Comcast Dumps NBCUniversal & SCOTUS Protects Fed’s Independence…For Now

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0:33Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the Supreme Court protects Fed independents for now. Then Nike miscalculated America's World Cup fever and it's running out of jerseys. It's Tuesday, June 30th. Let's ride.

0:59Good morning. Well, you made it. Today is the last day of the first half of 2026. time to hit the locker room, throw some ice on some of the problem areas, and make a game plan to start the third quarter with a bang. Toby, I honestly don't remember my New Year's resolutions, so that means I haven't failed to live up to them. I mean, we often ask each other, was it a fast week or a slow week? Now I'm asking you, fast half or slow half, Neil? I think it was a fast half of the year. I mean, it always is, but I forget who won the Super Bowl. I would say it's lightning fast. It's the saying, the days are long, but the years are short.

1:36I am definitely starting to feel that. Looking forward to what the next half of the year brings. Over, under, on straight of Hormuz mentions in the back half of the year. I hope for the world economy and everyone's sanity, I hope it's under. This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. It's hosted by Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research. Each week, Lizanne, Colin, and their guests analyze economic developments and bring context to conversations around stocks, fixed income, the economy, and more.

2:11You can download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts. So last year, President Trump attempted to fire two government officials, Fed Governor Lisa Cook and FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, whose pushback landed their cases in the Supreme Court. Yesterday, the justices handed down their decisions. Trump could fire Slaughter, but he couldn't get rid of Cook for now. In one of the two major decisions over presidential power, the Supreme Court agreed with Trump that presidents have the ability to fire members of federal agencies like Slaughter at the FTC, who carry out functions under the executive branch.

2:49The dramatic ruling strikes down a 90-year-old president known as Humphrey's Executor that sought to protect agency leaders from political influence. So that was a big win for Trump and really any future president who wants to bend the federal bureaucracy to their will. However, Trump suffered a loss against Lisa Cook, a Fed governor whom he fired last year over unsubstantiated allegations of mortgage fraud. In this case, the Fed allowed Cook to remain in her role while litigation continued, saying that out of all the agencies in the federal government, the Federal Federal Reserve was the special child.

3:23It had to be protected from political influence and must remain independent so as to preserve faith in American financial markets. Toby, a 1-1 draw for Trump on a historic day of decisions at the Supreme Court. Yeah, and the Supreme Court justices knew the stakes of what they were doing here because in the majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, he said not only the fact of independence, but also the appearance of independence is key to the Federal Reserve's design. So they were reading outside the lines a little bit here, even though that they were ruling on this specific case.

3:54And that's why I think one of the biggest winners here is Chair Kevin Warsh. He is newly in the position, obviously. And so this Supreme Court ruling reinforces that he's got that independence backstop at his back. Because remember, I mean, Jerome Powell was under immense pressure from Trump, immense pressure to try to change interest rates. This gives Warsh a little bit of breathing room as kind of the new guy on the job. So the Fed is protected and we should say it was a narrow ruling. The Supreme Court said that basically Lisa Cook did not have the opportunity to respond to the allegations, which is why they kind of punted down the road this particular decision.

4:33They didn't say forever and ever the president cannot fire any member of the Federal Reserve, just in this case narrowly that Cook did not have the opportunity to respond and push back. And that's why they're protecting her while litigation continued. So they're protecting the Fed. But when it comes to the rest of the federal bureaucracy, they're saying this falls under the executive branch and the president can do whatever they want to fire particular members. And this is a sprawling federal bureaucracy. It's the alphabet soup of what they talk about when it comes to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Postal Service, the National Labor Relations Board.

5:10These are the agencies that protect everything from consumers to labor relations to highway safety. And what this decision did by ripping up this 90-year-old precedent, Humphreys Executor, which actually goes back, interesting story, also relates to the FDC when FDR tried to fire the head of the FDC at the time because he didn't like the decisions he were making, wasn't on board with the Green New, or with the New Deal, not the Green New Deal. So that's been in place for almost 100 years now. And the Supreme Court says, well, actually, these things fall under the executive branch. The president has the ability to fire these members.

