Good morning. It is Thursday, May 7th, and this is your Morning Brief.

The top national story this morning is still the Strait of Hormuz, but the story has shifted again. The continuity line from earlier this week was that shipping had not truly restarted even after Washington talked about restoring navigation. This morning the new wrinkle is that Iran has moved to formalize its grip on the waterway instead of simply signaling it through threats. The Associated Press reports that Tehran has created a new agency to vet and tax vessels passing through the strait while it reviews the latest U.S. peace proposals.

That matters because it tells you the conflict is no longer just a military standoff or a diplomacy headline. It is becoming an economic control story. Iran appears to be trying to turn its choke point into leverage even during negotiations. So even if markets are reacting with hope that a deal could be close, the practical question remains whether commercial shipping companies, insurers, and energy traders believe the route is actually dependable again.

That is the thing to watch today. Not rhetoric. Not optimistic leaks. Real traffic. If tankers and cargo ships begin moving in meaningful numbers, markets will treat that as proof that de-escalation is real. If they do not, then the broader inflation and supply-chain risk is still sitting there, waiting to spill back into energy prices and consumer costs. This remains one of the clearest examples of how a foreign policy crisis turns directly into a kitchen-table economics story in the United States.

The second national story is in Washington, where the immigration funding fight is becoming more concrete by the day. Reuters and Roll Call report that Senate Republicans are pressing ahead with a large reconciliation package to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and related enforcement operations through the rest of President Trump's term. Earlier this week we were watching the rough topline. Now the political fight is increasingly about the actual details and what kind of enforcement buildout Republicans can carry on a party-line track.

The continuity here matters. The earlier Homeland Security funding fight did not settle the real policy question. It only postponed it. What is happening now is the larger ideological version of that battle: more money, more detention and transport capacity, more operational spending, and a more explicit test of how far Republicans want to go while they still have procedural leverage.

This is why the story is bigger than budget mechanics. It is really a governing-priority story. If this package keeps advancing, immigration enforcement stays in the center of both the spending debate and the fall political debate. The near-term watch item is whether any Republican discomfort emerges over total cost, scope, or specific line items, and whether Democrats frame their opposition mainly around civil liberties, fiscal stewardship, or the simple argument that this is the wrong response to affordability pressure across the country.

A third national story this morning is the Supreme Court's temporary abortion-pill ruling, which is still very much a live deadline story rather than a settled legal question. The Court restored telehealth, mail, and pharmacy access to mifepristone earlier this week, but only through an administrative stay that currently runs until Monday, May 11th.

The continuity line is that this issue keeps moving in sharp bursts instead of resolving cleanly. What looked like established access was interrupted. Then the Court stepped in temporarily. Now everyone is waiting for the next turn. That means the legal uncertainty is itself part of the story, especially because this case is not just about one medication. It touches federal regulatory authority, telemedicine, state power, and whether one challenge can disrupt access nationwide.

So the watch item here is simple and date-specific. Monday, May 11th is the hinge point. If the justices extend the stay, the immediate disruption eases. If they do not, abortion politics and health-care delivery could snap back into emergency mode very quickly. When a court story has a fixed date like that, it tends to keep attracting attention because everyone knows exactly when the next pressure point arrives.

Here in Columbus and Central Ohio, the biggest local story is the result from Tuesday's city charter fight. The continuity from earlier in the week was whether Issue 5 would be a close test or a broad mandate. Now we have the answer. WOSU and Axios Columbus report that voters approved the community crisis response amendment by a wide margin, with about 77 percent support in unofficial results.

That is significant because it changes the tone of the story. This is not a narrow symbolic win. It is a decisive public endorsement of expanding non-police responses for behavioral health crises, homelessness-related calls, and other nonviolent emergencies. The local conversation now moves from persuasion to implementation.

And that is the next thing to watch. Passing a charter amendment is one thing. Building a functioning twenty-four-seven response system with staffing, dispatch logic, city coordination, and political durability is another. So the continuity line shifts from campaign language to execution risk. Over the next several days, watch how city leaders, police leadership, advocates, and council members talk about timing, staffing, and cost. Those details will tell you whether this becomes a smooth rollout story or a long implementation fight.

The second local story is the Casey Goodson retrial, which has now reached one of its most important near-term phases. The Associated Press and WOSU report that jurors began deliberating Wednesday in the murder retrial of former Franklin County sheriff's deputy Jason Meade. That means the story has moved from competing courtroom narratives into a pure decision window.

The continuity here is important because the first trial ended in a mistrial after jurors could not agree. This time, Meade did not testify, and both sides closed by trying to give jurors a cleaner version of the case. Prosecutors argue the evidence does not support self-defense. The defense argues Meade faced a threat when Goodson, who was legally armed, allegedly pointed a gun.

As of this morning, the watch item is simply the verdict timeline. Once a jury has the case, the tone can change fast. A verdict would instantly become the dominant local story because of what it says about accountability, public trust, and one of the Columbus area's highest-profile police shooting cases. If deliberations stretch out, that itself becomes a signal that jurors are working through the same core tension that complicated the first trial.

In housing and mortgage news, the number to know this morning is 6.37 percent. Freddie Mac says the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose from 6.30 percent last week to 6.37 percent this week, while the 15-year fixed moved up to 5.72 percent.

The continuity line we have been tracking is still intact. Housing is not collapsing, but affordability remains extremely fragile. Rates are below where they were a year ago, and Freddie Mac says higher inventory and softer new-home prices may modestly help buyers. But the market is still being pushed around by yields, oil, and inflation expectations. That means one geopolitical shock can still ripple all the way into a monthly payment in Central Ohio.

The practical takeaway is that the spring market is still alive, but it is not comfortable. Buyers may have more choices than they did in recent years, yet financing costs remain high enough that even a small move higher can change what households qualify for. So the thing to watch next is whether bond-market relief from falling oil can actually stick, or whether rates stay lodged in the mid-sixes and keep the season constrained.

In AI and technology, there are really two connected stories this morning. The first is the market story. Reuters reports that AMD's strong outlook helped drive another rally in chip stocks as investors keep betting that AI demand is broadening beyond the original leaders. The second is the enterprise distribution story, where OpenAI's expanded presence on Amazon Bedrock continues to underline that the real AI contest is increasingly about where advanced models live inside existing cloud and software ecosystems.

That fits the continuity we have been following. The center of gravity in AI keeps moving away from novelty and toward deployment. Investors are rewarding companies tied to chips, infrastructure, and enterprise access because those are the places where real spending is easiest to defend. If AMD can convince the market that AI demand is spreading into a wider chip set, that helps explain the persistent enthusiasm across the sector. And if advanced models and coding tools are easier to consume inside AWS, that lowers friction for companies that want AI without rebuilding their stack around a single vendor.

So the watch item here is whether the next phase of the AI story is more about platform control than model theater. The companies with the best distribution, best compute access, and best enterprise workflow integration may end up shaping the next leg of adoption even more than the companies with the flashiest demo.

That brings us to the markets snapshot. Wednesday was a strong risk-on session. The Associated Press says the S and P 500 rose 1.5 percent to a record 7,365.12, the Dow climbed to 49,910.59, the Nasdaq jumped 2 percent to 25,838.94, and the Russell 2000 also pushed to a fresh high. The main drivers were hopes for de-escala...