PROCUREMENT: Navy Lays Keel for Latest Attack Submarine USS Oregon.

“Oregon is going to be put to work the minute it’s launched because the demand signal is at the highest level,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat.

The keel-laying comes at a time when many in Congress and in the military are eager to get more submarines into the fleet. Groton, Connecticut-based Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia have an agreement to build two attack submarines annually.

The House and Senate Armed Services Committees have each approved bills to authorize building three submarines instead of two in some years, and also authorize additional funding to prepare for the increased work.

“It’s really a robust, bipartisan recognition that submarines are the stealthiest, strongest and most survivable among most of our naval assets,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat.

The Oregon is one of a group of submarines with design changes so the submarines will need one less period in the shipyard for maintenance over their lifespan, according to the Navy. Consequently, they will be able to do one more deployment over their lifespan, for a total of 15 deployments.

The Virginia-class attack boats have been a rare procurement win for the Navy in recent years.

DRAIN THE SWAMP: Trump Jr. touts hundreds of VA firings. “A great start, need to get replace bureaucrats w thinkers: Hundreds of VA officials fired since Trump’s inauguration.”

THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE: Bear Bites Teen At Colorado Camp, Attacks On The Rise With 100 ‘Conflict Situations’ Reported In 1 Week.

DELAWARE SENATOR CHRIS COONS: Lone Insurer Could Exit State’s Marketplace.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Mosul liberation will not be end of ISIS.

And on the question of “What to do with the corpses of Islamic State fighters?” I’d recommend forcing survivors or local sympathizers to perform the cleanup and burial duties — and without any heavy equipment or traditional rites.

YES: Does Trump have a point about Obama and Russia?

What’s the penalty for breaking Betteridge’s Law of Headlines?

WE’LL VIRTUALIZE IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE: Oculus Rift slashes prices for second time in four months.

The harsh reality for Facebook-owned Oculus is that sales of its premium Rift virtual reality headsets have not taken off. Will a second price drop for the Rift in just over four months make a difference?

On Monday, Oculus announced this latest drop, a six-week “Summer of Rift” promotion in which the combined price of Rift headgear and its optional Touch hand controllers falls to $399, down from the previous combined price of $598. Oculus vice president of content Jason Rubin says Oculus is trying to “prime the pump and make sure there’s plenty of people coming to VR.”

In early March Oculus lowered the Rift-Touch combination from $798 to $598.

“It doesn’t appear the (initial) Rift price drop has made a big difference, but the first half of the year tends to be pretty slow in gaming at least,” says Lewis Ward, IDC’s research director, for gaming and VR/AR. According to “preliminary” worldwide data from IDC, consumers have bought about 520,000 Rifts through the first half 2017, compared to 1.6 million units for the rival Sony’s PlayStation VR system and 770,000 for the HTC Vive system.

Rubin insists Oculus is not holding a fire sale. He explains that the new promotion “is really about building that ecosystem of users.”

Until virtual reality doesn’t require a massive device strapped to your face, and even its own room, it’s going to remain the next big thing.

RE-RESET: Lawmakers Rip ‘Dangerously Naive’ Trump Plan to Work with Russia on Cybersecurity.

The idea appears to be a non-starter, anyway.

RUN, CHELSEA, RUN!

FLASHBACK: Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal.

AND THIS SEEMS RELEVANT: Chelsea Clinton used foundation to help pay for wedding.

RETAIL BLUES: The Cosmetics Counter Was Long Immune to Discounting. Not Anymore.

A decade ago, shoppers would have been hard-pressed to find any Estée Lauder lipsticks, Bobbi Brown mascara or Shiseido blush on sale. These “prestige” brands are sold mainly at department and specialty stores and tend to be pricier than the so-called mass cosmetics sold at drugstores.

Department stores have long given prestige cosmetics prime space on the ground floors of their stores, and the brands confined their distribution to these emporiums.

But the retail landscape has shifted. Shoppers are increasingly skipping the mall to buy online. Specialty chains like Sephora and Ulta Beauty Inc. are siphoning away customers. Brands such as Estée Lauder, Clarins and Dior now sell to such chains as well as through their own websites.

Department stores have cut the fat. Now they’re cutting the meat.

I’D RATHER NOT: Learning to live with a North Korean ICBM.

TRUMP JUNIOR VS THE NEW YORK TIMES, RNC CHAIR VS DNC CHAIR VIA NBC, AND CHUCK SCHUMER VS… SNORTABLE CHOCOLATE? All that and more in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

WINNING: Oil Exports, Illegal for Decades, Now Fuel a Texas Port Boom.

Oil exports grew slowly through most of 2016, but this year there has been a surge reaching 1.3 million barrels a day — roughly 15 percent of domestic production — which even at today’s depressed prices is worth more than $1.5 billion a month.

