Happy Wednesday Everyone! Today’s newsletter: 1,253 words…4.7 mins
🗞 Today’s Edition: Political Earthquake Hits NY, Wiki Founder Banned From Wikipedia, Knicks Fan/Trash Can Thief - Fired! Trump Cancels Bipartisan Bill Signing, OpenAI + Broadcom Unveil Custom Chip - Jalapeno… & much more!
🐶 Did you know, Queen Elizabeth II created her own dog breed? Scroll down to read about it.
📜THE HIGHLIGHT
One killer insight to stash in your back pocket
🚨The Mamdani Machine: A Political Earthquake Just Hit New York
On Tuesday night, Mayor Zohran Mamdani's handpicked slate of Democratic Socialists scored a series of stunning primary victories, knocking off establishment Democrats and expanding the influence of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in Congress and Albany.
👀 Who won?
🔵 Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY-13)
Defeated five-term incumbent Adriano Espaillat (D).
Boasted about wiping her dirty hands on the American flag.
Called inter-racial couples “ugly colonizers.”
Called police "pigs."
Referred to U.S. service members as "war criminals."
Supports abolishing ICE.
🔵 Claire Valdez (NY-7)
DSA member.
Defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso (D).
Running on a democratic socialist platform focused on housing, labor, and government expansion.
🔵 Aber Kawas (NY State Senate)
DSA-backed activist.
Child of Palestinian illegal aliens who came to America and gave birth to her in Brooklyn. Father was detained after 9/11 and deported to Jordan.
Has blamed 9/11 on capitalism, racism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia.
Previously described convicted Al-Qaeda financier Fahad Hashmi as a "living martyr."
Has called for ending U.S. support for Israel and has been a prominent pro-Palestinian activist.
🔵 Brad Lander (NY-10)
Not DSA, but heavily backed by Mamdani.
Defeated incumbent Dan Goldman (D).
😨 Why everyone is freaking out:
Republicans immediately blasted the results as proof the Democratic Party is moving toward communism. President Donald Trump responded with:
"America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!"
😱 But the panic isn't limited to Republicans.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) openly campaigned against Avila Chevalier.
Pro-Israel Democrats spent heavily trying to stop several of these candidates. They lost.
🎯 The bigger picture: Mamdani's movement is no longer a protest faction. It's winning elections. Critics see an alliance of anti-capitalist politics, anti-police activism, and increasingly radical anti-Israel rhetoric entering the Democratic mainstream. Supporters see a new generation taking on a stale establishment.
💡 Bottom line: AOC's 2018 victory looked like a spark. Eight years later, New York's socialist left looks a lot more like a machine. Whether that's renewal or a warning depends entirely on who you ask.
♟️THE CHESSBOARD
Geopolitics Decoded In 3 Moves
💥 U.S. Quietly Killed a Senior ISIS Leader in Syria
On June 19, CENTCOM ran a precision airstrike in northwest Syria and killed Ali Husayn al-'Ulaywi, a senior ISIS leader.
The location: Aleppo province, where ISIS maintains a low-level insurgency despite losing its territorial "caliphate" years ago.
No civilian casualties reported. No ISIS response. No detailed biography of al-'Ulaywi released — standard practice until intelligence value clears.
This is the third such strike pattern under Operation Inherent Resolve this year. ISIS isn't gone — it's just quieter.
💡 Bottom line: ISIS no longer holds land—but it still occupies the intelligence map. And that means the U.S. still has to play whack-a-mole in a war that refuses to fully end.
📖 Wikipedia Just Banned Its Own Co-Founder — For Trying to Fix It
Larry Sanger helped build Wikipedia from scratch in 2001, coined its name, and wrote its founding policies. This week, the platform he created banned him from editing it — indefinitely.
The charge: "Off-wiki canvassing" — Sanger told his 90k X followers about a proposed reform project aimed at reducing Wikipedia's perceived left-leaning bias.
Editors said that counted as soliciting outside interference. Sanger called the process a "kangaroo court."
