Anthropic also dropped Claude Opus 4.8 this week, and announced a Milan office plus a Seoul launch — they are sprinting on international enterprise. Andrew, what's happening on the national desk? ANDREW: The top story is Iran. Multiple outlets — CNN, the Washington Post, Reuters — are reporting that US and Iranian negotiators have reached a tentative framework agreement to extend the existing ceasefire by sixty days. Under the draft, the Strait of Hormuz would be de-mined and reopened to commercial traffic while talks continue on the harder issues — the nuclear program, frozen Iranian assets, and the uranium enrichment ceiling. JENNY: So is this a done deal, or is it still moving? ANDREW: It's not done. President Trump has not signed off yet. Vice President Vance told reporters yesterday that Washington is, in his words, "not there yet," but that the sides are close. There is also a complication from this week — that ballistic missile launch toward Kuwait on Tuesday, plus the drone activity near Hormuz that CENTCOM called an egregious ceasefire violation. Tehran has not publicly claimed the missile. The framework is moving forward despite all of that, which tells you both sides want the deal more than they want to relitigate the missile. JENNY: What's the market reading? ANDREW: Constructive. Brent crude has held below ninety dollars, the ten-year yield is down from its May high near 4.7 percent, and the dollar is steady. If the deal collapses, the signal to watch is Brent above one hundred fifteen — that's the threshold that says re-escalation. Below that, the bond market is telling you a deal still gets done. ANDREW: Second story, the Senate. Congress returns from recess Monday, and the seventy-two billion dollar reconciliation bill for ICE and CBP funding is back on the floor. Two pieces are still unresolved. The first is a 1.8 billion dollar Department of Justice fund that critics in the GOP are calling a slush fund. The second is one billion dollars in White House ballroom security spending that the Senate parliamentarian has partially ruled out of order under reconciliation rules. Majority Leader Thune has to pick which fight to drop before he can get to a floor vote. JENNY: And the original Trump deadline on this was when? ANDREW: This past Friday. So it's already late. The question is whether Thune brings it to the floor next week or pushes into mid-June. Either way, this is the political fight to watch as Congress comes back. ANDREW: One more on the national side — the new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh. He was sworn in two weeks ago today. He has now gone fourteen days without a single public remark — no statement on yesterday's PCE print, no speech, nothing. Marketplace is reporting Warsh intends to dramatically reduce Fed communications, possibly ending the post-FOMC press conference altogether. His first meeting is June sixteenth and seventeenth. Fed funds futures are pricing a ninety-seven percent chance of no change. JENNY: Speaking of the Fed and rates, that brings us to home lending. ANDREW: It does. Freddie Mac's weekly primary mortgage survey landed yesterday at noon. The thirty-year fixed averaged 6.53 percent — up from 6.51 last week, and up for a sixth consecutive week. That is the highest reading from the Freddie survey since August. The fifteen-year fixed is at 5.87 percent. For context, a year ago, the thirty-year was at 6.89 — so we are below last year, but the direction of travel matters more than the level right now. JENNY: And what's Mortgage News Daily showing on the daily side? Those two readings have been telling different stories all week. ANDREW: That's the interesting tension. The Mortgage News Daily index closed yesterday at 6.59 percent — actually down two basis points on the day, and at the lowest level in nearly two weeks. So the weekly survey is showing rates ticking up, but the daily index is suggesting the cycle high may be behind us. If you are a buyer trying to time a lock this week, the daily index is the more current signal. The Freddie number has a lag. JENNY: So what should a buyer trying to close right now actually take from that? ANDREW: Watch the ten-year. If it holds below 4.5 percent through next week, mortgage rates should drift down toward the low 6.5s. If the Iran framework collapses and the ten-year backs up to 4.7, you're going to see the thirty-year challenge 6.75 again. The Mortgage Bankers Association will publish its next applications data Wednesday. Last week purchases were down four-tenths and refis were down eighteen percent — a soft read. If purchases recover Wednesday, that's the signal that buyers are starting to accept the new rate range. ANDREW: One regulatory note — the two executive orders President Trump signed on May nineteenth, one on so-called politicized debanking and the other on fintech innovation, are now starting to surface in the Treasury rulemaking process. The piece to watch for lenders is the immigration-status component, which would require banks to factor a customer's immigration status into risk assessments. