Saturday Morning Covfefe: 5 Things with Olivia

Epstein Deflections, DHS Corruption & Tequila.

It’s getting impossible to keep up. Yesterday I wrote about Trump’s “Hoax Presidency,” and now he’s leaned right into it, brushing off Epstein questions by calling for probes into Democrats, with Pam Bondi dutifully backing him up. Meanwhile, Kristi Noem is running DHS like her own campaign studio. If you’re feeling whiplash, you’re not alone. *spikes coffee with tequila and keeps typing*

1. Kristi Noem’s DHS: Now Casting Friends, Family & Cronies

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you mix a border “emergency,” a $220 million DHS advertising budget, and a political operative with a cowboy-hat fetish…well, here we are.

ProPublica dropped a bombshell: a firm tied personally and financially to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, run by the husband of her top spokesperson, quietly siphoned money from her taxpayer-funded border ad campaign. And they did it through a shell company that magically appeared in Delaware days before the contract was awarded.

Let’s be clear: this wasn’t an accident. It was the weaponization of an “emergency” to skip competitive bidding, the safeguards meant to prevent precisely this kind of corruption. I’ve worked inside the federal contracting world, and this reeks.

The highlights:

• Noem used the “border emergency” to funnel $220 million into an ad campaign that resembles her 2028 sizzle reel more than public messaging.

• A key beneficiary? The Strategy Group, the GOP ad shop run by her spokesperson’s husband.

• The money was transferred through a newly formed LLC, “Safe America Media,” which was established just before the award.

• Contracting experts: “It’s corrupt.”

• Noem required all DHS payments exceeding $100,000 to be routed through her personally, a significant red flag.

And the ads? Filmed at Mount Rushmore, Jeep-commercial vibes, Trump Tower cameos. It’s propaganda on the taxpayer’s dime.

Crisis funds are supposed to protect the country, not bankroll friends or rehearse campaign themes. This isn’t border security. It’s self-dealing on horseback.

🤠💵 Kristi Noem’s Friends-and-Family DHS Deal: ProPublica

The One That Made Me Spit Out My Tequila and Coffee.

2. Costco’s Tequila Might Not Be…Tequila

A class-action suit says Costco’s Kirkland “100% Blue Weber agave” tequila may contain so much cane sugar it wouldn’t legally qualify as tequila.

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) testing allegedly found non-agave alcohol, meaning people paid for premium tequila and got tequila-adjacent mystery juice. And since all three Kirkland tequilas use the same base spirit, the whole line may be compromised.

Negligence, deception, and unjust enrichment are all in the filing. In other words, Costco’s bargain bottle may have been a bargain for a reason.

🥴 Costco’s “Tequila” Isn’t Tequila? Pour Me a Refund: Delish

3. Your Power Bill Has Entered the AI Era

Across Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic, families are opening their electricity bills and finding charges that make no sense: higher bills despite lower usage. One Baltimore resident cut her energy use by 40% and still saw her bill increase by 20% in a single month. The culprit? Artificial Intelligence (AI) data centers are devouring the power grid, and you’re being billed for their appetite.

Northern Virginia now hosts the largest data-center cluster on Earth, and its megawatt draw is spilling across state lines. The extra costs are buried inside electricity supply charges, which most people never notice.

Key facts:

• Data centers have inflated the region’s latest power-price auction by $9.3 billion.

• Residential users are being asked to pre-pay for future grid upgrades, decades’ worth, to support these facilities.

• The Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that data centers could consume up to 12% of all U.S. electricity by 2028.

• Experts warn this is the “tip of the iceberg.”

People are doing everything right, buying efficient appliances, turning off the AC, and still getting punished. Meanwhile, tech giants build AI campuses the size of small cities.

If you’re wondering why life feels more expensive and less fair, this is one reason: we’re subsidizing an AI boom that most Americans never asked for.

🤖 AI Is Making Your Power Bill Explode: People

4. The ‘Devil’s Train’ Has Gone Silent, and That Should Worry Us

Along the infamous “Devil’s Train” route in northern Mexico, once a lifeline for thousands heading towards the bordertown of Juárez, the rooftops are now empty. Locals who used to see waves of migrants pass daily haven’t seen full cars in a year. Migration didn’t stop. It was pushed out of view.

Yes, I believe in legal immigration. But here’s the truth people miss:
When a route like this disappears, it doesn’t mean the problem is solved. It implies the danger shifted. When the trains go quiet, migrants don’t stop; they’re forced onto riskier paths. And that means:

• More smugglers

• More dangerous, isolated crossings

• More people are going missing

• Far less visibility into humanitarian crises forming upstream

This shift tells us something bigger: policy crackdowns aren’t reducing desperation, they’re rerouting it into darker, deadlier channels.

What to watch: Are migrants switching routes entirely? Is Mexican enforcement the driver, or is it Trump’s end to asylum? And what happens when cartels, not train cars, become the primary route north?

The “Devil’s Train” going silent isn’t order. It’s the sound of people being pushed into places where the world stops paying attention.

🚂 The Devil’s Train Just Went Dark: El Paso Times

5. The Secret Memo Behind Trump’s Deadly Boat Strikes

A secret 40+ page Justice Department memo has blessed Trump’s “boat strike” campaign by accepting, uncritically, his claim that the U.S. is in a wartime “armed conflict” with drug cartels. That single assertion gives him broad war powers, battlefield immunity, and the authority to kill people on unflagged boats without charges, evidence, or congressional approval.

As a former White House national security official, here’s the part no one is saying out loud: This won’t reduce fentanyl deaths. Our overdose crisis started here at home, with pharmaceutical companies, deregulation, and demand, not cartel boats in the Caribbean. Killing alleged smugglers at sea doesn’t stop the drug trade; it just pushes traffickers toward more dangerous methods, as it always has.

Meanwhile, at least 80 people have already been killed with zero transparency about who they were or whether they posed any threat. Pete Hegseth is posting the explosions like social media content. Trump falsely claims each destroyed boat “saves 25,000 American lives.”

Experts warn the memo’s logic is unprecedented and dangerous. It treats drug profits as “military objectives,” rests on a “war” that doesn’t legally exist, provides legal cover for officials, and dodges the War Powers Resolution by claiming these killings aren’t “hostilities.”

And now, with Pentagon firepower shifting toward land operations, Trump is openly floating escalation into Venezuela, a major red line with zero congressional oversight. This isn’t counter-narcotics. It’s a president inventing a war and rewriting the law around it.

🚤 Trump’s Secret Boat-Strike Memo: NY Times

🤝 One Thing for Your Soul: We Need More Simones

During the government shutdown, when federal workers went unpaid, Simone Randolph didn’t wait for help; she became it. A furloughed mom and military spouse, she began buying breakfast for her kids’ daycare staff. Two days turned into a partnership with World Central Kitchen, and more than 3,000 hot meals were delivered to childcare workers and first responders who continued to show up without pay. Her reminder: “Americans forget about the good they can do.” This week, remember Simone, the kind of neighbor who proves community doesn’t break in a crisis. It shows up.

P.S. Last week I shared Bishop Seitz’s sermon. This week? The White House escalated its fight with the Catholic Church. After U.S. bishops condemned “indiscriminate” mass deportations, Tom Homan snapped: “The Catholic Church is wrong.” Big words from the guy running masked raids. When did he become the theologian-in-chief?

Unbelievable…

-Olivia