<....One more thing.

Employer-sponsored health insurance — available to most salaried workers in large corporations but rarely to hourly workers or contract workers — remains untaxed.

This is one of the largest tax expenditures in the federal government.

As I said, Medicaid costs about $880 billion a year. The exclusion from taxes of employer-provided health insurance costs the federal government a very large fraction of that — the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated $299 billion in 2022; the Congressional Budget Office projects $641 billion by 2032.

It’s another well-disguised benefit for the privileged that’s underwritten by the non-privileged. Yet I’d be astonished if DOGE touched it.

Why go after the costs of Medicaid and not the costs of employer-provided health insurance? For the same reason Trump’s billionaires will happily cut taxes on themselves even as they gut health care for millions of poor kids and working-class families.

What’s considered “waste and fraud” often depends on whether one is looking downward or upward, and the billionaire DOGEs look only downward. But the biggest waste and fraud is found at the high rungs — in tax loopholes and tax expenditures used by wealthy individuals and big corporations. (Did I hear anyone say “carried interest?”)

When Trump chose Dr. Mehmet Oz, the multimillion-dollar celebrity doctor (who infamously promoted hydroxychloroquine while holding over $615,000 in shares of the drug’s distributor) to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Trump said Oz will “cut waste and fraud within our country’s most expensive government agency.”

Believe that, and you should believe in hydroxychloroquine.>

Got a problem with this, <c***sucker from brazil>? Choke on it!

<<perfidubious> makes another knee-jerk comment that we're so accustomed to. It thrills my cyberstalker <pervicacious> to mischaracterize FTB in any way that Al's narcissistic mind can conjure up.

<perhidious> watches and waits, watches and waits, watches and waits, waits, waits (like a child waiting for Easter Bunny candy) each and every day, then gets so excited when FTB finally posts. <perfidubious> and hiz pal believe that FTB should not post an opinion on any matter at all. If only <pediococcus> would put forth some honesty and effort into hiz meager, misleading, fallacious posts.

Perhaps <pervicious> was consumed with hiz legacy at age 18?? He certainly is today, hoping to take the overall Chessgames member trash posting lead of worthless posts. What meds did they have him on back in the 1970s? Aldicarb, Methoxychlor, DDT, PFAS? Seemingly afflicted with Alzheimer's these dayz, Al won't remember, but it made him the fool that he iz so pleased with today.>

It would appear that someone has more than a passing acquaintance with certain drugs.

<A pretty good journalism rule of thumb: Someone threatening to sue someone isn't news.

Literally anyone can say they're going to sue someone, for any reason. But many people who say they're going to sue someone don't follow through. So, the argument goes, you should wait until they actually file a suit, for real, to report on it.

Then there's Donald Trump. He also threatens to sue people — and the press specifically — all the time. But sometimes, he goes ahead with the threat. He's also going to be the most powerful person in the world, again, starting next month.

So. When Trump announces that he's going to sue journalists and news organizations — like he did Monday, when he suggested he would sue pollster Ann Selzer, or The Des Moines Register, or both, for publishing a poll that showed him losing Iowa in the 2024 election — should we take him seriously?

I think so.

That's in part because Trump, who has a long career of threatening media organizations, seems to be ramping up his legal energy. Over the weekend, he extracted a $15 million settlement from ABC News over a George Stephanopoulos interview from March that Trump said was defamatory. He's also filed a suit against CBS over the way its "60 Minutes" program handled an interview with Kamala Harris, claiming the network is guilty of election interference.

Plenty of legal experts think Trump has no chance of defeating CBS in court — "The First Amendment was drafted to protect the press from just such litigation," attorney Floyd Abrams told CNN this fall. But that same cohort didn't think much of Trump's chances against ABC.

Just as important: The threats Trump is making— along with those made by others in his circle, like Kash Patel, Trump's nominee to run the FBI, who has promised to "come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections" — seem to be a strategy.

As The New York Times's David Enrich notes, those suits and threatened suits seem like the "latest sign that the incoming Trump administration appears poised to do what it can to crack down on unfavorable media coverage."

It's true that the First Amendment makes it hard to win suits against journalists, and everyone else in the United States, over what they say or write. Even more so when the person filing the suit is a public figure. And Donald Trump may be the most public figure there is.

But fighting lawsuits — even those without much chance of winning — can be very costly. (For its part, The Des Moines Register's parent company has said a lawsuit would be without merit.) And while it's possible for publishers who win suits Trump files against them to charge him for their legal fees — like The New York Times successfully did this year — you still have to have the money, and willpower, for the fight.

Perhaps just as important: It's one thing to fight Donald Trump in court when he's a private citizen. It's quite another when he's the president of the United States and can make life difficult for you or your company regardless of what happens in the courtroom.

All of which is something you now have to think about if you're in the business of journalism. Not just when Trump, or someone in his circle, complains about your reporting — but before you publish or air it. That seems to be what Trump would like.

So yeah. That's a story.

Liar. Liar.>

<Attorneys for Donald Trump told a New York judge that the president-elect's criminal hush money trial was tainted by "grave juror misconduct" and that his guilty verdicts should be thrown out as a result.

"The jury in this case was not anywhere near fair and impartial," attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove told Judge Juan Merchan in a letter dated Dec. 3 and made public Tuesday.

Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office responded at the time that the allegations are "seemingly inaccurate," and noted that Trump's lawyers oppose holding a hearing where the claims could be "fully examined."

The seven-page letter from Blanche and Bove is heavily redacted. The visible portions of the letter offer few details or evidence to support the misconduct claims.

The correspondence was revealed one day after Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Merchan rejected Trump's bid to have his hush money conviction dismissed on the grounds of presidential immunity.

The judge did not rule on other arguments Trump's team has put forward to try to get the case thrown out. Even if Merchan rejects the remaining challenges, it is unclear when Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, might be sentenced.

In his ruling Monday evening, Merchan addressed Blanche's juror misconduct claims, saying that they "should be thoroughly investigated" — but only as part of a sworn affidavit.

"This Court is prohibited from deciding such claims on the basis of mere hearsay and conjecture," Merchan wrote.

"Unless and until a properly filed claim ... is submitted, this Court cannot allow the public filing of unsworn, and admittedly contested statements," the judge wrote.

"To do so would threaten the safety of the jurors and violate the agreed upon Order Regulating Disclosure of Juror Information."

Neither Blanche nor the DA's office immediately responded to CNBC's request for additional comment.

A jury in late May found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a scheme ahead of the 2016 presidential election to keep porn star Stormy Daniels from discussing an alleged one-night stand with Trump years earlier. Trump, who has denied having sex with Daniels, has claimed he is the victim of a political prosecution and a biased judge.

