Good morning! "Liberation Day"?

Good Morning! Elon Musk is sulking! After touting the contest as a “crucial battle” and hosting an Election Day X Spaces, Musk has offered no congratulations, no spin, just a sulking retreat into other distractions. The absence of commentary on Crawford’s triumph speaks volumes. For a man addicted to the spotlight, this kind of silence can only mean one thing: Musk is licking his wounds.

Let’s start where things get extra weird, Langley. Musk, trench coat and sunglasses photoshopped onto his own body, posed inside the CIA like he just stepped out of The Matrix and into a government agency with the biggest classified vault on the planet. CIA Director John Ratcliffe even shared photos of their visit, beaming about Elon’s “ideas for government efficiency.” Apparently, DOGE, the self-styled “most transparent organization in government”, is going to help the CIA become more transparent. What could go wrong when a man who can’t keep his mouth shut on X gains backstage access to America’s most sensitive intelligence?

And about that DOGE transparency, turns out it’s mostly fog and projection. DOGE recently claimed that 5.5 million undocumented immigrants received Social Security numbers under Biden. It was a headline-worthy claim, especially if you know absolutely nothing about how Social Security, asylum law, or basic fact-checking works. Even Grok, Elon’s own chatbot, had to quietly admit it wasn’t true. But hey, never let reality get in the way of a viral scare tactic.

Speaking of credit where it’s not due, DOGE is also taking a victory lap over “exposing” $4.3 billion in wasted COVID relief. The only problem? That money was already flagged and being returned by the Labor Department through standard auditing procedures. DOGE isn’t uncovering waste; they’re narrating the credits of a film they didn’t direct and weren’t invited to.

Meanwhile, in what might be the clearest sign that meme-world economics has breached actual finance, Newsmax just IPO’d and surged a mind-boggling 2,230% despite reporting a $72 million loss. There wasn’t a single institutional whale behind the spike, just a stampede of retail traders, political nostalgia investors, and maybe a few folks confusing it for a different stock. It’s like Truth Social with better lighting.

Markets opened jittery this morning in response to Trump’s so-called Liberation Day, a sweeping new round of global tariffs aimed at reshaping international trade. Investors aren’t exactly celebrating. Early indicators show mixed performance as Wall Street tries to digest what “economic freedom” means when it comes packaged with rising costs, trade retaliation, and supply chain chaos. If this is liberation, the markets seem to be asking, “from what—and at what price?”

But the real carnage is happening off-camera, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Tuesday, RFK Jr. and the Trump administration effectively gutted the CDC, laying off 2,400 people, about 18% of its staff. Entire divisions were axed: HIV prevention, tobacco control, workplace safety, oral health, the Strategic National Stockpile. The agency’s global surveillance unit? Gone. Emergency preparedness? Good luck. Some workers found out via bounce-back email notifications. No public list of cuts was released. Just chaos. Apparently “radical transparency” means finding out you’re fired from the news.

Trump didn’t stop at dismantling public health. He’s also apparently trying to figure out how much it would cost to buy Greenland. Because why not? Climate change is making the island more accessible, it's rich in minerals, and there’s nothing like imperial real estate acquisition to distract from tanking poll numbers and democracy’s stubborn refusal to roll over.

Still, in the midst of all this absurdity, two bright lights emerged. First, Senator Cory Booker pulled off an all-night filibuster that reminded America what passionate civic defense actually looks like. He held the floor into the early hours, defending voting rights, bodily autonomy, and the principle that government exists to serve the people, not billionaires, not spies, and not conmen.

And second, Wisconsin came through. Susan Crawford defeated Brad Schimel in a pivotal race for the state Supreme Court, a massive blow to the dark-money ecosystem that tried to buy the seat outright.

Musk, who’d hyped the election all day with an X Spaces about the “crucial battle,” went conspicuously silent after the loss. Instead, he retweeted a ballot measure about voter ID, calling it “the most important thing.” Classic misdirection. When the boss fight doesn’t go your way, pretend the tutorial level was the real game.

So, as Musk sinks deeper into his own spy-thriller fantasy, and Trump wonders how to price a continent, let’s not lose sight of the fact that small, stubborn acts of democracy are still punching through the noise. The Matrix might be glitching, but it hasn’t won.

Thank you to those helping me say caffeinated. It is much appreciated!

Hold the line.