Welcome to Scoop, where you get the scoop on this week's news.

My name is Jenna and this is Smarter News.

Well, hi, everybody.

It's great to see you as we kick off another Monday, a Monday that's really

getting us quickly towards the end of May here. And we have Memorial Day weekend ahead of us.

We'll talk a little bit about that and the tradition around that and also a lot of activity

this week before what is often viewed, although we know Memorial Day is a solemn holiday in many ways, it is often

viewed as the unofficial start to summer. And with that added pressure for American families

and politicians, we start seeing certain deadlines trying to be met. We start to see certain projects try to be managed in certain ways.

So yes, is there a parallel between parents everywhere trying to figure out all the logistics of

summer camps and lawmakers trying to figure out all the logistics of how to get a spending bill

pass? There are parallels. It is all operations. Operations,

negotiations, a little bit of research, and, you know, got to grease the wheel somehow,

whatever that looks like or what you're envisioning, I'll leave to you. I'd like to start with a,

a, just an unexpected story. You know, there's so many unexpected things that happen in our world, and we have

some serious news to get to. We're going to get to it. We have, of course, the budget deal. We have

some interesting comments coming from America's largest retailer that I think are sort of getting

buried. We have the president currently speaking to Vladimir Putin as I'm recording this. We have

no idea what news could come after this. Could this be a breakthrough? I'm recording this. We have no idea what news

could come after this. Could this be a breakthrough? We don't know. We have news percolating about

the former president, President Biden. We have all these sort of things. So just let's have a little

bit of a palate cleanser, which is ironic to use that term, considering what I'm about to tell you.

...