Jax Morning Brief — Thursday, May 21, 2026

Jax Morning Brief — Iran-Israel Strikes Reignite War Fears, Tech Routed, JEA Testimony Today

Good morning, and welcome back from the weekend. It's Monday, June 8th, 2026. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: Iran launched roughly 20 ballistic missiles at Israel overnight, the first direct strike since April's ceasefire, after Israeli warplanes hit Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut on Sunday. President Trump is demanding both sides stop shooting. ANDREW: And here at home, Wall Street had its worst day of the year Friday. The Nasdaq fell more than four percent on a hot jobs print and a roughly one-trillion-dollar wipeout in chip stocks. We'll walk you through what it all means for rates, mortgages, and the Fed meeting next week. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: A quick look at the markets. The S and P 500 closed Friday at 7,383, down 2.6 percent, the worst session of 2026. The Dow fell 695 points, or 1.3 percent, to 50,866. The Nasdaq dropped 4.2 percent to 25,709, its worst day since April of last year, as semiconductor names took the brunt of the selling. The ten-year Treasury yield jumped to 4.55 percent on Friday's jobs print, and the thirty-year fixed mortgage rate is tracking near 6.5 percent according to Mortgage News Daily. Brent crude is up more than four percent in early trade on the Iran-Israel escalation, sitting just under 97 dollars a barrel. Stock futures are mixed this morning, with the Nasdaq up about half a percent and the Dow slightly negative. ANDREW: Two things shaped your weekend if you were off the grid. One, the Middle East ceasefire is unraveling fast, with Iran, Israel, and Hezbollah all trading fire over 48 hours. Two, Friday's jobs report came in hot, and the market reaction yanked rate-cut hopes off the table. JENNY: That makes the national desk the right place to start. Andrew, over to you. ANDREW: So let's start with what happened in the Middle East over the weekend, because it is genuinely dangerous. The short version is that the ceasefire President Trump brokered on June 1st between Israel and Lebanon is now effectively in tatters. On Sunday afternoon, Israeli aircraft hit Hezbollah's stronghold in Dahiyeh, in Beirut's southern suburbs. Lebanon's national news agency says at least two civilians were killed and more than ten wounded. Then late last night, Iran responded directly, firing at least 20 ballistic missiles into Israel. Most were intercepted, but per NPR's tally across the recent exchanges, 24 people are dead and more than 7,000 have been injured. JENNY: And this is the first time Iran has fired directly on Israel since the April ceasefire, right? How big a step is that? ANDREW: It is a major step. Iran spent April and May letting Hezbollah and the Houthis carry the fight. Direct fire from Iranian territory is what almost dragged the United States into the war back in February. Trump posted on Truth Social late last night demanding both sides, quote, "immediately stop shooting," and then the Israeli air force struck a petrochemical plant in southwest Iran early this morning. So the de-escalation script Trump was running for the past week has flipped into open exchange overnight. JENNY: What does that mean for the nuclear framework deal that was supposed to come this week? ANDREW: That is the second piece. Trump told reporters on Sunday the United States and Iran are, quote, "very close" to signing the framework, and he is pushing for Iran to physically destroy its highly enriched uranium as part of the agreement. But after this weekend's exchange, that timeline is now seriously in doubt. Watch oil here. Brent jumped more than four percent overnight, and a sustained move above 100 dollars a barrel would feed straight into U S gas prices and the inflation print on Wednesday. ANDREW: Closer to home, the House returns to Washington today facing what Axios is calling Speaker Johnson's, quote, "brutal June." The Senate's 69.5 billion dollar ICE and Border Patrol reconciliation bill passed 52 to 47 on Friday. Johnson can lose only two Republican votes, and the so-called anti-weaponization fund for the Justice Department, about 1.8 billion dollars, is the flashpoint. Conservatives want it stripped. If they force changes, the bill heads back to the Senate, and Trump's already-missed June 1st deadline keeps slipping further. ANDREW: And on the data side, Friday's May jobs report blew past expectations. Payrolls came in at roughly 172,000 versus consensus around 85,000. Unemployment held at 4.3 percent. The market reaction tells the story. The ten-year yield jumped back to 4.55 percent, futures pricing for a June rate cut effectively collapsed, and odds of a Fed hike later this year actually moved up. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is in his pre-meeting blackout window now, and he gave no signal before going dark. JENNY: So basically the Fed gets the worst possible setup heading into next week, a hot jobs print and a fresh geopolitical oil shock. ANDREW: That is exactly right. And we get the May Consumer Price Index on Wednesday morning, which is now the most important data point on the calendar. JENNY: One more on the international side before we move on. The Florida AG's lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman personally, filed June 1st, is still moving forward in the background. Eighty-three pages, six counts including fraud and public nuisance, cites two Florida deaths. We're watching whether California or New York attorneys general follow with their own suits this week. ANDREW: That personal-liability angle against Altman is the part that has every other lab's general counsel taking notes. JENNY: Andrew, stay with us. Let's pivot to what all of this means for the mortgage market. ANDREW: Yeah, the rate story is grim if you were hoping for relief. Freddie Mac's weekly survey on Thursday came in at 6.48 percent, the first weekly decline in six weeks. But that survey was collected before Friday's jobs print. Mortgage News Daily's daily index is tracking near 6.5 percent this morning, and given the ten-year jumped a dozen basis points on Friday alone, the practical lender quote for a 30-year fixed loan today is going to be in the high 6's. JENNY: So if I was about to lock a rate this morning, the situation looks worse than it did at Friday lunch? ANDREW: Materially worse. And the Mortgage Bankers Association data from last week already showed refinance applications down 18 percent week over week. That refi window everyone was watching for in May is effectively closed for now. Purchase applications were flat, which actually sounds resilient, but it is flat at a level that's the weakest in years. ANDREW: On the regulatory side, the FHA's February mortgagee letter on loss mitigation continues to squeeze servicers. National Mortgage News reported first-quarter foreclosure filings hit about 119,000 nationally, up 