Daily Brew // Morning Brew // Update

May 26, 2026

Welcome back. We hope your weekend travels weren’t too tumultuous or disrupted by bad weather. Be patient with your coworkers today—they are either sunburnt, hungover, or ate way too much Nuts on Clark popcorn while delayed at O’Hare.

Reminder: Today is Tuesday. Have a great short week.

—Matty Merritt, Brendan Cosgrove, Neal Freyman, Abby Rubenstein

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

The pope’s warning on AI
Teens struggling to find summer jobs
The short programs prestigious colleges are embracing

MARKETS: YEAR-TO-DATE

Nasdaq

26,343.97

+13.35%

S&P

7,473.47

+9.17%

Dow

50,579.70

+5.24%

10-Year

0.000%

-416.3 bps

Bitcoin

$77,364.37

-11.59%

Blackberry

$7.91

+108.71%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 4:00pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: Markets were closed yesterday to give traders the chance to wear their grill master aprons. Now that they’re back in the office, they’ll be watching developments in Iran and in the bond market closely, but there’s reason for optimism after stocks clinched a winning week and hit record highs last week.
Stock spotlight: Blackberry—a company whose tech is often associated with a time when typing with your thumbs was novel—soared 19% on Friday, following an earnings beat and executive comments that talked up its pivot to software.

FROM THE VATICAN

Pope delivers major AI warning

Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images

Despite his Chicago roots, the pope didn’t spend yesterday grilling by the lake. Pope Leo XIV issued his first encyclical yesterday, and spent most of the 83-page document offering a warning to Silicon Valley and policy makers about artificial intelligence.

The encyclical—a pastoral letter outlining the church’s position on a topic—is titled “Maginifica Humanitas,” which translates to Magnificent Humanity. Leo cautioned that AI could be the “new Tower of Babel”:

The document warned that AI power shouldn’t be concentrated among just a few private companies and that people’s jobs should be protected. Leo wrote that “the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs.”
Leo also urged more independent oversight and AI regulation, saying “a more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few.”
Without calling out any specific conflict, the pope criticized AI’s role in normalizing war and demanded developers build a chain of command that doesn’t allow AI to use weapons without human input.

It’s no surprise Leo spent so much time discussing AI

When he was elected last May, Leo said AI posed “challenges to human dignity, justice, and labor,” equating the technology to advancements during the Industrial Revolution.

The AI-themed encyclical was not only the first major theological doctrine of Leo’s pontificate, it was also the first papal encyclical publicly presented by the pope himself. Leo delivered his declaration while standing next to Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah, a gesture to the dialogue between Silicon Valley and the Vatican. Tech leaders traveled to Rome to discuss AI and make their case to Leo amid growing public backlash ahead of the document’s release.

A timely treatise: Pope Leo signed the encyclical on May 15, the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum,” a pivotal encyclical that highlighted the need for workers’ protections and addressed the limits of capitalism. But he didn’t just look to the past: The meditation on AI apologized for the Vatican’s role in legitimizing slavery, a first for any pope.—MM

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WORLD

Tour de headlines

Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

US strikes Iran amid peace talks. The US carried out strikes on missile launch sites and boats placing mines in southern Iran yesterday, characterizing the attacks as defensive. The strikes came hours after President Trump said that peace negotiations were “proceeding nicely.” Over the weekend, Trump suggested that a peace deal that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and address Iran’s nuclear ambitions was close. The president also floated the idea that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other countries involved in the deal should sign onto the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and some Arab nations. Iranian officials, meanwhile, had said that although conclusions had been reached on some issues, no deal was imminent.

Risk of catastrophic explosion eliminated at California chemical tank. Orange County fire officials said the risk of a vapor explosion at a damaged chemical tank at the GKN Aerospace facility had been eliminated, but that other risks were still present, including the possibility of a less intense chemical explosion. Around 50,000 residents of Garden Grove, which sits ~20 miles southeast of Los Angeles, were still under evacuation orders yesterday. The storage tank contains ~7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate, which is used to make plastic parts. When the leak was detected, officials feared an explosion or the release of dangerous chemicals into the air, but they said yesterday a crack in the tank had led to cooling that reduced these risks.

Just one world record bested at the Enhanced Games. Despite its co-founder’s prediction that “quite a few” world records would be surpassed at this weekend’s Enhanced Games in Las Vegas—a controversial competition in which doping is not only not banned but encouraged—only one competitor beat one. That’d be swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev, who completed the men’s 50-meter freestyle in 20.81 seconds, quicker than the 20.88 record set in March. Gkolomeev won the Enhanced Games’s $1 million bonus for record breaking, but won’t be officially recognized as the record holder, both because of the performance-enhancing substances and because he raced in a swimsuit that’s banned in official competitions.—AR

AGE OF UNEMPLOYMENT

The labor market has a teeny problem

Albany Times Union/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images

Your angry neighbor may have a tough time finding a teenage service worker to scream at this summer. That’s because teen employment is on pace for its lowest level in decades.

