✋ Power Play Powered Down

Happy Thursday, it’s May 29, 2025.

Here’s today’s dose of what you signed up for.

🔥 Top Shelf Chaos

⚖️ Court slaps down Trump’s tariff power play. A federal court just torched Trump’s attempt to slap tariffs on imports using emergency powers, ruling he overreached and nuking a key weapon in his second-term economic war chest. The ruling doesn’t touch his older steel and auto tariffs, but guts his “Liberation Day” levies that rattled global markets. The White House is appealing fast, but Congress may now have to co-sign any future tariff hissies. (More)

💄 E.l.f. drops $1B bag for Hailey Bieber’s Rhode. In just three years, Rhode blew up into a $212M skincare star, and now e.l.f. is snapping it up for up to $1 billion. The cash-heavy deal brings Bieber in as creative overlord, boosts e.l.f.’s Gen Z clout, and untangles its China-heavy supply chain. Rhode’s U.S. and Europe-based suppliers sweeten the move as tariffs bite. Sephora’s about to stock it, and the beauty wars just escalated. (More)

🕵️‍♂️ LexisNexis faceplants into massive data leak. The data-broking giant got breached through its GitHub, exposing names, SSNs, contact info, and licenses of over 364,000 people. The hack hit on Christmas, but LexisNexis didn’t spot it till April and is only now sounding the alarm. With regulatory crackdowns frozen and Congress snoozing, your privacy is basically raw meat for data scavengers, and Lexis just flung it wide open. Merry breachmas. (More)

👀 Side-Eye Central

🛡️ Horizon3.ai snags $73M to hunt cyber threats. Run by ex-Special Ops hackers, Horizon3.ai just bagged $73M and is gunning for $100M. With $30M ARR, FedRAMP creds, and AI-powered pentesting toys, it’s storming toward a $750M valuation while government contracts stack like sandbags in a digital trench war. (More)

🧠 Vietnam’s AI dream rides on one $6.8B beast. FPT Corp. started with one computer and a war general’s favor, now it’s Vietnam’s tech messiah. The government’s banking on it to leap from factories to futuretech. But tariffs, global giants, and Uncle Sam breathing down its neck could turn this national flex into a flameout. (More)

✈️ EU plots delay dodge that screws passengers. Brussels wants to let airlines delay flights up to five hours without coughing up cash, basically legalizing travel torture. Airlines say it’ll “save schedules,” but 75% of payouts would vanish. Critics are calling it blackmail-by-bureaucracy. Just in time for vacation season, Europe’s selling out your seat. (More)

📉 ASML loses $130B as chip chaos scorches Europe. Once a €1,000-a-pop darling, ASML’s stock has cratered on Trump tariffs, China bans, and AI overhype. The Dutch chip tool titan, sole maker of next-gen EUV machines, can’t sell its best gear to China and investors are sweating. Wall Street’s still hopeful. Markets? Not so much. (More)

💼 Shein bails on London, eyes Hong Kong IPO instead. Blocked by Chinese regulators and bruised by tariff hikes, Shein’s fast-fashion IPO is ditching London for Hong Kong. The move undercuts its global rebrand and spotlights Beijing’s gatekeeping. With U.S. and EU tax knives out, Shein’s $50B dream is fraying at the seams. (More)

🤷‍♂️ Whatever

💸 Wall Street escapes Musk’s $13B Twitter debt trap. Banks clung to Elon’s word, ate two years of stress, and cashed out after Trump’s win revived X’s toxic loan pile. (More)

🏭 Walgreens revives robot pharmacies as chaos hits retail. After pausing its rollout, Walgreens just fired up a new micro-fulfillment center in Minnesota, betting automation can outpace store closures and industry meltdowns. (More)

🚚 Driverless semis hit highways, safety hits a wall. Aurora’s robo-rigs just logged 1,000 solo miles, but critics say the unregulated rollout is barreling toward disaster. One glitch and 25,000 lbs becomes a missile. (More)

🏬 Meta eyes retail stores to flog its smart specs. Meta’s plotting a physical store rollout to boost hardware sales, hiring retail staff and chasing Apple’s playbook, minus the global cult. (More)

🧩 Microsoft wants Windows Update to run all your apps. Redmond’s cooking up a system where third-party apps update like Windows itself. Smart timing, fewer nags, maybe even battery-friendly. (More)

💰 Argentina raises $1B in bold peso-for-dollars debt play. Milei just pulled off a Wall Street return stunt: a peso bond sold for dollars to boost reserves without wrecking the currency. (More)

🎮 GameStop dives into Bitcoin, investors bail hard. The meme stock darling just dropped $500M on Bitcoin, but instead of a moonshot, its shares cratered 10%. Wall Street isn’t buying the crypto cosplay. (More)

📜 Cursed Wisdom

🧯 Send Help (to Others)

Be a hero. Save someone from the soul-crushing boredom of mainstream news.
Hit forward. Share the chaos. Perform CPR, the metaphorical kind, obviously.
We’ll even reward you. Eventually. Probably. But don’t do it for the prize. Do it because you’re a good person. Or at least want to look like one.