Happy Wednesday, y’all. Texas is feeling the impact of major flooding. Consider donating to relief efforts if you’re able. Otherwise, why not disappoint yourself with news before you disappoint yourself with more news?

Elon Musk Hired a Dozen Texas Lobbyists This Year. State Law Keeps the Extent of Their Influence Under Wraps.
Elon Musk’s team of Texas lobbyists during the 2025 legislative session did not rival those of huge energy and telecommunications companies, which typically employ dozens of people to represent them. But Musk and his companies still hired more lobbyists this year than any other since 2021, according to data from the Texas Ethics Commission.

Musk, the billionaire businessman behind carmaker Tesla and aerospace company SpaceX, influenced several new Texas laws this year. How his lobbyists came about these wins, however, is more of a mystery.

His lobbyists, who represented Tesla, SpaceX and the social media giant X Corp., spent tens of thousands of dollars on things like gifts and meals for Texas elected officials and others during the session, according to an analysis of state ethics data. In most cases, Texas transparency laws do not require lobbyists to disclose which politicians they wined and dined or on behalf of which clients.

These 5 Charts Show How Hotels Became New York’s Response to Homelessness
Hotels have long been considered a last resort for sheltering people who’ve lost their housing. But over the past few years, they’ve become New York’s predominant response to homelessness outside New York City, a recent investigation by New York Focus and ProPublica found.

Social services agencies across the state now place nearly half of all individuals and families seeking shelter in hotels. Yet those placed in hotels often go without services that they’re supposed to receive in shelters, such as meals, help finding housing and sometimes child care so they can look for work.

The growing reliance on hotels has been driven by soaring rent, shelter closures and a spike in evictions that followed a moratorium during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations
In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.

In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.

Noem then failed to disclose the $80,000 payment to the public. After President Donald Trump selected Noem to be his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, she had to release a detailed accounting of her assets and sources of income from 2023 on. She did not include the income from the dark money group on her disclosure form, which experts called a likely violation of federal ethics requirements.

Fifa opens office in Trump Tower, deepening ties with US president
Fifa’s relationship with the US president, Donald Trump, now has a physically tangible marker, with soccer’s world governing body announcing it has opened an office in Trump Tower in New York City.

The announcement of the new office came on Monday evening, after Fifa placed the Club World Cup trophy on display in the lobby of the skyscraper on the south-west corner of Central Park in an event attended by several Fifa dignitaries including its president, Gianni Infantino, and the Brazilian great Ronaldo as well as Eric Trump, the son of the US president and executive vice-president of the Trump Organization.

“Fifa [is] a global organisation [and] to be global you have to be local, you have to be everywhere, so we have to be in New York,” Infantino said. “Not just for the Fifa Club World Cup this year and the Fifa World Cup next year – we have to be in New York as well when it comes to where our offices are based. Thank you, Eric [Trump], thank you to everyone. Thanks, of course, to president Trump as well.”

Be kind and thoughtful today. Cheers.