🚂 SCOTUS Bends Over, Big Oil Rails

Happy Friday, it’s May 30, 2025.

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

🔥 Top Shelf Chaos

🛢️ Supreme Court steamrolls green tape for Utah oil rail. The justices handed an 8-0 win to Big Oil’s westward ambitions, greenlighting a massive Utah rail expansion and gutting how far agencies must look when weighing environmental fallout. Forget downstream damage, the court says regulators only need to squint at what’s directly in front of them. It’s a seismic blow to NEPA and a steroid shot for fossil fuel fast-tracking nationwide. Game changed. (More)

💶 EU flexes as the world burns, euro eyes its moment. While America tantrums with tariffs and the dollar wobbles like a drunk flamingo, trust in the EU just hit a 20-year high. Investors are jumping ship to euro-land, fueling talk of a “global euro moment.” With fiscal firepower, geopolitical swagger, and Trump chaos doing the marketing, Europe’s suddenly the safe bet in an unsafe world. Lagarde’s licking her chops. Dollar dominance? Consider it on notice. (More)

💣 U.S. slaps China with tech bans, Beijing fires back with mineral choke. The Trump admin hit pause on exports of jet engines, chip software, and critical tech to China, retaliation for Beijing’s clampdown on rare earths. Now it’s full-blown supply chain warfare, with both sides flexing their economic kill switches. From semis to airplanes, the fallout’s massive. Trade talks? On life support. The Cold War’s gone corporate, and everyone’s caught in the blast zone. (More)

👀 Side-Eye Central

🧠 New York Times strikes AI deal with Amazon, sues others. NYT will license content to Amazon’s Alexa and AI models, including material from The Athletic and NYT Cooking, while still suing OpenAI for copyright violations. It’s monetizing journalism through dual lanes, corporate handshakes on one side, courtroom brawls on the other. (More)

🪴 China woos Pacific Islands as US ghosts the region. China pledged trade access, climate aid, and no-strings-attached cash to Pacific nations, stepping in where the US pulled back. With Trump-era cuts to foreign aid and global tariffs, Beijing’s charm offensive is gaining ground. More ministers showed up than in 2022. Long game engaged. (More)

🌪️ $14B in clean energy projects torched as Trump era chills investment. A pending tax gut-job and Trump’s fossil-fueled agenda have nuked over $14B in U.S. clean energy plans this year, killing 10,000 jobs. Battery, EV, and solar firms are bailing, especially in GOP-led states. IRA gains? Reversed. Momentum? Bleeding. America’s green future just hit a red light. (More)

💰 Germany eyes 10% tax on Big Tech, dares Trump to blink. Berlin’s drawing up a digital tax targeting Google, Meta, and other U.S. giants, 10% on German ad revenue, possibly modeled after Austria’s levy. It’s part media rescue, part EU power flex. With Trump already howling about EU bias, this could blow up fast. (More)

🪖 Meta wants to weaponize AR for the Army with $100M bid. Meta’s teaming with defense darling Anduril on “EagleEye,” a high-tech wearables line for U.S. troops, think AR helmets, AI-linked glasses, and battlefield sensors. It’s part of a $22B Army splurge. Zuck’s in. Luckey’s back. And Big Tech’s war playbook just got another chapter. (More)

🤷‍♂️ Whatever

💼 Delaware AG brings in bank to dissect OpenAI’s restructuring. The state’s top cop wants an independent valuation of OpenAI’s nonprofit stake, potentially slowing its for-profit pivot. (More)

⚡ Tesla vet’s Heron Power lands $38M to reboot the grid. Backed by big names, Heron’s building smarter transformers to modernize how energy moves, starting with neighborhoods and data centers. (More)

🪙 SEC drops Binance case, clearing crypto’s biggest name. The agency dismissed its lawsuit with prejudice, capping a crackdown era as Trump-world cozies up to crypto. Binance walks, Zhao keeps billions. (More)

📊 ClickHouse hits $6.35B valuation as AI gold rush fuels demand. The Yandex spinout raised $350M to scale its lightning-fast database tech, now powering giants like Tesla and Anthropic. (More)

💉 Omada Health targets $1.1B IPO to scale virtual chronic care. The digital health firm plans to raise $158M with shares priced at $18–$20, joining Hinge Health in reviving the IPO drought. (More)

🛍️ Victoria’s Secret website goes dark after security scare. A major incident forced the retailer to yank its site and some store services offline. Recovery “will take awhile,” per its CEO. (More)

🏗️ Buildots raises $45M to bring AI oversight to construction sites. Its helmet-cam platform tracks progress, flags delays, and keeps execs synced. Intel’s already on board. Hard hats just got smart. (More)

📜 Cursed Wisdom

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