🌊 Correct, Dave, A 50-Year Mortgage

NYC’s gateway to the underworld?

Today is the 99th anniversary of the opening of New York City’s Holland Tunnel. The tunnel was a remarkable feat of engineering and also the subject of many conspiracy theories. One theory claimed that the tunnel was secretly going to be used for military operations, while another theorized that the tunnel — which is 97 feet underground — was a “gateway to the underworld.” But it turns out that’s not true: Only Curtis Sliwa lives down there as it’s the only place he can hide from the Gambinos and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

–Max and Max

KEY STORY

Trump Floats 50-Year Mortgages

The White House floated the idea of creating 50-year mortgages to address housing affordability concerns

• The 30-year mortgage became standard during the New Deal era and has remained the default option since, with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying and insuring most of these mortgages. However, home prices are up 56% since January 2020, and the median age of first-time homebuyers reached 40 in 2025, up from the late 20s in the 1980s

• This weekend, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte proposed a 50-year mortgage, with Trump seeming to endorse it

• The proposal would reduce borrowers’ monthly payments by a few hundred dollars compared to a standard 30-year loan, while resulting in longer loans that incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional interest

Dig Deeper 

• Critics argued that a 50-year mortgage would not address core problems like lack of supply and high construction costs, and some economists warned that the proposal could increase home prices by bringing more buyers into a supply-constrained market

• With the average first-time homebuyer now 40 years old, many borrowers would be 90 by the time the loan was paid off, well beyond the average American life expectancy

KEY STORY

US Aircraft Carrier Arrives Near Venezuela

The US' largest aircraft carrier arrived in the Caribbean, escalating tensions with Venezuela

• In early September, the Trump Administration began conducting strikes against suspected drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The US has carried out 19 such strikes, killing 76 people and sparking a legal debate about whether the strikes violate international law

• On Tuesday, the USS Gerald R Ford entered the Caribbean, bringing with it several destroyers equipped with Tomahawk missiles and military aircraft capable of striking land targets

• The strike group's firepower extends far beyond what would be required to attack small drug-smuggling boats, though Trump has said he will not start a war in Venezuela

Dig Deeper 

• Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has repeatedly alleged that the US buildup aimed to remove him from power and warned that "millions of men and women with rifles would march across the country" if the US intervened. Venezuela ordered a massive military mobilization in response to the Ford's arrival, with 200,000 soldiers reportedly deployed as part of a heightened alert

• Last week, administration officials told lawmakers no active preparations were underway for an attack on Venezuela, a statement that persuaded enough Republicans to vote down bipartisan legislation aimed at restraining the president's ability to use military force in Venezuela

KEY STORY

Harvard Confronts Grade Inflation

Harvard released a report that found over 60% of students receive As

• A report released last month by Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education concluded that the university was “failing to perform the key functions of grading” and "damaging the academic culture of the College more generally." The report found that nearly all faculty members expressed serious concern about a misalignment between grades awarded and the quality of student work

• Among various findings, it noted that the median GPA at graduation had  increased from 3.29 in 1985 to 3.83 in 2025, while the percentage of A grades jumped from approximately 25% in 2006 to about 60% in the 2024-25 school year

Dig Deeper 

• The report attributed grade inflation in part to professors fearing that stricter grading would drive students away from their courses and result in poor evaluations unless all professors changed their standards simultaneously. The dean noted that the current system provides insufficient information to students about their performance and makes it difficult for employers and graduate programs to distinguish between candidates

• The report recommended several measures to address grade inflation, including allowing professors to award a limited number of A-plus grades and displaying the median grade for every course on student transcripts. The dean also encouraged faculty to revert to grading standards from a decade earlier and suggested implementing more in-person exams, given concerns about AI. The report also called for standardizing grading between different sections of the same course

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

KEY STORY

Epstein Documents Released En Masse

Democrats and Republicans released Epstein files tit-for-tat

• On Wednesday, shortly after the House returned to vote on ending the government shutdown, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three email exchanges from Epstein's estate that mentioned Trump

• In one 2019 email, Epstein writes that Trump “knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.” In another, from 2011, Epstein wrote, “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [Redacted Name] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there”

• Republicans said those emails were taken out of context. Shortly after, Republicans on the same committee released 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein's estate

Dig Deeper 

• Also Wednesday, after weeks of delay, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) swore in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), who had promised to provide the 218th and last signature needed to a petition that would force a House vote on releasing all Justice Department files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Grijalva’s signature potentially sets up a vote for later this month

• In an attempt to prevent that vote, Trump and other administration officials met with Rep Lauren Boebert (R-CO) on Wednesday to persuade her to remove her signature from the petition, thereby putting it below the 218 needed

WE THE 66
To Cut or Not to Cut the Department of Education?