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is expected to put out preliminary guidance later this summer. Jenny, take us to Jacksonville. JENNY: Weather-wise, Jacksonville is looking at a high of eighty-six and a low in the mid seventies today, with clouds early and thunderstorms developing through the afternoon. The National Weather Service is flagging potential for heavy rainfall, and tropical moisture is going to stick around through next week — total accumulations of two to four inches expected, with localized spots possibly above five. And just a reminder, the open burn ban remains in effect across Duval County. JENNY: Our lead story this morning is one that took a lot of people by surprise. State funding is now in place to conduct a ground-penetrating radar survey at the former Mount Herman Cemetery in Durkeeville — a Jacksonville park and community center site that may be sitting on top of as many as six hundred unmarked graves. News4Jax has been following this for months. The historical record suggests Mount Herman was a Black cemetery that was effectively erased when the parcel was redeveloped decades ago. The radar survey is the first formal attempt to confirm what's actually beneath the site. ANDREW: Is there a timeline on the survey itself? JENNY: The state appropriation cleared this spring, and the work is expected to begin in the coming months. If the survey confirms the burials, it will trigger a much bigger conversation about reinterment, memorial design, and the future use of the park itself. Worth watching as a test of how the city handles the result. JENNY: Quick update on the Culinary Institute of America story we've been tracking. City Council passed the thirty-five million dollar incentives package sixteen to two on Tuesday. According to the Jax Daily Record, the CIA's board of directors meets June fifteenth and sixteenth to vote on whether Jacksonville beats out Atlanta, Charleston, and Nashville for the southeast campus. Council President Carrico pushed the ordinance through on an emergency basis specifically so that vote was in the record before the board meets. So eighteen days from now we know whether downtown gets the campus. ANDREW: And if Jacksonville loses? JENNY: Then there's a political question for Carrico about whether the emergency framing was necessary. If Jacksonville wins, the next thing to watch is the clawback language and enrollment targets in the finalized incentives agreement. JENNY: Two quick local notes to round out the beat. Memorial Day weekend ended badly at Jacksonville Beach — Action News Jax is reporting that bystanders were hit with pepper spray during a large fight outside a beachfront hotel involving thirty to forty people. No arrests have been made yet. And the Jaguars are in the middle of voluntary OTAs this week. Head Coach Liam Coen spoke after Tuesday's session — he said the team is, quote, setting a tone for the spring. Mandatory minicamp opens June ninth. ANDREW: Before we let you go, one thing to watch through next week. Monday and Tuesday are the big national set pieces. The Senate comes back from recess and Majority Leader Thune has to decide which piece of the seventy-two billion dollar ICE funding bill to drop to get past the parliamentarian — that vote will likely set the tone for the rest of the legislative session. And separately, watch the Trump desk for the Iran ceasefire extension. If he signs, Brent crude probably gives up another five dollars and the ten-year yield drops below 4.4 — which would feed directly into a lower mortgage rate by the end of next week. If the framework collapses, the trade goes the other way, hard. JENNY: That's your Morning Brief for Friday. Have a great weekend. ANDREW: We'll see you Monday.

Jax Morning Brief — PCE Hits 3.8 Percent, June Cut Off the Table, Iran Tests the Ceasefire

Good morning. It's Thursday, May 28th, 2026. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: The Fed's preferred inflation gauge came in this morning at 3.8 percent — the hottest reading in three years — and it lands the day after both the Dow and the S and P 500 hit fresh record closes. ANDREW: And the Pentagon is quietly auditioning OpenAI, Google, and xAI to replace Anthropic's Claude in classified military workflows — we'll explain why that's a bigger deal than it sounds. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: A quick look at the markets. The S and P 500 closed Wednesday at 7,520.36, up two-hundredths of a percent — a record. The Dow added 183 points, or 0.36 percent, to finish at 50,644.28, also a record. The Nasdaq edged up seven-hundredths of a percent to 26,674.73. The ten-year Treasury yield sits at 4.47 percent this morning, down sharply from the 16-month high of 4.7 percent it touched on May 20th. And the thirty-year fixed mortgage rate is tracking at 6.61 percent according to Mortgage News Daily — that's the third straight day it's held steady or moved lower. So records on stocks, easing on bonds, all before the PCE number landed at 8:30 this morning. Jenny, over to that print — because it's the story driving everything. JENNY: Yeah, take us through it. What did the Fed actually get this morning? ANDREW: Headline PCE rose to 3.8 percent year-over-year in April, up from 3.5 percent in March. That's the highest reading since May of 2023. Core PCE — which strips out food and energy — ticked up to 3.3 percent, the highest since October of 2023. Both prints came in right in line with what economists