Today's five.

When your own party's elder statesman tells you to "step aside," the internal polling conversation is effectively over. Graham Platner, Maine's Democratic Senate nominee, is now weighing whether to drop out after an ex-girlfriend told Politico he sexually assaulted her in 2021. Platner says the allegations are false but paused his campaign to "reflect." Bernie Sanders went public. Roy Cooper posted. Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson already filed exploratory paperwork — which is the political equivalent of showing up to a breakup with moving boxes. Platner hasn't quit yet, but the race has.

Graham Platner was supposed to be the Democrats' best shot at flipping a critical Senate seat, and then Politico published a rape allegation. He denied it, posted a video, and watched his coalition dismantle in real time. Major allies walked. Mamdani — who never even endorsed him — called for him to drop out. The NYT covered the abandonment; the Post was already listing his replacements. There's a hard deadline buried in all this: Maine Democrats can only substitute a candidate if Platner exits by July 13. The party is essentially waiting for him to make a decision he hasn't made yet.

Apparently what Gen Z wanted all along was a movie about George Washington's early life, which says something about the current cultural moment even if nobody can quite agree what. *Young Washington* is pulling audiences who are, by most accounts, tired of being told everything is broken — the film's pitch being that strength and endurance are still worth something. Both outlets covering it framed this less as a film story and more as a cultural symptom. Whether that's reassuring or slightly alarming probably depends on what you thought was wrong in the first place.

Ships are back on fire in the Strait of Hormuz. Two commercial tankers — including a Qatari liquefied natural gas vessel — were struck near the coast of Oman on Tuesday, one catching fire after being hit by what the British military called an unknown projectile. U.S. officials believe Iran's Revolutionary Guard fired on both. The U.S. responded with new strikes and revoked Iran's oil sales permit. Semafor noted the attacks came just as the week-long U.S.-Iran understanding expired; the Times framed it as a ceasefire under pressure. Iran hasn't claimed responsibility, but state media said the ships ignored warnings.

Two years after everyone gave their arguments, a federal appeals court finally ruled that Florida can't tell university professors which ideas are acceptable to teach. The Eleventh Circuit struck down the Stop WOKE Act's classroom provisions, landing on the fairly foundational position that students should be allowed to hear ideas the government doesn't like. The ruling took over two years to arrive after oral arguments — not unusual for federal courts, but long enough that the law had already reshaped hiring and curriculum decisions at Florida universities. The state can still appeal.