Americans’ views of the political system have never been worse, according to a new Pew survey. Here are some of the bleak — but unsurprising — findings:

• 28% of Americans have a negative view of both parties — an all-time high and 4x higher than in 2002.

• Two in three Americans say they always or often feel "exhausted" when they think about politics.

• 63% of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the presidential candidates who have emerged so far for 2024.

Translation: US politics got an F on its report card. We started RocaNews with many of these sentiments and hope that we help minimize your political “exhaustion” while still keeping you informed. That’s our goal, and we won’t stop until every member of the exhausted cohort can try out RocaNews.

In today's edition:

• YouTube demonetizes Brand

• Alabama band teacher gets tased

• The Correspondent

 🔑 Key Stories

No More Senate Dress Code

The US Senate will no longer enforce its informal dress code

• For decades, the Senate has had an unwritten dress code that required senators to wear formal attire on the Senate floor

• Several senators, including John Fetterman (D-PA), have recently challenged that rule. Fetterman often wears baggy clothes, and to get around the dress code, he votes from the edge of the Senate floor

• On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced the Senate will stop enforcing the dress code. Senators expressed mixed opinions about it

Dig Deeper

• “It bothers me big time,” one said. “You got people walking around in shorts, that don’t fly with me”

• “I plan to wear a bikini tomorrow to the Senate floor,” another joked

• “It’s nice to have the option, but I’m going to plan to be using it sparingly and not really overusing it,” Fetterman said of the new rule

Fallout Continues

YouTube demonetized Russell Brand’s account

• Brand has 6.6M YouTube subscribers, largely through an anti-establishment talk show/podcast on which he discusses controversial social and political issues

• Last weekend, three UK outlets reported sexual assault allegations against Brand; on Monday, London police confirmed that they had received a criminal complaint against him. His management company, a charity, and other organizations cut ties to him

• On Tuesday, YouTube suspended Brand from making money from his videos on the platform. Brand has denied all allegations against him

Dig Deeper

• YouTube said Brand violated its "creator responsibility policy"

• On Monday, Brand postponed the remaining dates of a stand-up comedy tour he was on. “We don’t like doing it,” the tour’s promoters said in a statement, “but we know you’ll understand”

FTX Sues SBF’s Parents

FTX sued Sam Bankman-Fried’s (SBF) parents to recover funds they received from their son

• FTX – a crypto exchange founded by SBF – is trying to recover funds misallocated while SBF was CEO

• The lawsuit alleges that SBF’s parents, both Stanford professors, received millions from their son. SBF’s father worked for FTX for a $200,000 salary; his mother didn’t, but advised SBF on political donations. SBF allegedly once gave his parents a gift of $10M and bought them a $16.4M house in the Bahamas

• The suit claims SBF’s parents “either knew…or ignored bright red flags revealing” their son’s illegal actions, yet accepted his money anyway

Dig Deeper

• In a statement, a lawyer for SBF’s parents called the allegations “completely false” and accused FTX of trying to “intimidate” his clients and “undermine the jury process” weeks prior to SBF’s criminal trial

Violence Flares in Nagorno-Karabakh

The government of a breakaway region of Azerbaijan agreed to disarm a day after fighting broke out

• Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) is a region of Azerbaijan largely populated and controlled by ethnic Armenians. Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars over it, most recently in 2020

• Tensions have remained high, and on Tuesday, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive against NK. Officials there said the attack killed 32 people, including seven civilians, and injured 200+

• A day into the fighting, NK officials agreed to terms for a ceasefire, including a pledge to disarm. Azerbaijan said it will seek to “re-integrate” NK

Dig Deeper

• The ceasefire will reportedly end the fighting, force the withdrawal of Armenia's military, and require NK to hand over its weapons

• Armenia denounced what it called the “ethnic cleansing” of Armenians in NK and denied that its military was in the region

🍿 Popcorn

ICYMI

• Pay-to-Tweet: Elon Musk implied all users will soon have to pay to use Twitter. He claims it’s “the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots”

