May 21 2025

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Trump Pushes Sweeping Tax Cuts as House Races to Vote Amid Divisions

Trump Unveils "Golden Dome" Missile Defense; Claims Will Be Complete by 2028

Musk Signals Retreat From Major Political Funding

OpenAI's Texas AI Hub Secures $11.6B for Massive Expansion

Report: Brazil Uncovered as "Spy Factory" for Russian Deep-Cover Agents

1. Trump Pushes Sweeping Tax Cuts as House Races to Vote Amid Divisions

A. WASHINGTON—President Trump’s multitrillion-dollar economic agenda hinges on fractious GOP lawmakers who are at odds over the details of a tax package that could determine their fate in next year’s midterm elections. Trump is betting that the legislation will win over voters who are skeptical of his stiff tariffs, which threaten to raise prices for American consumers. The bill contains versions of his campaign-trail pledge to eliminate taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits, and boosts the child tax credit.¹ The economic and political stakes are enormous. If Trump is able to secure passage of his “big, beautiful bill,” he could take credit for delivering tax cuts ahead of the midterms. If the legislation falters, millions of voters could instead be focused on the economic fallout from his trade agenda. On top of that, many tax cuts put in place during Trump’s first term would expire, triggering tax increases for many U.S. households.

B. House Republicans on Wednesday are set to try to push President Donald Trump’s massive tax and immigration package across the finish line, hoping to conquer internal divisions and tee up a vote that would send Trump’s sprawling agenda to the Senate. The House Rules Committee worked through the night on the legislation, trying to push the bill past a procedural test that would allow for a final vote. Lawmakers were still debating its provisions early Wednesday morning after a committee session that began at 1 a.m.

C. there have been 537 amendments submitted to reconciliation package

- 439A CST, 5/21/25 @JakeSherman

WSJ

Washington Post

2. Trump Unveils "Golden Dome" Missile Defense; Claims Will Be Complete by 2028

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the government will move forward on construction of a multibillion-dollar “Golden Dome” missile defense system that will use a constellation of satellites and space-based weapons to intercept ballistic attacks on the United States.³ For months, Trump has pushed for such a system, citing increasingly sophisticated threats from countries such as Russia, China and North Korea. “Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space, and we will have the best system ever built,” Trump said in the Oval Office alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who later described the project as a “game changer.” Trump said Tuesday that his administration had settled on an architecture for the project and claimed that the system could be operational within three years, before the end of his second term.⁴ Gen. Michael Guetlein, vice chief of operations for the U.S. Space Force, will oversee the Golden Dome’s progress, Trump said.⁵ Trump has already allocated $25 billion in the federal budget toward the construction of the Golden Dome in the massive budget bill that Republicans in Congress aim to pass in the coming weeks. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that deploying and operating just the space-based interceptors of the new missile defense system could cost anywhere from $161 billion to $542 billion over the next two decades. On Tuesday, Trump said he estimated the system would cost $175 billion.⁶

Washington Post

3. Musk Signals Retreat From Major Political Funding

Elon Musk, the US’s largest political donor, has said he intends to spend a “lot less” on political campaigns in the future, in a blow to Donald Trump loyalists ahead of next year’s midterm elections.⁷ The world’s richest man, who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars on Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, said he thought he had “done enough” donating to political causes.⁸ Speaking at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday, Musk said: “I’m going to do a lot less [political spending] in the future,” adding that he did not “currently see a reason” to sustain the level of support he has given conservative candidates over the past year.⁹ The remarks come after Musk’s most recent foray into electoral politics ended in defeat.¹⁰ The Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate he backed with more than $25mn lost by 10 percentage points in April, after Democrats turned the race into a referendum on the Trump administration and Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.¹¹

FT

4. OpenAI's Texas AI Hub Secures $11.6B for Massive Expansion¹²

A Texas data center that the startup Crusoe is building for OpenAI has secured $11.6 billion in new funding commitments, expanding a site that is core to increasing the ChatGPT maker’s long-term computing capabilities.¹³ The funding, a mixture of debt and equity, will expand the data center to eight buildings from two and increase the total amount secured for the project to $15 billion, Crusoe said. Both Crusoe and investment firm Blue Owl Capital OWL -1.85% decrease; red down pointing triangle are contributing cash to the data center project as part of the latest financing.¹⁴ The data center, which is slated for completion next year, is expected to be the largest used by OpenAI. Each of the buildings will run up to 50,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips, which are commonly used for training large language models. The development of the Abilene site is a key step in reducing OpenAI’s reliance on Microsoft in the race to build the next generation of AI models.¹⁵ For years, the startup exclusively relied on Microsoft MSFT -0.15% decrease; red down pointing triangle for its computing power, but grew frustrated that the tech giant wasn’t keeping up with demand. Last spring, it struck a deal with Oracle to use the Abilene site after receiving the signoff from Microsoft.

WSJ

5. Report: Brazil Uncovered as "Spy Factory" for Russian Deep-Cover Agents

Artem Shmyrev had everyone fooled. The Russian intelligence officer seemed to have built the perfect cover identity. He ran a successful 3-D printing business and shared an upscale apartment in Rio de Janeiro with his Brazilian girlfriend and a fluffy orange-and-white Maine coon cat. But most important, he had an authentic birth certificate and passport that cemented his alias as Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich, a 34-year-old Brazilian citizen. After six years lying low, he was impatient to begin real spy work. “No one wants to feel loser,” he wrote in a 2021 text message to his Russian wife, who was also an intelligence officer, using imperfect English. “That is why I continue working and hoping.” He was not alone. For years, a New York Times investigation found, Russia used Brazil as a launchpad for its most elite intelligence officers, known as illegals. In an audacious and far-reaching operation, the spies shed their Russian pasts. They started businesses, made friends and had love affairs — events that, over many years, became the building blocks of entirely new identities. Major Russian spy operations have been uncovered in the past, including in the United States in 2010.¹⁶ This was different. The goal was not to spy on Brazil, but to become Brazilian. Once cloaked in credible back stories, they would set off for the United States, Europe or the Middle East and begin working in earnest. The Russians essentially turned Brazil into an assembly line for deep-cover operatives like Mr. Shmyrev. For the past three years, Brazilian counterintelligence agents have quietly and methodically hunted these spies. Through painstaking police work, these agents discovered a pattern that allowed them to identify the spies, one by one. Agents have uncovered at least nine Russian officers operating under Brazilian cover identities, according to documents and interviews. Six have never been publicly identified until now. The investigation has already spanned at least eight countries, officials said, with intelligence coming from the United States, Israel, the Netherlands, Uruguay and other Western security services.

NYT

May 21, 1927: Charles Lindbergh completes the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight

May 21, 1932: Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to make solo, nonstop transatlantic flight

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Sources

1. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-tax-bill-economic-agenda-republicans-b9f31a73?mod=hp_lead_pos1
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/05/21/trump-tax-bill-house-rules-committee/
3. https://x.com/JakeSherman/status/1925121637302538509
4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/20/trump-golden-dome-missile-defense/
5. https://www.ft.com/content/b1dfa77b-cbc6-4274-9362-cffc21025d5c
6. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-data-center-funding-microsoft-75e879b6?mod=hp_lead_pos10
7. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/world/americas/russia-brazil-spies-deep-cover.html