were expecting. But here's the wrinkle: month-over-month, the numbers actually came in softer than forecast. Headline rose 0.4 percent versus a 0.5 expectation; core rose 0.2 versus 0.3. JENNY: So which signal is the bond market trusting — the hot year-over-year, or the cooler monthly? ANDREW: For now, the soft monthly numbers are winning. The ten-year yield has held below 4.5 percent this morning, and the Mortgage News Daily index hasn't moved up. But this is the print that as we previewed yesterday was the door on a June Fed cut — and that door is now effectively closed. Fed funds futures are pricing in a 97.5 percent probability that Chair Warsh and the FOMC hold rates steady on June 17th. The market is also now pricing in a 65 percent probability of zero cuts for all of 2026. JENNY: Zero cuts for the year — that's a real shift from where we were in March. ANDREW: It is. And it has a direct read-through to housing. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported yesterday that the average 30-year conforming rate hit 6.65 percent last week — the fifth straight weekly increase and the highest since August of last year. Applications were down 8.5 percent on the week, refinances down 18 percent. But — and this is important — Mortgage News Daily's day-by-day index has actually been ticking lower since Monday, helped by the de-escalation in the Persian Gulf pulling oil prices and the ten-year yield down with them. We get the Freddie Mac weekly survey at noon today. If that print comes in below the MBA's 6.65 — and the bond market doesn't sell off on the PCE — buyers may finally catch a small break heading into the weekend. JENNY: And the Q1 GDP revision drops this afternoon, right? ANDREW: At 2:30 Eastern. Consensus is looking for a sharp upward revision to 2.0 percent annualized, from the 0.5 percent initial estimate. If that lands, you've got a real story to tell: inflation sticky at 3.8, growth picking up, no rate cuts coming. That is by definition not a Fed easing setup. Speaking of things that didn't ease over the long weekend — let me hand it back to you, Jenny, because the national headline is Iran. JENNY: Right. So CENTCOM put out a pretty stark statement Tuesday night calling what Iran did this week an "egregious ceasefire violation." Walk us through what actually happened. ANDREW: Late Tuesday, Iran launched a ballistic missile in the direction of Kuwait. Kuwaiti forces intercepted it. Around the same time, Iran launched five attack drones in and near the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. forces intercepted all five and then prevented a sixth from leaving an Iranian launch site near Bandar Abbas. CENTCOM's framing was unambiguous: this was a violation. Tehran has not formally claimed the missile. JENNY: Which is awkward, because we've been reporting all week that the U.S. and Iran are within striking distance of a framework deal to extend the ceasefire 60 days and reopen the Strait. How does the missile change that? ANDREW: It complicates it without killing it. According to the Washington Post and CNBC, U.S. and Iranian negotiators are still working on the same framework Trump described over the weekend as quote "largely negotiated." The deal envisions a 60-day extension of the April ceasefire, U.S.-led de-mining of the Strait, and a reopening of commercial traffic. The sticking points have been frozen Iranian assets and the enrichment ceiling on Iran's nuclear program. The missile launch reads as either a hardline faction in Tehran trying to torpedo the talks, or a pressure tactic to extract concessions before signing. Markets are betting on the latter — oil is down, and the ten-year yield, as we said, is at 4.47. JENNY: Got it. And there's a second national thread that's been quietly building — the green card policy change. ANDREW: Yes. USCIS issued a memo last Thursday — May 21st — and announced it publicly the following day. Under the new rule, foreigners legally inside the United States who want to convert their status to a green card will, in most cases, have to leave the country and apply from their home nation. Adjustment of status from inside the U.S. will only be granted in quote "extraordinary circumstances." This is a sharp break from a decades-old policy. NBC and the Washington Post are reporting that hundreds of thousands of pending applications are now affected, including spouses of U.S. citizens, H-1B holders converting to permanent residency, and people who entered as students. Immigration attorneys say the change effectively reroutes a huge share of the green card pipeline through consular offices abroad — which were already running multi-year backlogs before this. JENNY: So the practical effect is just slowing the whole system down. ANDREW: That's the read, yes. Legal challenges are likely. The change appears to be administrative — a USCIS policy memo — rather than an executive order, which gives the administration flexibility but also gives plaintiffs a narrower target. Jenny, AI is yours — and there's a real story out of the Pentagon this week. JENNY: There is. Bloomberg is reporting that the Department of Defense has spent the past three months quietly testing AI models from OpenAI, Google, and Elon Musk's xAI to see which ones can replace Anthropic's Claude inside classified military workflows. The tests are being run by a group of 25 designated quote "power users" through a platform called GenAI.mil, which operates separately from the Pentagon's main AI deployment. ANDREW: And what's driving this? Anthropic has been the favored defense vendor for over a year. JENNY: It comes down to one thing — Anthropic's safety guardrails. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared Anthropic a quote "supply chain risk" back in early March, three days before the testing began. The friction is that Anthropic refuses to remove restrictions that prevent Claude from being used for mass surveillance or lethal autonomous targeting. The Pentagon wants those use cases on the table. Anthropic won't do it. So Hegseth's team is shopping for a model that will. As we've been tracking, Anthropic just had its first profitable quarter and closed a 30-billion-dollar funding round at a 900-billion-dollar valuation. Losing the Pentagon contract would not break the company financially — but it sets a precedent. If the U.S. government decides that safety guardrails are a procurement disqualifier, that's a wedge OpenAI, Google, and xAI can use to dislodge Anthropic across the entire federal stack. ANDREW: And there's a strategic irony there — the same week Anthropic is being told its safety stance is too restrictive for DOD, it's also positioning itself with the Vatican as the safety-first AI lab. JENNY: Exactly. Chris Olah at the Vatican AI ethics conference last week, and now this. Two very different customer pitches at the same time. Speaking of Anthropic — separately, the company quietly rolled out a new enterprise feature this week. Claude Managed Agents can now run inside a customer's own infrastructure — what Anthropic is calling self-hosted sandboxes. Tool execution happens on a customer's own servers or with partners like Cloudflare, Modal, or Vercel; the model orchestration still runs on Anthropic. It's in public beta now. The point of the announcement is to remove the security objection that's been blocking enterprise pilots — banks and regulated companies that don't want their data leaving their environment. ANDREW: That's a direct play for the financial services market. JENNY: It is. And it lines up with the Fujitsu deal Anthropic and OpenAI both announced yesterday — both labs are sprinting to plant flags in Japan-Inc.-style enterprise accounts before the other does. Andrew, speaking of accounts that need to close — let me bring it home to Jacksonville. ANDREW: Take us there. JENNY: Weather-wise, Jacksonville is looking at 89 degrees today with scattered afternoon thunderstorms and a 40 percent chance of rain. So an outdoor lunch is a roll of the dice. To the news. The story we've been following on the Culinary Institute of America campus took its decisive city-side step Tuesday — City Council voted 16 to 2 to approve up to 35 million dollars in incentives on an emergency basis. Council President Kevin Carrico pushed the emergency designation specifically so Jacksonville could be officially on the record before the CIA's board meets in June to pick its southeast campus location. Atlanta, Charleston, and Nashville are the other finalists. ANDREW: Sixteen to two is a wide margin. Who were the no votes, and why? JENNY: The two no votes were Council members Diamond and Gay. Diamond has been the loudest of the skeptics, arguing the deal needs enrollment-based clawbacks so the city isn't on the hook if the campus underperforms its student projections. Council member Lahnen was absent. So the real date to watch now is the CIA board vote in June. That is the only thing that matters from here. ANDREW: And separately on the downtown front? JENNY: Two quick items. Jacksonville Daily Record reports a warehouse at 924 Lane Avenue North sold this week for 8.25 million dollars — 4.55 million more than it traded for in 2022. That's a 122 percent appreciation in less than four years, which tells you something about industrial demand in this market. And on the JEA investigation we've been tracking, the subpoena dates are now locked in. Chief Administrative Officer Jody Brooks testifies June 8th. CEO Vickie Cavey testifies June 22nd. The committee specifically wants to see communications between Cavey's office and Mayo Clinic, which JEA's own attorneys say owes more than 12 million dollars in unpaid capacity fees. Andrew, take it home. ANDREW: Before we let you go — one thing to watch today. The Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey drops at noon Eastern. Last week's print was 6.51 percent. The MBA already told us the rate hit 6.65 yesterday. If Freddie comes in above 6.6, you can expect the housing-data narrative to harden around the idea that the spring buying season is now decisively closed — and any buyer sitting on the sidelines waiting for sub-6 rates is going to be waiting through the fall. If Freddie surprises to the downside, below 6.5, the bond market is calling the cooler monthly PCE number the real signal — and we may have seen the local high in mortgage rates for this cycle. Either way, the print at noon today sets the tone for housing for the next two weeks. JENNY: That's your Morning Brief for Thursday. Have a great day. ANDREW: We'll see you tomorrow.