5:46Yeah. Decision in that case definitely strengthens presidential control over, you know, some of the branches of the government. While the other one, you're right, just punts the can down the road, kicks the can down the road, mixing metaphors there. But this is not the end of this fight, especially when it comes to Lisa Cook. Literally minutes after the ruling came down, Bill Pulte, who is the top housing official, who's kind of been leading this charge against Cook, who also was recently elevated to acting director of national intelligence, said that he would continue his campaign against Cook.

6:17He wrote on social media that he expected Cook would be charged with committing mortgage fraud. So again, while this specific case took the very narrow lens, as you were describing, the broader fight specifically against Lisa Cook is not as far from over. Moving on, Comcast is ditching the peacock. Yesterday, the telecom giant announced it would split off NBCUniversal into a separate company, joining the wave of connectivity providers purging their content arms. Investors applauded the move, sending shares up 5 % on the news. In effect, Comcast is breaking itself up into two distinct publicly traded companies.

6:52One is classic Comcast, broadband, internet, wireless, and cable. The other, NBCUniversal, will contain theme parks, Universal Film and TV studios, Peacock, NBC and Telemundo, Bravo and the European media business Sky. The split unwinds a merger from 15 years ago and highlights just how much the media world has changed since then. In 2011, Comcast acquired a majority stake in NBCUniversal from its previous owner, GE, in the hopes that combining distribution and content, the pipes and the stuff that goes into the pipes, the cable package and the shows you watch on there would be a winning formula.

7:27It's the same philosophy that led AT &T to buy Time Warner for$85 billion in 2018. In contrast to that epic disaster of an AT &T deal, the Comcast and NBC partnership wasn't a total cluster, but things have gone south in a big way recently as streaming defenestrated cable and people rushed to cut the cord. The stock is down nearly 60 % in the past five years, and that forced Comcast's hand to rip apart its conglomerate. It's so funny because you go back to 2011. This was supposed to bring synergies and create more value for shareholders by combining. And now you fast forward to today, you're now supposed to create more value for shareholders by separating them.

8:07It's just this vicious media cycle that we've seen play out, not just with Comcast, but with tons of companies. AT &T brought Time Warner, said, nope, eventually let's spin Warner Media back out. Verizon bought AOL and Yahoo, who tried to combine those digital and wireless businesses. Nope, sold those assets a few years later. So the pattern is so consistent where you try to buy the content, you try to create these massive synergies, you promise this to shareholders, and then eventually you separate the businesses because it's hard to run combined businesses, especially as kind of the broadband business is heating up.

8:44You're facing immense pressure from Starlink as well. So they're like, let's just focus on what we can do well separately rather than try to run this big conglomerate subparly. Yeah. So why would a cable company be good at making content? It doesn't make sense. And that's why in season four of 30 Rock, which I encourage everyone to watch if you want to understand sort of the chaos around some of these deals, they parody. I mean, they work for NBC and they parody the fact that Comcast was buying them and they say it's a cable company from down in Philadelphia called Cable Town with a K. But they kind of put a knife into this particular deal saying this is doesn't make sense just because you're a distribution company and you distribute cable to hundreds of millions of households doesn't mean you have any idea of making the content that goes into them.

9:31Immediately, people were saying, what happens to NBC Universal? Obviously, it's going to be a standalone company for now, but that it also attracted a lot of acquisition rumors. Maybe Netflix buys it. Maybe Apple buys it. Maybe Amazon goes after it. But a lot of people said, hey, this business is beefier than you think. It's not just Peacock. Universal is actually one of the fastest growing theme park businesses in the world. And that actually could make it especially attractive to Netflix, who has been trying to move into that more experience. experiential space. So you saw a lot of media prognosticators saying, I'm calling it right now.

10:06Netflix is going to make a play for this, especially because they just missed out on Warner Brothers as well. So maybe we're seeing another tie-up future. This time it's media on media, though. Moving on, Nike is almost out of U.S. men's national team jerseys. As the stars and stripes gear up for their crucial knockout clash with Bossie and Herzegovina, fans can't find any jerseys to buy. Nike is sold out of most adult sizes. Dick's Sporting Goods only has youth sizes left. And a trip to Soccer.com shows just smalls remaining. Part of the issue is demand has been off the charts. U.S. Soccer says through the group stage, online jersey sales are more than double what they were during the 2022 World Cup.

