| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a 365 party girl bringing back Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. President William McKinley was a man of many talents. At 17, he taught at a one-room schoolhouse and made $25 a month. At 19, he drove a wagon of coffee to the front lines of the Battle of Antietam (oh, to have interned during the Civil War). And as president, he trained his pet parrot — a double yellow-headed Amazon named Washington Post — to whistle "Yankee Doodle Dandy" for White House guests. But was he a "tariff king," as former President Donald Trump asserted in his recent interview with Bloomberg Businessweek? After a thorough investigation into the matter, Justin Fox and John Authers both say the answer is no.  "Tariffs were high in the US for the entire 19th century, during both good economic times and bad," Justin writes. Although Trump tried his best to revive that era, the impact of tariffs today is still extremely low; during his tenure, they only generated 2% of federal revenue. Plus, "US government spending is now almost ten times higher as a share of GDP than it was in the McKinley era, and even doubling or tripling or quadrupling tariff revenue wouldn't change the federal fiscal picture much," he notes. You know what's also a LOT higher than it was? The surging US federal debt: While the Tariff Man talks a big game, Kathryn Anne Edwards says what Trump's party doesn't mention can tell us just as much about his priorities. Curiously absent from the Republican platform? Any mention of the government's $34.8 trillion tab. "It's a stunning omission," she writes. "If you believe the conservative fiscal hawks, these last four years under the Biden administration have been nothing less than an existential crisis." Yet their strategy for tackling the federal debt amounts to zip, zero, zilch. Project 2025 is no better. Not one sentence is spared for Social Security, yet Kathryn says "the government will send around $1 trillion to retired seniors this year alone." Combined, those two glaring omissions could lead to chaos: "Think about it," she writes: "The 2017 tax cuts would be extended, causing debt and deficits to predictably swell to historic highs. But with the extensions in place, Republicans could about-face, return to their fiscally conservative roots and demand that debt and deficits finally – finally! - be brought under control." And what would be dead center in their budget-cutting sights? Yep: Social Security. Read the whole thing. It has come to my attention that I need to explain Charli XCX's Brat to boomers. CNN, evidently, was not up to the task:  Love her, but no <3 So what does "brat" mean? If you tried to Google the answer, you've already failed. You're a 365 party girl bringing back the noughties, you're not verifying stuff on the internet! To have a brat summer is to live unbridled. You're sweating through your tube top at the club in Bushwick. You're sipping spritzes at the pool hall and there's pizza grease on your phone. You're jaywalking with a bag of Cheetos in your left hand and a Bic lighter in your right. It's trashy and it's tacky and your feet have more blisters than you can count, but you're listening to Sky Ferreira in your wired headphones and she's healing you. You're forgiven if the connection between all that and Kamala Harris escapes you. Really, what happened is one Gen Zer on social media — @ryanlong03 — stayed up until 3 am on July 3 making a "von dutch brat coconut tree edit" featuring the vice president and millions of people on the internet went absolutely feral for it. Now, copycats abound. Harris's campaign team has leaned in to her memefication. And Jake Tapper is saying "I will aspire to be brat" on live television. The best part? It's actually working, if this viral tweet about Twisters is any indication.  But Harris has more than memes: she has momentum. And that scares Republicans! Naturally, the minds behind Project 2025 are already hard at work spreading rumors about how her candidacy presents "election integrity issues." The Heritage Foundation's Mike Howell went so far as to suggest that Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin have "specific procedures for withdrawal of a presidential nominee" that might not allow her to replace Biden in November. But Mary Ellen Klas says efforts to keep the Democratic presidential candidate's name off the ballot are "an absurd distraction and a waste of time." Plus, "legal scholars have widely concluded that because Biden was not the Democratic Party's official nominee, any attempt to challenge his replacement will be deemed frivolous," she writes. You know what's not frivolous? Making memes to try and win a presidential election. Bonus Election Reading: When Kamala Harris calls Donald Trump a predator, voters will listen. — Francis Wilkinson Olympic athletes in Paris might be struggling to sleep on cardboard beds, but at least they have access to one of the best public transportation networks in Europe! "Mayor Anne Hidalgo's crusade to pedestrianize, modernize and de-motorize swathes of the city has seen road congestion fall and air quality improve," Lionel Laurent writes. A small consolation prize for a stiff neck, I suppose:  Hundreds of thousands of families in America feel boxed in by their low mortgage rate. Until recently, Jonathan Levin's family was one of them. Then he said, "to heck with it all!" and bought a larger house. "My two daughters — who shared a room with bunk beds — were getting older and accumulating more clothes, and we wanted them to have spaces of their own. And, yes, sue me, we wanted a pool," he writes. (He's preaching to the choir with the pool!) "Homes may be Americans' biggest individual investments, but they're also places that we live first and foremost." It's a nice reminder for people freaking out about their losing their precious pandemic-era mortgage. Google's $23 billion snub from Wiz will sting them both. — Parmy Olson Can Ray-Ban's owner make Supreme relevant once more? — Andrea Felsted The end of China's cement boom will lead to a healthier planet. — David Fickling The CrowdStrike outage that grounded flights and hurt hospitals is a warning to banks. — Paul J. Davies Private equity is illiquid by design. Remind me why we're worried about it? — Aaron Brown Trump's out-of-nowhere dig at El Salvador's president says a lot about his foreign policy plans. — Juan Pablo Spinetto Finally, the Modi government has acknowledged the severity of youth unemployment. — Andy Mukherjee A foldable iPhone is coming. Tesla shares are down. Trump might suck at golf. Welcome to the TikTok Olympics. Meet cocaine shark. (h/t Andrea Felsted) Refrigerate your blood oranges. Notes: Please send cold citrus and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and follow us on Threads, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. | 
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