Jax Morning Brief — Paxton Routs Cornyn, Jacksonville Backs Culinary Institute, MBA Rates Hit 6.65%

Good morning. It's Wednesday, May 27th. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: The runoff we previewed Friday is over. Ken Paxton crushed John Cornyn last night by more than 25 points, ending a thirty-year run for one of the Senate's most institutional Republicans. ANDREW: And here in Jacksonville, the City Council voted 16 to 2 to back a 35 million dollar incentive package for the Culinary Institute of America. We'll get to what that means and what comes next. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: First, a quick look at the markets. The S and P 500 closed Tuesday at 7,519, up about six tenths of a percent and at a fresh record. The Nasdaq rallied roughly 1.2 percent to 26,656, also a record. The Dow lagged, finishing down about a quarter percent, off 118 points to 50,461. Optimism around a U.S. Iran deal lifted tech and pressured energy, which is the Dow's heaviest sector exposure. The ten-year Treasury yield slipped to 4.50 percent, and the thirty-year fixed mortgage rate is tracking at 6.61 percent today according to Mortgage News Daily, the lowest reading in a week. We'll dig into mortgages in a few minutes. Jenny, the big political story this morning is in Texas. JENNY: It is. Walk us through what happened. ANDREW: John Cornyn served four terms in the Senate. He was the Republican Whip under Mitch McConnell. He had every institutional advantage you can have, including most of his colleagues' endorsements. And he lost the Republican primary runoff to his own state's Attorney General, 64 to 36, according to the Texas Tribune and the Associated Press. President Trump endorsed Paxton seven days before the vote, and the AP called the race for Paxton about an hour after polls closed. JENNY: 26 points is not a primary fight. That's a repudiation. What does this signal? ANDREW: Two things. First, sitting Republican incumbents are now genuinely vulnerable to MAGA-aligned challengers when the President puts his thumb on the scale. Second, this puts the seat at least mildly in play in November. Paxton was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 and has faced years of legal scrutiny at both the state and federal level. The Democrats nominated state representative James Talarico, who has been raising real money. Texas hasn't elected a Democratic senator since 1988, but the cycle just got more interesting. JENNY: Sticking with Capitol Hill. You told us Friday Thune punted the ICE funding bill to after Memorial Day. Where does it stand? ANDREW: The Senate is back in session next Monday, June 1, which is also the President's original deadline to have the bill on his desk. So they'll miss it. The two flashpoints haven't moved. There is a roughly 1.8 billion dollar Justice Department anti-weaponization fund tied to a Trump IRS settlement that several Republicans publicly called a slush fund. And there is a one billion dollar line item for ballroom security at the White House that the Senate parliamentarian has already partially ruled out of order under reconciliation. Thune now has to decide which of those he can drop. JENNY: And on the foreign policy side, the Iran picture shifted again over the weekend. ANDREW: It did. On Sunday, U.S. Central Command confirmed defensive strikes on Iranian missile launch sites and small boats in the Strait of Hormuz, framing them as a response to maritime threats. At the same time, the President said publicly that a deal reopening the Strait is, quote, largely negotiated. CNBC and CNN both reported that Tehran and Washington are working on a memorandum of understanding that would convert April's ceasefire into a longer-term framework. The sticking points are familiar. Iran wants frozen assets released. Washington wants meaningful limits on uranium enrichment. And Tehran is publicly accusing the U.S. of demanding a troop withdrawal, which the White House calls fabricated. JENNY: And the market is reading it as a deal. ANDREW: That's the read for now. Tech rallied, oil futures eased, Treasuries rallied. But the Strait is not actually open, the strikes are real, and one bad night can flip the script. Last thing on the national desk before we go to mortgages. The President signed two executive orders eight days ago that have been flying under the radar but matter for anyone in financial services. The first directs Treasury and federal regulators to crack down on what the White House calls politicized debanking, which is the practice of banks closing accounts tied to lawful but unpopular industries or politics. The second directs banks to factor immigration status into customer risk assessments, specifically flagging accounts opened with individual taxpayer ID numbers rather than social security numbers. Both will spend the next year in agency rulemaking. JENNY: Staying on banking, your beat. The MBA print came out this morning. ANDREW: It did. The Mortgage Bankers Association released its weekly survey for the week ending May 22. The headline 30-year conforming rate climbed to 6.65 percent, up nine basis points from the prior week, and the highest level since August. That is the fifth consecutive weekly increase. Total applications fell 8.5 percent week over week. Refinance volume dropped 18 percent. Purchase applications were essentially flat, down four tenths of a percent. JENNY: So purchases held up, but refis fell off a cliff. Why such different reactions in the same week? ANDREW: Refi demand is rate-sensitive in a way purchase demand isn't. People shopping for a home need to buy regardless of what rates do this month. People refinancing are doing a math problem, and that math broke this week. When you cross from 6.56 to 6.65, the cohort that had been waiting on the sidelines just got pushed further out. The refi index is still up about 35 percent year over year, but that comparison is flattered. Last May, rates were closer to 6.9 percent. JENNY: And today's daily print is actually lower, you