Right on the heels of Meta’s new policies against “fact checking,” and two years after Elon Musk took Twitter private on a mission to save free speech, Google has declined to cooperate with the EU’s new Digital Services Act (DSA), a wild piece of censorship legislation demanding “fact checks” on search results and YouTube videos. Axios broke the story, and implied Google’s decision was inevitable — the company has never required anything like this before, and already signaled it wouldn’t comply. But I can’t help but wonder how different things would be had Lil Coconut won the White House. Over the past few months, Trump has taken calls from every major tech leader. They want protection from the EU. He wants tech’s unofficial leftwing censorship apparatus dismantled. It’s not difficult to understand what’s happening here, we just haven’t seen it in a while: it’s the art of the deal. Welcome back. 

In a plot twist that would make 2016-era Silicon Valley sob into their Patagonia vests, Big Tech’s elite are doing the unthinkable: celebrating Trump’s 2025 inauguration. It’s not just (or only) the PayPal mafia — we’re talking the crumbling Blue Wall of Google, Apple, Meta, and OpenAI. Even the un-closeted communists will attend, notably TikTok’s Shou Chew (because nothing says “America First” quite like a Chinese op at the party). The $200M protection money inaugural fund donated by tech giants isn’t just vibes — it’s the death knell of Big Tech’s Democrat era. It looks like the industry finally realized surviving AI regulation, antitrust heat, and a two-front China / EU trade war matters more than borg-run DEI panels and climate pledges. Will historians look back on January 20th as the moment tech remembered how — and why — to build? Probably not, but there will at least be an industry to speak of.

Starbucks is reversing its so-called “open-door” policy after almost seven years, with the chain now requiring patrons to make a purchase if they want to hang out at a coffee shop or use its restrooms. Additionally, the company also announced a new code of conduct for all of its North American locations that will, among other things, prohibit smoking, panhandling, and consumption of outside alcohol (getting plastered at Starbs with the boys? Apparently ok up to this point). The moves come as new CEO Brian Niccol vows to restore Starbucks’ status as the nation’s “community coffeehouse” while making its locations “inviting places to linger,” and we admire the bold vision. “Hey, what if our coffee shops weren’t glorified homeless shelters where drunk vagrants harass customers for spare change?” Brilliant. In fact, we should scale the strategy. Brian, when you’re done kicking that violent hobo out of your store… ever thought about running for California Governor?

On January 3, 2025, Eric Trump tweeted a photo of himself alongside Michael Saylor at Mar-a-Lago. Saylor’s reply, “Bitcoin is on the menu at Mar-a-Lago,” might seem lighthearted, but it’s a snapshot of a much bigger story. Tracking the movement on Arkham Intelligence, which reveals blockchain activity in real time, we see that prior to Trump’s re-election on November 10, 2024, MicroStrategy held 279,420 bitcoins — a massive stash already. By January 13, 2025, the company’s holdings had ballooned to 450,000 bitcoins, the largest corporate position in the world by far. With a position this massive, Saylor isn’t just betting on the cryptocurrency — he’s making a play to reshape the financial world. If Bitcoin is on the menu, Saylor and MicroStrategy are ordering seconds.

Follow Saylor’s moves here.

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