December 21, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.
Bet you came to the same conclusion, even before the GOP House rejected Trump’s demand to increase the debt ceiling last night! 👇
Trump Is Having A Very Bad Week by Simon Rosenberg.
As of press time this morning it’s hard to see how we can prevent the government from shutting down this weekend. To me, however, the biggest story right now is that Donald Trump is having a very bad week and his post-election honeymoon has come to an ugly end even before taking office:
The Fed and the markets got spooked this week by Trump’s inflationary economic agenda. Mortgage rates are rising, the stock indices have had big losses and yesterday Trump signaled that he needs to get rid of the debt ceiling so he can dramatically grow the deficit next year. Trump’s extreme agenda has already started unraveling the strong Biden economy he inherited.
Trump is openly picking fights with our closest allies and largest trading partners, who are starting to talk about economic and political retaliation against him and the US. Tariffs and trade wars = higher prices, a slower economy, extraordinary political corruption and global political instability. These too are ominous developments for the GOP.
We learned the Matt Gaetz report will be released in the coming days, further reminding us of the next President’s recklessness, depravity and extremism as. I believe the report will further undermine his other egregious and dangerous nominees - Gabbard, Hegseth, Patel and Kennedy.
Goaded by Elon’s corrosive, lie-infused opposition to the bi-partisan House package, Trump came out against the bill and threw his party and Washington into total chaos. Trump undermined and weakened his own Speaker; had 38 Republicans vote against him and kill his first must pass bill even before becoming President (LOLOLOL!!!!!!); and has come off looking like a reckless buffoon who may not actually be running the show. (Hopium Chronicles)
Here are words by a man who cares not for his country or its people.
He is lying as well, of course.
Trump was poised to inherit a strong economy. Then things got rocky and he added to the uncertainty.
Lack of clarity about Donald Trump's plans caused Federal Reserve to signal fewer interest rate cuts ahead
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The smooth economy that Donald Trump was poised to inherit suddenly looks a bit rockier — with critics saying the president-elect is contributing to the uncertainty.
The Dow Jones stock index essentially ended Thursday flat after having posted 10 days of losses. The Federal Reserve now sees inflation as staying stubbornly elevated as it has become cautious about further interest rate cuts planned for next year.
On Wednesday, Trump blew up a bipartisan budget deal, which means the government could shut down after midnight Saturday. He then promoted a deal reached with Republicans on Thursday that Democratic lawmakers and President Joe Biden see as unacceptable. It failed to get the two-thirds threshold needed for House passage. This comes on top of a spate of tariff threats by Trump that the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday would raise prices and hurt growth without raising enough revenues to cover the rest of his planned tax cuts.
As Trump prepares for a second term in the White House, his actions to undo a deal and replace it in under 24 hours test the proposition that markets — a favored Trump barometer of success — will accept his mix of uncertainty and reality TV drama.
But from the vantage of Trump world, the economy was already a mess. That’s because of inflation, which is currently 2.7%, and public dissatisfaction with Biden.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The smooth economy that Donald Trump was poised to inherit suddenly looks a bit rockier — with critics saying the president-elect is contributing to the uncertainty.
The Dow Jones stock index essentially ended Thursday flat after having posted 10 days of losses. The Federal Reserve now sees inflation as staying stubbornly elevated as it has become cautious about further interest rate cuts planned for next year.
On Wednesday, Trump blew up a bipartisan budget deal, which means the government could shut down after midnight Saturday. He then promoted a deal reached with Republicans on Thursday that Democratic lawmakers and President Joe Biden see as unacceptable. It failed to get the two-thirds threshold needed for House passage. This comes on top of a spate of tariff threats by Trump that the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday would raise prices and hurt growth without raising enough revenues to cover the rest of his planned tax cuts.
As Trump prepares for a second term in the White House, his actions to undo a deal and replace it in under 24 hours test the proposition that markets — a favored Trump barometer of success — will accept his mix of uncertainty and reality TV drama.
But from the vantage of Trump world, the economy was already a mess. That’s because of inflation, which is currently 2.7%, and public dissatisfaction with Biden. (Associated Press).
Then last night…
First this happened.👇
House Passes Bill to Avert Shutdown With Hours to Spare.
The measure still needed approval from the Senate and a signature by President Biden to avert a lapse in federal funding at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday.
The House on Friday approved legislation to avert a federal shutdown that was just hours away, with lawmakers extending funding into mid-March and approving $100 billion in disaster relief for parts of the nation still reeling from storms. The Senate was expected to quickly follow suit.
The House vote came after Republicans stripped out a provision demanded by President-elect Donald J. Trump to suspend the federal debt limit and spare him the usually politically charged task of doing so when he takes office. But that demand sparked a revolt by dozens of Republicans on Thursday and led to a major defeat on the House floor.
The measure that passed on Friday, by a vote of 366 to 34, must still be approved by the Senate and sent to President Biden to keep dollars flowing to federal agencies. Otherwise, funding will lapse at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. All 34 “no” votes were from Republicans; one Democrat, Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas, voted “present.”
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said he expected the Senate to act quickly on the legislation.
“Though this bill does not include everything Democrats fought for, there are major victories in this bill for American families,” Mr. Schumer said, citing “emergency aid for communities battered by natural disasters” as well as no suspension of the limits on federal borrowing. He added that it would “keep the government open with no draconian cuts.”
The legislation also extends farm programs for one year and provides $10 billion in direct aid for farmers.
Following the vote, Mr. Johnson, who faced questions about his ability to continue as speaker next year after the tumult of the past few days, said he had been in constant contact with Mr. Trump and had talked with Mr. Musk as well.
“He knew exactly what we were doing and why,” Mr. Johnson said of the president. “This is a good outcome for the country.”