• Don for the count: Donald Trump Jr.’s Twitter account was apparently hacked early this morning. Among other things, he tweeted, “I'm sad to announce, my father Donald Trump has passed away. I will be running for president in 2024”

• Tragedy in Foxborough: A 53-year-old Patriots fan died after being punched in the head by a Dolphins fan at the Patriots’ stadium on Sunday. The fan died at the hospital

Wildcard

• Mile-high peeper: The family of a 14-year-old girl who found an iPhone in the bathroom on her American Airlines flight alleges a flight attendant left the camera there to record her

• Average Bills fan: A 29-year-old Bills fan covered himself in feces and jumped into a 30-foot pit at the Buffalo Bills game on Sunday. The man received a ticket

• Cymbal of injustice: An Alabama band teacher was tased after his band played too long after a nighttime football game. Police officers said they told him to stop playing but that he refused

👇 What do you think?

Today's Question:

What was the moment in which you felt most motivated?

Reply to this email with your answers!

See yesterday's results below the Wrap! 

🌯 Roca Wrap

F or Marie Colvin, no risk was too much.

Colvin was born in New York City in 1956 to a public school guidance counselor mother and a public school teacher father. She grew up on Long Island and in 1974 enrolled at Yale, where she developed a passion for reporting while working for the school’s newspaper.

One friend remembered her as a “character” who wore all black and “smok[ed] thousands of cigarettes a day.”

A year after graduating, Colvin began reporting for UPI, an American news outlet. After stints covering New York and New Jersey, UPI sent her to Paris and then to the Middle East, paving the way for her to become one of the world’s most celebrated reporters.

In April 1986, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi sponsored the bombing of a nightclub popular with Americans in West Germany. The attack killed two Americans and wounded 79, prompting speculation that President Ronald Reagan would order airstrikes on Libya. As the world waited for that to happen, Colvin traveled to Libya, with the hope of interviewing Gaddafi, who was notoriously strange and rarely met foreign journalists.

But at 3 AM one night, a woman woke Colvin and told her “the leader” had summoned her.

“My car was met by several beautiful young women in tight camouflage uniforms, high heels and make-up with pistols at their hips,” she wrote. They drove to a basement room where “in walked Gadaffi, dressed in a red silk collarless shirt, white silk pyjama trousers, and lizard skin slip-ons. Over it all he wore a gold cape. He turned, locked the door, put the key in his pocket and said, ‘I am Gadaffi.”

Colvin’s Gaddafi report was the first of dozens that would earn her a reputation as one of the world’s most fearless journalists. She soon transferred to the London-based Sunday Times, and until 2012, there was hardly a war she didn’t see with her own eyes.

In 1991, she ignored warnings to evacuate Baghdad and stayed to report on the Gulf War.

Several years later, she embedded with rebels in Kosovo, in the Balkans, and documented ethnic cleansing while coming under fire from the Serbian military. In 1999, she was one of the only journalists to stay in Timor Leste – a part of Indonesia that was in the process of seceding – and her reporting was credited with reversing the UN’s decision to leave, saving the lives of an estimated 1,500 civilians who were sheltering in a UN compound.

In December 1999, Colvin reported from Chechnya, a Russian province at war with Russia proper. After her vehicle was bombed by Russian jets, she ended up stranded with all exit routes under fire.

Chechen rebels decided to evacuate Colvin back to Georgia by foot through the mountains, spending eight days trekking through 12,600-foot peaks with Russian jets circling overhead.

In 2001, Colvin snuck behind the front line in Sri Lanka’s civil war to meet a rebel commander that no one else had interviewed. The Sri Lankan government had blockaded the rebels and banned journalists from accessing them.

While sneaking back out after the interview, Colvin came under fire.

A grenade thrown by the Sri Lankan military left her bleeding out, and the subsequent evacuation and surgeries left her missing her left eye. She covered it with an eyepatch and continued to work, reporting from Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, and elsewhere in the following years.

Colvin said she felt a need to show war’s human casualties.