💡Why it matters: Wikipedia has become one of the most powerful information gatekeepers on Earth. The fact that one of its founders now argues the institution is hostile to dissent—and then gets banned while trying to reform it—will only fuel accusations that the world's digital encyclopedia has become an ideological fortress rather than a neutral referee.
🥵 France Is Melting
June 23 was the hottest day France has recorded since measurements began in 1947. 44.3°C (111.7°F) in parts of the southwest, 40°C+ in Bordeaux, Paris flirting with 38°C. Two-thirds of the country is now under red alert.
The death toll is drownings: At least 40–50 people have died jumping into unsupervised rivers and lakes to escape the heat since mid-June.
The grid is cracking: Up to 68,000 households lost power — nuclear plants reduced output because river water used for cooling was too warm.
Schools, trains, the Eiffel Tower: All disrupted. France is functionally limping through the week.
💡 Bottom line: The infrastructure wasn't built for this — and neither was June.
🗽THE EMPIRE FILES
Political Drama From DC To NYC
Left: Angie Baez dumping trash on the street and stealing the trash can; Right: Baez in the subway. Inset: Angie Baez’s professional picture.
🏠 Trump Cancels Housing Bill Signing — Demands Election Law First
A housing affordability bill that passed 358-32 in the House and 85-5 in the Senate was headed for a White House signing ceremony today. Then Trump posted on Truth Social and pulled the plug.
The condition: No signing until Congress passes the SAVE America Act — Trump's election security bill featuring stricter voter ID and mail-in ballot rules. Democrats call it voter suppression; Republicans call it a priority.
The surprise: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) had been publicly praising the housing bill. He learned about the cancellation with everyone else.
💡 The escape hatch: Trump hasn't vetoed it. If he takes no action for 10 days while Congress remains in session, it becomes law without his signature.
🗑 Knicks Fan / Trash Can Thief Gets Fired By JPMorgan
You saw the video. Knicks championship parade, June 18 — a woman in full orange-and-blue gear, dumps a limited-edition NYC Sanitation bin onto a Manhattan sidewalk and walks off with it. Then onto the subway. Brazenly. The video went viral instantly.
Turns out, she’s Angie Baez, Executive Director of DEI at JPMorgan Chase.
The aftermath: NYC Sanitation called it illegal. The can was returned. No charges filed — but JPMorgan ran an internal review and fired her June 23.
💡 She came for the trash can. The trash can came for her career.
🤖 CODES & POWER
Tech Wars, Crypto Chaos, and AI’s Black Mirror Moments
🌶️ OpenAI Just Built Its Own Chip — And Named It Jalapeño
Sam Altman's been complaining about Nvidia's prices for years. Today, OpenAI and Broadcom announced Jalapeño — OpenAI's first custom AI inference chip, built from scratch to run models like ChatGPT faster and cheaper than general-purpose GPUs.
The speed flex: Design to tape-out in 9 months — one of the fastest high-performance chip cycles ever. They used AI to help design it.
The stakes: Early tests show "substantially better" performance-per-watt than current state-of-the-art.
Deployments targeted late 2026, as OpenAI pushes deeper into full-stack AI infrastructure.
⚡ Nvidia has a new problem — and it's named after a pepper.
🖥️ China Just Reclaimed the World's Fastest Supercomputer
China's LineShine supercomputer debuted at No. 1 on the TOP500 list this week, dethroning the U.S. system El Capitan for the first time since 2017.
It hits 2.198 exaflops — roughly 20% faster than its American rival — using entirely homegrown chips, interconnects, and operating systems. No Nvidia. No foreign components.
The context: U.S. export restrictions were supposed to slow China's chip progress. LineShine is the rebuttal.
⚡ The big asterisk: It ranks only 4th on AI-optimized benchmarks — where the U.S. still dominates. Raw speed isn't the whole story.
📺 FUN FACTS & TRIVIA
The “Dorgi”
HM Queen Elizabeth II invented a new dog breed called the “dorgi” when one of her corgis, Tiny, mated with her sister HRH Princess Margaret’s dachshund, Pipkin.