A PARTY OF, BY, AND FOR THE RICH AND FAMOUS: Two Silicon Valley billionaires want to reinvent the Democratic Party with a new project called ‘WTF.’

Called Win The Future, WTF is starting as a “people’s lobby” where people can vote on policy topics that are important to them, like making engineering degrees free for everyone.

“We need a modern people’s lobby that empowers all of us to choose our leaders and set our agenda,” said Mark Pincus, the billionaire cofounder of WTF and Zynga. “Imagine voting for a President we’re truly excited about. Imagine a government that promotes capitalism and civil rights.”

Despite its roots with two powerful tech founders, WTF is taking an old-school approach to start. People will vote on the policies and discuss them on Twitter. The ones that seem to resonate will then be turned into billboards that the group plans to buy in Washington D.C. to make sure Congressional leaders see them.

While it wants to get the attention of members of Congress, WTF is also unabashedly “not for pro-politicians.” According to Recode, one of WTF’s more audacious plans has been to recruit political outsiders to run as “WTF Democrats” and challenge the old stalwarts of the democratic party. One person Pincus targeted specifically has been Stephan Jenkins from the band Third Eye Blind, according to Recode.

I’d wager that the Democrats will run as many celebrities as they can drum up, hoping to emulate Donald Trump’s success. But not many celebrities have Trump’s thick skin, and unlike Trump they can’t afford to rally support by constantly tweaking the symbiotic news media.

IT’S A MYSTERY:

That might not seem fair, but Stelter has made himself easy to mock.

DONALD TRUMP’S EUROPEAN VACATION, CANADA PAYS AL QAEDA, AND AN HOUR WITH KATHY GRIFFIN: All that and more on Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

OBAMACARE’S POISON WELL: Republicans during July Fourth recess are confronted with prospect of premiums increasing 20% in January.

Republican senators are confronting a political challenge that is increasingly hard to ignore as they engage with voters during the July Fourth recess: Under their health-care overhaul, average premiums for a midlevel insurance plan would jump by 20% next January.

Left unasked: How many people will continue buying ObamaCare plans at any price once the mandate is removed.

More:

That means many people who don’t get insurance through work would see their premiums increase just a few months before the midterm elections, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Premiums would fall in later years, in part because less-comprehensive plans would be offered by that time.

This highlights what some Republicans privately concede is a Catch-22 as GOP Senate leaders work to assemble a bill they can bring to the floor when Congress returns to Washington: Both passing a bill and not passing one carry political peril.

Repeal now, replace… someday, maybe.

PATRICK POOLE: Swedish Spy Chief Admits ISIS Sympathizers Have Increased Tenfold to 2,000.

If Swedish officials are willing to admit to 2,000, then it’s a safe bet the actual number is much higher.

PERFECT:

It’s not you, it’s us.

HEH: A Bunch of White Guys Got Together in Philadelphia and Guess What Happened?

FIZZLE: Long March 5 Failure Casts Doubt On Chinese Space Schedule.

The unexplained launch failure on July 2 has also ruined an attempt at testing an important new spacecraft bus while also putting an end to the quantum-technology communications satellite based on that bus.

Long March 5s, China’s largest rockets, are supposed to launch the Chang’e 5 lunar probe this year and the first module of China’s planned space station next year; the timing of both missions cannot now be assured. Furthermore, two other new Chinese launchers plus another soon to enter development share much technology with the Long March 5, notably engine components, raising the possibility that the launch failure has implications for them.

China’s chief space-launcher builder, Calt, developed the Long March 5 and builds it at its new industrial base at Tianjin in northern China.

The Long March 5 that failed seemed to ascend normally from its pad at the Wechang launch base on the tropical island Hainan. But on the same day Xinhua news agency, the government’s main mouthpiece, issued a terse statement: “An abnormality occurred during the flight of the rocket. The mission has failed. Experts will analyze the cause of the fault.” The English version of the report said an abnormality had been “detected” in the flight.

The payload of the failed mission was the Shijian 18 geostationary satellite, built on the DFH-5 bus, which was to go into orbit for the first time. Exploiting the capacity of the big new bus, Shijian 18 had a weight of 7 metric tons. Apart from quantum communications technology, it featured a new type of Hall-effect electric thruster.

China had a lot riding on that flight.

CHARLIE MARTIN: Charlie Gard vs. the Know-Betters.

SO IT’S COME TO THIS: Newborn baby may be the first to be registered ‘gender unknown’ because its mum insists only the tot can decide what sex it wants to be.

These are Heinlein’s Crazy Years — we just live in them.

VIRTUE SIGNALING: The Nuclear Ban Cometh… Unfortunately.

In New York, negotiations towards a nuclear weapons ban treaty—involving approximately 130 countries plus sundry civil society groups—are drawing rapidly to a close. A second draft (PDF) of the text is already under discussion. In the end, supporters of a ban will have their day. So it now seems a foregone conclusion that the UN will soon open for signature a treaty banning nuclear weapons, which would enter into force 90 days after 50 signatories have ratified it (Article 16.1).

Does that mean nuclear disarmament is close? No. In fact, the ban treaty probably won’t remove a single nuclear weapon from the face of the earth. No nuclear weapon state is attending the negotiations. And, of all those countries known to enjoy an extended nuclear deterrence guarantee, only the Netherlands is attending. Disarmament aficionados aren’t dismayed though: they get to criticise the nuclear weapon states and their allies for not attending, and to write the treaty text that best codifies their own understanding of ‘international norms’. Problems that might be genuine difficulties in any real nuclear disarmament exercise—like verifying dismantlement, punishing breakout, or designing new stable force balances at key strategic fulcra—are either postponed to a later date or avoided altogether.