10:48That's causing supplies to run short, despite the fact that they are selling merch at 10 times more retail locations this time around. It is a big egg on the face moment for Nike, whose stock is already down 35 % so far this year. The company tried to thread the needle, balancing inventory and demand so as not to end up with excess jerseys after the tournament ends. But one retail exec vented to The Athletic that Nike never seems to get the puzzle right. Retailers have been telling Nike to make more jerseys before these events happen. They just ignore it. Neil, luckily we snagged some before things sold out, but it sounds like Nike has to channel its inner Trenton and make some new jerseys.

11:27Good one. First of all, I wonder how much the soccer.com domain would sell for. That is crazy. This is a replay from back in February when Nike did not make enough jerseys or did not see the surge in demand when it came to the U.S. men's hockey team when they went on their run to win the gold medal for the first time since 1980. You could argue that this is a little more predictable because the U.S. didn't have exactly like the murderer's row of a group stage. So they were likely going to make it to the round of 32 and there'd be an upswell of interest and people would want to buy the jerseys to give sports apparel makers some grace when it comes to making jerseys for the Olympics or the World Cup for fans to buy.

12:08It is a very unique situation in which there's crazy amount of interest for just a few months. And then when the whole thing's over, unless you win, things kind of die out. So it is a very interesting inventory management situation. But it looks like Nike, you could probably have anticipated this and made a few more jerseys because the U.S. was likely going to make this run. Yeah, obviously, if the team plays well, that is going to, as one retail exec put it, pour gasoline over demand. end but also soccer has kind of emerged as more of a cultural and fashion thing than just a sport thing versus maybe u.s hockey for instance hockey jerseys are not going to be worn out around town although i don't know maybe some people would but they have a a soccer jerseys have a position in the fashion world as well i mean adidas sold out of curacao's pastel yellow away jersey because it It was just this very beautifully designed jersey.

13:03The team didn't even wear the jersey. They got eliminated before they even got a chance. So that's not necessarily fan demand doing it. It is just the fact that people like the cultural tie to it as well. So the jersey shortest cannot only be blamed on the fact that the U.S. is doing well. It can also be blamed on the fact that Nike hasn't realized just how much of a cultural and fashion symbol these shirts have become. Yeah, and we're seeing sort of a World Cup inside a World Cup between all these apparel makers that are supplying jerseys to these World Cup teams. I mean, specifically, you're seeing Nike and Adidas who have gone after each other for decades.

13:36Nike has some major teams. Adidas also has some major teams, and they're all whipping out these new designs to get people to buy them. And you're right that soccer jerseys. I mean, I have seen so many soccer jerseys of people on the street in New York and probably in other cities this summer. So it's really having a moment outside of the World Cup. What's so ironic, too, is that Nike's been U.S. soccer's kit supplier for the last 30 years. But before that, it was Adidas. And Adidas has kind of this very vintage U.S. men's national team jerseys that are coming back to the fore, especially because people don't have Nike jerseys to buy.

14:16So not only is Nike missing out on some of the potential customers, they are also getting kind of ambushed marketed by these retro adidas jerseys and you look in some of the fans obviously a lot of people have the current one but a lot of people are wearing the older one so it's a one-two punch right now of you're missing out on attracting new business and you're also kind of getting mogged by your older competitor who are just wearing these pretty groovy retro jerseys we have to talk about what happened yesterday at the world cup because all three games were just absolutely insane brazil defeated japan who is an adidas supplier to tie back to our story two to one.

14:51This is a last minute goal, basically a buzzer beater. And then we had two penalty kick shootouts, Germany, huge upset to Paraguay, um, which was certainly a Cinderella story. Now that was on penalties. And I was at a, I was at a German bar where I sprinted out right away because it was, I mean, I can't even fathom the depression. So as soon as Paraguay scored that last penalty, like I just got out of there so fast because it was just so awkward and I feel so bad, but very excited for Paraguay. And then late last night, Morocco beat the Netherlands on penalties in a real heavyweight matchup. By the way, shout out U.S.

