Death, Taxes, & Alabama Football

🏛️ Capitol Update

In the wake of last Wednesday’s events, federal authorities will lock down a large portion of Washington, D.C., this Wednesday - six days earlier than originally planned - ahead of Inauguration Day (January 20). The Washington Monument will also be closed through January 24.

• Federal and local authorities have arrested nearly 100 people they say were involved in the riot at the Capitol, with more arrests expected to come.
• The FBI reportedly sent a memo to law enforcement agencies across the country warning of possible armed protests at all 50 state capitols starting Saturday, per multiple sources (ABC News, FOX News).

The head of the National Guard Bureau ordered at least 10k National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., ahead of Inauguration Day (January 20), adding that troop levels could rise to 15k.

• Separately, ex-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned last week, told the Washington Post ($) that security officials at the House and Senate denied his repeated requests to mobilize National Guard troops ahead of last Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol, contradicting other officials’ claims. 

Also…

Acting Homeland Secretary Chad Wolf resigned on Monday. He did not directly mention last Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol, saying the move was “warranted by recent events, including the ongoing and meritless court rulings regarding the validity of my authority as Acting Secretary.”

🇯🇵 Japan Identifies New COVID Strain

Japan’s health authority on Sunday announced the detection of a new strain of COVID-19 in four travelers coming from Brazil. The organization said any information about the variant was limited to its genetic makeup, making it difficult to immediately determine how infectious the new strain is and the effectiveness of vaccines against it.

More: Experts say they have not yet seen evidence that new variants - like the ones identified in the UK, South Africa, and now Japan - cause more severe disease or are resistant to vaccines.

Even More: Yesterday, BioNTech CEO Dr. Ugur Sahin said research showed the company’s COVID-19 vaccine is effective against new strains of the virus, and that more key data would be published in the coming days.

🍩 DONUT Holes:

🇨🇺 The Trump administration returned Cuba to the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism on Monday, reversing an Obama-era decision to remove the country from the blacklist.

🇪🇸 Spain recorded a 50-year record snowfall over the weekend, with some areas receiving more than 20 inches of snow.

🇺🇸 President-elect Biden selected William Burns - a former ambassador to Russia and Jordan with a 33-year career in the State Department - as his nominee for CIA director, a post requiring Senate confirmation.

🏦 Start Me Up

Walmart announced plans to launch a fintech startup with Ribbit Capital, one of the investors behind Robinhood. In a news release published Monday, Walmart said the unnamed startup will be designed to develop and offer affordable financial solutions to the retail giant’s millions of customers.

🇺🇸 Let’s Get Political

• More than a dozen companies - including Facebook, JPMorgan Chase, Amazon, AT&T, Citigroup, Microsoft, GE, Hallmark, & Google - have announced they're pausing contributions from their political action committees (PACs) after last Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol. Dig deeper.
• Social media platform Parler filed a lawsuit against Amazon yesterday, alleging the tech giant kicked the company off its cloud servers for political and anti-competitive reasons. (Why Amazon banned Parler)
• Shares of Twitter fell 7% on Monday, the first day of trading after the company permanently banned President Trump from the platform (representing ~$2.5B in market cap). Shares of Facebook, which temporarily suspended President Trump’s account for at least two weeks, also fell 3%.

🤔 Mixed Signals Pt. 2

Signal Advance, an obscure device maker, rose an additional 438% in trading Monday, with a company-record 2M shares exchanging hands.

• Shares closed at $38.70 yesterday – up from 60 cents on January 6 (+5,643%).
• The company, which hasn’t filed an annual earnings report with the SEC since 2019 and reported no revenue from 2014 to 2016, is now worth $3.16B.
• This $3.16B company has just one full-time employee… who now can definitely make the case for a raise.

The meteoric rise came after Tesla CEO Elon Musk told his Twitter followers early Thursday to “use Signal” as an alternative to conventional texting apps (a privately-owned encrypted messaging service completely unaffiliated with Signal Advance).

🍩 DONUT Holes:

📉 The crypto market fell sharply Monday, wiping ~$150B from its market cap (now at ~$931B).

🎤 Country music singer Carrie Underwood signed an equity deal with sports drink company Bodyarmor as its first non-athlete celebrity endorser.

🐶🍦 Ben & Jerry’s unveiled Dog Desserts, frozen dog treats the company plans to sell at grocery and pet stores.

🐶🎨 State of the Art

Image via Instagram.

Shortly after 25-year-old artist Eliza Reinhardt lost her job at the beginning of the pandemic, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles announced a social media challenge to recreate famous works of art.

• Eliza inserted herself and her three-year-old dog Finn into reimagined pieces of art – from Grant Wood’s American Gothic to Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam.

And in other good news…

• Since October 3rd, April DiDonna, the manager at a Wendy’s in Oak Harbor, WA, has told every drive-thru customer that she loves them – and more than 2,000 patrons have said it back.
• Alina Bardwell, a sophomore at the University of Michigan, created MiTutor, a free online tutoring service helping K-12 students in low-income families improve on their schoolwork and build self-confidence.

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