Civitas Snippets - July 12, 2026
Issue 59
Dear friends of Civitas Growth Partners,
America spent the week turning 250 - with national pride at a record low, a socialist toppling a 15-term incumbent in Denver, and the president's memecoin separating a million retail investors from $3.8 billion. Meanwhile, chip stocks just posted the best quarter in market history, Europeans are smuggling ranch dressing home in checked luggage, and a family in Bangkok is on its 52nd consecutive year of watching a pot of soup. The republic is odd and often feels like it is reeling, but it endures as one of the greatest social experiences in history.
As G.K. Chesterton observed a century ago:
"America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence."
With that, let's get to it…
Politics and Current Events
Axios reports America's child population is shrinking everywhere but the South - down 1.8 million kids nationally since 2020, while the South grew 1.1%. House seats, school budgets, and housing starts all follow the strollers. The Sun Belt trade now begins in the maternity ward; perhaps the simple cure for the much-hyped demographic is grits and gravy.
After tariffs pushed Apple to raise iPhone and MacBook prices by roughly $200, AOC declared "we need to break up these companies". Whatever your politics, the sequence deserves a second look: bad policy imposes a tax, prices rise, and the proposed remedy is breaking up the company that paid it. Causation remains Washington's least popular subject.
Gallup finds American pride at a record low heading into the 250th birthday - 53% of adults say they're extremely or very proud, with "extremely proud" down to 33% from 55% in 2001. The fireworks were scheduled; the enthusiasm was optional.
The Democratic establishment officially has an insurgency problem: Axios reports party leaders see a Tea Party-style rebellion they can't stop, and Colorado proved the point when a 29-year-old democratic socialist toppled 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette in a Denver primary that stunned the party's hand-picked slate. Both parties have now learned the same lesson a decade apart: the base doesn't take assignments from headquarters – progressives and some parts of MAGA make interesting bedfellows.
The FT combed through Trump's 927-page financial disclosure: more than $1 billion earned last year, including $526 million from crypto token sales and $635 million in memecoin royalties. The NYT, citing Nansen data, tallied the other side of the trade - nearly a million investors lost a combined $3.8 billion on the $TRUMP coin. Rarely has exit liquidity been so patriotic.
ZeroHedge reports xAI's Memphis Colossus is testing a "data center dividend" - free Starlink kits and half-price internet for the neighbors. Communities have started pricing in the noise, water, and grid load, and hyperscalers are discovering it's cheaper to pay the neighbors than the lawyers.
Some genuinely good news the CDC buried in a spreadsheet: the U.S. death rate fell to its lowest level on record in 2025, down 4.6%, driven largely by falling drug-overdose deaths. Nobody fundraises off good news, so consider this your only notification.
The FT reports OpenAI has floated handing the U.S. government a 5% stake as the $852 billion startup seeks political goodwill, suggesting other labs do the same. When companies start offering the state equity to stay in its good graces, we are somewhere east of free-market capitalism and drifting.
A first-of-its-kind ESO study says the night sky can support no more than 100,000 satellites before astronomy suffers; companies have proposed launching 1.7 million. In any other market a 17x oversubscription is bullish. In orbit, it's a traffic jam with no zoning board.
The DOJ and 17 state attorneys general allege egg producers gamed prices while blaming bird flu, including a former Cal-Maine CEO texting a rival "Let it rip" as prices hit records. Rule one of collusion hasn't changed since Standard Oil: don't put it in writing.
The Economist finds Europe promised cash for defence and isn't coughing up, even as BAE's Swedish armored-vehicle plant grows revenue from $211 million to $1.1 billion. Everyone wants deterrence; nobody wants the invoice. Strategy decks are free - capex is not.
The WSJ profiles Jewish Democrats eyeing 2028 navigating their party's turn against Israel, with Rahm Emanuel calling in Tel Aviv for an end to "the American taxpayer's subsidy of Israel's defense budget." The foreign-policy primary is starting two years early, and it runs through the donor base as much as the base.