Merchan in November indefinitely postponed Trump's sentencing date as his attorneys sought time to argue that the case should be thrown out in light of his electoral victory.

Trump last month tapped Blanche and Bove to serve in top roles in the U.S. Department of Justice in the next administration.>

<Few policy proposals were as central to President-elect Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign pitch as tariffs. When asked about his economic policy, Trump almost always fell back on tariffs as a shorthand for his vision. Details were scarce elsewhere, but huge tariffs were ever-present.

“The most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff,’ and it’s my favorite word,” he told the Economic Club of Chicago in October. It showed. And the idea seemed to be relatively popular, if not overwhelmingly so.

But there was always a major question about how much that support would hold up over time. Trump, after all, falsely pitched tariffs as taxes paid by other countries — they’re actually taxes on imports that are paid by U.S. consumers — and voters didn’t seem to understand their inflationary potential. Polls generally showed a minority of Americans were able to pick the right definition of a tariff; Republicans overwhelmingly subscribed to Trump’s incorrect framing.

And sure enough, as the reality of Trump’s proposed tariffs approaches, Americans appear to be registering more concern.

Recent polling suggests Americans have begun to understand — and agree — that Trump’s tariffs could drive their prices up. And overall support for Trump’s specific tariffs appears to have cooled. What support does exist seems to be only a few inches deep.

A new Monmouth University poll released Tuesday showed Americans are about evenly split on the idea of imposing tariffs on goods imported from other countries. While 42 percent favor the idea, 40 percent oppose it.

But then Monmouth took it a step further, asking people whether these tariffs would help or hurt their family. Americans said 2-1 (47 percent to 23 percent) that the tariffs would impact them negatively.

That was the most negative split among six Trump policies tested.

The poll didn’t specify how people thought the tariffs would hurt them, but it’s logical to assume a lot of it has to do with increasing prices, which studies agree Trump’s tariffs would do.

Other polling has indeed shown a majority of Americans think the tariffs will raise prices — 59 percent in a CBS News/YouGov poll and 64 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll. (Just 18 percent thought they would lower prices in the former, and just 8 percent disagreed about the tariffs raising prices in the latter.)

That Ipsos poll points to another perception problem with Trump’s tariffs: that they wouldn’t even do the thing they’re actually, generally, supposed to do.

Trump’s errant pitch aside, there are other valid arguments for tariffs. They are usually aimed at driving up the prices of imports to revitalize American industry by sending people toward those products in the absence of cheaper, imported alternatives.

But the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed those offering an opinion said 34 percent to 28 percent that they didn’t even think Trump’s tariffs would increase American jobs.

All of which might help explain why, when you get more specific about tariffs, Americans don’t appear as keen as they might have seemed.

While polling on the broad concept of Trump’s tariffs has leaned slightly positive, recent polls have shown Americans oppose a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods (42-37 percent), a 25 percent tariff on Mexican goods (45-36 percent) and a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods (49-31 percent). Another poll this week showed Americans said by double digits that tariffs on each of those countries’ goods would hurt the U.S. economy rather than help it — by between 10 points and 19 points.

When Trump espoused the greatness of the term “tariff” in that appearance in Chicago in October, he went on to claim that people didn’t appreciate it enough.

“It needs a public relations firm to help it,” he said.

If Trump does indeed press forward with this proposal after he’s sworn in next month, it appears he’ll need one.>

<President-elect Donald Trump's advisors have been hoping county sheriffs in border states will assist with the incoming administration's mass deportation campaign. But several sheriffs are already publicly promising to not lift a finger.

According to a Tuesday report in WIRED magazine, Trump's top Trump immigration advisors like Tom Homan and Stephen Miller have been having conversations with several far-right sheriffs who have expressed an interest in helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) remove immigrants from the United States. But that effort is unlikely to pick up traction, both for legal reasons and because other sheriffs have said they already have their hands full and don't want to take on more work.

Currently, ICE's 287(g) program allows for state and local law enforcement to collaborate with ICE in its efforts "to protect the homeland through the arrest and removal of noncitizens." However, this does not include sheriffs themselves rounding up and detaining undocumented immigrants. Additionally, no federal funding has been appropriated to any sheriffs' offices that help ICE, meaning just 125 out of 3,081 sheriff's offices in the U.S. have signed up. And Yuma County, Arizona Sheriff Leon Wilmot told WIRED that the Supreme Court has already established that enforcing immigration law is outside the jurisdiction of local police departments and sheriffs' offices.

"[T]hat's not our realm of responsibility," Wilmot said. "If we wanted to do immigration law, we would go work for Border Patrol."

The push for sheriffs to assist the incoming administration has been led by retired sheriff Tom Mack, who is the head of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA). Mack told WIRED he's been exchanging voice and text messages with Homan about getting more sheriffs involved with deportations. Homan has previously promised to build "the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen." But Wilmot said "no one listens to" Mack, that he "hasn't been a sheriff in a long time" and that he "pushes his own agenda."

Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway, who is a Democrat, told WIRED that he wasn't invited to an event Homan hosted in his state last month, even though Hathaway's jurisdiction includes some of the nation's biggest ports of entry. He added that he would refuse any calls to help the Trump administration deport immigrants, as it would hurt his standing in his county.

"I'm not going to cooperate, because 95 percent of the residents of the town where I live, where my county is, are Hispanic,” Hathaway said. “I'm not going to go checking the documents of practically every single person in my county to determine their immigration status, because that would create distrust between law enforcement and all the people in my community."

The sheriffs bucking calls to assist with mass deportations even include some of Trump's biggest supporters in the law enforcement community. Livingston County, Michigan Sheriff Mike Murphy — who hosted a pro-Trump rally in a building owned by the sheriff's office — told the outlet that he isn't interested in using county resources to help with federal immigration law enforcement.

"I still have a county to do police work in,” Murphy said. “Just because the president says, 'Hey, go out and round them up,' that is not all of a sudden gonna move to the top of my priority list. If somebody's house is getting broken into, that's my priority. If somebody's involved in an injury crash and they're laying [sic] on the side of the road, that's my priority. I've got cases that are open.”

Other border state sheriffs who have come out against calls to help the Trump administration round up migrants include Val Verde County, Texas Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez and Brewster County, Texas Sheriff Ronny Dodson. According to Dodson, the incoming Trump administration giving sheriffs the authority to jail migrants could "break" county law enforcement.

