CEOs on ICE, the SEC kills small investors, the manchild economy, and AI navel gazers

Story of the Week (DR):

1. Trump's ICE tactics force CEOs to choose between staying silent and risking White House backlash MM

1. CEOs of Target and Minnesota’s Biggest Companies Call for ‘De-Escalation’ After Shooting

2. Minnesota workers pressure employers to take action against ICE operations

3. CEOs, long silent on Trump’s immigration crackdown, seem to hit their breaking point over killing of Alex Pretti in Minnesota

4. Target's incoming CEO tells staff violence in Minneapolis is 'incredibly painful' – without naming Trump or ICE

1. Jan 28: Target Unveils Largest Spring Beauty Assortment Ever — Making Trend-Driven, Expert-Backed Beauty More Accessible

5. Tech's top CEOs mum after ICE killings, while leaders like Reid Hoffman, Yann LeCun speak out

6. ICE is going too far': Sam Altman, Jamie Dimon, and more CEOs on the unrest in Minnesota

7. Reid Hoffman says business leaders are wrong to stay silent about the Trump administration

8. Apple's Cook says he's 'heartbroken' by Minneapolis events and has spoken with Trump

1. Companies reap $22bn from Trump’s immigration crackdown

1. Meta blocks links to ICE List across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads

2. As Big Tech CEOs speak up about violence in Minneapolis, 1 in 3 corporate leaders think ICE tensions are ‘not relevant to their business’

3. How ICE Already Knows Who Minneapolis Protesters Are

1. Agents use facial recognition, social media monitoring and other tech tools not only to identify undocumented immigrants but also to track protesters, current and former officials said.

4. Freefloatanalytics data blast:

1. Palantir Technologies: Continues to be a primary partner. In 2025, they were awarded a $30 million contract to build "ImmigrationOS," a platform designed to provide "near real-time visibility" on individuals for the purpose of streamlining apprehensions and tracking self-deportations. Gender Influence Gap -26%

2. RELX: LexisNexis Risk Solutions: Provides ICE with investigative databases used to track, vet, and target individuals. Their current contract is valued at over $22 million. Gender Influence Gap -24%

3. Thomson Reuters: Supplies ICE with access to massive databases, including over 20 billion license plate scans. This data allows agents to track vehicle movement history and identify where individuals may be living or working. Gender Influence Gap -28%

4. Clearview AI: Recently signed a $3.75 million contract (September 2025) to provide facial recognition technology. While officially limited to certain types of investigations, procurement records suggest its use is expanding. Gender Influence Infinity% (no women on advisory board; Hal Lambert and Richard Schwartz as co-CEOs)

1. King “Bumps”

1. JPMorgan’s Dimon sees 10.3% pay bump to $43M

2. Disney CEO Bob Iger’s Pay Increased 11.5% to $45.8 Million in 2025

3. Goldman Sachs hikes CEO David Solomon's pay 21% to record $47 million

4. Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf Gets 28% Pay Boost to $40 Million

5. Why Starbucks is letting Brian Niccol use the company plane for more personal travel

1. “Following a security review of risks, the Starbucks board of directors made the decision to enhance security measures for Brian,” a company spokesperson said. “This included a decision by the board to require Brian to use private aircraft for all travel.”

2. $96M in 2024; $31M in 2024, including temporary housing expenses in the amount of $371,536; and security expenses in the amount of $1,142,700; and $997,392 in expenses related to his use of Starbucks aircraft for commuting and personal use

1. median employee: $17,279. CEO Pay ratio 1,794 to 1 (January 1st: 10:10am)

2. Temporary housing expense ratio: 22:1

1. The docu-bribe: At ‘Melania’ Premiere, the President Sees ‘Glamour’ and Others See Graft

1. Amazon paid Melania Trump’s production company $40 million for the movie and then paid another $35 million to promote it.

2. Guests included:

1. Jordan Belfort: The real-life "Wolf of Wall Street."

2. Director Brett Ratner, accused of rape, sexual assault, sexual harrassment, and homophobic abuse by at least 9 women:

1. Melania Trump documentary marks a post-#MeToo comeback for its director

2. Brett Ratner was all but exiled from Hollywood after facing sexual misconduct allegations. Trump’s win gave him an opening to return.