In a 2010 speech she spoke of “the terror one feels and must contain when patrolling on an embed with the armed forces through fields and villages in Afghanistan…putting one foot in front of the other, steeling yourself each step for the blast.”

“[Covering wars] has always been a hard calling. But the need for frontline, objective reporting has never been more compelling,” she said.

Colvin was known for being opinionated and stubborn.

In one speech, she spoke of her desire not to be seen as a “female” correspondent, saying that “courage knows no gender” and “feminists nark me.” She suffered from PTSD and alcoholism and twice married and divorced the same man, while another husband – also a war correspondent – committed suicide.

Colvin’s final reporting trip was to Homs, a Syrian city occupied by rebels that was under heavy bombardment from Syria’s government.

While the city was under siege, Colvin had smugglers sneak her in. In her last written article, she detailed a city where civilians were constantly under attack: "The scale of human tragedy in the city is immense. The inhabitants are living in terror.”

On February 21, 2012, she live-streamed from Syria onto news channels around the world.

“The top floor of the building I'm in has been hit, in fact, totally destroyed. There are no military targets here,” she said. “There are rockets, shells, tank shells, anti-aircraft being fired in parallel lines into the city. The Syrian Army is simply shelling a city of cold, starving civilians.”

The next morning, the Syrian Army intensified its fire on her building, and a rocket struck and killed Colvin while she was grabbing her shoes to evacuate.

A US court has since found that Syria’s government ordered the strike to silence her reporting, which was among the first to document first-hand what was happening in Syria. Colvin’s death sparked huge outpourings of grief and tributes, including a 2018 movie – ”A Private War” – in which Rosamund Pike played her.

Colvin’s legacy remains in much of what we know about the wars fought since 1986.

If you have thoughts, let us know at [email protected]!

 🌊 Roca Clubhouse

Yesterday's Poll:

Have you ever used a dating app?
Yes: 30%
No: 70%

Yesterday's Question:

Should your government negotiate with other governments to release hostages?

Ray from Philadelphia: "No - If we reliably pay to gain the release of hostages, we are turning everyone who travels under a foreign passport into currency”

Anonymous: "The US government should negotiate hostage releases but only on a 1 for 1 personal level . Ransoms in any format should not be paid”

Sheri from The Villages, Florida: "Whether we should or shouldn’t, we do and always have. Maybe not immediately, and citizens suffer the wait, but at some point negotiation takes place. What shouldn’t happen is the trade of people AND huge sums of monies (from wherever) to capturing countries!”

Cynthia from Texas: “Depends on the circumstances. Truly innocent Americans who travel to what is a safe country when they went should be negotiable, particularly if they are being subjected to torture or possible death. Otherwise, no!”

Yesterday's Wrap Replies:

Yesterday’s Wrap told the story of an undercover police officer who lied about his identity.

Jamie: “Hmmm? You think maybe the police are part of the Government? And they take their lead from the lying politicians that we keep electing year after year?”

Mary: “If the name was the only thing the police offer lied about that would be alright I guess. But if the police officer was living as their identity and lying about their background, job, religion, family and whatever else, then I would see an issue.”

Glen: “Lying about identities can only cloud ethics and the integrity of Police Work.”

Rain from Augusta, Georgia: “Yes, but not to the extent that they can include other people in their falsehood. There is no need to force or THREATEN innocent people who have nothing to do with the investigation to keep it quiet. It's borderline intruding on our rights to force these people to become part of such a scary and dangerous situation, one they didn't want to become part of. If they are not involved in the investigation, leave them to live their lives. Do not become personally involved with a person and force them to hide YOUR secrets. Well, at least a secret like that one. Anyway, sorry for the rant, AWESOME wrap today!”

🧠 Final Thoughts

Some bleak polling numbers to start the newsletter, but — thanks to the Roca Riders we meet — our hope abounds. There are so many of us out there — including in Germany where one of the Maxes is learning that Roca is a hit. We are offering a bright alternative to the bleak status quo, and we hope it continues to grow every week.

Thank you for your support since Roca would be nothing without you.

—Max and Max