15:28again. Everyone wrote us off for beating Paraguay 4-1. Turns out Paraguay was kind of good, actually, and maybe we are too. We're going to take a quick hydration break and come back with Toby's trends right after this. Toby, let's do some free word association. Financially stressed. Toby. What about unexpected$1 ,000 medical expense? Crying, stress, lots of stress. Duck? Aflac. Smart man. Aflac pays claims fast, accurately, and fairly. Their plans can even help businesses and employees save tax dollars when payroll deductions are pre-taxed while coming at no direct cost to businesses. To learn more, just head to aflac.com slash morningbrewdaily.

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16:50That's spectrum.com slash business. Restrictions apply. Service is not available in all areas. Neil, it feels like every week there's a new AI model making headlines. And somehow I'm expected to keep up with all of them. Fair. But Minimax's new M3 is one worth paying attention to. Their open-weight model combines frontier-level coding and AI agent capabilities, a massive 1 million token contacts window, and native multimodal understanding. M3 is built for coding, agent, and visual understanding, helping developers and businesses build more capable AI products and automate complex tests. It's available today through APIs and leading AI platforms.

17:32To learn more and start building with M3, visit minimax.io. That's minimax.io. The 90s are calling and they want their sacks back. Today's Toby's Trend is all about the surprising comeback hacky sacks are staging in high schools across the country. Searches for hacky sacks spiked more than 5 ,000 % on Google last month, according to NPR. There's not one reason you can point to for the revival, but social media certainly played a role. Searches for hacky sack jumped 7 ,000 % on TikTok compared to last year, as high schoolers in the Northeast popularized the trend by posting videos online. Scroll and you'll come across fictional rankings, varsity and JV rosters, even fake D1 recruiting commitments.

18:17ESPN has reposted some videos amplifying the craze. It's helping slingers of sacks too. Business has exploded, bomb footbags owner Mike Hare told Bloomberg. Side note, the official name for hacky sack is footbag, while hacky sack is a brand name. One played against sports owner in Concord, California, says he's receiving 15 phone calls a day asking if hacky sacks are available. Some stores are limiting how many a customer can buy. Neil, in terms of trends, this feels like a good one. Kids are getting outside, away from their phones, just sacking away. The sack senescence is underway. Okay, I'm workshopping something here.

18:55Let me know what you think. Hacky sack is the pickleball of soccer. Whoa. No. No? Okay, well. Sure. I'm still thinking about it, but it makes sense in my mind. we can actually identify where this trend started and uh it started in the new england prep school lacrosse circuit in massachusetts and connecticut and so i gotta throw my preppy jock some respect here because when you think about all of the online viral trends that we've talked about over the past few years they never start with the preppy jock so i gotta throw my people some love not exactly the cultural pacemakers but there's a lot of reasons why hacky sack is coming back to the four the overarching you know toby's trend of the year is that kids want more irl experiences they want to hang out with their friends so do things that you happen offline hacky sacking is one of those one it's also very collaborative it's not competitive you can't really competitively sack i know you'd find a way to make it competitive i was gonna say there definitely is competitive hacky sacking but you're just kind of playing together you're not trying to beat your your opponent.

20:02And then it's also pretty cheap, even though some foot bags have been surging in prices. And a lot of these hacky sacks purveyors are saying, yeah, we're going to raise prices because we're trying to cash in on this craze while it's happening. But mostly you can get a bag for under$20. It's nostalgic too. Again, a very big through line through a lot of these trends is the fact that it looks back to the past. Obviously, Gen Z loves a 90s aesthetic, and this fits squarely into that. So a lot of different factors are feeding into it. I remember saying to you, like I've been seeing a lot of hacky sack videos recently and it truly has become this incredible groundswell that you see amplified by social media.

20:40Yeah, and one of the major factors here that I think is making it cool is that everyone's made it into sort of an inside joke. They basically comparing it to a varsity sport. They're creating leaderboards. There's one account called M-I-A-A hacky sack that basically purports to be the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association body for the sport of hacky sack. And they say, oh, he's committing to the hacky sack D1 program at this college. So they've made it sort of an inside joke that this is this very competitive varsity sport. And that just fueled, I think, the flames. Hopefully this fuels the next generation.