"I’m not gonna let the government tell me what to do in my job," Dodson said.>

<Texas Gov. Greg Abbott applauded Elon Musk's commitment to stopping government waste after the tech billionaire — who heads the "Department of Government Efficiency" task force to try to cut $2 trillion from the budget — vowed to block the federal government from funding the construction of a new football stadium for the Washington Commanders in the omnibus spending deal.

The only problem: it was false.

The flap began when Mario Nawfal, a right-wing social media influencer, posted on Musk's X platform that "Buried in the 1,547-page omnibus bill is a provision to facilitate a $3 billion stadium in Washington, D.C."

Musk quickly replied, "This should not be funded by your tax dollars!"

Abbott cheered Musk on, chiming in, "Good catch, Elon. You are doing a great job."

But according to Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake, none of this is true.

"The thing is not only not in the spending deal; the spending deal explicitly prohibits it," Blake wrote.

Indeed, Page 233 of the continuing resolution contains a passage titled, "PROHIBITING USE OF FEDERAL FUNDS FOR STADIUM," which reads, "The Declaration of Covenants entered into under subsection (a)(1) shall include provisions to ensure that the District may not use Federal funds for stadium purposes on the Campus, including training facilities, offices, and other structures necessary to support a stadium."

Nawfal appeared to backtrack upon being confronted with this information, editing his post on X to read, "Buried in Congress’s 1,547-page spending bill is a provision transferring the RFK Stadium site to D.C., setting the stage for a new Commanders stadium" — which is still a misleading explanation of the bill.

In fact, according to sports reporter A.J. Perez, "D.C. already has a lease for the land for stadium use. The bill creates a new 99-year lease and expands the use of the land from just a stadium to parks, housing and other possibilities. There's still no guarantee the Commanders will relocate there."

Musk thrust Washington into chaos Wednesday by whipping Republicans in Congress against passing the spending bill altogether, threatening primary challenges against any Republican who votes for it, and demanding that nothing be passed until Trump has been sworn in. Lawmakers could be forced to hastily write a new, smaller stopgap bill, and a government shutdown has become more likely.>

<NFL teams can retain the rights to one of their impending free agents in 2025 with the use of a non-exclusive tag, an exclusive franchise tag or a transition tag during a 15-day period from Feb. 18 to March 4.

Traditionally, players aren't happy when given a franchise tag. The designation can hinder the ability to gain long-term security because players must incur the risk of serious injury and poor performance again after already playing out their contracts when an agreement on a multiyear deal can't be reached. In these cases, the franchise tag is essentially a high-salaried, one-year, "prove-it" deal.

The franchise tag operated more like it was originally intended this year. The designation was a precursor to a long-term deal. Seven of the eight players (87.5%) given franchise tags signed multiyear contracts.

That's a big change from the previous three years (2021-23). Less than half of the time (11 of 24 or 45.83%) during this time frame was a long-term deal signed while under the designation.

A look at how franchise and transition tags work and the projected 2025 numbers are below.

Tag logistics

How franchise and transition tenders are calculated is misunderstood. The confusion makes most attempts at projecting these numbers wrong.

Prior to the 2011 NFL collective bargaining agreement, non-exclusive franchise tags had been an average of the five largest salaries in the prior year at a player's position or 120% of the prior year's salary of the player, whichever was greater. For franchise tag purposes, salary means a player's salary cap number, excluding workout bonuses and most other performance bonuses.

The 120% and five largest salaries provisions have remained intact but the formula component is now calculated over a five-year period that's tied to a percentage of the overall salary cap. More specifically, the number for each position is derived by taking the sum of the non-exclusive franchise tags as determined by the original methodology for the previous five seasons and dividing by the sum of the actual NFL salary cap amount for the previous five seasons. The resulting percentage, which is known as the cap percentage average in the CBA, is then multiplied by the actual salary cap for the upcoming league year.

This non-exclusive tag allows a player to negotiate with other NFL teams but if he signs an offer sheet with another club, his team has five days to match the offer. If the offer is not matched, his team will receive two first-round picks as compensation from the signing team.

Under the exclusive franchise tag, a player will receive a one-year offer from his team that is the greater of the average of the top five salaries at his position once the restricted free agent signing period of the current league year has ended (April 18 for 2025) or 120% of his prior year's salary. The non-exclusive number is initially used as a placeholder and adjusted upward, if the exclusive calculation dictates, once restricted free agency ends. A player cannot negotiate with other teams if given the exclusive franchise tag.

Teams rarely apply the transition tag. The New England Patriots placed the designation on safety Kyle Dugger this year. Prior to Dugger, the transition tag hadn't been used since 2020 by the Arizona Cardinals with running back Kenyan Drake.

The transition tag is based on the average of the top 10 salaries at a player's position using the same methodology as non-exclusive franchise tag calculations. The 120% provision also applies. Teams have the same right of first refusal as with franchise tags but do not receive any draft choice compensation for declining to match an offer sheet....>

<Following his expected approval by a full vote in the Senate after his confirmation hearings, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) will step into his new role as secretary of state with less influence and diminished responsibilities compared to his predecessors.

According to a report from Axios, while Rubio has held back from speaking with foreign leaders until after his confirmation hearings, multiple Trump envoys have been burning up the phones and doing their own negotiating long before the president-elect is sworn in and assumes power.

Under an Axios headline claiming, "Rubio's toughest diplomacy task may be in Trump's Washington," journalist Barak Ravid wrote, "Rubio has extensive foreign policy and national security experience from his years in the Senate, but he isn't a member of Trump's inner circle. He'll have to fight for influence and for Trump's ear as the U.S. decides how to handle a range of conflicts and alliances around the world," adding, "Some key foreign policy issues are run from the White House in most administrations, but Trump has appointed numerous presidential envoys and given them many of the State Department's responsibilities."

The report notes that Trump already has envoys working on Middle East issues, the Gaza crisis and the Russian invasion of Ukraine while Rubio is staying out of the fray.

Particularly vexing to Rubio having full authority is Trump appointee Rick Grenell having a broad mandate from the president-elect to involve himself wherever he wants.

"His broad job description could allow him to get involved in many other foreign policy files and step on the State Department's turf," Ravid is reporting. "A source with knowledge of the situation said Grenell would be best positioned to succeed Rubio if he leaves the administration in a year or two as many Trump administration insiders expect.">

<Elon Musk lashed out at Democratic House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries after the congressional spending bill he had insisted on, including a suspension of the debt limit and the removal of a number of concessions to the opposition, tanked in the House of Representatives on Thursday night, leaving the US government hurtling towards another federal shutdown.