Axios charts America's tax divide: 27 states now lean on sales taxes while 21 lean on income taxes, with the income-tax share of state revenue up from 16% in 1950 to 44% today. Tell us what a state taxes and we'll tell you its politics - and where the U-Hauls are headed.
Economy, Markets, and Business
After an 11-year reign, Chick-fil-A lost its customer-satisfaction crown to Jersey Mike's, which edged it by one ACSI point after adding 238 net new locations and clearing $4.2 billion in sales. We note for the record that the new king is a franchise roll-up story.
The Atlantic asks how Britain became as poor as Mississippi - output per person outside London now trails America's poorest state after 18 years of stagnation. Productivity isn't everything, but in the long run, it's almost everything. Britain is the control group. Cheers, hotty toddy…
The WSJ chronicles the summer of "funflation": $800 World Cup resale tickets, $175 parking, and fans taking on debt to be there. Live experiences became the one thing Americans won't trade down on, and the industry noticed. Dynamic pricing is the real MVP of this World Cup.
The FT reports SpaceX told IPO-roadshow investors it may launch a consumer Starlink mobile service, potentially building its own U.S. network to take on Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. The telcos spent decades building moats out of spectrum and towers; Musk is proposing to fly over them.
The Stanford economist who called the AI entry-level jobs crisis has the receipts, Fortune reports: ADP payroll data shows employment for 22-to-25-year-olds in AI-exposed occupations falling, while the critics' alternative explanations keep expiring. The canaries were, in fact, canaries.
It's not anecdotal anymore: Axios reports payroll declines in finance and tech have accelerated to 28,000 jobs lost per month, with AI the top cited layoff reason four months running. The rest of the labor market is fine - which is exactly how regime changes start: quietly, in two sectors.
The counter-narrative has data too: David Sacks flagged a Ramp/Revelio study of 21,559 firms finding AI adopters grow employment roughly 10% after adoption, with entry-level headcount up 12% at the heaviest adopters, and an Nvidia-Corning fiber partnership just added 3,000 jobs in North Carolina and Texas. Dueling datasets, trillion-dollar stakes - see this issue's survey.
Axios charts how the Mag 7 became the Lag 7, trailing the equal-weight S&P 500 by roughly 16 points this year. The generals fell back and the army kept marching - either a healthy broadening or a changing of the guard, and Wall Street is paid to call it both.
The FT reports the $60 trillion great wealth transfer is rattling Wall Street, with one Singapore patriarch minting six thirty-something billionaire grandchildren on his way out. Wealth managers built for the patriarch now have to pitch the urban-farming grandson who loves Robinhood. Good luck with the discovery call.
Wall Street just logged its best quarter in six years - S&P 500 up 15%, Nasdaq up 21% - despite the largest oil shock in history, notes the WSJ. Micron rose 242% and AMD 186%. Records set on this much concentration are records with a co-signer.
Zoom in and it's starker: Axios notes the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 88% in Q2, its best quarter on record - beating anything the dot-com era produced. The AI build-out is plausibly the biggest investment boom in American history; even in 1999, chips never did this in 90 days.
The WSJ finds AI data centers use far more water than most tech giants report - indirect consumption at the power plants that feed them historically runs about 12x the on-site figure, and only Meta counts it. The AI boom's utility bills are still being marked to model – and the public is taking note.
For the 250th, Barron's traces how the Declaration of Independence spawned free markets: a colonial economy set loose with no industry, no currency, and no banks. History's most successful startup began with zero revenue and a war with its largest trading partner.
Forbes' new ranking of decabillionaire families puts the Waltons at $520 billion, up $253 billion in two years as Walmart crossed a $1 trillion market cap - second in America only to Elon Musk, who became the world's first trillionaire in June. The compounding lesson: the family that never sold.
The WSJ asks whether liquor stocks are priced for a Big Tobacco moment after four straight years of declining U.S. spirits volumes, with bar and restaurant prices up 29% in five years. The industry spent decades saying "drink responsibly." The stocks now price in the risk that America listened.