26 percent year over year, the highest in six years. With the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau pulled back under this administration, the risk is shifting onto FHA and state regulators, and you can see it in default servicer margins. JENNY: Bottom line for a buyer this week? ANDREW: If you have a rate lock that holds through Friday, hold it. If you don't, the most important calendar event for you is the May inflation print on Wednesday morning. A hot reading on top of a hot jobs print pushes the thirty-year toward 6.75 percent. A soft one is the only thing that brings it back. JENNY: Let me take you over to the AI desk, because there is a lot moving this week, starting with the biggest IPO in years. JENNY: SpaceX is in the final stretch of its roadshow. Pricing is set for Wednesday night, with the Nasdaq debut Thursday. The company is going out at a fixed price of 135 dollars a share, which values it at about 1.77 trillion dollars. That would make it roughly the seventh-largest U S company on day one. CNBC is reporting that an event for around 1,500 retail investors is scheduled for Wednesday, with 30 percent of the float earmarked for retail. That is three times the normal mega-cap allocation. ANDREW: A 1.77 trillion dollar valuation with no traded shares yet is a wild data point. Is the institutional book actually there for it? JENNY: The reporting suggests yes. The demand pool for SpaceX exposure has been bottled up for over a decade. The gray market opens tomorrow, which is the first honest read on where institutions actually want to pay. Watch that tomorrow morning. JENNY: On the Anthropic side, Project Glasswing, that's the early-access program for the Mythos vulnerability-finding model, expanded over the weekend. Bloomberg first reported, and TechCrunch and Cybersecurity Dive confirmed, that the EU's cybersecurity agency ENISA has now been granted access, along with about 150 additional organizations across more than 15 countries. New sectors include power, water, healthcare, and communications. Anthropic says Project Glasswing partners have found more than 10,000 critical-severity vulnerabilities since the model launched in April. ANDREW: So when ENISA finds something serious in European critical infrastructure using a United States model, who actually controls the disclosure timeline? JENNY: That is the live question, and it is exactly why this matters. The disclosure-coordination protocol between Anthropic, ENISA, and EU member states is still being negotiated. And the answer there shapes how every U S AI lab partners with foreign governments going forward. JENNY: Quickly on Microsoft. Project Polaris and the MAI-Thinking-1 model launched at Build last week are now in private preview on the company's custom Maia 200 chip. The pitch to enterprise is no OpenAI distillation in the training, which the legal and procurement teams at large banks have been asking for since the spring. ANDREW: Jenny, let's bring it home. What does the morning look like for Jacksonville? JENNY: Weather-wise, Jacksonville is looking at a high near 92 degrees today, partly sunny, with a low around 73 overnight. Breezy in the afternoon, no rain expected, so the standard summer heat advisories apply. JENNY: The biggest local story is happening at City Hall at 1 p.m. this afternoon. JEA Chief Administrative Officer Jody Brooks testifies in front of the City Council's Special Investigative Committee. This is the first of the headline-name testimonies, with CEO Vickie Cavey scheduled for June 22nd. Jacksonville Today and the Daily Record have both reported that Brooks has said she does not believe she is a target of the parallel criminal probe, and that the state attorney general and the State Attorney's Office have pulled records on lobbying contracts JEA canceled with Ballard Partners. ANDREW: What's on the line for Brooks today specifically? JENNY: Three pressure points. The workplace-culture allegations, the underpaid water-capacity fees from some of JEA's largest customers, including the unresolved 1986 Mayo Clinic dispute, and the decision to move forward on the 1.57 billion dollar natural gas plant. Brooks confirmed the regulatory applications for that plant were filed on June 4th, so the financial-impact line of questioning is going to be sharp. JENNY: Two quicker stories on the city side. The Jaguars open mandatory minicamp tomorrow morning at Miller Electric Center, running June 9th through the 11th. Travis Hunter is still working back from the knee injury he sustained last season. General Manager James Gladstone said back in April the plan is for Hunter to be at, quote, "full tick" by training camp in late July, so expect a limited role this week. The Wednesday practice is open to the public, 8:40 to 10:55 in the morning, with free tickets. JENNY: And the City Council has a full vote tomorrow on the 478-home rezoning along Yellow Water Road on the Westside, which cleared the land-use committee last week. With the November property-tax amendment hanging over the city budget, expect every housing-pipeline vote between now and the fall to get more scrutiny than usual. ANDREW: Remind me on that property tax amendment, just to anchor for anybody who missed it. JENNY: Sure. The state legislature put it on the November ballot last month. It would raise the homestead exemption from 50,000 dollars to 150,000 in 2027, then to 250,000 by 2028. The City Council Auditor's office calculates Jacksonville loses more than 300 million dollars a year by fiscal 2029, roughly 17 percent of the general fund. Mayor Deegan held a news conference on Thursday calling the amendment, quote, "hastily conceived" and, quote, "short-sighted." Libraries, parks, public health, and homelessness services are the first cuts on the table if it passes. Public safety and pensions are protected. So that is the budget shadow over every new spending vote between now and November. JENNY: One quick last item — News4Jax reported the Pecan Park Flea Market, a 40-year Northside landmark, is closing this fall after selling for 8.5 million dollars. Big number for a vendor community that's been there for four decades. ANDREW: That is a good handoff. Every one of those local stories now sits in the shadow of the Fed and the oil price. ANDREW: Before we let you go, one thing to watch this week. The May Consumer Price Index print, out Wednesday morning at 8:30 Eastern. After Friday's jobs surprise and this weekend's oil shock from the Middle East, this is the single number that decides the path of the ten-year yield, the thirty-year mortgage, and the framing for the Fed's meeting on June 16th and 17th. Headline consensus is around 2.7 percent year over year. A print at or below 2.5 percent gives the bond market room to breathe. Anything 2.9 or higher, and the entire week tilts toward more rate pressure and more equity selling. JENNY: That is your Morning Brief for Monday. Have a great week. ANDREW: We'll see you tomorrow.