It’s not just because teenagers are busy with extracurricular activities and social media—summer jobs are getting as hard to find as lightning bugs. Outplacement agency Challenger, Gray & Christmas projects:

Teens will be hired for 790,000 jobs in May, June, and July this year.
That’s down from 801,000 jobs last summer and 1,077,000 jobs in 2024.

Where’d the jobs go? Some are disappearing because of AI-driven automation, while others are being taken by older workers, who’ve increasingly put off retirement, the agency said. But hiring in the teen-filled entertainment and leisure sector (theme parks, hotels, activity centers, etc.) is also down 70% from last year, due to higher costs from inflation and gas prices, per Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

It’s not all bad: If a teen wants to be like Wendy Peffercorn, lifeguard job postings are up 78% this year, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Indeed. And more teens are landing in retail, workforce platform Revelio Labs’ data shows, according to Barron’s.

Meal ticket: Teens are also finding work via Uber and DoorDash. Workers aged 17 to 25 are the fastest-growing age group on gig-work apps, and Gen Z registrations are up 8.4% year over year, according to mobile app researcher Apptopia.—BC

CALENDAR

The week ahead

Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

Data for consumption: Inflation fears are high, and consumer sentiment is low. We’ll get more info on both this week, starting with consumer confidence data from the Conference Board today. Then on Thursday, the Federal Reserve’s favorite way to measure inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, will be released. Welcome to the job, new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh.

A few more earnings reports: We’re on the cusp of summer, but earnings season is finally cooling off. AutoZone offers a look under the hood today, followed by Salesforce, HP, Marvell, Synopsys, and Snowflake tomorrow. On Thursday, Costco will offer some insight into ~~hot dogs~~ consumer spending, as will fellow retailers Best Buy, Dollar Tree, Burlington Stores, and Gap.

Plenty to watch: The World War II flick Pressure, starring Brendan Fraser and Andrew Scott, lands in theaters on Friday, along with comedian Nate Bargatze’s first foray into film, The Breadwinner. Web-series-turned-horror-movie Backrooms will also debut on Friday. In the sports world, both the NHL and the NBA will be offering up conference finals action all week, while the first four rounds of the French Open play out in the land of baguettes and Travolta hats.

But wait, there’s more:

Cue the theme song: After nearly 15 years, James Bond is back in video game form. 007 First Light comes out on Wednesday.
An equally impressive Brit, Paul McCartney, releases The Boys of Dungeon Lane, his first solo album in six years, on Friday.

MATTY’S WORK-LIFE BALANCE

It’s never been easier to rack up alumni status

Rick Friedman/Getty Images

On Tuesdays, the Brew’s Matty Merritt brings you the news you need to make life a little easier during your 9-5, 5-9, or OOO.

You could spend years studying for the GRE and going the traditional grad school route to have the privilege of dropping “when I was at Wharton.” But nowadays, there’s another option: You could just power through the school’s five-week Advanced Management Program.

Amid declining enrollment, cash-strapped schools are courting shorter term students through their executive education programs, according to Bloomberg:

These program are cheaper and less time-consuming for older, working students, but are also a rapidly growing source of income for universities.
Last year, Harvard University brought in $612 million from its program, a huge jump from $155 million 20 years ago.

Popular short-term courses cover everything from AI to how to be a founder. Hampton University in Virginia even rolled out a program this year to help professional athletes transition into commercial real estate.—MM

READER POLL

Can you call yourself an alum if you complete a short executive education course?

Yes, you totally went to school “just outside Boston.”
No, no degree, no claiming the school.
Maybe, it depends on the situation and the program.

Nutrition facts

Here is the ingredient list for a summertime food product commonly found at a grocery store. Can you figure out what it is?

Water, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, less than 2% of: sugar, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), dextrose, citric acid, malic acid, vegetable juice (for color), guar gum, modified cellulose, natural and artificial flavors, spirulina extract (for color), raspberry juice concentrate, locust bean gum, turmeric oleoresin (for color), cherry juice concentrate

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Firecracker popsicles

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: tumultuous, meaning “characterized by chaos, disorder, or upheaval.” Thanks to Ryan Kish from Clawson, MI, and several other readers for a suggestion that didn’t throw us for a loop. Submit another Word of the Day here.

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