said. ANDREW: Yes. Mortgage News Daily has the average lender today at 6.61 percent, down four basis points. That's the third straight daily decline. Treasuries have rallied this week on Iran deal hopes, and the ten-year yield is at 4.50 percent, off from a recent high near 4.6. If that holds, the MBA print next Wednesday could finally break the streak. The wild card is tomorrow morning. JENNY: PCE. ANDREW: PCE. Eight thirty Eastern. The Bureau of Economic Analysis releases the April Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, which is the Fed's preferred inflation gauge. The last print, for March, came in hot at 3.5 percent annualized. Economists are looking for a slight cooling, but with oil still elevated from the Iran conflict, a hot number would push the ten-year back toward 4.6 and the 30-year mortgage back toward 6.75. A cool number, and refi shops have a few good days ahead. Jenny, over to you on AI. JENNY: Thanks, Andrew. The biggest AI news this morning is a Tokyo story with real money behind it. Fujitsu announced strategic partnership agreements today with both Anthropic and OpenAI. The Anthropic side combines Claude with Fujitsu's enterprise systems for Japanese banks, government agencies, and critical infrastructure operators. The OpenAI side integrates GPT models into Fujitsu's existing AI services portfolio. ANDREW: So Fujitsu is hedging. JENNY: Yes, and they're hedging at scale. Fujitsu sells into a huge share of Japan's top enterprises and government ministries. Both deals are pitched as accelerating, quote, AI transformation across Japan's enterprise sector. The Anthropic announcement specifically emphasizes safety and reliability for mission-critical systems, which is the language Japanese regulators want to hear. The bigger story here is that Japan is one of the most risk-averse enterprise markets in the world. If Anthropic and OpenAI both move volume through Fujitsu, that's revenue neither has had to build a sales force for. ANDREW: And it lands as the two companies are publicly disagreeing about whether their own product is going to take everyone's job. JENNY: That's right. This was the strangest contrast in tech this week. Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, speaking at the Vatican's AI ethics conference, said, quote, there is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale. The same week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman gave an interview saying he was wrong about earlier projections and that he no longer believes the technology is going to cause a jobs apocalypse. Same industry, same week, polar opposite messaging. ANDREW: Which one is selling and which one is hedging? JENNY: That's the right way to read it. Anthropic's enterprise pitch increasingly emphasizes safety, oversight, and what they call deployment science. That positioning requires customers to believe the technology is powerful enough to cause harm if mishandled. OpenAI's pitch is much closer to a productivity story aimed at chief financial officers. Different strategies, different signals to enterprise buyers. Andrew, before we go to Jacksonville, the weather. Looking at 90 degrees in Jacksonville today, mostly cloudy with afternoon showers and about a 40 percent chance of rain. So if you're heading downtown, take the umbrella. ANDREW: And speaking of downtown. JENNY: Speaking of downtown. The City Council voted 16 to 2 last night on emergency passage of ordinance 2026-0419, authorizing up to 35 million dollars in city incentives to bring the Culinary Institute of America's first southeast campus to a 50 thousand square foot space on the Northbank riverfront. Members Rory Diamond and Mike Gay were the only no votes. Member Will Lahnen was absent. The Jax Daily Record and News4Jax both confirmed the vote count. ANDREW: Why the emergency tag on a 35 million dollar deal? JENNY: Council President Kevin Carrico requested emergency passage so the city would be on record before the CIA's board picks a city in June. Atlanta, Charleston, and Nashville are also in the running. The Jacksonville package breaks down into roughly 8 million in workforce incentives and 27 million in additional support, spread over six years and paired with a private hotel development on the same site. JAX Chamber endorsed last week. ANDREW: And what did the two no votes argue? JENNY: Diamond and Gay both raised concerns about taxpayer exposure for a private institution that hasn't formally committed to Jacksonville yet. Diamond said publicly he wanted the deal restructured to claw back funds if enrollment targets aren't hit. Two other Jacksonville items quickly. The Related Group held a ground breaking last Wednesday on Southbank Residences, a 25-story luxury apartment tower with 395 units on the Southbank riverfront. That adds to a downtown development pipeline now valued at roughly 7 billion dollars across completed, under-construction, and approved projects. And separately, the University of Florida announced this week that Edgemoor Infrastructure and Real Estate has been selected as the lead developer for the first 287 million dollar phase of UF's new Jacksonville graduate campus. ANDREW: That's a busy downtown news cycle. JENNY: It really is. Andrew, take us out. ANDREW: Before we let you go, one thing to watch tomorrow morning. The Bureau of Economic Analysis releases the April PCE price index at eight thirty Eastern. The Fed's preferred inflation gauge ran at 3.5 percent annualized in March, which was hotter than expected. A reading at or above 3.5 tomorrow keeps a June rate cut effectively off the table and likely pushes mortgage rates back above 6.7 percent. A 3.2 or lower would re-open the cut conversation and probably take 30-year rates a quarter point lower by Friday. The futures market is pricing under one in three odds of a June cut going into the print. Watch the ten-year Treasury immediately after eight thirty for the live read. JENNY: That's your Morning Brief for Wednesday. Have a great rest of the week. ANDREW: We'll see you tomorrow.