Jax Morning Brief — Hot May Jobs Print, Senate Passes ICE Bill, Anthropic Hands Mythos to EU

Good morning. It's Friday, June 5th, 2026. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: This morning's jobs report came in hot — payrolls beat expectations, and the ten-year Treasury is back at four and a half percent. We'll unpack what that means for the Fed and for mortgage rates. ANDREW: And Anthropic just handed the European Union's cybersecurity agency direct access to its most powerful security model. We'll get to what that signals about who's setting the rules for frontier AI. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: A quick look at the markets. The Dow ripped to a fresh record close yesterday, jumping nearly 875 points, up about one point seven percent, to finish at 51,561. The S and P 500 added about four-tenths of a percent to 7,584, also a record. The Nasdaq was the laggard, slipping less than a tenth of a percent to 26,831, as investors rotated out of chip names after Broadcom sold off. The ten-year Treasury yield closed near 4.5 percent, and Freddie Mac's weekly survey put the thirty-year fixed mortgage rate at 6.48 percent yesterday, down from 6.53 the week before — the first weekly dip in six weeks. ANDREW: Let's start with this morning's main event. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the U.S. economy added about 115,000 jobs in May. That's well above the 85,000 economists had been expecting, and it makes May the third straight month of payroll growth. The unemployment rate held at 4.3 percent. Average hourly earnings came in line with forecasts, up about three-tenths of a percent on the month. JENNY: So a beat, but not a runaway. How is the bond market reading it? ANDREW: Hawkishly. The ten-year Treasury yield is right back at the 4.5 percent level it last visited in late May. That's a big deal because, on Wednesday, the same yield was down at 4.43 after the JOLTS surprise was offset by Iran de-escalation hopes. Two days later, the cushion is gone. CME fed funds futures still show roughly 97 percent odds of no change at the June FOMC meeting in two weeks, but the September cut that traders were leaning into has tightened sharply. JENNY: And this is the first jobs print Kevin Warsh is sitting with as Fed chair. ANDREW: It is. Warsh was sworn in May 22nd and has been almost entirely silent in public. The pre-meeting blackout window starts this weekend, so any signal he wanted to send had to land by today. He didn't send one. The market is now reading the silence as endorsement of the no-cut stance, at least for June. ANDREW: To the other story driving Washington this morning — the Senate passed the immigration enforcement reconciliation bill early this morning, 52 to 47, after a nearly 18-hour vote-a-rama. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only Republican to break ranks. Crucially, the 1.78 billion dollar Justice Department anti-weaponization fund that nearly killed the bill survived every amendment to strip it out, including a Tillis-Collins maneuver that got eleven Republicans on board but still failed. JENNY: That fund had Susan Collins blocking the bill all week. What changed? ANDREW: Leadership ate the fight. Senator Thune kept the floor open through the night and let the amendments lose one by one. The bill now goes to the House, where Speaker Johnson has to thread it past members who want even more for ICE and members who object to the DOJ fund on principle. Roll Call is reporting that House leadership has already left town for the week, so there is no immediate path to the president's desk. ANDREW: Overseas — the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire we talked about Wednesday is hanging by a thread. Israel and Lebanon agreed to renew it on June 3rd, with U.S. mediation and new "pilot zones" for the Lebanese army to police. The next day, Hezbollah publicly rejected the deal and demanded a full Israeli withdrawal first. Within hours, the Israeli air force struck a Lebanese village. The next negotiation round is scheduled for June 22nd in Washington, but as of this morning, an Iranian official is telling reporters there has been "no tangible progress." The Trump-Iran framework, separately, is still unsigned. Jenny, over to you for what's happening in housing. JENNY: Thanks, Andrew. The mortgage market is staring down a problem this morning. Freddie Mac's weekly print yesterday — 6.48 percent on the thirty-year fixed — was the first weekly decline in six weeks, and it was based on data collected before this morning's jobs report. So that 6.48 number is already stale. ANDREW: How fast does the daily index move on a print like this? JENNY: Fast. Mortgage News Daily had the thirty-year fixed at 6.60 percent earlier this week and climbing. With the ten-year back at 4.5 and spreads still wide because lenders are hedging payroll Friday, the daily index is likely to push toward 6.7 or even 6.75 by Monday morning. For a buyer locking a 400,000 dollar loan, every quarter-point higher costs roughly 65 dollars more per month over the life of the loan. ANDREW: And what about demand? Did this week's MBA print show buyers walking away? JENNY: The MBA applications survey on Wednesday was telling. Purchase applications were essentially flat. Refinances dropped about 18 percent week over week — that's not a buyer story, that's a refinance window slamming shut. Refi share is back down near 37 percent. The takeaway is that the spring buying season is grinding on, but the refi pipeline that was building through May has effectively closed. JENNY: One more story on the lending side — the foreclosure data is starting to tell a quieter story underneath all of this. National Mortgage News is reporting first-quarter foreclosure filings hit roughly 119,000, up 26 percent year over year, and the highest in six years. The driver is the new FHA loss mitigation framework — mandatory three-month trial payment plans and limits on home retention options — that's squeezing servicers and pushing more files toward final disposition. ANDREW: So the rate story is the noise, and servicing is the signal. JENNY: Exactly. Let's move on to AI. JENNY: The big AI story this morning is from Anthropic. The company is granting the European Union's cybersecurity agency, ENISA, direct access to its Mythos security model. It's the first EU government agency to get it. Bloomberg, Dark Reading, and TechCrunch all confirmed the deal this week. The agreement followed months of negotiation, with EU officials flying to San Francisco late last month to close the terms. ANDREW: Remind me what Mythos actually does — and why a European agency getting access is the headline. JENNY: Mythos is an autonomous vulnerability-discovery model. Since its launch in April, it has reportedly identified more than 10,000 high or critical severity software flaws across major operating systems and browsers — including zero-days that human reviewers had missed for years. The reason the ENISA deal matters is that it positions Anthropic, an American AI company, as effectively a deputized cyber defender for the European Union — at a moment when Brussels is also finalizing the EU AI Act's compliance schedule. It is unusual access for a foreign vendor. ANDREW: That sounds like a regulatory hedge as much as a security partnership. JENNY: It reads that way. And there's a parallel story — Anthropic is also expanding the program to about 150 new organizations across more than 15 countries, including NATO, Okta, Samsung, and SK Telecom. Separately, the Wall Street Journal and a couple of trade outlets are reporting that Anthropic has embedded staff at the NSA to help deploy Mythos for offensive cyber work. So the same model that's defending European critical infrastructure is also reportedly being used by U.S. signals intelligence. That's a tension Anthropic will have to manage carefully into its IPO filing. ANDREW: Speaking of which — SpaceX kicked off its roadshow yesterday at a fixed price. JENNY: 135 dollars a share. That values SpaceX at about 1.77 trillion dollars, which would put it ahead of Tesla as the seventh-largest U.S. company by market cap. The plan is to sell roughly 555 million shares, raise about 75 billion, and start trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX on June 12th. Final pricing lands June 11th. Inside the amended S-1, the company also confirmed Anthropic is paying 1.25 billion dollars a month — through May 2029 — for access to its Colossus compute clusters. That ends a public dispute Elon Musk had been waging on social media. JENNY: Closer to home — weather-wise, Jacksonville is looking at a high near 87 degrees today with a 40 percent chance of afternoon showers and thunderstorms. Northeast wind 10 to 15 miles per hour, low tonight around 74. Recent rainfall is improving local drought conditions, but the city-wide burn ban remains in effect. JENNY: City Hall had two major stories this week. Yesterday, Mayor Donna Deegan held a news conference at City Hall to publicly oppose the property tax overhaul the Florida Legislature put on the November ballot in last week's special session. She called the measure "hastily conceived" and "short-sighted." City Council auditors estimate Jacksonville stands to lose more than 300 million dollars a year by fiscal year 2029 if voters approve it. ANDREW: 300 million is roughly what — 17 percent of the general fund? JENNY: That's right. And Deegan was explicit about what gets cut first — libraries, parks, public health programs, literacy, housing, and homelessness services. Public safety and pensions are constitutionally protected, so the math falls hardest on everything else. Then this morning, in a related twist — the City Council stalled a routine renewal of the Duval County Public Schools half-cent sales tax. The Mayor pushed back hard, saying the council's role on a referendum like that is "ministerial," not substantive. So expect a fight there next week. ANDREW: That JEA investigation testimony — that's coming up Monday, right? JENNY: It is. Chief Administrative Officer Jody Brooks is scheduled to testify before the Special Investigative Committee Monday at 1 PM. Brooks has said in writing she does not believe she's the target of any parallel criminal investigation, but the State Attorney's office and the Florida AG have both pulled records. CEO Vickie Cavey is scheduled to follow on June 22nd. The committee is also looking into JEA's 1.57 billion dollar natural gas plant decision and an unresolved capacity-fee dispute with Mayo Clinic dating back to 1986. JENNY: And the Culinary Institute of America's board meets June 15th and 16th to choose its fourth U.S. campus location. Jacksonville is on the shortlist alongside Atlanta, Charleston, and Nashville. City Council approved a 35 million dollar incentive package on an emergency basis last week. If Jacksonville wins, the campus would be a 50,000 square foot anchor inside the new downtown convention hall. That decision lands ten days from today. JENNY: One more local note — the Jaguars are wrapping up OTAs at the Miller Electric Center. Travis Hunter is in every huddle holding the play sheet but still rehabbing from the knee injury that ended his 2025 season early. Trevor Lawrence told reporters this week that Hunter is "the twelfth guy" in every meeting. Mandatory minicamp starts Monday, and Wednesday's practice is open to the public. ANDREW: Before we let you go, one thing to watch next week — Wednesday, June 11th. That's the day SpaceX prices its IPO. The fixed offer is 135 dollars, but Morningstar's published fair value estimate sits at less than half that — about 780 a share equivalent. So the real question is whether the institutional book absorbs 75 billion dollars at this price, or whether demand softens and the company has to walk it back before Friday's debut. Watch the gray market on Tuesday for the first honest read, because if it trades below 135 before the bell on Friday, that becomes the year's most important market story. JENNY: That's your Morning Brief for Friday. Have a great weekend. ANDREW: We'll see you Monday.

