and houston rushes out. the country that put the first man in space is quitting the international space station. the impact on future missions just ahead. but first, your money and cnn business reporter matt egan is here with us. today s consumer confidence report was the first major data point in this critical week for the u.s. economy. what did it show? simply put americans are not happy with this economy. consumer confidence dropping for a third month in a row in july. to put this into context, the lowest level for consumer confidence since february of 2021. not only is confidence well below the peak of last year, it s not even close to the pre-covid levels, closer to the covid lows, which is pretty amazing. this is a telling stat despite the very strong jobs market, just 17% of consumers said business conditions were good. 24% say conditions are bad. now this is a big deal because consumer spending is the biggest driver of the economy. if people slow their spending, a
d.c. for the first time since losing the election and leaving town in disgrace, following the capitol riot. he is about to give a key note speech to a conservative group focused on, of all things, law and order. this morning, former vice president pence gave a speech urging conservatives to focus on the future and avoid looking back. let s begin with the doj investigation. our senior cnn analyst and former u.s. attorney for the district of new york. why is mark short so important to the doj? this is a big deal because for the first time we know the justice department has gotten inside the white house. mark short is the highest ranking person who we know have of who has been subpoenaed to the grand jury. short was the chief of staff to mike pence. we don t know what he said in the grand jury. he won t talk about it. but we do know he talked to the january 6th committee and he had this crucial meeting in the white house in the oval office where donald trump and this lawyer, j