Story of the Week (DR):

Trump is bringing Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and a dozen other CEOs to Beijing for his Xi summit

Technology & AI

Elon Musk – CEO, Tesla and SpaceX

Tim Cook – CEO, Apple

Jensen Huang – CEO, Nvidia (joined as a last-minute addition after a personal call from the President)

Cristiano Amon – CEO, Qualcomm

Sanjay Mehrotra – CEO, Micron Technology

Dina Powell McCormick – President, Meta

Jim Anderson – CEO, Coherent

Finance & Investment

Larry Fink – CEO, BlackRock

Stephen Schwarzman – CEO, Blackstone

David Solomon – CEO, Goldman Sachs

Jane Fraser – CEO, Citigroup

Aerospace & Manufacturing

Kelly Ortberg – CEO, Boeing (reportedly finalizing a massive 500-jet deal during the trip)

Larry Culp – CEO, GE Aerospace

Payments & Services

Michael Miebach – CEO, Mastercard

Ryan McInerney – CEO, Visa

Agriculture & Biotech

Brian Sikes – CEO, Cargill

Jacob Thaysen – CEO, Illumina

Paypal agrees to $30 million settlement with Trump's Justice Department over 'illegal DEI'

The company launched a $530M Economic Opportunity Fund in 2020 for Black and underrepresented minority businesses

Did not fight this in court, just surrendered

To make the DOJ happy, PayPal had to ditch its race-based criteria; instead, it now funnels that financial support to veteran-owned businesses and companies in farming, manufacturing, or technology. A direct “black” to “white” transfer

Any company that launched a race-specific grant or loan program after 2020 is now officially in the DOJ’s crosshairs, and "social justice" is being litigated as "civil rights fraud."

PayPal board:

“Independent” chair David W. Dorman (2015-; 17%)

member of the Dell Technologies Board

Michael Dell and Donald Trump are BFFs: Dell pledged $6.25B to Trump Accounts

Jonathan Christodoro (2015-; 13%): a disciple of billionaire Carl Icahn (former Managing Director at Icahn Capital), one of Trump’s oldest and most vocal allies

Founder PayPal Mafia Trump BFFs: Musk (DOGE), David Sacks (AI and Crypto Czar), Peter Thiel (JD Vance creator)

Frank Yeary (2015-; 12%): Intel director since 2009 and chair since 2023

It Was One of DOGE’s Most Absurd Abuses. A Court Finally Exposed It

This whole saga centers on a major legal showdown between the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

The case is a consolidated lawsuit (often called the NEH-DOGE lawsuit) filed in May 2025 by groups including the Authors Guild, the American Historical Association, and the Modern Language Association.

On May 7, 2026, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon issued a massive 143-page ruling. She essentially nuked DOGE’s attempt to defund hundreds of humanities projects, calling their process a "textbook example of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination."

The AI Purge: Instead of a professional review, DOGE staffers (described in court as young "technologists" with no background in humanities) ran thousands of grant descriptions through ChatGPT.

DOGE staffers—mostly described as 20-somethings with "zero experience in the humanities"—attempted to dodge government transparency laws by conducting official business on Signal with auto-delete enabled. The court found this was a blatant violation of the Federal Records Act, proving that "efficiency" is often just code for "avoiding a paper trail."

The Woke Filter: They told the AI to flag anything related to "DEI." This backfired spectacularly when the AI flagged projects on Holocaust survivors, Appalachian history, and Italian-American archives simply because they used words like "identity," "culture," or "women."

DOGE didn't actually read the grants they cut. Instead, they used ChatGPT and basic keyword searches to flag any program containing "incriminating" words like "history," "culture," "identity," or "BIPOC." If the AI thought it sounded "woke," the funding was axed—a move Judge Colleen McMahon called a "textbook example of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination."

In perhaps the most "mask-off" moment of the proceedings, it was revealed that DOGE staffers flagged and canceled a documentary about Jewish women’s slave labor during the Holocaust. The reason? Their AI-driven filter decided that focusing on "Jewish cultures" and "female voices" made it an illegal DEI program. Apparently, documenting Nazi atrocities is now "radical identity politics."

The ruling highlighted a minor detail the administration seemed to forget: DOGE isn't a real government agency. The judge noted that DOGE had absolutely no lawful authority to terminate congressionally appropriated funds. They were essentially a group of private-sector bros playing President with the NEH checkbook

The Redirect: The court found that the $100 million "saved" wasn't actually returned to the Treasury. Instead, it was being funneled into the administration's own projects, like the "National Garden of American Heroes."

Why Two Big Companies Just Cut Paid Family Leave MM

For the last decade, a tight labor market forced companies to compete for talent with generous perks. Now, with the job market cooling and employees having less leverage to quit, companies like Deloitte and Zoom are quietly rolling back benefits.

Zoom, the company that became the face of remote work, has slashed its paid parental leave. Birthing parents saw their leave drop from up to 24 weeks to 18 weeks, while non-birthing parents were cut from 16 weeks down to 10.

Deloitte is making deep cuts, but not for everyone. The reductions specifically target “Center” employees—...