Jax Morning Brief — Trump Scraps AI Order, Senate Punts ICE Funding, Mortgage Rates at 6.51%

Good morning. It's Friday, May 22nd. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: The AI executive order we told you to watch yesterday? It didn't happen. Trump scrapped the signing at the last minute, telling reporters he didn't want to slow down American AI companies. ANDREW: And Senate Republicans abandoned a vote on ICE funding and sent themselves home for Memorial Day recess, blowing past the President's June 1 deadline. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: First, a quick look at the markets. The S and P 500 closed down about half a percent on Thursday. The Dow lost roughly half a percent as well, and the Nasdaq slipped half a percent. It was a quietly negative session as Treasury yields rose and Nvidia's blockbuster earnings somehow failed to lift the AI trade. The ten-year Treasury yield is sitting at 4.59 percent, and the thirty-year fixed mortgage rate jumped to 6.51 percent on Freddie Mac's weekly survey, up fifteen basis points from a week ago. Mortgage News Daily has its daily index a bit higher, around 6.63 percent. Jenny, on the AI story, this one really did come apart in front of the cameras. JENNY: It really did, Andrew. So just to recap where we were yesterday. The White House had invited CEOs from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft to a Thursday afternoon ceremony. Trump was expected to sign an executive order asking frontier AI labs to voluntarily share new models with the government 90 days before release, plus a Treasury-led cybersecurity clearinghouse for banks and other critical infrastructure to test those models. Then yesterday afternoon, hours before the ceremony, Trump pulled it. ANDREW: And what did he say? JENNY: His exact words to reporters were, quote, we're leading China, we're leading everybody, and I don't want to do anything that's going to get in the way of that lead. He said he thought certain provisions, quote, could have been a blocker. CNBC, the Washington Post, and TechCrunch all reported the same reasoning. There's also a quieter explanation circulating, which is that not enough tech CEOs could actually make it to Washington on short notice. ANDREW: So who won this fight inside the White House? JENNY: The growth side beat the security side, at least for now. There has been an internal split for weeks. National security advisers wanted pre-release testing because they're worried about model misuse. The economic and tech advisers worried any government bottleneck would hand China an opening. Trump came down on the second side, and the cybersecurity hawks in his own base are not happy about it. Expect the order to come back in some softer form, but the political signal from yesterday is that this White House is not going to put any speed bumps in front of the labs. ANDREW: And on the other end of the AI spectrum, Nvidia reported a blowout quarter Wednesday night and the stock went down. JENNY: Yeah, this was strange. Nvidia delivered 81.6 billion dollars in revenue for Q1, beating the street by about three billion. Data center revenue alone was 75 billion, up 92 percent year over year. They guided next quarter to 91 billion, four billion above consensus. The board added 80 billion to the buyback and raised the dividend 25-fold, from a penny a share to 25 cents. And the stock closed down 1.8 percent. ANDREW: How does a company beat by that much and trade down? JENNY: One analyst at Capital.com called it, quote, a garden variety beat. At a four trillion dollar market cap, you have to wildly exceed not the published consensus but the so-called whisper number the buy side is actually trading. Nvidia merely crushed it. It didn't obliterate it. Andrew, over to you for the national desk. ANDREW: Thanks, Jenny. The big story on the Hill yesterday was the collapse of the Senate's plan to pass the reconciliation bill funding ICE and Customs and Border Protection. NPR, CBS News, and UPI all reported the same picture. Senate Majority Leader John Thune had hoped to get the bill on the floor Thursday night. Instead the Senate adjourned for a one-week recess. They will pick this back up June 1. JENNY: What blew it up? ANDREW: Two things. First, the package included a roughly 1.8 billion dollar Justice Department fund that several Republican senators called a slush fund. It is tied to a settlement involving President Trump and the IRS, and a handful of GOP senators just refused to sign off on it. Second, there is a one billion dollar line item for a Secret Service-protected ballroom at the White House. That also drew Republican opposition. Underneath the headline number, which is around 72 billion dollars for ICE and CBP over three years, the package became too much of a Christmas tree to hold the conference together. JENNY: And what does this mean for the President's June 1 deadline? ANDREW: They are going to miss it. Thune told reporters the Senate will, quote, pick up where we left off. The political read is that the President's leverage over his own party on a marquee priority is weaker than the White House would like, and Senate Republicans heading into a midterm year are not willing to absorb a billion dollar ballroom vote. JENNY: Anything else on the national side? ANDREW: Two more things. On Iran. We have been tracking the ceasefire that has been on, in Trump's words, life support all week. Reuters and Al Jazeera report Israel is still pushing to resume strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, and Iran's Supreme Leader issued a directive yesterday that the country's near-weapons-grade uranium stays inside Iran. That hardens Tehran's position on the single thing the U.S. has been demanding in the talks. Brent crude climbed back above 104 dollars a barrel this morning, WTI around 101. Oil is still about 50 percent above its pre-war level from late February. JENNY: So