21:17I'm thinking back to your theory of that it relates to soccer. Maybe this does get a new generation of kids playing with their feet. And it lays the groundwork for the U.S.'s next run to win the World Cup or maybe win this World Cup. But anything, sports are not usually done with your feet. Like soccer is the only one. Hacky sack is the only other thing that I could say that would allow you to use your feet in an athletic way. So I'm kind of on board with your, I can't remember what it was, the pickleball of what? Yeah, so basically as pickleball is to tennis, hacky sack is to soccer. so they're gonna start taking down all the soccer uh all the soccer fields and putting up hacky sack stadiums oh gosh never mind hearing you say it again i'm back out on the theory all right let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines ford tried to go the ai and automation route to improve service to its vehicles it didn't work and now it's backtracking we were relying more and more on automated quality systems ford ceo kumar galhorta said charles poon the company's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering admitted Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence, that would produce a high-quality product.

22:24It has since rehired 350 veteran engineers to bring a human touch back to its factory floors. The change in strategy appears to be working. CEO Jim Farley has said better quality control has reduced warranty and recall costs by hundreds of millions of dollars. And this week, Ford ranked as the top mainstream brand in J.D. Power's initial quality survey. Neil, the company affectionately calls these sorts of hires graybeards for the ability to show younger employees the ropes and maybe more importantly, teach the AI too. Seems like a good idea to keep graybeards around. Yeah, just bringing a bunch of Gandalfs usually does the trick.

23:00Thing to know about Ford is it's had some insanely bad quality issues in the first six months of 2025. I think this was a Neil's number last year. It had more safety recalls, 88, than any car company has ever had an entire calendar year. So whatever they were doing was absolutely not working. They brought in the army of graybeards back, and it looks like they've got things a little more under control. We've also seen other companies that have laid off humans to bring in AI, backtrack on that a little bit. The one that comes to mind is also is Klarna, the fintech giant. it laid off 700 customer service employees to pivot to AI and just have AI do all of that, but then they brought them all back because of quality concerns.

23:44Up next, the Dow is getting a new character, 26 of them actually. Yesterday, the index officially welcomed Alphabet, the parent company of Google, replacing Verizon after a forgettable 22-year run. The Dow may be 130 years old, but every so often it reshuffles the deck to stay relevant and better represent the modern economy. Two years ago, it invited NVIDIA and Sherwin-Williams to the club, replacing Intel and Dow Inc. With Alphabet's edition, the 30-member index wants to show its hip to the AI trend. However, waiting this long to add freaking Google, the second biggest company in the world and not exactly a newcomer, may give more ammo to critics who consider the Dow an out-of-touch dinosaur.

24:23Some people are actually saying it's an anti-signal because if the Dow is openly embracing AI, maybe the AI trade has already come to pass because the Dow is so far behind many of these trends that by the time they eventually do circle around to adding a company, you're like, well, it's too late now. We're all kind of screwed. So some people are saying it's a contrarian signal. Let's look at how much influence it will actually have over the index because Alphabet is a$4 trillion company, second biggest in the world. Remember, unlike the S &P 500, the Dow doesn't care how big a company is overall.

24:57It is share price weighted, not market cap weighted. So despite being the second biggest company in the world, it will account for roughly 4 % of the Dow. The companies that have a bigger weight are Goldman Sachs, Caterpillar, United Health, Microsoft, Amgen, and Alphabet comes in at that sixth spot. So it's actually not as bad as I was expecting because it is about 4 % of the Dow. Alphabet is roughly 6 % of the S &P 500. So it's closer than most companies. Like I'm thinking of NVIDIA barely has the influence over the Dow that it does over the S &P 500. But that's always something to look at when a company is added to a share price weighted index rather than a market cap weighted index.

25:41Who could be the next one booted? I mean, I'm looking at Nike. I did not know that Nike was still in the Dow. But yeah, if they can't supply. I mean, yes, the stock is actually down 70%. 70%. And if they can't figure out this Jersey fiasco, then I think they might be. Take them out. Finally, want to know why your company is bringing you back to the office? It might have less to do with productivity and more to do with your boss's ego. According to a new study from Warren, the strongest predictor of opposition to remote work is narcissism. The bigger a leader's desire for status, authority, and admiration, the more likely they were to insist employees come back to the office.