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s continuing resolution (CR) – which replaced a version he had spent weeks carefully crafting with Democrats after Musk and President-elect Donald Trump abruptly objected to it – was comprehensively voted down by 235 votes to 174.

The debacle sends the speaker back to the drawing board and scrambling against the clock to find an alternative to satisfy all parties before Friday’s midnight deadline.

“A super fair & simple bill was put to a vote and only 2 Democrats in Congress were in favor. Therefore, responsibility for the shutdown rests squarely on the shoulders of Hakeem Jeffries,” the world’s richest man reacted on X, the social media platform he owns, in the aftermath of the humiliating vote.

“Shame on Hakeem Jeffries for rejecting a fair & simple spending bill that is desperately needed by states suffering from hurricane damage!” he added in a follow-up post.

The president-elect, who befriended the SpaceX and Tesla boss in the final months of this year’s presidential election and then appointed him to co-run a new “Department of Government Efficiency”, responded to the debacle in a statement of his own that likewise blamed the opposition.

“Nearly every single House Democrat just voted against government funding and to shut down the government,” Trump said.

“These 197 Democrats voted against keeping the government open, disaster relief, and aid for farmers.

“As Vice President-elect JD Vance said, Democrats ‘asked for a shutdown and I think that’s exactly what they’re going to get.’”

But despite Musk and Trump’s efforts to spread the blame, no fewer than 38 Republicans also refused to back the bill, leaving Johnson in a sweat and a bipartisan deal still needed to avert Christmas chaos in Washington.

Jeffries himself responded with a post on Bluesky that read: “The Musk-Johnson government shutdown bill has been soundly defeated.

“MAGA extremists in the House GOP are not serious about helping working class Americans. They are simply doing the bidding of their wealthy donors and puppeteers. Unacceptable.”

The situation represents the first taste of political defeat for Musk precisely one month before the incoming Trump administration even takes office.

The trouble began on Wednesday when Johnson trailed the original congressional spending bill he had negotiated with Democrats that would have funded the government until March 14 next year and provided $100bn in disaster relief for hurricane-hit states and $10bn for farmers.

Hoping to get the CR signed off so that he and his fellow lawmakers could head home for the holidays, the speaker was caught off guard when Musk began posting his objections to it on X and declared it “should not pass”.

A statement from Trump and Vance duly followed, warning House Republicans not to support it and that they could face a primary challenge if they did, demanding a “streamlined” CR in its place that would suspend or abolish the debt ceiling to allow for further borrowing.

Johnson obediently scrapped his near-1,600 page original agreement in favour of a much slimmer 116-page one giving the president-elect precisely what he wanted, only for Jeffries to dismiss it as “laughable” before handing down a crushing defeat in the House.

Before the vote, Trump had hailed “SUCCESS in Washington!” in a post on Truth Social and backed Johnson ahead of his bid to retain the speakership in January amid growing GOP discontent and MAGA suggestions that the unelected Musk should take his place.

But his team has also been forced to angrily hit back at suggestions from Democrats like Bernie Sanders and others that it is Musk who is the real president-elect and calling the shots.>

<On Tuesday, House Republicans issued a report recommending the FBI investigate former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney for her role in investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, President-elect Donald Trump, who has called for Cheney to be jailed before, reacted to the report on Truth Social, writing that the former Republican congresswoman “could be in a lot of trouble.”

Now, let’s not get caught up in the weeds here. We need to understand that, as Cheney has said before, Trump is petty, vindictive and cruel. This is not about the law for him; it’s not about providing a predicate for the FBI; it’s simply about his desire for revenge.

Republicans’ case against Cheney has no legal merit and no lawyer or judge should take it seriously, but there are two goals Trump and his allies are trying to accomplish with this threat.

The first involves Trump's pledge to pardon the rioters who stormed the Capitol, including those who violently attacked police officers. By pardoning those involved, Trump wants to turn things upside down and make the rioters, the people who tried to overturn the election, heroes. Then he wants to turn the tables on the truth-tellers, the people who tried to get to the bottom of what happened on Jan. 6, and make them villains. Trump wants to take the moral universe and turn it on its head, as he has done over and over again.

The second goal also involves something we've seen from Trump before. For the president-elect, fear is the point. Trump wants people to be afraid. It doesn’t matter whether there’s any legal merit to charge Cheney or the other individuals he’s threatened. In fact, the more absurd some of these lawsuits are, the scarier they are because there’s no protection. He wants people to believe it’s dangerous to criticize him.

To that end, it's also important to ask, why people are afraid right now. It’s because they don’t think the guardrails will hold. They don’t think that Trump can be stopped. They don’t have confidence in Congress. They don’t have confidence in the courts. They don’t have confidence that independent agencies will remain independent under Trump’s watch. That’s the real danger here. Americans have lost faith in the methods that, under normal circumstances, could hold someone like Trump accountable.>

<House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) appears to be on the brink of losing his gavel when the next Congress is sworn in next month.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk killed a bipartisan government funding bill Wednesday, and Johnson has seemingly lost the support of many Republicans to hold onto his job, which senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Mike Lee (R-UT) suggested should go to Musk, the South Africa-born tech billionaire who the president-elect tapped to slash trillions from the federal budget.

"The fact that Mike Lee and, for example, Marjorie Taylor Greene also are floating other people for speaker, including Elon Musk, is a reflection of their discontent with speaker Johnson, and that's the significant part here," said The Hill's Mychael Schnell. "The House is going to gather in the chamber on Jan. 3 to select the next speaker of the House, and while Mike Johnson was unanimously nominated by his conference last month for the gavel, his grip on that looks extremely tenuous right now."

"There's at least one Republican, Tom Massie, who's already saying he will not support Johnson on Jan. 3," Schnell continued. "I've spoken to a number of others who say they are uncertain, and they are very upset with how speaker Johnson is currently handling the spending deal. Talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene for a second, she was somebody who led the motion to vacate against Johnson earlier this year, then ultimately said she would support him. The fact that she is now floating somebody else shows how deep this discontent is with the Republican conference, and it is a worrying sign for Mike Johnson as he heads into the speaker vote next month."

