Good morning and happy Cinco de Mayo! Sure, it’s way more of a thing in the U.S. than it is in Mexico. But don’t let that stop you from going hog wild and bumping Taco Tuesday up a day. In other news, a horse named Sovereignty won the rainy (bad fancy hat weather) 151st Kentucky Derby on Saturday, Trump posted an AI image of himself as pope, and the Met Gala is tonight.

AGENCIES

📰 Trump signs order defunding PBS and NPR

This may as well be the apocalypse for Subaru drivers. President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media” to pull taxpayer funding from PBS and NPR. Let’s check out the lay of the land and how all this works.

NPR: National Public Radio. Big with fans of whisper talk. Also has good podcasts.

PBS: The Public Broadcasting Service. Airs news and cartoons for your friends who grew up without cable. Also home to “Sesame Street,” which is produced by an outside, nonprofit studio.

CPB: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB isn't technically a government agency. It's a nonprofit corporation. But it was created by an act of Congress and receives almost all of its funding from the government. The CPB received $535 million from the federal government in the 2025 budget.

Funding: PBS and NPR are funded by private donations, dues from hundreds of local affiliates, and taxpayer dollars from the CPB. While that CPB funding makes up only a small part of their budgets, those local stations also receive a big chunk of their own cash from the CPB… which they then pay to PBS and NPR in exchange for their programming.

• Trump’s executive order directs the CPB to stop giving federal dollars to PBS and NPR. It also bans local affiliates from giving their CPB cash to PBS and NPR.

Why? Biased coverage. Per the order, “neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events.” Republicans have long viewed both NPR and PBS as reflexively left-wing in both the language they use and the stories they cover.

• Examples from the White House include stories on gender identity and white privilege alongside supposed pro-Democrat, anti-Republican political coverage.

Reactions: Democrats are mostly big fans of PBS and NPR. They believe the coverage is as centrist as can be and love that it’s free for viewers and free from any influence by Big Corporate Media™.

• As you might expect, neither network is a fan of the change. NPR CEO Katherine Maher’s statement defends her network’s “integrity” and “editorial independence.” PBS’s calls Trump’s order "blatantly unlawful."

Future: PBS and NPR are fighting the change. They say the CPB isn’t a federal agency, so the president doesn’t get a say in how it operates. Then there’s the fact that Congress has already given CPB cash in this year’s budget. Expect this fight to end up in court soon… and to make its way into Congress’s ongoing debate over next year’s budget.

GOVERNMENT

💰️ President Trump, via the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), submitted his annual budget request to Congress. The so-called “skinny” budget is a broad outline of the money he needs to run the government that allows his allies in Congress to do the nitty-gritty work of filling in the details. It cuts overall spending by $163 billion (mostly on the back of domestic programs) while boosting homeland security and defense. The White House says the plan raises defense spending by $150 billion, but some defense hawks in Congress think that's a budgetary gimmick. They say the budget actually cuts defense spending by 13%. One fancy item on the president’s wish list? A sci-fi style “Golden Dome” nationwide missile defense shield.

📦️ Say goodbye to the de minimis rule. President Trump ended the tariff loophole on Friday, which allowed Chinese packages worth less than $800 to avoid tariffs and other customs issues when they entered the country — but only when they were shipped directly to your house. The rule was meant to ease congestion at ports and make it easier for consumers to buy online. But opponents, including the Biden administration, worry the rule made it too easy to avoid health standards and drug checks, and blame companies like Shein and Temu for abusing the system. For its part, Temu has already stopped shipping directly from China.

✈️ The ink is still drying on Wednesday’s big minerals deal between the U.S. and Ukraine. To start, one or two air defense systems (currently based in other countries) will be refurbished and moved to Ukraine. Next, the State Department approved a potential $310 million sale of F-16 fighter jet support to Ukraine. This doesn't involve actual jets (they already have those), and it's not a gift. But it will allow Ukraine to buy a host of related goods, including flight training, support systems, plane upgrades, and spare parts.

WHITE HOUSE

🏛️ Rubio fills out schedule with new, fourth job

If anybody has a job that needs filling, we hear Marco Rubio is available. No, he hasn’t been fired as secretary of State. Quite the opposite. He’s also director of USAID. And head of the National Archives. Now, as if he doesn’t have enough on his plate, he’s also Trump’s national security advisor.

Mike Waltz was fired from the position on Thursday. His three months on the job were marked by policy fights, strategy disagreements, and, most notably, that time he accidentally added a reporter to a private Signal chat containing sensitive national security info (who among us?).

• Waltz is a former Army special forces guy who resigned his seat in the House to take the job with Trump.

• Despite the firing, Waltz won’t be on the outs for long. Trump nominated him to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (a Cabinet-level role).

The replacement: Trump selected Secretary of State Marco Rubio to fill Waltz’s old role in an “acting” capacity until he can find a permanent replacement. But some White House sources say the president wants Rubio to stay for at least six months. That would give him time to reorient the National Security Council (NSC) to better represent Trump’s foreign policy vision.

Rubio’s going to be a busy guy for the foreseeable future. He now has four full-time jobs. Two, heading USAID and the National Archives, are relatively minor in scope. But there’s some concern in D.C. that he can handle two hugely important national security roles at the same time.

• That said, special envoy Steve Witkoff is doing plenty of international travel and is leading negotiations on Ukraine, Iran, and Israel. That’s taking some of the weight off Rubio’s shoulders at the State Department.

• Plus, this arrangement isn’t new. Henry Kissinger famously held both roles for more than two years in the early 1970s.

Future: Marco Rubio was a star on the rise until his 2016 presidential campaign collapsed in the face of the Trump Machine. But time heals all wounds, and the man Trump once derided as “Little Marco” is now one of the president’s most trusted allies. If he can keep that up, it could pay off big in 2028.

TRIVIA

RIP to the GOAT. No, he’s not dead. But business legend Warren Buffett will retire as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of the year. The Oracle of Omaha (yes, he lives in Nebraska) will be a youthful 95 when he heads off into the sunset to enjoy his place as the sixth richest person in the world. His company isn’t a household brand, but it does own plenty: Dairy Queen, GEICO, Duracell, Fruit of the Loom, and more. As you can imagine, they’re swimming in cash. What is the current price of a single share of Berkshire Hathaway stock?

Hint: It’s the most expensive stock in the world.

BRIEFS

● Residents voted on Saturday to incorporate the new city of Starbase, Texas. Just north of the Mexican border, the 1.6 square-mile coastal city is home to SpaceX's HQ and launch facility and is mostly populated by a few hundred SpaceX employees.

● The S&P 500, a stock index tracking 500 major companies, rose on Friday for the ninth day in a row. That's its longest win streak since 2004. The index has now erased the losses it suffered after Trump's reciprocal tariffs announcement on April 2.

● Australians voted on Saturday — voting is legally required, by the way — to keep Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his liberal Labor Party government. As with Canada last week, the victory is widely viewed as a repudiation of President Trump.

● Prince Harry will not receive government-funded security during trips back to the United Kingdom. He lost a court battle on Friday trying to restore his police protection that the government yanked after he bailed on royal life and moved to California.

● The Trump administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to grant Elon Musk’s DOGE team access to Social Security data. A lower judge blocked access based on the data’s sensitive nature, but DOGE argues it’s trying to combat waste and fraud.

QUOTE

ANSWER

A single share of Berkshire Hathaway will cost you an astounding $810,000. The number is so high because there aren’t many shares available. The pie simply isn’t split into nearly as many pieces. For reference, a single share of Apple runs about $205.