The funding of the Department of Education has become one of the hottest debates in politics, but the media doesn’t cover it

• We interviewed leading experts on both sides of this debate, and in this part we interviewed the pro-Department of Education expert. If you support this approach to become a We the 66 member here

• The case to save the Department of Education is now live

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🇺🇸 Jack Schlossberg, grandson of President John F Kennedy, announced on Tuesday that he will seek the Democratic nomination for New York's 12th Congressional District.

🛂 The Trump Administration's State Department issued guidance recommending that overweight individuals be denied immigrant visas to enter the US.

🇮🇱 President Trump wrote to Israeli President Isaac Herzog, calling for a full pardon of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arguing that his five-year corruption trial unnecessarily diverts attention from pressing matters.

🇮🇹 Prosecutors in Milan, Italy, opened an investigation into allegations that Italian citizens paid to shoot at civilians in Sarajevo during the 1990s Bosnian war as part of "sniper safaris."

🏛️ The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to end the longest government shutdown in US history, passing legislation that had already cleared the Senate on Monday.

What does Roca Nation think?

💰 Yesterday’s Question: Should billionaires exist? If yes, why? If no, what would you do to prevent people from amassing such wealth?

💰 Today’s Question: Any responses to the above? Curious to hear more thoughts since yesterday’s responses were so interesting.

Reply to this email with your response!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🪙 Penny for Your Thoughts?: After 232 years, Philadelphia minted the last US penny, marking the coin’s discontinuation.

🐊 Drop It Like It's Croc: Scientists analyzed 55M-year-old crocodile eggshells in a Queensland, Australia, sheep farmer's backyard that belonged to extinct mekosuchines – tree-climbing "drop crocs" that ambushed prey from above.

🪈 Pipe Dream: 374 bagpipers in Melbourne, Australia set a new world record by performing AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top."

🏀 Three-Peat Performance: A Maine high school gym teacher may have earned his third Guinness World Record by sinking 1,516 three-pointers in one hour, exceeding his goal of 1,372 by 145 shots.

🏒 Puck It Forward: An 8-year-old hockey player from a legendary hockey family turned his childhood frustration into a charitable merchandise line after declaring, "I'm tired of just being a rink dude" while watching his older brothers play.

ROCA WRAP
The Boy Wonder

Orson Welles

When he was just 23, this director convinced a nation that Martians had invaded Earth.

Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1915, Welles experienced tragedy early when his mother died just after his ninth birthday. His father, a wealthy inventor turned alcoholic, died six years later. Welles had told his father he wouldn't see him until he stopped drinking and reportedly never forgave himself. 

Despite these challenges, though, Welles lied his way into Dublin's Gate Theatre – claiming he was a Broadway star – and by age 16 had launched a career that would reshape cinema.

On October 30, 1938, Welles directed a radio adaptation of HG Wells' "The War of the Worlds" that used news bulletin formatting. Listeners who missed the introduction believed actual Martian invaders had landed in New Jersey. The broadcast made the 23-year-old internationally famous overnight and even earned a disparaging mention in an Adolf Hitler speech.

At 20, Welles directed an all-black cast production of "Macbeth" set in Haiti, which became known as Voodoo Macbeth. Two years later, he staged a modern-dress "Julius Caesar" as an anti-fascist statement and packed Broadway theaters. By 23, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine. 

When the Federal Theatre Project tried to shut down his production of "The Cradle Will Rock," Welles led the cast and audience on foot to another venue 20 blocks away. Union rules prohibited the actors from performing on a commercial stage, so they sat in the audience and delivered their lines from their seats while the composer played piano.

RKO Pictures offered Welles unprecedented control for his first film – final cut, complete creative authority, and the right to write, produce, direct, and star. At age 25, he released "Citizen Kane," based on newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Hearst responded by banning all mention of the film in his newspapers and pressured studios to destroy the negative. 

The film ended up failing at the box office but changing cinema forever, becoming a definitive film considered by many to be the best movie of all time. 

Welles spent his final decades struggling to complete projects while taking acting jobs to fund his own films. He worked on "Don Quixote" for over 20 years, once burning ten reels of footage because the Moon landing made his ending obsolete. 

On October 10, 1985, Welles died of a heart attack in Hollywood, found at his typewriter working on stage directions. His ashes were buried in Spain in an old well on a bullfighter's estate, far from the studio system that both celebrated and destroyed him.

At the time of his death, Welles’ magnum opus, "The Other Side of the Wind," remained unfinished, trapped in legal disputes until its release in 2018. The boy who faked a martian invasion thus became the man whose greatest films Hollywood wouldn't let him finish.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

According to a shocking new report, the number of students taking the lowest-level math course at UCSD — one of the 10 best public universities in the country! — has soared, and those students’ math results have plummeted. Here are some unbelievable findings:

• 25% of students got 7 + 2 = ___ + 6 wrong

• 61% of students, a large majority, couldn’t round 374,518 to the nearest hundred

• 37% of students couldn't subtract fractions

Time to apologize to your local Boeing plane engineer, cause the next generation of planes are COOKED.

–Max and Max