"I will note the whole conversation in the lead up to this spending fight was Republicans were saying, we are watching so closely to see how Mike Johnson handles this, this will determine if we can support him in January," Schnell added. "Right now, it's not going well for him.">

Reminds me of Barrack Hussein Obama using words like Affordable Care Act, you keep your doctor, No Super PACs, closing Guantanamo Bay, Arab Spring, world tour apologizing for American arrogance and policy and interrogating terrorists, open boarders [sic], sending humans back to the moon by 2020 and on to Mars, "Global Warming" [now called "Climate Change" instead] turned out to be a scientific lie as the earth was actually cooling, the TRILLION dollar stimulus Recover Act was not at all "shovel ready jobs" and "clean energy jobs" and "green economy" was a complete no go as Solyndra went bankrupt (good grief!??) but kickbacks to union donors, 36 straight months of employment above 8% [sic], four straight years of spending deficits over $1 trillion, lift 2 million Americans from poverty, 1 million electric cars by 2015, "cap and trade", all that LGTBQ alphabet stuff, race baiting relating to police enforcement, "long form birth certificate," having the audacity to mock DT's "word salad" etc. etc. etc. All pure Social-Marxist hot gas never approaching reality. There was Michelle's remark of "ashamed to be an American." Of course, Joe cannot blame Barry for Joe copying such blatant dishonesty, as Joe was already well-off the fact track back in the 1980s when Barry was still budding. So, so, so glad all those bad tunes are behind us, although DT has TONS of cleaning up to do....>

Less than 550 posts before I hit that number you love to hate, <fredthestalker>. You are as f***ing stupid as they come.

<Democrats in the House of Representatives killed a spending deal approved by President-elect Donald Trump with the help of conservative Republicans after Elon Musk scuttled the original bipartisan deal.

The bill failed with all but two Democrats and 38 Republicans voting against it, and 172 Republicans voting for it.

House Republicans said they had struck a deal on a short-term funding bill 24 hours after Musk and Trump derailed a resolution and steered the government into a shutdown the weekend before Christmas.

But congressional Democrats called the plan that Trump’s billionaire deputy touted hours earlier “laughable.” House Democrats were heard chanting “hell no” as they met to review it on Thursday.

News of a newly hashed-out deal arrived one day after the world’s wealthiest person and the incoming president commanded members of Congress to reject a bipartisan stop-gap funding bill as lawmakers prepared to vote.

“It’s not serious, it’s laughable. Extreme MAGA Republicans are steering us towards a government shutdown,” Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Thursday of the Trump-backed deal.

“It’s an absolute slap in the face,” Democratic congreswoman Jill Tokuda told The Independent. “It’s disgusting that they would try to use this as a tool to increase the debt limit for two years, which we know will ultimately result in tax credits for the uber wealthy on the backs of our working people.”

Congressman Robert Garcia, a Democrat from California, specifically criticized lifting the debt limit.

“This is a complete bulls*** attempt to try to allow Donald Trump to eliminate the debt ceiling for two years and he can give away all this money to all his billionaire friends,” he told The Independent.

Trump had called on lawmakers to abolish the debt ceiling, a limit set by lawmakers to determine how much money the federal government can borrow to pay its bills. It was last raised in 2023 through January 1, 2025.

A new deal proposed extending the “very unnecessary” ceiling through January 30, 2027, Trump said.

“Now we can Make America Great Again, very quickly, which is what the People gave us a mandate to accomplish,” Trump said.

Tennessee Republican congressman Tim Burchett told The Independent that the debt ceiling is “an arbitrary thing.”

“And reality is, I don’t know why they ever put a debt ceiling on anything,” he said. He later voted against the legislation.

Asked whether Musk and his incoming “Department of Government Efficiency” co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy will have an impact on an upcoming fight for House Speaker, he told The Independent: “Of course, they have to. I mean, they’re prominent people, and they have very big checkbooks.”

The new proposal would have stripped out provisions to criminalize the distribution of pornographic deepfakes, and cut funding for treatments of sick cell disease, pediatric cancer research, and breast and cervical cancer detection, among other provisions.

“Why would you cut funding for nutritional assistance ... for seniors, for veterans?” Jeffries said in remarks on the House floor.

“Everything that was there to help with healthcare, the measures that were included to attempt to help the average family — they're all gone,” Democratic congresswoman Marcy Kaptur told The Independent.

“Is he going to own the United States before it's all over?” she wondered of Musk.

“He has a lot of personal interests here, and he's not elected to anything,” she added. “Some people are calling him the president and President Trump the vice president. I have to do some homework on who this man really is.”....>

<....Conservative opposition also helped sink the bill, with Republican congressman Chip Roy railing against the legislation on the floor, which led to Democrats applauding him.

The president-elect had said that the country would be “far better off closing up for a period of time” than agreeing to a deal that was supported by both Republicans and Democrats until Musk spent Wednesday firing off dozens of social media posts condemning the deal and threatening to fund primary challengers against Republicans who voted for it.

“‘Shutting down’ the government (which doesn’t actually shut down critical functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill,” Musk said.

Congress has until midnight Friday to approve a spending bill that would avert a government shutdown, with potential employee furloughs and service interruptions across federal agencies.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson spent much of Thursday negotiating a deal that extended government funding at its current levels until March, more than a month into Trump’s administration and a new Congress.

On his Truth Social, Trump lambasted Roy for “getting in the way” for “the sake of some cheap publicity for himself.”

“Republican obstructionists have to be done away with,” Trump added.

In another post, he called Roy “just another ambitious guy, with no talent.”

“By the way, how’s Bob Good doing?” said Trump, referencing the Virginia congresswoman who lost a primary election to a Trump-endorsed challenger; Good, like Roy, had supported Trump’s former rival Ron DeSantis.

“I hope some talented challengers are getting ready in the Great State of Texas to go after Chip in the Primary,” Trump said Thursday. “He won’t have a chance!”

The vote puts Johnson in danger. Republicans will have only 220 seats in the House next year, with a handful of members leaving to work in Trump’s administration. Only a few Republicans opposing his speakership could prevent him from leading the House of Representatives.>

<One public relations professional in South Carolina is now airing Rep. Nancy Mace's (R-S.C.) dirty laundry on social media, blasting the far-right congresswoman in several viral social media posts.

The Daily Beast reported Friday that Wesley Donehue — the founder of the PR firm Push Digital Group — recently unleashed on his former client on his X account. Donehue informed his followers that the two-term congresswoman (who was recently reelected) caused him significant stress, and that he fired her several months ago.

"I’m a political consultant and not a babysitter, a sex therapist or a doctor who can prescribe fixes for chemical imbalances," Donehue wrote in one tweet that's been viewed more than 1.5 million times. "I don’t have time for her constant egotistical bull— and drama in my life."

After former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) — who is now a Fox News host — criticized Mace for voting against a recent government funding bill endorsed by President-elect Donald Trump, she responded by insinuating that Gowdy was transgender in a Thursday tweet. Donehue highlighted that tweet as an example of what he viewed as poor political judgment on Mace's part, given that she is reportedly contemplating a gubernatorial campaign in the Palmetto State.