Toyota will move Tacoma production from Mexico to Texas, a $3.6 billion San Antonio expansion adding 2,000 jobs. Whatever one thinks of tariffs, the factories are voting with their feet - and they're voting for the state that taxes spending, not income (see Politics, above).
The WSJ reports private equity is sitting on a nine-year backlog of unsold companies - 13,500 U.S. portfolio companies, nearly 4,000 held six-plus years, with AI anxiety freezing software exits. We prefer the industry's own term: "extended value-creation runway." The LPs prefer "distributions."
Bloomberg reports PE funds are hiring "heat detectives" to model whether portfolio assets can survive a changing climate, as record weather rewrites underwriting assumptions. Somewhere a first-year associate just added "wet-bulb temperature" to the diligence checklist and a new toggle for revenue and COGS.
The WSJ autopsies Smucker's $5 billion Twinkie bet: Hostess sales sagged under changing snack habits and a 65-day shelf life. "Tastes like growth," the CEO said at the closing. Three years later, it tastes like a goodwill impairment (which, for the record, is not particularly good).
The Economist reports China's chipmakers are racing to catch the West - Huawei is stacking circuits to sidestep Western tools, and Hong Kong-listed chip shares are up 140% - but designing chips is proving easier than making them. Export controls bought time; the question is who compounds faster inside it.
Bloomberg reports cities are making room for flying taxis, including an LA condo tower converting its heliport into a vertiport - units from $2.6 million, penthouse at $78 million. The flying car finally arrives, and its first stop is the amenities brochure.
And the WSJ profiles a Costco cashier earning $33 an hour who became a millionaire - the retailer pays up to keep tenured hourly workers and keeps turnover at industry lows. Paying people more so they stay: the rare retention strategy that fits on an index card and survives contact with a spreadsheet.
Society and Culture
Reader's Digest explains why buttons sit on opposite sides of men's and women's clothing - a tale involving aristocrats, weapons, and Napoleon. Women's buttons still face their long-departed ladies' maids; men's face their sword hand. Fashion, like software, ships its legacy code forever.
Complex ranked the 30 best boy band songs of all time, from New Edition to One Direction. We take no editorial position, other than to note the boy band is a startup studio: manufactured team, charismatic founder breakout, messy cap-table split, solo IPO..and let it be noted, that we “want it our way”.
Scott Galloway argues the biggest trend of 2026 isn't AI - it's IRL: since 1960, the share of discretionary spending on experiences is up 60% while goods fell 35%. The "experience economy" was coined in 1998; it took a pandemic and a World Cup to make it consensus.
The WSJ finds European soccer fans marveling at America's suburbs: "Everything is three times the size," said one Dutch fan road-tripping to Kansas City. Nothing recalibrates a European's view of American living standards like a Costco run and a three-car garage.
The WSJ tells of the father who bankrolled a high-school football team so his son could play at a high level - a $150,000-a-year coach, a $962,500 house for him, a roster built like a pro franchise. Youth sports has long had a booster problem; this one just cut out the middlemen. Say hello to real life Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights.
Per the WSJ, the status symbol for young women in wealthy zip codes is now an old, loud SUV - $76,000 restored Defenders, vintage Broncos, Kendall Jenner's 1989 Land Cruiser. New luxury signals money; old trucks signal edge. The only cars appreciating are the ones built before airbags.
USA Today reports Gen Z's new dating trend is "chalance" - the radical practice of openly caring, texting first, and saying what you want. An entire generation has rediscovered sincerity and branded it a disruption. We look forward to the Series A.
The WSJ visits the Bangkok family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup - a beef broth simmering since 1974, now under its third-generation guardian, who almost never takes vacations. Multi-generational operational excellence and a literal moat of stock: this is the kind of business we look for.
Via Axios PM, the World Cup's unlikely breakout star is ranch dressing - one English fan paid nearly $300 to ship 20 bottles home. Soft power is real, and apparently emulsified.
The WSJ asks why Europe still resists air conditioning even as Paris tops 104°F - including a Parisian two years into a lawsuit because his neighbors find AC too loud. Europeans think Americans are soft for using it; Americans think Europeans are soft for melting. We admittedly have a bias, but we side with the compressor.