Jax Morning Brief — Microsoft Cuts the OpenAI Cord, JOLTS Shocks, Florida Tax Plan Hits Ballot

Good morning. It's Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: Microsoft used its Build keynote yesterday to formally cut the OpenAI cord, launching its own reasoning model and a new in-house engine that replaces GPT-4 inside GitHub Copilot starting in August. ANDREW: And on the macro side, April job openings came in nearly three quarters of a million higher than economists expected, the Florida legislature sent a property tax cut to the November ballot that could blow a 300 million dollar hole in Jacksonville, and mortgage rates ticked up again. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: A quick look at the markets. All three major indexes pushed deeper into record territory Tuesday. The S and P 500 closed at 7,609, up a tenth of a percent, its first close above 7,600. The Dow added 229 points, or just under half a percent, to 51,307. The Nasdaq eked out a gain of three hundredths of a percent to 27,093. Chip names did most of the work. Marvell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise led the tape. The ten year Treasury yield closed at 4.43 percent, a couple of basis points lower on the day, and the thirty year fixed mortgage rate is tracking at roughly 6.60 percent according to Mortgage News Daily, up another four basis points. JENNY: Andrew, let me jump right to AI because Microsoft Build was the headline yesterday. Satya Nadella used the keynote in San Francisco to announce something the industry has been waiting two years to see. Microsoft launched its first flagship in-house reasoning model. It is called MAI-Thinking-1. And it launched a coding-specific model called Project Polaris that will replace GPT-4 as the default engine inside GitHub Copilot for paying subscribers starting in August. ANDREW: So this is Microsoft formally telling OpenAI it does not need them. JENNY: That is the read. Microsoft says Polaris was trained from scratch on its own data, with no distillation from OpenAI models, and that it runs on Microsoft's custom Maia 200 accelerators inside Azure. Translation, lower latency and lower per inference cost than routing through OpenAI's API. The reasoning model, MAI-Thinking-1, hits 97 percent on the AIME 2025 math benchmark and Microsoft is publicly claiming it matches Claude Opus 4.6 on coding tasks. ANDREW: How should an enterprise buyer think about this? JENNY: A few ways. One, if you are a Copilot customer, your default model is changing in August whether you want it to or not, though Microsoft is offering an optional three month fallback to stay on GPT-4. Two, this is the most concrete evidence yet that the era of one model for everything is over. Microsoft is telling buyers it will route the right model to the right task and bill accordingly. And three, this lands in the same week Anthropic confidentially filed for its IPO and SpaceX moved its roadshow up to tomorrow. Capital is going to flow toward whichever lab can prove durable enterprise revenue, and Microsoft just made that harder for OpenAI specifically. ANDREW: Speaking of SpaceX, the roadshow kicks off Thursday. What is the read going in? JENNY: Mixed. Reuters confirmed yesterday that SpaceX is targeting a 1.75 trillion dollar valuation with a raise of up to 75 billion dollars. That would be the largest IPO in history. But Morningstar published a fair value estimate of 780 billion dollars yesterday, less than half the ask. Cathie Wood's ARK Invest, on the other side, says 1.75 trillion is achievable. The Anthropic compute contract dispute we flagged yesterday is also still unresolved three days from pricing. JENNY: Andrew, over to the national desk. ANDREW: The story of the morning on the macro side is JOLTS. The April Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey dropped at 10 a.m. yesterday, and it came in at 7.6 million open positions. Consensus was 6.9 million. That is a 700,000 beat, and it is the highest reading on job openings since May of 2024. JENNY: What does that do to Fed pricing? ANDREW: It complicates the cut narrative considerably. Coming into yesterday, fed funds futures had roughly a 97 percent probability of no change at the June 16th and 17th meeting. That has not moved much because the meeting is two weeks out, but the September probability of a cut tightened. If you take JOLTS at face value, the labor market is reaccelerating, not cooling. The bond market initially priced it as hawkish, but the ten year actually closed three basis points lower on the day because the headline got partially absorbed by the Iran ceasefire news. The bigger test is Friday. ANDREW: On Iran, Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before Congress yesterday for the first time since the war began. He told senators the administration's position is that Iran must be prevented from getting a nuclear weapon, full stop. President Trump told ABC's Jonathan Karl Monday that he expects Iran to agree to his terms, quote, within the week. As of this morning, the framework still is not signed, and Iran has not resumed direct communications with US negotiators. JENNY: What about the Lebanon piece? ANDREW: The Trump-brokered partial ceasefire is technically holding, but barely. Hezbollah agreed to halt attacks on Israeli cities, Israel agreed not to strike Beirut's southern suburbs. The Times of Israel reported Netanyahu confirmed the agreement but explicitly said Israeli forces will continue operating in south Lebanon. And in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the IDF intercepted two projectiles fired from Lebanon. So the truce is partial, contested, and the kind of arrangement that can unravel in one news cycle. ANDREW: One more national item. The Senate ICE reconciliation bill is still stuck. Majority Leader John Thune did not bring it to the floor yesterday. Senator Susan Collins remains opposed to