3. Tim Cook (Apple)

4. Andy Jassy (Amazon)

5. Lisa Su (AMD)

6. Eric Yuan (Zoom)

7. Lynn Martin (President of the NYSE)

8. Larry Culp (GE)

9. Sam Altman (OpenAI

10. Satya Nadella (Microsoft)

11. Sundar Pichai (Google)

12. Safra Catz (Oracle):

13. David Brown (Victory Capital)

14. David Ellison (Skydance/Paramount)

15. Marc Benioff (Salesforce)

Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):

1. DR: Diversity on Fortune 50 boards: white men haven’t been a majority for 3 years in a row

1. Whereas about a decade ago, white men held two-thirds of the seats on the top 50 Fortune boards, in 2023, for the first time, they held fewer than 50%. In 2024, that number dropped to 48.4%, but this year it climbed back to 49.7%.

2. Since white men make up about 31% of the U.S. population, they still have been very much overrepresented in all three years.

2. DR: National Shutdown: General strike on January 30 aims to push ICE out of Minnesota. Stores closed, protests scheduled in all 50 states

3. MM: Delivery Robot Gets Stuck on Train Tracks, Gets Obliterated by Locomotive

4. MM: Judge greenlights Massachusetts offshore wind project halted by Trump administration

1. Vineyard Wind, which joins Revolution Wind, Empire Wind, and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind in restarted because laws

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

1. WHICH ASSHOLE DO YOU BLAME: Trump's ICE tactics force CEOs to choose between staying silent and risking White House backlash

1. Trump/ICE

1. His personal military got orders to be “ethical”, but to fuck up everyone - and recruited specifically targeting Call of Duty players and lonely, angry men who wish they could call their friends “retarded” again but it isn’t politically correct

2. Palantir and the ICE industrial complex

1. Alex Karp went out of his way to insist to his disgusted employees that AI and Palantir “bolsters civil liberties”

2. Meanwhile, Palantir employees signed a letter from tech employees pondering whether or not they are actively destroying our country and abetting oligarchs

3. But Palantir, while making some of the creepiest, most heinous software known to man (I mean, worse than CHINA!  And we all HATE CHINA, RIGHT???), has $100m in contracts with ICE

4. In fact, there’s a whole private infrastructure complex that’s largely not politically agnostic that’s made $22bn from ICE and immigration crackdowns - and it’s only been a year!  That’s some awesome shareholder value illegally sending weeping mothers to countries they don’t live in with no due process!

3. CEOs (Target, looking at you) DR

1. They managed to find a pen and craft a strongly worded letter that asked, pretty please, for “de-escalation”, calling ICE out not by NAME of course, but as a “recent challenge” that created “widespread disruption” - and named the White House only as someone they are “communicating” with.  Signed by 60 Minnesota CEOs, co-signed in spirit by the Business Roundtable (though not like, officially), they managed to write a whole 199 words about the execution of a VA nurse whose crime was filming the Gestapo in action

2. Target’s incoming CEO (obviously not the CURRENT CEO Brian Cornell, he’s busy polishing his mahogany chair for board meetings where he will be Executive Chair, making as much as a CEO with none of the responsibilities) also addressed the unlawful and unwarranted arrests of Target employees in Minneapolis by thugs - oh, wait, no he didn’t - he said, “The violence and loss of life in our community is incredibly painful.” - IT WAS YOUR EMPLOYEES IN THE CROSSHAIRS, SCHMUCK.  Target employees are currently skipping work in Minnesota, but solid leadership.

4. Boards of directors

1. Our analysis of the boards of the Minnesota 60 showed that nearly half of them sit on each other’s boards.  Basically, you have a massive groupcoward problem - about 25 of the CEOs sit on some other CEOs board or overlap in some way, and the lawyers that carefully crafted the letter absolutely had to have it run through every other board and company lawyer, a task made easier when half of you are on the board with each other.  No need for authenticity when you have collective ass covering.

5. Jeffrey Epstein

1. If not for those files, there wouldn’t NEED TO BE MURDERS so you look somewhere else!

6. Investors

1. If not for “shareholder value”, we could pay attention to humanity and authentic real world values!

2. WHICH ASSHOLE DO YOU BLAME: As You Sow leads criticism of SEC’s updated restrictions on smaller shareholders

1. Smaller investors!

1. For three decades, small investors have used precatory proposals either as a means to extract more data, a means to improve governance, or a means of advertising - many of the non profits use it as a fundraising tool as much as a means of change

2. Meanwhile, those proposals have almost entirely failed at the vote - though they HAVE succeeded in increasing our data over time (the long arc of disclosure)

