Happy Wednesday Everyone! Today’s newsletter: 1,211 words…4.6 mins
🗞 Today’s Edition: America's Heading Back To The Moon! France Raids X’s Offices, Americans Agree With Nicki Minaj On Voter ID, SpaceX Merges With xAI, Media's Gaza Doctor Is Hamas Colonel, China's Flying Taxis, Billie Eilish's Speech Backfires… & much more!
🐴 Are America’s beloved wild “mustang” horses, really American? Scroll down to find out!
📜THE HIGHLIGHT
One killer insight to stash in your back pocket
(left to right) Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman (seated center), Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen (right)
🌕 America’s Headed Back to the Moon
After 54 years, astronauts are headed back to the moon. NASA’s Artemis II mission—targeting launch as early as Feb. 6, 2026—will send humans back to the Moon’s neighborhood for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. Yes, the space drought is officially over.
🚀 What’s happening:
Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed lunar mission since the Nixon era.
Four astronauts will fly a 10–10.5 day loop around the far side of the Moon—No landing. This is the dress rehearsal for the real thing (Artemis III).
The spacecraft: Orion, launched atop NASA’s controversial but powerful Space Launch System (SLS) from the Kennedy Space Center.
🪩 Why this isn’t just nostalgia:
This is a full-system stress test: propulsion, life support, navigation, comms, and crew operations in deep space.
Humans haven’t gone beyond low Earth orbit since disco was still cool.
If this fails, Artemis III (the actual Moon landing) slips again.
1️⃣The crew’s historic firsts
Victor Glover → first Black astronaut to travel to the Moon region.
Christina Koch → first woman to do the same.
Jeremy Hansen (Canada) → first non-American (and first Canadian) to fly to the Moon, making Canada the second nation to send an astronaut into deep space.
🇺🇸 The bigger play: Artemis isn’t about planting flags—it’s about owning lunar real estate, building a sustained presence near the Moon’s south pole, and using it as a launchpad to Mars.
💡Bottom line: This is America rebooting its deep-space credibility. Miss this window, and China writes the sequel.
♟️THE CHESSBOARD
Geopolitics Decoded In 3 Moves
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya - Doctor/Hamas Colonel
🇫🇷 🚨France Raids X's Paris HQ — Musk Gets a Summons
Europol + French cybercrime cops kicked down the door at X's Paris offices today. The probe? Started as algorithm manipulation in Jan 2025 — now it's way bigger.
The charges on the table: Child pornography (CSAM), sexualized deepfakes, Holocaust denial, and rogue outputs from Grok, X’s AI chatbot.
Devices were searched and seized; staff questioned.
Elon Musk and ex-CEO Linda Yaccarino are summoned to Paris for voluntary interviews in April.
💡Bottom line: X has previously called similar French probes politically motivated attacks on free speech, resisting demands for algorithm access and data. Today, the company called these allegations “baseless” and denied any wrongdoing. Musk called it, “a political attack.”
📰 NYT & BBC’s Gaza Doctor Was A Hamas Colonel
For months, Western media cited Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, ex–Kamal Adwan Hospital director, as an impartial humanitarian voice. New evidence says otherwise.
Israeli watchdog NGO Monitor and the IDF revealed Abu Safiya held the rank of colonel in Hamas’s Military Medical Services—with photos, Arabic-language sources, and Hamas-linked references dating back years.
The hospital Israel raided in 2024? Allegedly a Hamas stronghold.
The vetting fail: Abu Safiya was cited multiple times by the BBC and wrote two opinion pieces for the NYT. He was described only as "a pediatrician and the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital" — with no mention of any Hamas role.
💡Why it matters: The real issue isn't whether Hamas embeds operatives in civilian institutions — it's how a senior Hamas terrorist passed through editorial filters and was presented to global audiences as an independent humanitarian voice.
🇫🇷 💣 A French Man Inserted a Live WWI Shell Into His Rectum. It Got Worse.
Yes, this is real. A 24-year-old in Toulouse checked into the ER on Saturday night with "extreme discomfort" — turns out, a live, unexploded 1918 German artillery shell was the culprit.
The chaos: Surgeons mid-operation discovered the shell was still armed. Hospital evacuated. Bomb squad called. Police. Fire brigade. The whole circus.
The kicker: This is actually the second time this has happened in France.
💡Bottom line: WWI's legacy is truly everywhere — even where you'd least expect it.
🗽THE EMPIRE FILES
Political Drama From DC To NYC
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten; Inset: Nicki Minaj’s post on X
🗳️ CNN's Own Data Guy Just Said "The Americans Are With Nicki Minaj"
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten detonated a quiet narrative bomb, citing Pew data showing voter photo ID support north of 75%—across parties and races. His punchline? “The American people agree with @NickiMinaj.”
“Having a photo ID to vote is not controversial in this country. It’s not controversial by party, and it’s not controversial by race.”
He declared that polling going back to 2018 shows at least 75% of Americans back voter ID — hitting 83% last year.
The kicker? The racial breakdown holds up too: 85% White, 82% Latino, 76% Black Americans all favor it.
The catalyst: Nicki Minaj's viral X post questioning why voter ID is even being debated.
⚡When CNN's data analyst and a Grammy winner are on the same page, Schumer's "Jim Crow 2.0" framing is looking lonely.
🎤 Billie Eilish's "Stolen Land" Speech Just Backfired — Beautifully
Eilish dropped "No one is illegal on stolen land" and "F*** ICE" while accepting Song of the Year for "Wildflower" at the 2026 Grammys.
The internet immediately clocked it: Her $14M LA properties sit on former Tongva tribal land.
Enter Drew Pavlou: The Australian activist launched a crowdfunding campaign to fly to LA and literally camp on Eilish's Malibu property — applying her own logic back at her.
GoFundMe pulled the campaign. He moved it to GiveSendGo. Flights are booked for next week.
⚡The memes won the night. The Tongva got visibility. Pavlou got a plane ticket. Everyone else just got loud.
🤖 CODES & POWER
Tech Wars, Crypto Chaos, and AI’s Black Mirror Moments
🎮 Musk Merges SpaceX & xAI — $1.25T Flex
It’s official…SpaceX is acquiring xAI, folding Grok and Musk’s AI stack directly into rockets, satellites, and Starlink—creating a private behemoth valued around $1.25 trillion.
The stated goal? Space-based data centers to power AI without "imposing hardship on communities."
The transaction is structured as a share exchange, converting xAI shares into SpaceX stock ahead of a mid-year monster IPO that could raise $50 billion.
⚡SpaceX called it, “one of the most ambitious, vertically integrated innovation engines on (and off) Earth.”
🚕 China Just Approved Flying Taxis—For Real
China has become the first country to approve paid passenger flights in fully autonomous flying taxis.
Aviation regulators cleared EHang’s pilotless EH216-S—a two-seat electric aircraft—for commercial use in select cities.
No pilot. No joystick. Just software.
It’s part of Beijing’s push to dominate the “low-altitude economy.”
⚡While the world debates safety, China is already monetizing the sky.
📺 FUN FACTS & TRIVIA
America’s Wild Horses….Aren’t Actually American!
Those iconic wild mustangs thundering across the American West? They're not actually native to the continent at all!
Horses had been extinct in North America for thousands of years... until Spanish conquistadors brought them back in the 1500s. Some escaped, went feral, multiplied like crazy, and became the legendary "mustangs" we know today.
So the next time you spot a herd galloping free across sweeping vistas, remember: they're living descendants of horses that crossed the ocean with armored explorers over 500 years ago!