Hey there. Today’s newsletter is all over the place, in a good way. We’ll take you to:

We hope you’ll stick along to the end for our song of the week and hey, if you liked something in this newsletter will you do me a favor and forward it to a friend? I’d really appreciate it. Have a great weekend! — Tony Wagner, newsletter editor

Working in health policy these days sort of feels, to Camille Richoux, like being the scientist at the beginning of the Godzilla movie: “You're running in, and you're like, ‘Godzilla is about to destroy the city!’”

As director of health policy at the nonprofit Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, she has a good idea of what’s coming when the massive Medicaid cuts that Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed into law last summer, as part of that mega budget bill, phase in.

Those cuts, which include new work requirements, restrictions on how much states can tax hospitals and healthcare providers to help finance Medicaid, eligibility restrictions for many legal immigrants, and more frequent redeterminations, will ultimately reduce how much the federal government spends on Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion.

They will also likely reduce the number of people on the Medicaid rolls by about 7.5 million, according to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

Richoux has seen this movie before; her state implemented its own Medicaid work requirements in 2018. Within the first six months, 18,000 low-income Arkansans lost their insurance , most for paperwork reasons.

“We know what happens when people don't have health coverage,” she said. More uncompensated care, more medical debt, more providers closing because they're losing patients.

“I know people who lost coverage during that time, who lost access to needed prescriptions, who couldn't go to the doctor,” Richoux said. “It was a pretty chaotic rollout because the website had tons of issues, people had trouble reporting, everybody had issues getting in touch with someone to figure out what they needed to do to comply. It was an administrative nightmare.”

Those work requirements were overturned by a court in 2019 . But now, new ones are coming back, and not just in Arkansas, around the country.

In May, Nebraska became the first state to implement the new federally-mandated work requirements for low-income people who get government-subsidized health insurance. Montana is set to follow next month. By next year, everyone in the country who is on Medicaid will be required to prove they’re either working, in school, or volunteering, or that they qualify for an exemption.

“This is the biggest rollback in federal support for healthcare ever,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF.

The mower fires up to groom the field that’s usually home to the Division II Bentley Falcons. Next week, it’ll host Kylian Mbappé and the French National team.

Athletic director Vaughn Williams is overseeing the prep, and he seems pretty calm for someone who’s about to host the top-ranked soccer team in the world.

“Yeah, well, you know, I work in athletics, so, you know, I'm used to pressure,” he said.

Pressure, in this case, to get every detail right. Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, is one of the base camps for teams competing in this year’s World Cup. Teams representing countries around the globe are arriving in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico for the matches, which kick off next week and will run for more than a month. Each of the 48 teams that’ll be playing will have its own “base camp," a place for players, coaches, and staff to prepare for the world’s most popular sporting event.

And the details matter here. The grass must be cut to a uniform nine-tenths of an inch; World Cup officials came to measure that. Sightlines to the field need to be obscured to prevent spying. Vaughn said that was a tough sell to team reps last winter.

“When they did first come, it was covered in snow,” he said, chuckling. And the trees surrounding the field were leafless. “I sat here talking to the coach about, ‘No, don't worry, that'll all fill in. No one can see you from up top of the hill in the buildings.’"

Some of the World Cup base camps are more used to these challenges than others. Argentina is using a professional training center in Kansas City. Portugal will practice at a public park in Florida. Tournament officials have been making sure all the training surfaces are up to snuff.

“We just got done replacing the field about three weeks ago,” said John Ruppert, deputy athletic director at Bryant University in Rhode Island, which will host team Ghana.

World Cup organizers paid for the replacement, he said. “It's crazy — they replaced the field for probably 12 days of practice. But it did turn out beautiful.”

Around-the-clock businesses often include casinos, diners and pharmacies. In suburban Maryland, a hair braiding salon is part of that list.

At Nadine’s Hair Braiding in suburban Maryland, customers can walk in at 2 p.m. or 2 a.m. and find a stylist. Speed is another draw; two braiders often work on one head.

“If I need to get in a chair immediately, I can get in a chair immediately,” said customer Folade Smith.

At its peak, the salon serves 600 customers a day, even attracting high-profile clients like Maryland’s junior U.S senator Angela Alsobrooks.

“The clients were telling me, ‘Please don’t close before 8 p.m., please open at 2 a.m., please open at 3 a.m.,’” said Nadine Djuiko, the founder and CEO.

She stumbled into the 24-hour model when her stylists started competing to meet the demand. But a massive financial hit also drove the Cameroonian entrepreneur to keep the doors open day and night. Djuiko and her husband had invested more than $200,000 into a commercial venture that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme.

“I just felt like, if I'm sleeping and my business is still making at least $500 profit every day, that will cover the money I lost,” she said.

With 245,000 followers on Instagram, social media has fueled the salon’s growth. Out-of-state travelers now make up a major chunk of the salon's customer base, Djuiko said.

Styles start at $220, meaning a busy day can generate more than $130,000 in revenue. Customers pay the shop, and the salon splits the sales with the braiders. Stylists don't pay a flat fee to rent a chair. By comparison, a typical braiding shop takes an entire month to bring in a fraction of that daily total.

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Convenience stores don’t earn more when gas is expensive, they make a few cents a gallon at most.

No, the real profits are inside the store, where chains are courting customers with hot food to get a bigger piece of a crowded market — convenience stores account for more than a third of in-person retail stores in the U.S. Midwest gas station Casey’s has become the fifth-largest pizza chain in the country thanks to its pies, for example. Texas chain Buc-ee’s attracted such a cult following in the south that its expansion plans make local news.

Marketplace’s Kristin Schwab hit a few c-stores and talked with a few devotees about how a roadside staple becomes “cool.” If you’re looking for more “cool” song choices this week, black midi and Dylan Brady have their own songs about 7-Eleven too.