we are not closer to a resolution. ANDREW: We are further away. Watch Brent. If we break 115, the market is telling you Israel has moved. The second item is Fed Chair Kevin Warsh. He was sworn in one week ago today. He has not made a single public statement since. The Marketplace reporting this week suggests he intends to dramatically cut back Fed communications, possibly ending the post-FOMC press conference altogether. His first meeting as chair is June 16th and 17th, and futures are pricing less than a one-in-three chance of a rate cut at that meeting. Speaking of rates, Jenny, the news on the mortgage side is not what buyers wanted to hear this week. JENNY: How bad? ANDREW: Freddie Mac's primary mortgage market survey came in at 6.51 percent yesterday on the 30-year fixed, up from 6.36 last week. That is the fourth consecutive week of increases. Mortgage News Daily's daily index has been even more volatile. They had it briefly at a nine-month high of 6.68 on Tuesday before pulling back into the mid 6.5s by Wednesday and bouncing again this morning. The driver is the same one we have been talking about all spring. Inflation expectations are stuck because of oil, and the ten-year Treasury is sitting near a year-to-date high. JENNY: What is that doing to demand? ANDREW: The Mortgage Bankers Association published its weekly applications survey yesterday for the week ending May 15. Total applications fell 2.3 percent. Purchase applications dropped 4 percent on the week, although they are still up year-over-year because last May was even worse. Refinances were basically flat, down a tenth of a percent. Interestingly, refis are still 35 percent above where they were a year ago, because last May the 30-year was running above 6.8. So even at 6.5, some borrowers from late 2024 are finding it worth refinancing. JENNY: So who is actually closing right now? ANDREW: It is mostly purchase-money buyers who simply cannot wait any longer, and a thin slice of refinancers who locked in above 7 in the fall of 2024. The bigger story for originators is the eight straight weeks now where the 30-year has held above 6.4 percent. The MBA's spring forecast assumed rates would be back in the high fives by Memorial Day. They are not. Production budgets for the second half of the year are getting rewritten. Jenny, speaking of weekends, sounds like you've got a busy one in Jacksonville. JENNY: We really do, Andrew. Weather-wise, Jacksonville is looking at a high of 92 today, low around 74, partly sunny with a 40 percent chance of afternoon showers. Classic late-May First Coast day. Now, the big local story is downtown. Whole Foods opened its first-ever downtown Jacksonville store yesterday morning at 8 a.m. on Riverside Avenue in Brooklyn. Thirty-eight thousand square feet, more than 800 local Florida items on the shelves. The first 300 customers got a limited-edition Jacksonville tote and a coupon worth up to 100 dollars. The Jacksonville Daily Record had reporters on site. ANDREW: Is this a one-off, or does it actually signal something about the urban core? JENNY: It's a real bet. Brooklyn was a working-class neighborhood basically until five years ago. The Whole Foods sits where the old Florida Times-Union building used to be, and the store's interior design actually pays homage to that building with vertical wood slat walls. The opening is one piece of a broader downtown thesis. Riverfront Park, Independent Living, the planned FIS headquarters expansion, and what's happening on Bay Street this weekend. ANDREW: Which is the Jazz Festival. JENNY: Which is the Jacksonville Jazz Festival. It kicked off last night at the Florida Theatre with the piano competition. The free outdoor stages at Ford on Bay run Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, Andra Day, Nile Rodgers and Chic, Sheila E, Esperanza Spalding, and Kamasi Washington. There is also a new Jazz in the Plaza stage at Riverfront Plaza this year. If you are anywhere near downtown this weekend, this is the event. ANDREW: And there was a planning commission vote yesterday on the density bonus ordinance we talked about earlier in the week. JENNY: There was. The Planning Commission took up Ordinance 2026-0311 yesterday. This is the proposal that would create what the city is calling target growth areas along high-frequency transit corridors and the Emerald Trail, where developers could build up to 40 units per acre with smaller lots, more height, less parking, in exchange for either pledging 20 percent of units as affordable, or building to flood-resilient standards. Single-family neighborhoods are carved out. The next step is the Council Land Use and Zoning Committee public hearing on June 6. ANDREW: That's a big change in what's allowed near transit. JENNY: It is the most consequential land use change since consolidation in terms of what kind of housing actually gets built downtown. The carve-out for single-family is what keeps the politics manageable, and the resilience track is how the city's Office of Resilience has signed onto it. The fight in committee June 6 will be about how big the carve-outs actually are. ANDREW: Before we let you go, one thing to watch this week. Tuesday is the Texas Senate Republican primary runoff between Senator John Cornyn and State Attorney General Ken Paxton. Trump endorsed Paxton. Cornyn is the institutional incumbent. The result will tell us how durable an institutional Republican is against a Trump-backed challenger in a state Trump won by 14 points. The same evening, the Jacksonville City Council holds its full vote on the 35 million dollar package to bring the Culinary Institute of America's Southeast campus downtown. The CIA board picks a city in June, and Atlanta, Charleston, and Nashville are also in the running. Two very different votes, both Tuesday, both worth watching. JENNY: That's your Morning Brief for Friday. Have a great weekend. ANDREW: We'll see you Monday.