the 1.78 billion dollar Justice Department fund inside the package. The Trump June 1st deadline is now in the rearview, and the FISA Section 702 reauthorization deadline is bearing down on June 12th. So a vehicle that was supposed to fund immigration enforcement is now potentially colliding with the surveillance authority renewal. JENNY: Andrew, over to Jacksonville. This is the biggest local story we have covered in weeks. JENNY: Weather wise, Jacksonville is looking at a high of 87 today, low of 72, mostly sunny early with a chance of afternoon storms. Still no meaningful rain so far this week, which means the city wide burn ban Chief Percy Golden put in place Monday is still in effect. JENNY: The headline is the property tax amendment. The Florida House passed it 75 to 26 yesterday. The Senate passed it 30 to 9. It is now headed to the November ballot. To take effect, it needs 60 percent voter approval. According to News4JAX and First Coast News, the plan raises the homestead exemption from 50 thousand to 150 thousand dollars in 2027, then to 250 thousand by 2028, with constitutional language that could push it as high as 500 thousand. ANDREW: And what is the Council Auditor saying the hit looks like for Jacksonville? JENNY: As we reported yesterday, Council Auditor Philip Peterson's initial analysis pegs the loss at more than 300 million dollars a year starting in January 2027, at just the 250 thousand exemption level. That is on a general fund of about 1.8 billion. Mayor Donna Deegan and Republican leaders in Clay and St. Johns counties have all publicly voiced concern. Deegan's specific point is that Jacksonville already runs the lowest city millage of any major Florida metro, and the current rate does not fully cover police and fire. ANDREW: So now this becomes a five month campaign for and against the amendment. JENNY: Exactly. And from a budget planning standpoint, the city has to start modeling its fiscal year 2028 budget assuming a hole. If the amendment passes in November, that hole is real and starts in 14 months. If it fails, you have spent a year planning for revenue you actually have. Either way, this is the dominant local story between now and Election Day. JENNY: Two quicker Jacksonville items. The Jax Daily Record reports the Council's Land Use and Zoning Committee approved rezoning yesterday for a 478 home single-family development in West Jacksonville, on 112 acres along Yellow Water Road. The final Council vote is set for June 9th. And separately, two Council committees advanced the sale of the former JEA headquarters downtown for one million dollars to Jacksonville based Live Oak Contracting. The buyer plans 180 residential units with rooftop amenities and ground-floor uses. Both of those are signals that the downtown and West side housing pipelines are still moving despite the property tax noise above them. JENNY: Andrew, over to mortgage. ANDREW: Rates went the wrong way again Tuesday. According to Mortgage News Daily, the average lender moved the top tier 30 year fixed scenario up about four basis points to roughly 6.60 percent. That is the fourth consecutive session of upward pressure since Friday's brief cooling. The driver yesterday was actually not Treasuries, since the ten year closed three basis points lower. It was spread widening on lender hedging into the data wall this week. JENNY: So even with yields easing, borrowers paid more. ANDREW: Right. And that is what to watch in the spread itself. When mortgage backed security investors get nervous about prepayment volatility or about Fed policy uncertainty, the spread between the ten year and the 30 year fixed widens. That is exactly what happened yesterday. If JOLTS or Friday's payrolls report turns out hot, that spread does not contract, and you can see a 6.75 percent print by Monday even without much movement in the underlying Treasury. ANDREW: On the data side, the Mortgage Bankers Association weekly print drops at seven a.m. Eastern this morning. The last reading, for the week ending May 22nd, had purchase applications down four tenths of a percent and refinance applications down 18 percent. The refi share fell from 41.9 percent to 37.5 percent. The question this morning is whether the purchase index can turn positive despite higher rates. If it does, buyers are accepting the 6.5 to 6.75 percent range as the new normal. If it falls again, the housing market spends the summer flat. JENNY: And on the servicing and regulatory side? ANDREW: Quiet 24 hours on the regulatory front. The FHA loss mitigation rules we covered yesterday are still the dominant story for default servicers. National Mortgage News flagged first quarter foreclosure filings hit 119 thousand, up 26 percent year over year, the highest in six years. Servicers are getting squeezed by the new mandatory three month trial payment plan and the one home retention option per 18 month cap. Watch the next round of default servicer earnings calls for color on margin compression. ANDREW: Before we let you go, one thing to watch this morning. The MBA weekly mortgage applications print drops at seven a.m. Eastern, but the real event is Friday's May employment situation report. Consensus is for payroll gains somewhere between 60 and 100 thousand, with the unemployment rate holding at 4.3 percent. Here is why it matters. JOLTS yesterday said the labor market is reaccelerating. If Friday's payrolls print confirms that with a number above 150 thousand, the Fed cut conversation gets pushed deeper into the fall, the ten year backs up through 4.5 percent, and the 30 year mortgage rate tests 6.75 percent by Monday. If it comes in under 50 thousand, every bit of that flips, and we start hearing the first whispers of a Warsh-era cut at the July meeting. Either way, it is the most consequential data point of the week. JENNY: That's your Morning Brief for Wednesday. Have a great day. ANDREW: We'll see you tomorrow.