In fact, the treaty’s better seen as a normative commitment than as a practical aid to a nuclear-free world. That shows up straight away in the preamble—a treaty of 21 articles is preceded by 24 paragraphs in which the signatories describe the many ways in which they are holier than thou.

It’s easy to give up what you never had, and it’s satisfying to scold others for failing to follow your non-example.

JAMES JAY CARAFANO: Top 5 Movies to Celebrate This 4th of July.

CHARLIE MARTIN: Trump Trolls the Pearl-Clutchers.

RETAIL BLUES: Amazon’s store of the future is delayed. Now what?

THIS SEEMS LIKE A NON-STARTER: Valerie Jarrett Says Trump Admin Should Spend More on Marketing Obamacare Benefits.

VIDEO: Guy Drives Across the Country in a 1948 John Deere Tractor to Raise Awareness for Wounded Warriors.

FINALLY: Cornell researchers build American eels an ‘eelevator.’

HMM: China Is About to Bury Elon Musk in Batteries.

Chinese companies have plans for additional factories with the capacity to pump out more than 120 gigawatt-hours a year by 2021, according to a report published this week by Bloomberg Intelligence. That’s enough to supply batteries for around 1.5 million Tesla Model S vehicles or 13.7 million Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrids per year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

By comparison, when completed in 2018, Tesla Inc.’s Gigafactory will crank out up to 35 gigawatt-hours of battery cells annually.

Cheap energy storage is great, but it still requires cheap energy production.

HOMELAND SECURITY: Kelly ‘Fairly Confident Right Now’ That Terrorists Aren’t Using Border Smuggling Network.

FASCINATING: Hawaiian-Canadians and ‘Buffalo’ Canadians: The hidden history of confederation.

Canada is not a simple story of French, British and Indigenous nations. At the point when British Columbia became a colony in 1851, for example, the Pacific coast contained sizable populations of Indigenous nations, a thin scattering of British and U.S. trappers and miners and a well-established community of Hawaiian Canadians.

Indigenous Hawaiians, who crewed transpacific ships, had been settling the Vancouver and Victoria areas since the 1780s, jumping ship to take jobs in the burgeoning fur and later mining and timber industries; in the 19th century, they were recruited and imported by the Hudson’s Bay Company.

In the 1830s, Hawaiian Canadians were the single most populous ethnic group employed by the company on the West Coast. By 1851, half the working-age population in Fort Victoria was native Hawaiian. By 1867, according to Tom Koppel’s history of their community, the Hawaiians had become farmers, landowners and fishermen, and were known, sometimes derisively, as “Kanaka” (the Pacific Island word for “man”). There was a substantial “Kanaka Row” shack town in Victoria, and sizable districts in Vancouver and on Salt Spring Island. They had their own schools and preachers, and while they taught their children English, some subscribed to Hawaiian-language newspapers.

I had no idea.

CHANGE: A Smaller Government, At Least At 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

On Friday, the Trump administration released its annual report on White House office personnel, disclosing the name, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. OpenTheBooks.com, a private organization that tracks government spending, calculates that the Trump White House is costing taxpayers $5 million less, and employing 110 fewer staffers than the the Obama White House in 2015.

Perhaps the biggest reduction comes in the size of the first lady’s staff: “There are five staffers dedicated to Melania Trump vs. 24 staffers who served Michelle Obama (FY2009).” God bless Melania.

Indeed.

IT RHYMES WITH MODEL T: Tesla’s mass-market Model 3 begins production Friday.

The first car will roll off the assembly line two weeks ahead of schedule. Tesla has scheduled a “handover party” for the first 30 customers for July 28.

The company plans to produce 20,000 cars in December, company founder Elon Musk said Monday in a series of Twitter comments.

The Model 3, an electric-powered car selling for about $35,000, is a crucial test for the company and its plans to make affordable electric vehicles available to a wide range of customers. Musk said he hopes Tesla will manufacturer 500,000 cars per year by 2018. The company has made about 85,000 vehicles thus far, selling them at prices of $90,000 and beyond.

Musk has promised to ramp up annual Model 3 production to half a million units in 2018, which would be a modern manufacturing miracle if he can pull it off.

DONALD TRUMP: Opioid pusher.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Scientists find mathematical formula for a flawless bottom.

The science is far from settled however, and further study is required.

BLUE STATE BLUES CHAOS: Illinois House OKs income tax hike, spending plan; Rauner vows vetoes.

With the state on the cusp of a catastrophic credit downgrade, the Illinois House on Sunday voted to end the historic budget drought by passing a long-awaited spending plan and seeking to pay for it by hiking the income tax rate to 4.95 percent.

But nothing is ever easy when it comes to patching up a political feud between two of the state’s most powerful men: Democratic Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Rauner’s administration on Sunday night said he’d veto both measures as soon as they hit his desk, should the Illinois Senate concur with the House on Monday. The administration also advised that members of the General Assembly “shouldn’t go anywhere.”

You can’t tax your way to prosperity, and you can’t go on indefinitely spending money you don’t have — two simple facts which escape most legislators.