3. Then the zone gets flooded by the anti-woke shareholders looking to de-trans companies, and now we have a massive influx of performative proposals

4. Now that the insiders are in charge (vs. career bureaucrats), in a six month period, virtually all rights have been revoked with threats of paperwork for non compliance

5. As a final cherry, they are now trying to keep EXEMPT SOLICITATIONS off the filing docket unless you have $5m in stock, so you can’t even file your intent to vote directionally unless you’re super rich

2. John Chevedden

1. The gadflyfather - if not for being the winningest shareholder in history with a nearly obsessive focus on improving shareholder rights, the most boring of topics, the SEC would probably have ignored the whole thing

2. But the data shows the SEC is taking the time to blanket ignore everyone BUT Chevedden, responding to affirmatively say no to his proposals

3. JC, no one likes a repeat champion dynasty

3. The SEC

1. Brain Daly at the SEC is out there suggesting maybe NO ONE should vote proxies while SEC Chair Atkins tried to gaslight the entire investment community by claiming the “government shutdown” made it too hard for the poor ole SEC to do its job, so they just gave companies immunity from proposals in lieu of doing their jobs

2. Meanwhile, Atkins has overseen a steep drop in enforcement of accounting irregularities and reporting while simultaneously green lighting crypto scams and Exxon’s new “retail vote” capture plan (which gives management anywhere from 5-20% of the company vote depending on the company by auto voting retail that opts in)

3. All with Trump family in the backdrop raking in 1.4bn in the first year of the presidency from crypto token bullshit, asset seizures and sales, and pure graft - none of which will obviously be investigated despite Trump’s son actively on a public board of directors

4. Bigger investors!

1. THEY NEVER REALLY CARED ABOUT VOTING ANYWAY!  96% average support for directors, 0.2% of directors globally voted out annually, and of those that are voted out (~20 a year), MORE THAN HALF STAY ON THE BOARD either by bylaw (cumulative voting) or as zombies (Jay Hoag!)

2. And still, NO ONE CARES!

3. WHICH ASSHOLE DO YOU BLAME: Marc Andreessen says the real crisis isn't AI job losses — it's what would have happened without AI

1. The powerless AI makers

1. Sam Altman: Sam Altman Says AI Will Cause Massive Deflation, Making Money Worth Vastly More - that’s pretty good if you’re already a billionaire, yeah?

2. Dario Amodei: Anthropic CEO Warns That the AI Tech He’s Creating Could Ravage Human Civilization - uh, don’t create it

3. The CEO of Microsoft Suddenly Sounds Extremely Nervous About AI

4. AI anxiety is so widespread that veteran Microsoft researchers are having panic attacks because they’re making themselves obsolete

2. The VC Navel Gazing Manchild Economy

1. Andreessen’s genius was investing in manchildren: Facebook, Roblox, AirBnB

2. VCs actually are giving LESS MONEY to women than the INCREDIBLY LOW AMOUNT they already gave during the AI race

3. YOU - you should have been a plumber or a peasant or a construction worker

Headliniest of the Week

1. DR: Cracker Barrel Wants Its Staff to Eat One Thing on Work Trips: Cracker Barrel

2. MM: The company Americans say is the best place to work in 2026 isn’t who you think

1. Crew Carwash - washing cars is better than tech bro manbaby fests

3. MM: The Worst People Alive Are Obsessed With Meta’s Video Recording Glasses

Who Won the Week?

1. DR: Resistance in Minnesota and Maine (I’m attempting to be optimistic here, give me a break)

2. MM: 33% of corporate leaders: As Big Tech CEOs speak up about violence in Minneapolis, 1 in 3 corporate leaders think ICE tensions are ‘not relevant to their business’

Predictions

1. DR: January 1st will officially be recognized by the Business Roundtable as "Equality Day"—celebrating the grueling minutes it takes a CEO to earn more than their average worker for the year. Engraved badges with the exact time (10:10 for SBUX) will be created to honor the achievement.

1. Ok, maybe that’s silly, my real one is that Target announces its "De-Escalation" Collection: a "Minneapolis-Inspired" line of high-fashion neutral-tone hoodies, specifically marketed as "non-threatening" to ICE agents and heartbroken CEOs

2. MM: Alex Karp, social justice warrior out for the little guy, mass fires his staff at Palantir and replaces it with an AI robot named “The Job Displacer”, does a road show claiming he’s “freed” his employees using AI and now they can really have authentic jobs like “bagger at grocery store” and “guy who mixes paint”