Jax Morning Brief — Anthropic Files for IPO, SpaceX Pulls Roadshow Forward, Florida Sues OpenAI

Good morning. It's Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: Anthropic confidentially filed for an IPO yesterday, racing OpenAI to the public markets, and SpaceX just pulled its own roadshow four days forward. The race to lock in AI capital is happening this week. ANDREW: And on the national side, the Iran framework is still unsigned, the Senate ICE bill is still stuck, and a brand new state property tax proposal could blow a 300 million dollar hole in Jacksonville's budget. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: A quick look at the markets. All three major indexes hit fresh record highs Monday. The S and P 500 closed at 7,600, up a quarter of a percent. The Dow finished at 51,079, up a tenth. The Nasdaq added four tenths to close at 27,087. That's the ninth consecutive weekly gain for the S and P, the longest streak since late 2023. Nvidia led the tape, up six percent on a new laptop chip announcement at Computex. The ten year Treasury yield closed at 4.46 percent, a couple of basis points higher on the day, and Brent crude pushed back above 95 dollars a barrel on Iran headlines. The thirty year fixed mortgage rate is tracking at roughly 6.6 percent according to Mortgage News Daily, up a few basis points from Friday. JENNY: Andrew, let me start at the AI desk because the story is moving fast. Anthropic confidentially filed its S-1 with the SEC yesterday. CNBC, Bloomberg, and NPR all confirmed it. The target is a public listing as early as this fall. ANDREW: This is built on the round we previewed last week, right? JENNY: It is. The 65 billion dollar Series H that closed at a 965 billion dollar post money valuation, with a 47 billion dollar revenue run rate. The new piece of news is that Anthropic beat OpenAI to the SEC. OpenAI reportedly filed confidentially around May 22nd, but Anthropic is now the lead candidate to price first, possibly in October. That matters because whoever prices first sets the comparable valuation for everyone else. ANDREW: How much room is there in the market for two trillion dollar AI listings in the same window? JENNY: That is exactly the question, and the answer arrives this week. SpaceX moved its roadshow up. Reuters is reporting the kickoff is now Thursday, June 4th, not next Monday as originally planned. Pricing on June 11th, trading debut June 12th on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX. They are targeting a 1.75 to 2 trillion dollar valuation, with a raise of 40 to 80 billion dollars. If it prices at the top of that range, it is the largest IPO in history. ANDREW: And the Anthropic compute contract embedded in that S-1 is still in dispute. JENNY: Still in dispute, three days from a roadshow. The filing says 45 billion dollars over three years. Elon Musk has publicly said on X that it is a 180 day lease with a 90 day mutual cancel, capped at 7.5 billion. Neither party has reconciled the language. That is the single biggest open question institutional buyers will be asking on the road. JENNY: There is one more story I have to put in front of listeners. Florida's attorney general filed suit against OpenAI and Sam Altman personally yesterday. NPR and Axios both covered it. The complaint cites the 2025 Florida State University shooting case and a University of South Florida graduate student murder case, where the defendant allegedly used ChatGPT to research body disposal. The counts include deceptive trade practices, negligence, strict liability, and public nuisance. Florida is the first state to bring this kind of suit, and naming Altman individually is the headline. ANDREW: Six weeks ahead of an OpenAI IPO that has not been formally announced. JENNY: Right. This is exactly the kind of contingent liability that the S-1 review process surfaces, and it will not be ignored. JENNY: Andrew, over to the national desk. ANDREW: We pick up where we left off yesterday on Iran. Trump still has not signed the framework. CNN's live blog reported Monday afternoon that Iran has suspended communications with US negotiators, with Tehran citing two reasons. One, the US position keeps shifting. Two, Israel just expanded its operations in Lebanon. Brent crude jumped about five percent intraday on the headline before settling around 95 dollars. The ten year traded heavier into the close. JENNY: And the Israel piece of this is escalating. ANDREW: Significantly. Monday morning, Prime Minister Netanyahu and his defense minister jointly ordered the IDF to strike targets in Beirut's southern suburbs. Civilians began evacuating in mass numbers. Jabal Amel hospital in Tyre took major damage in an afternoon strike. Lebanon's health ministry puts the total death toll at over 3,400 since this round began. By evening, Trump announced that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to dial back the fighting. CNN reported a heated phone call between Trump and Netanyahu earlier in the day. So you have the President publicly trying to de-escalate while Iran says the Lebanon front is the reason it cannot close the deal it has on the table. JENNY: What about the Senate ICE bill? ANDREW: Still stuck. The Senate parliamentarian struck the one billion dollars in White House ballroom security funding under Byrd rule constraints, so that piece is gone. But the 1.78 billion dollar Department of Justice anti-weaponization fund is still in the bill, and Senator Susan Collins, who chairs Appropriations, remains opposed. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche briefed Republican senators last week and did not move her vote. Thune said yesterday the chamber will, quote, pick up where we left off. Translation, no progress, and Trump's June 1st deadline is now two days in the rearview. ANDREW: One quick data point worth flagging from yesterday. ISM manufacturing for May printed at 54, the highest reading since May of 2022 and the fifth straight month of expansion. Consensus was 53.3, so this was a meaningful beat. Cyclical equities ran with it, and it is one of the reasons yields backed up. The economy is not slowing the way some had positioned for. JENNY: That sets up Friday's payrolls report nicely. Andrew, the local desk is mine. JENNY: Weather wise, Jacksonville is looking at a high of 90 today, low of 70, partly sunny this morning with thunderstorms likely between three and five p.m. and a 70 percent chance of rain overall. And that rain is welcome. Fire Chief Percy Golden issued a city wide burn ban effective immediately yesterday. The Keetch-Byram Drought Index for Duval is sitting at 594 out of 800. According to Jacksonville Fire and Rescue, we are in the driest stretch the city has seen since 1872. JENNY: The biggest local story landing this morning is the DeSantis property tax plan, and what it means for Jacksonville's budget. Council Auditor Philip Peterson released his initial analysis yesterday. Jacksonville Today, the Jax Daily Record, and First Coast News all reported. The plan would raise Florida's homestead exemption from 50 thousand to 150 thousand in 2027, then to 250 thousand by 2028, with constitutional amendment language that could eventually push it to 500 thousand. The Council Auditor's office estimates that at the 250 thousand exemption level alone, the city would lose more than 300 million dollars a year starting in January 2027. ANDREW: For context, how big is the city's general fund? JENNY: Roughly 1.8 billion. So we are talking about a hole in the high teens as a percentage of the entire general fund. Mayor Donna Deegan pointed out that Jacksonville already has the lowest city millage of any major Florida metro, and the current rate does not fully cover police and fire. The Florida Legislature convened in special session Monday to vet the plan for the November ballot. ANDREW: That is a much bigger budget threat than the JTA cuts we talked about yesterday. JENNY: An order of magnitude bigger. And it would land on top of all the other pressures the city is already absorbing. So for local listeners, this is the one to track from now through the November ballot. JENNY: Quick second item. The JEA investigation is still on track. Chief Administrative Officer Jody Brooks testifies next Monday, June 8th, at 1 p.m. CEO Vickie Cavey on June 22nd. Former general counsel Regina Ross has also been subpoenaed. The committee's focus is the Mayo Clinic capacity fee dispute, alleged workplace culture issues, and the natural gas plant decision. Brooks said publicly she does not believe she is a target of the parallel criminal probe, but is taking the subpoena seriously because her communications are being sought. ANDREW: And one more from Jacksonville. The Jaguars announced mandatory minicamp runs June 9th through 11th, and the Wednesday June 10th practice is open to the public at the Miller Electric Center. Free, registration required. Travis Hunter is still rehabbing the knee but reportedly in every huddle holding a play sheet. Trevor Lawrence has called him, quote, the twelfth guy. JENNY: Andrew, over to mortgage. ANDREW: Rates ticked up into the week. The thirty year fixed closed Monday at roughly 6.60 percent according to Mortgage News Daily, a few basis points higher than Friday's print. That is the daily index. The Freddie Mac weekly survey came in at 6.53 percent last Thursday, its sixth straight weekly increase and the highest reading since August. Both are now moving the same direction. JENNY: So the cooling we talked about Monday flipped. ANDREW: It did, and the driver is exactly what I flagged yesterday. The ten year backed up to 4.46 percent on the Iran headlines and the ISM beat. If oil pushes the ten year through 4.5 percent in the next two sessions, the thirty year fixed is going to test 6.75 percent by the end of the week. The asymmetry is still toward locking sooner rather than later. ANDREW: On the data side, the latest Mortgage Bankers Association weekly print showed purchase applications down four tenths of a percent and refinance applications down 18 percent week over week. Refi share dropped from roughly 42 percent of all activity to 37.5 percent. The next print drops tomorrow morning. If the purchase number turns positive on tomorrow's print despite higher rates, that is a real signal that buyers are accepting this range. If it drops again, the housing market is going to spend the summer flat. JENNY: And on the servicing side? ANDREW: National Mortgage News flagged that first quarter foreclosure filings hit roughly 119 thousand nationally, up 26 percent year over year, the highest in six years. The new FHA loss mitigation rules from February are starting to bite. There is a mandatory three month trial payment plan, a cap of one home retention option per 18 months, and a new borrower affordability attestation requirement. The industry view is that servicers are getting squeezed. Watch the next default servicer earnings calls for color on margin compression. ANDREW: Before we let you go, one thing to watch today. The April Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey drops at 10 a.m. Eastern. JOLTS. The March print showed 6.9 million open jobs, essentially flat. Today's number is the appetizer ahead of Friday's payrolls, and the figure to watch is the quits rate. If it ticks up, workers are confident enough to move, and that is a hot signal for wages and for the Fed. If it falls again, it confirms the labor market is cooling under the surface, which is the case for any cut talk later this year. Either way, the bond market will price the print inside ten minutes, and the mortgage market will follow. JENNY: That's your Morning Brief for Tuesday. Have a great day. ANDREW: We'll see you tomorrow.

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.