Sat, Jan 3, 2026

The year is three days old, and a pressure campaign has turned into a removal operation.

Donald Trump announced on Saturday that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been "captured and flown out" of the country. Residents in Caracas reported explosions and low-flying aircraft overnight. Yesterday, the administration struck a dock. Today, it claimed the head of state. The US has removed the obstacle. Now, it owns the power vacuum.

In Silicon Valley, the removal process is broken. xAI’s Grok is facing a reckoning in Europe after reports that the model generated sexualized images of minors. French prosecutors called the content "manifestly illegal." The company’s defense was a hallucination: Grok cited the "ENFORCE Act of 2025" as governing law. That law does not exist. It passed the Senate but never the House. The AI invented a statute to justify its own output.

While the US legal system is slow, others are not. The real risk for Elon Musk isn't a Washington subpoena. It's a New Delhi arrest warrant. India warned platforms that "responsible officers" will be held liable for non-compliance. Musk is safe in San Francisco, but as the CEO of a technology that churns out sexual abuse material, his travel itinerary just became complicated.

Musk will add this to his pile of lawsuits and mounting regulatory pressure, highlighted by a recent €120 million EU fine under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

In Omaha, the transition of power was handled with trust. Warren Buffett officially handed the reins of Berkshire Hathaway to Greg Abel, a designated successor for over four years.

"There's no secret formula that only CEOs have," Buffett said yesterday. "I'd rather have Greg handling my money than any of the top investment advisors or any of the top CEOs in the United States. He knows business."

Wall Street closed on Friday unaware of the weekend’s extraction. Stocks finished the week higher, pricing in a world that no longer exists. The hint at the price of regime change arrives Sunday night when oil futures open.

Domestically, the courts are widening the lane for conflict. A federal appeals court ruled against California’s open-carry ban, stating the law violated the Second Amendment.

Power left the building in three different ways this weekend. Buffett walked out. Grok is being shamed out. Maduro was flown out.

The market closed Friday pricing in the walk. It opens Monday pricing in the void.

Fri, Jan 2, 2026

Wall Street opened 2026 reaching for chips. The S&P 500 rose 0.4%, the Nasdaq 1%, Nvidia and Alphabet both up more than 2%.

Tesla surrendered its EV crown to BYD after a 15.6% sales drop in Q4, marking its second year of decline. The market looked at the data, punished the carmaker, and pivoted to the hardware with pricing power.

While Austin stumbled, the rest of the world bid up the plumbing. The FTSE 100 hit a record above 10,000, driven by miners digging for the copper and silver that electrification requires. Silver resumed its chaos: up 4.8% after Wednesday's 9.4% drop, its fifth straight session of 5%-plus swings.

This economic gravity is forcing Washington to break its own character. The administration talks incessantly about containment, yet it quietly granted TSMC a license to import US chipmaking tools into its Nanjing, China facility. The rhetoric is America First. The reality is supply chain preservation. The trade war has exemptions.

Donald Trump delayed some tariff hikes as inflation lingers. Meanwhile, he warned Iran that the US is "locked and loaded" if security forces kill protesters, the sixth day of demonstrations, at least seven dead.

In Venezuela, the administration confirmed its first strike on land: a dock Trump said was loading drug boats. Sanctions hit a Tehran-Caracas drone network the same day.

In New York, Zohran Mamdani took office, vowing a democratic socialist agenda with his hand on the Quran and framing himself as a foil to the White House.

In House testimony, Special Counsel Jack Smith revealed a private truth behind the public act: Trump acknowledged he lost the 2020 election, contradicting four years of rallies.

Dominance is heading east to start the new year. American manufacturing lost its crown to a Chinese car company that makes cheap batteries. The US is shipping innovation to China. Some tariffs are on hold. And buried in a transcript, the admission that four years of rallies tried to drown out: "Can you believe I lost to this fucking guy?"

America is still rich. It just isn’t automatically first.

Thu, Jan 1, 2026

Xi Jinping sat at a desk in Beijing and called reunification with Taiwan “unstoppable,” coinciding with his live-fire drills around the island, seeking to end its robust, multi-party democracy with free and fair elections, strong civil liberties, and peaceful transfers of power.

22 million Taiwanese people disagree. Pro-unification sentiment sits at 6%. The government passed a record $40 billion defense budget and signed an $11.1 billion arms deal with the US. The economic math is also a wall: a conflict would cost the global economy $10 trillion, a 10% hit to global GDP. Xi wants the geopolitical win without the bankruptcy price. “Unstoppable” is branding for a dilemma he cannot solve.

Vladimir Putin is running the same play. He told troops he believes in victory on day 1,407 of the war. He has matched the duration of the WWII Eastern Front with a fraction of the result. Russian forces trade conscripts for millimeters. 158,143 Russian deaths have been verified, while intelligence puts total casualties at 1.1 million. The narrative requires distraction, like false claims of a drone attack, to obscure the body count.

Xi and Putin are banking on the mechanic that just failed in Chicago: declare the outcome and hope the volume hides the math. Trump claimed law and order, but suffered a procedural defeat. Beijing claims history is a law of nature. Moscow claims victory is a matter of time. But as Washington learned, can only occupy the narrative for so long before you have to clear the street.

Here's to the power of democracy, justice, and hope.

Happy new year.