"Imagine wanting to run statewide and thinking this is a good idea," Donehue wrote. "The upstate loves Trey Gowdy. This is what happens when a person cannot control their emotions enough to think strategically."

"I’ll stop piling on," he added. "I’ve been worried about Nancy Mace for a while now. Mental health is a serious issue. I want her to get better and seek treatment."

Mace recently headlines for her singling out of Congresswoman-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who is the first transgender woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. After McBride was elected, Mace successfully pushed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to impose a transgender bathroom ban in Congress. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) revealed in a post to Bluesky that Mace was "pretty wildly disliked" even by members of her own conference.>

<Today we don’t know if the United States government will shut down tomorrow because, first, Elon Musk followed by his co-president Donald Trump, persuaded House Republicans to vote against a compromise bill, and then, last night, Republicans couldn’t summon enough votes for a stripped-down continuing resolution because Trump insisted that it contain a measure lifting the debt ceiling.

This is not governing. Trump and the Republicans are not a governing party.

What’s the back story to all this? It’s the oligarchy that put Trump into the presidency.

A half-century ago, when America had a large and growing middle class, those on the “left” wanted stronger social safety nets and more public investment in schools, roads, and research. Those on the “right” sought greater reliance on the free market.

But as power and wealth have moved to the top, everyone else — whether on the old right or the old left — has become disempowered and less secure.

Today the great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy.

The word “oligarchy” comes from the Greek words meaning rule (arche) by the few (oligos). It refers to a government of and by a few exceedingly rich people or families who control the major institutions of society — and therefore have most power over other peoples’ lives.

So far, Trump has picked 13 billionaires for his administration. It’s the wealthiest in history, including the richest person in the world. They and Trump are part of the American oligarchy, even though Trump campaigned on being the “voice” of the working class.

America has experienced oligarchy twice before. Many of the men who founded America were slaveholding white oligarchs. At that time, the new nation did not have much of a middle class. Most white people were farmers, indentured servants, farm hands, traders, day laborers, and artisans. A fifth of the American population was Black, almost all of them enslaved.

A century later a new American oligarchy emerged comprised of men who amassed fortunes through their railroad, steel, oil, and financial empires — men such as J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Andrew Mellon. It was called the Gilded Age.

They ushered the nation into an industrial revolution that vastly expanded economic output. But they also corrupted government, brutally suppressed wages, generated unprecedented levels of inequality and urban poverty, pillaged rivals, shut down competitors, and made out like bandits — which is why they earned the sobriquet “robber barons.”

World War I and the Great Depression of the 1930s eroded most of the robber barons’ wealth, and much of their power was eliminated with the elections of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

America demanded fundamental reforms — a progressive income tax, corporate taxes, estate taxes, limits on the political power of large corporations, antitrust laws, laws enabling workers to form unions and requiring that employers negotiate with them, Social Security, the forty-hour workweek, unemployment insurance, civil rights and voting rights, and Medicare.

For the next half-century, the gains from growth were more widely shared and democracy became more responsive to the needs and aspirations of average Americans. During these years America created the largest middle class the world had ever seen.

There was still much to do: wider economic opportunities for Black people, Latinos, and women, protection of the environment. Yet by almost every measure the nation was making progress.

Starting around 1980, a third American oligarchy emerged.

Since then, the median wage of the bottom 90 percent has stagnated. The share of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest 400 Americans has quadrupled (from less than 1 percent to 3.5 percent) while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3 percent, according to an analysis by my Berkeley colleagues Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.

The richest 1 percent of Americans now has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

The only other country with similarly high levels of wealth concentration is Russia, another oligarchy.

All this has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the political power of the super-wealthy and an equally dramatic decline in the political influence of everyone else....>

<....While the Biden administration sought to realign America with its ideals, it did not and could not accomplish nearly enough. Trump’s lies and demagoguery exploited the anger and frustration of much of America — creating the false impression he was a tribune of the working class and an anti-establishment hero — thereby allowing the oligarchy to triumph.

In 2022, Elon Musk spent $44 billion to buy Twitter and turn it into his own personal political megaphone. Then, in 2024, he spent $277 million to get Trump elected, also using Twitter (now X) to amplify pro-Trump, anti-Harris messages.

These were good investments for Musk. Since Election Day, Musk’s fortune has increased by $170 billion. That’s because investors in Tesla and SpaceX have pushed their value into the stratosphere.

Trump has put Musk (and another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy) in charge of gutting government services in the name of “efficiency.” Musk’s investors assume that Musk will eliminate the health, safety, labor, and environmental regulations that have limited the profits of Musk-owned corporations, and that Trump will put more government money into SpaceX and xAI (Musk’s artificial intelligence company).

Unlike income or wealth, power is a zero-sum game. The more of it at the top, the less of it anywhere else.

The power shift across America is related to a tsunami of big money into politics. Corporate lobbying has soared. The voices of average people have been drowned out.

The American oligarchy is back, with a vengeance.

Not all wealthy people are culpable, of course. The abuse is occurring at the nexus of wealth and power, where those with great wealth use it to gain power and then utilize that power to accumulate more wealth. Today’s robber barons include Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Charles Koch, Jeff Yass, Ken Griffin, and Rupert Murdoch.

This is how oligarchy destroys democracy. As oligarchs fill the coffers of political candidates and deploy platoons of lobbyists and public relations flaks, they buy off democracy. Oligarchs know that politicians won’t bite the hands that feed them.

As long as they control the purse strings, there will be no meaningful response to the failure of most people’s paychecks to rise, nor to climate change, nor racism, nor the soaring costs of health insurance, pharmaceuticals, college, and housing, because those are not the main concerns of the oligarchy.

The oligarchs want lower taxes, which is what Trump, Musk, and other oligarchs are planning — an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cut, with an estimated price tag of at least $5 trillion.

They want no antitrust enforcement to puncture the power of their giant corporations. Instead, their corporations will grow larger, able to charge consumers even more. Trump is replacing Lina Khan, the trustbusting chair of the Federal Trade Commission, with a Trump crony.

There will be no meaningful constraint on Wall Street’s dangerous gambling addiction. The gambling will only increase.

Wall Street is already celebrating Trump’s victory. The stock market has reached new heights. But the stock market is inconsequential for most people, because the richest 1 percent own over half of all shares of stock owned by Americans while the richest 10 percent own over 90 percent....>

<....There will be no limits to CEO pay. Wall Street hedge fund and private equity managers will also rake in billions more. Government will dole out even more corporate subsidies, bailouts, and loan guarantees while eliminating protections for consumers, workers, and the environment.

