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Today’s Agenda

City-run supermarkets? Hard pass.
Dalai Lama, raise a glass.
An AI tool that writes with class.
Climate change is here, alas.

Democrats Are Divided

Has the billionaires’ boys club hit a wall? In the same weekend that dozens of private jets touched down in Italy for a certain someone’s wedding, New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani told NBC News’ Meet the Press, “I don’t think that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality, and ultimately, what we need more of is equality.”

Mamdani’s rapid ascent shows how voters — especially younger ones — are fed up with technocratic, centrist politicians, yet Nia-Malika Henderson says a lot still stands between him and a four-year stay at Gracie Mansion.

“Democrats are desperately looking for a winning formula,” she writes, yet Mamdani’s burn-it-all-down approach, while compelling to many, stands in stark contrast to other members of his party. Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, for instance, touts a risk-averse “war plan” that consists of fewer regulations, more investment in vocational training and incremental tweaks to immigration policy. “Even though both share relative youth, their approach to this moment and their paths to power are starkly different — and illustrate the choices that face candidates, voters and party power brokers,” Nia-Malika notes.

Different visions. Photos via Getty Images: Angela Weiss (left), Anna Moneymaker (right)

Which version of the future will voters go for? Nobody knows for sure, but Matthew Yglesias hopes it doesn’t include city-run grocery stores — one of the more peculiar proposals out of Mamdani’s campaign. In a city where $28 sandwiches sell out on the daily, not many folks seem to be hankering for government food markets.

Beyond that, it’d be logistically challenging to achieve: The plan “presupposes that there is a large number of supermarket-shaped buildings that the city either already owns or else could obtain for free,” Matthew writes. “More to the point, if grocery prices are too high because of property taxes, the city could always offer grocery stores a tax break.” Read the whole thing.

Bonus Mayoral Reading: Mamdani’s Muslim ancestry shines a harsh light on the community’s shrinking role in India’s political life. — Andy Mukherjee

The Next Dalai Lama?

Elsewhere in star-studded celebrations, you have the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday party, attended by none other than actor Richard Gere:

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama (L) speaks with US actor Richard Gere (R) during a Long Life Prayer offering ceremony on June 30, 2025. Photographer: Sanjay Baid/AFP

All eyes are on the 14th Tibetan spiritual leader as he turns 90 because Karishma Vaswani says he’s expected to reveal who will reincarnate as heir. “China is determined to shape the narrative around this succession, to prevent the erosion of its grip on Tibet, a mountainous region that it annexed in the 1950s,” she writes. “At the time, the Dalai Lama was forced to flee in disguise, dressing in a Chinese uniform and escaping on foot with family members and ministers to India, where they settled as refugees. He established a government-in-exile in the northern city of Dharamshala, which has advocated for greater freedoms for their homeland.”

Now, Beijing wants to hand-pick the new face of the spiritual role. Yet Tibetans don’t want a Communist Party puppet hijacking their religion. “In a tactical move, the Dalai Lama has said the line might end with him. But he’s also floated the idea of being reborn outside Tibet, beyond China’s reach.”

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An AI Guessing Game

The tech world is itching to learn more about the top-secret device Jony Ive is cooking up with Sam Altman. Although OpenAI has been pretty tight-lipped about the project ever since they dropped this teaser trailer, Parmy Olson says there’s a few things we know for certain:

It won’t have a screen
It won’t be wearable
It can fit in a pocket
It can sit on a table
It will be aware of surroundings
It will compliment a smartphone

Based on all that, what do you think it’ll be? I was picturing one of those pet rocks from the ’70s, but Parmy’s money is on something a little more practical: A pen.

It “checks all those boxes,” she writes. “Its familiarity to everyone eliminates a major barrier to adoption, and it wouldn’t look out of place on a desk.” There’s also a direct connection to Ive, since he has “a personal collection that includes a vintage Montegrappa fountain pen and a Hermes pen designed by Marc Newson,” Parmy explains. “He was deeply involved in the design of the Apple Pencil and an early commercial success in his career was designing the sporty-looking TX2 pen.”

What would an ChatGPTX2 look like? Parmy envisions a futuristic-looking stylus with a projector at the top that casts images onto hard services. “Its clip could contain a microphone and perhaps even a camera, to not only scan text for analysis but also a person’s wider environment,” she predicts. A pet rock could never!

Bonus Inspector Gadget Reading: The US can’t allow China to take over the humanoid robot industry as it did with drones. — Thomas Black

Telltale Climate Charts

There are many ways to show how bad climate change is getting, but this sentence from Mark Gongloff might be the most mind-boggling: “Climate change is already twice as painful economically as the Great Depression,” he writes. A new analysis from Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that climate disasters have cost the US at least $6.6 trillion over the past 12 years, and that’s likely an undercount: Thousands of lives are lost each year to extreme heat and wildfire smoke. “There’s still time to limit this damage, but not much,” he warns.

Meanwhile in the UK, Paddington Bear has ditched his rainy day uniform for a portable fan he bought on TikTok. Lara Williams says Britain just endured its warmest, sunniest spring on record. “With just over 653 hours of sunshine — 43% above average — spring 2025 has outshone even most summers,” she writes. That’s great for solar power and strawberries, but it’s also been its driest spring since 1974. “The combination of strong sun and low rainfall has been devastating to some crops, leaving farmers suffering from hydrological whiplash,” she writes.

You Have Questions, We Have Answers

If you had to choose one word to describe the first half of 2025, what would it be? For me, it’s “messy.” Between Trump’s tariffs, escalating military conflicts in the Middle East and the continuing war in Ukraine, it’s hard to keep up. And yet Wall Street has remained ... largely unscathed? Join Jonathan Levin, Marcus Ashworth and Robert Burgess for an audio Q&A on Tuesday, July 1 at 11 a.m. EDT as they discuss how markets managed to defy the naysayers.