Good Morning! Today’s edition is 912 words, a 4-minute read.

What’s on tap: 

• Shutdown averted

• US life expectancy hits a high

• Can you trust your gut?

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Big Stories

Sonya Massey Murder Sentencing

• Former Sangamon County sheriff's deputy Sean Grayson was sentenced Thursday to the maximum 20 years in prison for the fatal shooting of Sonya Massey, a Black woman who called 911 to report a possible intruder at her Springfield, Illinois, home in July 2024. Grayson was convicted of second-degree murder in October 2025.

• Body camera footage shows Grayson shot Massey three times in the face after she said "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus" while holding an oven mitt and apologizing. She had been pouring out a pot of boiling water when Grayson told her to move away from it. Grayson testified he feared she would throw the water on him.

• The judge denied Grayson's request for a new trial on Thursday morning. Grayson's attorneys had argued the trial contained "erroneous rulings," including improperly admitting body camera footage showing his statements and actions after the shooting.

48 Hours Without Lungs

• Northwestern University surgeons kept a 33-year-old man alive for 48 hours without lungs using a custom-engineered artificial device, enabling a successful double lung transplant. The patient had influenza B complicated by drug-resistant bacteria that caused his lung tissue to liquefy.

• Removing both lungs is normally fatal because the heart's right side has nowhere to pump blood, causing immediate pressure spikes and failure. The team's "total artificial lung system" solved this by unloading the right ventricle, preventing heart collapse in the empty chest cavity, and oxygenating blood. Within 24 hours, the patient's life-threatening infection began to resolve. Donor lungs arrived 48 hours later and were successfully transplanted.

• The breakthrough could save patients currently considered too unstable for transplants. Two years later, the patient has returned to normal life with excellent lung function.

Shutdown Deal Reached

• President Trump and Senate Democrats reached an agreement Thursday to avert a prolonged government shutdown, five sources familiar with the deal said.

• The agreement provides a two-week funding extension for DHS through February 13 while funding the rest of the government through September 30. The Senate could vote as soon as Thursday night, with the House voting Monday after returning from recess. A brief weekend shutdown is expected since the House cannot act until Monday, though the impact should be minimal since most federal employees don't work weekends.

• The deal averts a shutdown of the departments of Defense, State, Treasury, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Education, and Homeland Security. The Senate rejected a $1.2 trillion funding package 45-55 hours before reaching the agreement.

Someone just spent $236,000,000 on a painting. Here’s why it matters for your wallet.

The WSJ just reported the highest price ever paid for modern art at auction.

While equities, gold, bitcoin hover near highs, the art market is showing signs of early recovery after one of the longest downturns since the 1990s.

Here’s where it gets interesting→

Each investing environment is unique, but after the dot com crash, contemporary and post-war art grew ~24% a year for a decade, and after 2008, it grew ~11% annually for 12 years.*

Overall, the segment has outpaced the S&P by 15 percent with near-zero correlation from 1995 to 2025.

Now, Masterworks lets you invest in shares of artworks featuring legends like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso. Since 2019, investors have deployed $1.25 billion across 500+ artworks.

Masterworks has sold 25 works with net annualized returns like 14.6%, 17.6%, and 17.8%.

Shares can sell quickly, but my subscribers skip the waitlist:

Skip waitlist

_{*Per Masterworks data. Investing involves risk. Past performance not indicative of future returns. Important Reg A disclosures: masterworks.com/cd}

Quick Stories

US News

• US life expectancy hit a record 79 years in 2024, driven by fewer deaths from COVID, heart disease, cancer, and drug overdoses, with 2025 showing continued improvement. (More)

• ICE halted its Maine immigration sweep Thursday after over 200 arrests, following pressure from Rep. Senator Susan Collins on Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem to end the crackdown. (More) | New videos show Alex Pretti, who was fatally shot by Border Patrol 11 days later, kicking an immigration vehicle, spitting at, and scuffling with agents at a Minneapolis protest, with a gun visible in his waistband. (More)

• A Minnesota man tried to free accused killer Luigi Mangione from a Brooklyn prison by posing as an FBI agent with a court order, but got busted. (More)

World

• Venezuela's legislature approved privatizing the nation's oil industry, reversing decades of socialist control. (More)

• China executed 11 people on Thursday for running a $1 billion scam and gambling operation and killing 14 citizens. (More)

• The EU unanimously called Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group Thursday over its protest crackdown, a symbolic move putting it alongside al-Qaida and ISIS. (More)

Business & Economy

• US stock markets closed mixed on Thursday (S&P -0.13%, Nasdaq -0.72%, Dow +0.11%). Microsoft bogged down the market by falling 10%, its worst day since March 2020. (More)

• Tesla is ending production of its Model S and X vehicles to focus on manufacturing Optimus humanoid robots at its Fremont, California, factory. (More)

• The US trade deficit nearly doubled to $56.8 billion in November, undercutting Trump's tariff strategy, as the gap with Europe surged while the shortfall with China shrank slightly. (More)

Sports & Entertainment

• The Falcons hired Bears assistant GM Ian Cunningham as GM, teaming him with new president Matt Ryan and coach Kevin Stefanski. (More)

• Elena Rybakina beat Jessica Pegula to reach the Australian Open final against top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka, surviving three missed match points and nearly blowing a huge lead before winning in a tiebreaker. (More)

• Patrick Reed, who won the 2018 Masters, is leaving LIV Golf to rejoin the PGA Tour in August, saying he wants to play closer to his family. (More)

Science, Health, & Tech

• Researchers caught coastal martens on trail cameras, the cute ferret-sized animals once thought extinct that now survive in just four populations in Oregon and California forests. (More)

• Polar bears in Norway's Arctic Svalbard islands are thriving despite melting ice, staying fat and healthy by adapting to smaller ice patches and hunting reindeer on land instead of just seals. (More)

• OpenAI's AI video app Sora is fading after a hot start, with downloads down 45% in January and spending dropping 32% as competition grows and copyright restrictions limit what users can create. (More)

Extra Credit

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