It will become a government for, of, and by the oligarchy.

The biggest divide in America today is not between “right” and “left,” or between Republicans and Democrats. It’s between democracy and oligarchy. The old labels — “right” and “left” — prevent most people from noticing they’re being shafted.

The propagandists and demagogues who protect the oligarchy stoke racial and ethnic resentments — describing human beings as illegal aliens, fueling hatred of immigrants, and spreading fears of communists and socialists.

This strategy gives the oligarchy freer rein: It distracts Americans from how the oligarchy is looting the nation, buying off politicians, and silencing critics. It causes Americans to hate each other so we don’t look upward and see where the wealth and power have really gone.

The way to overcome oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and win America back, as we did in response to the oligarchy that dominated America’s last Gilded Age.

This will require a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor, and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy and against concentrated power and privilege.

It will require that the Democratic Party, or a new third party, tell the truth to the American people: that the major reason most peoples’ wages have gone nowhere and their jobs are less secure, why most families have to live paycheck to paycheck, why CEO pay has soared to 300 times the pay of the typical worker, and why billionaires are about to run our government, is because the market has been rigged against average working people by the oligarchy.

The agenda ahead is simply stated but it will not be easy to implement: We must get big money out of our politics. End corporate welfare and crony capitalism. Bust up monopolies. Stop voter suppression.

We must strengthen labor unions, give workers a stronger voice in their workplaces, create more employee-owned corporations, encourage worker cooperatives, fund and grow more state and local public banks, and develop other institutions of economic democracy.

This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything else America must do.

It may seem an odd time in our history to suggest such reforms, but this is the best time. Trump and his oligarchy will inevitably overreach. The lesson from the last Gilded Age is that when the corruption and ensuing hardship become so blatant that they offend the values of the majority of Americans, the majority will rise up and demand real, systemic change.

It’s only a matter of time. A government shutdown that hurts average people, engineered by the richest person in the world, might just hasten it.>

<Donald Trump has made clear he wants the FBI to target his enemies – Liz Cheney, in particular – and a columnist called on fellow journalists and Democratic lawmakers to force Republicans to confront these threats.

GOP lawmakers like Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) have waved away the president-elect's threats as merely bluster, but The New Republic's Greg Sargent said Trump has already seized on the purported findings by a House Republican investigation into the Jan. 6 committee on which Cheney served, saying the report showed she "could be in a lot of trouble."

"Note the trademark mobspeak here: Cheney <could be in a lot of trouble> for federal lawbreaking, Trump declares, as if he’s merely a passive observer remarking on the danger she faces, rather than someone who will control the nation’s sprawling federal law enforcement apparatus in just over a month," Sargent wrote. "Trump has been raging at Cheney for years and has amplified suggestions that she should face televised military tribunals."

"Now, in a dark turn in this whole farcical saga, Trump is pretending that House Republicans have given him a legitimate basis for prosecuting Cheney, when in fact their claims were cooked up in bad faith for precisely that purpose," Sargent added.

The columnist knocks down the House GOP report's claims of alleged wrongdoing by the former congresswoman to be "entirely baseless," saying that legal experts found nothing to support witness tampering allegations in that report or in books published by Cheney and former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson about the Jan. 6 probe.

“The FBI has very strict guidelines for when they can open investigations,” said Kristy Parker, counsel at Protect Democracy and a former federal prosecutor. “The GOP report does not provide any information that would credibly justify a criminal inquiry.”

Many of the headlines about the House GOP report treat the subject matter as an ordinary political dispute, but Sargent said the situation was unprecedented in U.S. history, and he said Republicans must be forced to go on the record on whether they support Trump's FBI nominee Kash Patel carrying out what the president-elect has explicitly threatened to do.

"Senate Republicans appear willing to confirm Patel while knowing full well that Trump has expressly chosen him to carry out this extraordinary and degenerate abuse of power," Sargent said.

"All of that is the story," he added. "How is it conceivable that the media is treating this as a conventional political moment? Trump’s veiled threat toward Cheney should prompt the press to revisit those reassurances from Republicans. GOP senators should be hounded mercilessly by reporters on whether they’ll knowingly support Patel now that Trump has made the corrupt reality of the situation so inescapably, alarmingly clear.">

<Friends,

Sorry to intrude on your day for a second time, but I wanted to bring you up to date about the Muskrat.

Having blown up the bipartisan compromise bill to keep the government open and forcing Trump to weigh in against it, Elon Musk — the richest person in the world, who hasn’t been elected to anything — now says he’ll be funding “moderate” primary challengers to incumbent Democrats in deep-blue seats around the country.

Here’s his post today, in response to a video clip of Richard Neal (D, Mass.), ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee.

“Forgot to mention that I’m also going to be funding moderate candidates in heavily Democrat districts, so that the country can get rid of those who don’t represent them, like this jackass.”

Neal is an odd choice for Musk to threaten, given that progressive groups have demanded Neal’s ouster as the top Democrat on the powerful tax writing panel because of Neal’s close ties to big business. Hence, Musk’s definition of “moderate” is way over on the authoritarian-fascist end of the spectrum.

Neal’s apparent sin, in Musk’s eyes? He spoke out Wednesday against Musk’s successful attempt to kill the bipartisan government funding agreement, saying:

“Can you imagine what the next two years are going to be like? If every time the Congress works its will and then there’s a tweet from an individual who has no official portfolio, who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary, they succumb?”

Also yesterday, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul suggested that Musk replace Mike Johnson as speaker of the House. “The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress,” Paul posted.

“Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk . . . think about it . . . nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds).”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she’d be open to supporting Musk to replace Johnson. “The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday. This could be the way.”

Three takeaways:

Musk is getting carried away with himself, using his limitless fortune and his ownership of X to try to turn American politics to the authoritarian right.

Wealth inequality is rapidly undermining our democracy. Musk is the poster boy for a wealth tax.

The DNC must bar dark money and limit campaign contributions in all Democratic primary campaigns. The incoming chair of the DNC, selected on February 1, should make this a key part of their strategy for the 2026 midterms and beyond.>

Digital assets and online accounts

Sentimental items and family heirlooms

Backup beneficiaries

Pets and their care

Outstanding debts and liabilities

Business succession plan

Overseas assets

Charitable giving

Funeral and burial preferences

Naming an executor

<The bipartisan House Ethics Committee is expected to detail scathing allegations into former Rep. Matt Gaetz, writing in a draft report obtained by ABC News that the committee found "substantial evidence" that he had sex with a 17-year-old in 2017 in violation of Florida's statutory rape law, and engaged in a broader pattern of paying women for sex.

