Axios

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell responded to a pointed letter from the Trump administration on Thursday, offering the central bank's strongest defense to date in attacks over its building renovations.

Why it matters: The letter comes as President Trump denies he will attempt to fire Powell.

President Trump's push to switch the sweetener in Coke to cane sugar could cost thousands of U.S. jobs, an influential corn industry group said.

Why it matters: A can of soda just became a minor political crisis, adding to a White House pile that includes the Jeffrey Epstein controversy, drama at the Federal Reserve, and a near-boiling trade war.

The trial of Roman Storm, one of the developers behind the Ethereum privacy app Tornado Cash, began this week in Manhattan.

Why it matters: For the government, this is a trial about anti-terrorism, money laundering and law enforcement having eyes on financial transactions.

• For the defense, this is about whether or not developers have the right to publish code the same way writers write.

What they're saying: Prosecutors called Tornado Cash a "giant washing machine for dirty money," according to Inner City Press.

• The government said it would show evidence that Storm cashed out and that doing so was his main intent in launching the project.

📊 Crypto data firm Coin Metrics was sold to institutional trading platform Talos for $100 million. (Fortune)

📱 Coinbase unveiled its Base app, an everything app for crypto. (Decrypt)

☢️ AI needs nuclear power, and the nuclear industry is using AI to build better reactors. (Axios)

American consumers are spending freely, unemployment filings are low and executives feel more optimistic about business prospects.

Why it matters: A trade war-stunted economy remains something forecasters hand-wring about, but it's not the reality on the ground.

Retail spending rebounded in June after a pullback in late spring, the Commerce Department said on Thursday.

Why it matters: Consumers ramped up spending more than economists anticipated, a sign of resiliency among American shoppers despite concerns that President Trump's tariffs are weighing on the economy.

Stock investors started selling at 11:15am ET Wednesday when Bloomberg reported that President Trump was likely to fire Fed chair Jerome Powell soon.

Why it matters: The nearly 1% decline is a mild premonition for equity investors of what's to come if the Fed chair is really ousted.

Here's what's new on HBO Max, Paramount+, Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu.

What we're watching: An in-depth documentary about the Piano Man and new seasons of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" and "The Summer I Turned Pretty."

If President Trump fires Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, it would likely bring a period of short-term market volatility — along with higher long-term borrowing costs, as the Fed would be viewed as more subject to a president's whims.

The big picture: Trump appears to be itching to push out the Fed chief he originally appointed, perhaps by claiming that an over-budget building renovation constitutes legal cause.