That may be only the beginning. In a test a few weeks ago, the French-flagged supertanker Anne, empty but capable of holding more than two million barrels of oil, docked safely at Occidental Petroleum’s year-old export terminal here. The docking of the 1,093-foot vessel, larger than any tanker to come into port previously in the Gulf of Mexico, is seen as the herald of an export boom, lifting the spirits of American oil executives despondent over the crumbling price of crude and sending ripples across global energy markets.

“This is our chance, this is our turn to prosper,” said Khalid A. Muslih, executive vice president of Buckeye Partners, a pipeline and terminal operator in the midst of a major export expansion. “We’re working our way toward energy independence. We’re grabbing market share, and we’re doing our part to rectify our imbalance of trade.”

“Get the hell out of my way!” the wise man once said.

ALLIES: Germany starts to withdraw troops from Turkish Incirlik base.

The motion to pull the troops out of Incirlik had been approved by the German parliament in June, after parliamentarians had repeatedly been refused access to the roughly 260 soldiers stationed at the facility. Turkey had denied German lawmakers requests to make what they saw as routine visits to the base.

A German defense ministry spokesman said on Sunday that the withdrawal from the Incirlik base in southern Turkey’s Adana province was the next step in one of several bilateral disputes between Germany and Turkey. These range from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s post-coup clampdown on dissidents to Turkey’s political campaigning in Germany in the run-up to a key referendum held in April giving Erdogan sweeping new powers.

RELATED? Istanbul rally concludes anti-Erdogan march.

Hundreds of thousands of people have gathered in Istanbul at the end of a 450km (280-mile) “justice” march against the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Large numbers have joined the march since it began in Ankara on 15 June.

Opposition and protest leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu criticised the wave of arrests and imprisonments that followed last year’s failed coup.

President Erdogan has accused the marchers of supporting terrorism.

But of course.

THEY WILL SCORN YOUR PRUDENT WORDS: Politico Attacks Rubio for Tweeting Proverbs, the ‘Most Republican Part of the Bible.’

To be clear, Politico’s Joel Baden described Proverbs as Republican, not Rubio.

FACT CHECK: 94 Percent of U.S. Domestic Terrorism Fatalities Are Caused by Islamic Terrorists.

WELL DONE: Iraqi Prime Minister congratulates armed forces for Mosul “victory.”

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi arrived in Mosul on Sunday and congratulated the armed forces for their “victory” over Islamic State after eight months of urban warfare, bringing an end to three years of jihadist rule in the city.

The battle has left large parts of Mosul in ruins, killed thousands of civilians and displaced nearly one million people.

“The commander in chief of the armed forces (Prime Minister) Haider al-Abadi arrived in the liberated city of Mosul and congratulated the heroic fighters and Iraqi people for the great victory,” his office said in a statement.

The decaying corpses of militants lay in the narrow streets of the Old City where Islamic State has staged a last stand against Iraqi forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition.

“Victory” is in always quotes because, I suppose, Reuters.

PATRICK POOLE: Mass Arrests of Christians in Eritrea as Patriarch Marks 10 Years in Detention.

MAYBE SHE’LL CAMPAIGN IN WISCONSIN: Hillary Clinton looks for her role in midterms.

INCITEMENT TO VIOLENCE: Injured Baton Rouge Police Officer Sues Black Lives Matter.

RACISM, STRAIGHT UP: In Hollywood, Asian American actors see few lead roles, and pay discrepancies when they land one.

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: ‘Scab’ Goats Raise the Ire of AFSCME at College in Michigan.

BECAUSE THEY’RE BIDING THEIR TIME? Why the Robot Takeover of the Economy Is Proceeding Slowly.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: We Didn’t Expect Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and Alex Jones’s Infowars to Have This in Common.

WHEN YOU STRIKE AT A QUEEN… Dems push back against anti-Pelosi insurgents.

The insurgent Democrats, led by Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.), contend that the liberal Pelosi, after four straight losing election cycles, projects the wrong image for the party and should step aside — or be forced out — to allow a new generation of leaders to take the helm.

Moulton is stressing the urgency of a leadership change, arguing that the Democrats can’t win back the majority with Pelosi as the leader, so why wait for the next losing cycle to make the switch?

“There is clearly a desire to have this discussion and to do something — and to do something now,” Moulton told The Hill last week as Congress was preparing to leave town for the July Fourth recess.

“Another reporter recently suggested that people think we should wait until after 2018. I have not heard that from anybody — absolutely not,” Moulton added. “Some people may say that on the record, you know, for political purposes. But we want to win 2018.”

Moulton, 38, who had huddled before the recess with Rice and roughly a dozen other dissenting Democrats, said those “conversations” would continue over the break and beyond.

“We don’t want to wait until after we lose again to make the changes we know we need to make,” he said.

But a growing number of Democrats, representing a crosscut of regions and ideologies, say blaming Pelosi for the Democrats’ losses is misguided because any leader the Democrats seat will instantly become the target of similar GOP attack ads.

You mean, like the anti-Pelosi ads which were successfully used to defend Georgia’s sixth district last month?