Happy Wednesday Everyone! Today’s newsletter: 1,188 words…4.4 mins
🗞 Today’s Edition: Artemis II Launch, SpaceX IPO, SCOTUS Birthright Battle, Presidential Library Gets A Boeing 747, Mexico To Send Oil To Cuba, Starmer & Albanese Warn Citizens… & much more!
🚀 The first living creature to orbit the earth was… Scroll down to find out!
🚨 Watch For:
POTUS to address the nation on Iran: Tonight, 9pm ET
📜THE HIGHLIGHT
One killer insight to stash in your back pocket
Clockwise from top-left: Artemis II takes off; The crew waves goodbye as they embark upon their mission; Artemis II soaring; The card-game tradition.
🌕 🇺🇸 🚀 52 Years Later... Humanity's Heading Back to the Moon
Liftoff! NASA’s Artemis II is officially airborne — the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17. After 50+ years, humans are back in deep space.
The last time humans left Earth's gravitational neighborhood, Nixon was President and the Beatles had just broken up. That changes tonight.
At 6:24 p.m. ET, four astronauts strapped into NASA's Orion capsule atop a 32-story rocket at Kennedy Space Center, will fly farther from Earth than any humans in recorded history.
🧑🚀 The crew making history:
Reid Wiseman (Commander)
Victor Glover (first Black astronaut on a lunar trajectory)
Christina Koch (first woman on a lunar trajectory)
Jeremy Hansen (first Canadian beyond LEO)
🚀The mission:
~10 days in space
Loop around the Moon (no landing… yet)
Fly farther than any humans ever (sorry Apollo 13 👀)
Testing life support, navigation, and deep-space systems before Artemis III tries to put boots back on lunar soil (and Mars).
♠ The vibes: They played cards pre-launch (Wiseman lost = good luck), packed iPhones in their suits, and sent a plush moon mascot named “Rise” to float once zero gravity hits.
🍽 ☕ What They’ll Eat: The astronauts will enjoy an assortment of food and beverages including breakfast sausage, mac & cheese, mango salad and fruit smoothies.
💡Why it hits different: This is the most ambitious mission in over half a century. This is the dress rehearsal for putting boots back on the Moon — and eventually Mars. It’s also historic: first woman, first person of color, and first non-American on a lunar mission. America makes history yet again!!
♟️THE CHESSBOARD
Geopolitics Decoded In 3 Moves
🔫 Palantir Exec Warns US Has Just 8 Days of Weapons
Palantir Technologies’ CTO Shyam Sankar says the U.S. has just ~8 days of weapons for a high-intensity war with China — when it should have 800 days to actually scare off Beijing.
He argues: The U.S. builds elite weapons, but not at scale. Modern war (see Ukraine) burns through missiles fast, and a Taiwan scenario would be even worse.
The fix: AI-driven manufacturing and urgent defense production investment to rebuild what he calls the "Arsenal of Democracy."
💡Why it matters: Palantir is a major defense contractor with direct stakes in the spending debate — worth noting whose wallet benefits from this particular alarm bell.
🛳️ Hormuz Shockwaves Hit London & Canberra — Allies Brace Publicly
This morning, two allied leaders went on record telling their citizens to prepare for pain.
Keir Starmer warned the Iran crisis will hit Brits where it hurts — energy bills + cost of living — while ruling out direct military involvement.
The U.K. is instead rallying ~35 nations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Anthony Albanese gave a rare national address: Expect months of fuel shocks, conserve energy, and brace for turbulence. Canberra even slashed fuel taxes to soften the blow.
🛢️ Why it matters: This isn’t just a Middle East war — it’s a global energy stress test. No troops, just wallets getting hit.
🇲🇽 Mexico Will Send Oil To Cuba
President Claudia Sheinbaum says Mexico has every right to send oil to Cuba — humanitarian or commercial, no permission slip needed. Translation: foreign policy ≠ Washington’s call.
The squeeze: Shipments (via state-owned Pemex) slowed earlier this year under pressure from Trump, who’s floated tariffs on countries supplying Cuba.
Timing matters: Sheinbaum’s comments land just as the U.S. softens its tone with a Russian tanker nearing Cuba.
💡Why it matters: Mexico runs $800B+ in annual trade with the U.S. — Sheinbaum is balancing historic solidarity with Cuba against very real economic exposure.
🗽THE EMPIRE FILES
Political Drama From DC To NYC
Left to right: The Presidential Library Building; Boeing 747 in the lobby; Recreation of the Oval Office
⚖️ Trump Crashes the Supreme Court — Birthright Battle Goes Live
No sitting President had ever attended oral arguments. Trump sat front-row this morning and watched his own lawyers argue the case.
🥊 The fight: a 14th Amendment clause written in 1868 to protect children of freed slaves is now the legal basis for automatic citizenship for children of tourists, visa holders, and undocumented immigrants.
Trump's order says only children born to at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or green card holder get automatic citizenship - not just any child born on US soil.
Challengers say 158 years of precedent is clear: Born here = Citizen. Full stop.
Justices grilled both sides — no obvious lean either way.
⚡ A clause written for freed slaves is now at the center of modern immigration law — and by July, the Court decides if that was always the point, or always a loophole.
🏛️ Trump's Presidential Library Has a Golden Escalator & a Boeing 747 in the Lobby
Eric Trump unveiled renderings this week — a 50-story glass skyscraper on Miami's waterfront, gold "TRUMP" lettering near the top, red-white-and-blue needle spire, oversized gold statues, and a recreation of the Oval Office, Rose Garden, and a new ballroom.
The Qatar-gifted Boeing 747 sits in the planned lobby — a detail that has its own ongoing controversy.
Unlike traditional archives-run libraries, this one looks family-built, brand-first, and massive — sitting on prime waterfront land near Miami’s Freedom Tower.
⚡ Lincoln has a log cabin. Washington has Mount Vernon. Trump has a 50-story skyscraper with a golden escalator.
🤖 CODES & POWER
Tech Wars, Crypto Chaos, and AI’s Black Mirror Moments
🚀 SpaceX Just Filed to Go Public — At a $1.5 Trillion Price Tag
Elon Musk's rocket company quietly filed IPO paperwork with the SEC this week, targeting a June stock market debut that could be the largest in human history.
The target valuation: $1.5–1.75 trillion — bigger than most countries' economies.
The IPO could potentially raise $50–75 billion, which would shatter Saudi Aramco's 2019 record of $29 billion.
⚡The most valuable rocket company in history just asked Wall Street to put a number on it. June can't come fast enough.
💾 Anthropic Accidentally Published Its Own Secret Recipe
The company behind Claude — one of the world's leading AI labs — accidentally posted its own proprietary code online for anyone to download. Not a hack. A copy-paste mistake.
Think of it as accidentally emailing your competitor your entire business playbook — all 512,000 lines of it, including unannounced features and internal engineering notes.
Anthropic scrambled to delete it, sending takedown notices to over 8,000 websites — but the code had already spread worldwide.
⚡In tech, you only get one chance to keep a secret. Anthropic used theirs on a bad upload.
📺 FUN FACTS & TRIVIA
The Soviet Space Dog
Laika, the first living creature to orbit Earth in 1957, was a stray dog found on the streets of Moscow. Soviet scientists chose strays specifically — believing they'd already learned to endure harsh conditions.
She was never meant to come back. Her one-way mission on Sputnik 2 helped pave the way for human spaceflight.