The draft committee report also revealed evidence of illegal drug use, acceptance of improper gifts, granting special favors to personal associates, and obstruction, after Gaetz refused to comply with subpoenas and withheld evidence from the committee.

A woman testified to the committee that Gaetz had sex with her in 2017, when she was 17 and had just completed her junior year of high school. Identified only as "Victim A" in the draft report, the woman told investigators she received $400 in cash from the then-Congressman that evening, "which she understood to be payment for sex," according to the report.

Gaetz on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Ethics Committee in an effort to stop the committee from releasing its report.

"This action challenges the Committee's unconstitutional and ultra vires attempt to exercise jurisdiction over a private citizen through the threatened release of an investigative report containing potentially defamatory allegations," the filing from Gaetz says.

Gaetz in the filing asks the court to issue a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to block the release of the report or any findings, which he says would cause "damage to [his reputation and professional standing" that would be "immediate and severe."

"The threatened release of information believed to be defamatory by a Congressional committee concerning matters of sexual propriety and other acts of alleged moral turpitude constitutes irreparable harm that cannot be adequately remedied through monetary damages," the filing states.

Gaetz's lawsuit highlights that he is now a public citizen and claims he did not receive "proper notice" of the report's impending release.

"After Plaintiff's resignation from Congress, Defendants improperly continued to act on its investigation, and apparently voted to publicly release reports and/or investigative materials related to Plaintiff without proper notice or disclosure to Plaintiff," the complaint states.

Gaetz has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Following indications last week that the committee would release its report, Gaetz took to X in a lengthy post, writing in part that when he was single he "often sent funds to women" he dated and that he "never had sexual contact with someone under 18."

"It's embarrassing, though not criminal, that I probably partied, womanized, drank and smoked more than I should have earlier in life. I live a different life now," he posted. "I've never been charged. I've never been sued. Instead, House Ethics will reportedly post a report online that I have no opportunity to debate or rebut as a former member of the body."

The Justice Department declined to charge him last year after a yearslong investigation into similar allegations.

President-elect Donald Trump last month tapped Gaetz to serve as attorney general in the incoming administration, and Gaetz resigned his congressional seat shortly after. But Gaetz subsequently withdrew his name from consideration, saying his confirmation process was "unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition."

The Ethics Committee was in the final stages of its probe into Gaetz when Trump tapped him for attorney general. The committee generally drops investigations of members if they leave office, but Gaetz's resignation prompted a fiery debate on Capitol Hill over whether the panel should release its report to allow the Senate to perform its role of vetting presidential nominations.

The committee initially voted against releasing the report before reversing course, sources said.>

<The Biden administration on Monday said it launched a new probe into legacy Chinese semiconductors that may go into everything from cars to household goods and defense systems.

China "routinely engages in non-market policies and practices, as well as industrial targeting" of the chip industry, which allows Chinese firms "to significantly harm competition and create dangerous supply chain dependencies in foundational semiconductors," the White House said in a statement.

The so-called Section 301 investigation will look into China's "acts, policies, and practices on the production of silicon carbide substrates or other wafers used as inputs into semiconductor fabrication," the White House added.

Overall, Washington's probe looks to assess the U.S. dependency on legacy Chinese chips in areas spanning everything from telecommunications to the electrical grid.

The new investigation marks an escalation of U.S. pressure on China's semiconductor industry. To date, many of the actions taken by Washington have sought to target the most cutting-edge chips, in particular those used in the booming artificial intelligence sector.

So-called legacy chips are produced with less advanced manufacturing technique. Chinese manufacturers of chips still remain generations behind industry leaders like TSMC, but they are able to produce legacy chips at scale.

The latest investigation into Chinese legacy chips is being conducted under the Trade Act of 1974. One potential remedy that can be imposed under this law is placing tariffs on the products in question.

The Biden administration has continued to target China's tech sector this year with increased import tariffs on products from electric vehicles to semiconductors. The latest action comes just weeks before the incumbent U.S. president hands over the reins to Donald Trump.

Reuters, citing Biden administration officials, reported on Monday that the probe into legacy chips will be handed over to Trump's administration to complete.>

Not to worry: the Hump administration will quash this anyway. Hump would go down for Xi in Tiananmen Square on command.

<China's population, reported to be 1.41 billion, will drop to 330 million by the end of the century, predicts Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This startling conclusion is included in a paper to be published in the Winter 2024 issue of the Contemporary China Review. He's not the only one concerned. "China has embarked on a road of demographic no-return," writes Wang Feng of the University of California, Irvine. Yi puts it this way: "Left unaddressed, China's demographic trap could precipitate a civilizational collapse."

Why do we care? Rapid demographic change can push an ambitious China to become even more militant and accelerate dangerous plans.

The crisis is plain to see. Yi's stunning 330 million figure assumes that China will be able to stabilize its total fertility rate—generally, the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime—at 0.8. China's TFR in 2023 was 1.0. and is dropping over time. A country generally needs a TFR of 2.1 to maintain a stable population.

Yi believes that China's TFR could even fall to 0.7, meaning China could have even fewer people by 2100.

How far will China's population fall? The 2024 Revision of the U.N.'s World Population Prospects shows a low estimate of 403.8 million people at the end of the century. The U.N.'s figures closely track China's, which for two decades have overestimated the size of the Chinese population. Yi's prediction, although considered extreme today, will probably be closer to the mark when the clock strikes 2100.

China today is 4 times more populous than the United States. At the turn of the century, it could conceivably have roughly the same number of people as America.

China's in a fix. No other society has ever faced a steeper population decline absent war, disease, or famine. These one-off events throughout history have resulted in disastrous demographic drops, but societies almost always bounce back. China itself bounced back fast after the famine during the Great Leap Forward at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the following decade. Then, the country's population plunged by at least 30 million people. Some estimates are double that figure.

Today, China's population decline is caused by deep-seated changes in society, continued economic failure, and a deepening gloom enveloping the country. Young Chinese now speak of themselves as China's "last generation."

These anti-natal attitudes are partly the result of the regime's relentless indoctrination enforcing the One-Child Policy. Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong's successor, instituted the policy in 1979 as one of his first initiatives after assuming power. During the existence of the coercive program, "probably the largest social experiment in human history," China's fertility declined, falling from 2.9 births per female to 1.1 births in 2015.

China moved to a two-child policy in 2016 and, when that didn't work, a three-child one in 2021. The successive policy relaxation has not done the trick. The country's population peaked in 2021....>