Canada is joining the Eurovision Song Contest, Variety reports, after PM Mark Carney floated the idea in a federal budget. When your southern trade relationship gets complicated, you diversify - even if that means competing against Moldovan techno in Bulgaria.
Bloomberg Businessweek quantifies America's fun shortage: 2,000 fewer golf courses, 7,000 fewer bars and nightclubs, and 1.3 million fewer boats over two decades. We regulated, priced, and NIMBY'd our way out of a good time, then wondered why everyone's on their phone.
The Ringer canonizes the Costco $1.50 hot dog - price unchanged since the 1980s, 245 million combos sold last year, and a CEO vowing it won't change on his watch. America's last honest price is a loss leader with better brand equity than most Fortune 500 marketing budgets.
The WSJ nominates the painted white line on the road's edge as America's greatest unsung innovation, championed in the 1950s by a metallurgist nobody remembers. It cost almost nothing and saves lives nightly. Somewhere between the lightbulb and the iPhone sits a bucket of paint with a better ROI than both.
Skift reports Cabo Verde's World Cup heroics are already driving a tourism surge after the 550,000-person island nation took Argentina to extra time. The smallest country ever to reach the knockout stage just ran the world's cheapest destination-marketing campaign: 120 minutes of football.
The Information reports the tech elite has moved on from pickleball to padel, with pro teams as trophy assets and court access running near $50,000. We'd mock, but padel's status as the sport of PE partners is a matter of public record - and, at CGP, of weekly practice.
Mental Floss maps which states drink the most beer: New Hampshire leads at 35.6 gallons per person, boosted by tax-free border stores; Utah brings up the rear. Beer is still America's favorite drink even as volumes fall - see the liquor bullet above for what the market thinks of that.
And the WSJ investigates soccer's strangest stat: Lionel Messi, the greatest player ever, is decidedly average at penalty kicks - the simplest shot in the game. Even the most exceptional operators have one line item that refuses to scale. We find that oddly comforting.
One Final Thing
Last issue we asked whether the World Cup has turned the U.S. into a permanent soccer nation. You were unsentimental: 80% said the craze fades after the tournament, 13% said it depends on how far the USMNT goes, and only 7% said this time feels different. Given that the tournament's most durable cultural export so far appears to be ranch dressing, the 80% may have a point (plus the embarrassing 4-1 defeat to Belgium, a country with the population equivalent to Ohio that is primarily known for chocolate and waffles).
This issue, the AI jobs debate: Stanford's "canaries" data says entry-level hiring is falling in AI-exposed occupations, while a 21,559-firm study says AI adopters are hiring more juniors, not fewer. Somebody's dataset is wrong, and a generation's career path rides on which.
AI and entry-level jobs: which dataset do you believe?
We're Looking for Exceptional, Overlooked Businesses
At Civitas Growth Partners, we invest our own capital in founder-led B2B businesses with $1M to $4M in recurring revenue, strong retention, and best-in-class products, but that fall outside the traditional VC or PE mold. These businesses are often bootstrapped, breakeven, and haven't yet invested meaningfully in sales and marketing. Growth is steady (0–25% annually), and the product quietly leads its niche.
This is a category of company that is often overlooked, but we see tremendous opportunity. Our model is to help these businesses scale to $10M or more in revenue by providing flexible capital (minority or control), supporting both organic and M&A growth, and deploying an operational playbook honed through years of work with capital-efficient founders. Because we invest our own capital — not institutional LP funds — we bring no artificial timelines or exit pressure. That gives founders room to build enduring value. Our partners have achieved more than 6x equity outcomes without compromising what makes their companies special.
We're actively looking for our next great partner. If you know a founder or operator building something exceptional — and overlooked — we'd be grateful for an introduction. We value the relationships that lead us to great companies and are always happy to have a conversation about referral arrangements. Reach out anytime at team@civitasgrowth.com.
Cheers,
The Civitas Team