Still, the vote illustrated the limits of the president-elect’s power to keep fractious House Republicans in line. Mr. Trump failed in his effort to win a debt-limit suspension even after threatening primary campaigns against Republicans who voted for a stopgap bill that did not address it. The internal divisions over spending and debt foreshadowed potential difficulties for Republicans next year as they try to navigate their narrow House margin and accomplish an ambitious domestic agenda including complex tax and spending issues.
The government funding measure was a stripped-down version of an earlier proposal negotiated between Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate that was much more expansive and filled with policy priorities for both parties as well as a cost-of-living pay adjustment for members of the House and Senate.
But as soon as it was rolled out by Mr. Johnson on Tuesday, it ran into fierce criticism from members of his own party as a bloated legislative Christmas tree of the sort Mr. Johnson had pledged to avoid. Mr. Musk piled on with an onslaught of criticism on his social media platform X, and Mr. Trump warned Republicans not to support any deal without a debt-ceiling suspension. Mr. Johnson quickly withdrew the bill and never put it to a vote.
That outcome angered Democrats who savaged Mr. Johnson for reneging on the deal they had reached. It also meant that some of the provisions they sought on health care and trade, among other issues, would fall by the wayside. Democrats weighed opposing the stripped-down measure that Mr. Johnson hastily cobbled together on Friday, but ultimately decided to back it rather than risk being blamed for a shutdown.
“House Democrats have successfully stopped extreme MAGA Republicans from shutting down the government, crashing the economy and hurting working-class Americans all across the land,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader. “House Democrats have successfully stopped the billionaire boys’ club, which wanted a $4 trillion blank check by suspending the debt ceiling.”
To mollify both Mr. Trump and conservatives, House Republican leaders floated a pledge to cut spending and raise the debt limit in separate legislation next year. Republicans have been preparing to pass party-line legislation through a fast-track process called reconciliation — a procedure leadership said on Friday could be used next year to address Mr. Trump’s demand to raise the debt limit.
“House Republicans agree to raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion in the first reconciliation package, with an agreement that we will cut $2.5 trillion in net mandatory spending in the reconciliation process,” the proposal from the Republican leadership said.
Those promises will join cutting taxes, cracking down on immigration and allowing for more oil drilling on the G.O.P. agenda for next year. Republicans in the House and Senate have been at odds over how to tackle their policy priorities, with some senators pushing for multiple party-line bills and House members demanding one huge effort.
The shutdown turmoil made it clear that even one such vote is likely to be a heavy lift for Republicans.
Congress had flirted repeatedly with shutdowns over the past two years with Republicans in control of the House and Democrats the Senate. But lawmakers pulled back from the brink each time, fearing fallout in the November elections.
With the elections over and the holidays coming next week, lawmakers had initially expected a fairly smooth path to funding the government into next year but instead found themselves enmeshed in one final episode of disarray to cap a tumultuous Congress. (New York Times)
Then, I went to bed but this was happening and likely happened.👇
Senate Prepares to Vote on Stopgap Funding Bill as Shutdown Deadline Approaches.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said it will likely pass, and President Biden is expected to sign it. The new legislation would keep the government open but did not include the debt ceiling increase that President-elect Donald J. Trump had demanded.
POOR LOSER TRUMP.
The American people rightly fear we will have a rocky 4 years, but this makes it clear - Trump is going to have that too.
We are going to hear a lot over the next couple of years about how, despite controlling the White House, House, and Senate, Republicans just aren't able to get anything done because of Democrats
— David Pakman (@davidpakman.bsky.social) 2024-12-21T01:20:07.757Z
Elon Musk endorses the Neo-Nazi Party in Germany.
Among other extremist position the AfD takes, it demands a “reversal” of Holocaust remembrance in Germany and states that the Nazi Schutzstaffel (the paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany) were “not criminals.”
Here is Musk’s tweet. 👇
Here’s the New York Times’ write-up about it.👇
Read the article and learn more about Musk’s political preferences.
Pick your favorite reporter and ask him/her/them to ask Musk what he thinks about Hitler, Nazis, and even about apartheid (he is, after all, from South Africa)
Musk Expresses Support for Far-Right Party in Germany’s Election.
It was not the first online intervention by Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and adviser to Donald Trump, on behalf of once-fringe anti-immigrant parties in Europe.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, on Friday endorsed Germany’s far-right party, a group with ties to neo-Nazis whose youth wing has been classified as “confirmed extremist” by German domestic intelligence.
“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Mr. Musk posted to X, referring to the anti-immigrant party, the Alternative for Germany, by its German initials.
In doing so, he is wading into German politics at a time of turmoil. The German government recently collapsed, leading to early elections planned for next year.
Mr. Musk’s post was in response to an English-language video by a 24-year-old German far-right influencer, Naomi Seibt. She harshly criticized Friedrich Merz, whom polls show leading the race, for dismissing a rival’s suggestion that Germany look to Mr. Musk and another firebrand, President Javier Milei of Argentina, for ideas about reforming the country.
Ms. Seibt also criticized Mr. Merz for ruling out joining any coalition with the AfD. The ethnonationalist and Islamophobic message of the once-fringe party has proved to be a strong vote-getter at the local level, especially in the more economically disadvantaged former East Germany.
Mr. Musk’s post, which had more than 25 million views in roughly 10 hours, comes as Germany begins what promises to be an aggressive election campaign. The country will have an early election on Feb. 23 after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition collapsed in November.
Like all the mainstream German parties, Mr. Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union has ruled out working with the AfD, which Mr. Scholz and others have called a threat to German democracy.
News that members of the AfD attended a secret meeting with the Austrian extreme-right provocateur Martin Sellner, who has admitted to once being a member of a neo-Nazi group and has called for deporting migrants en masse, led to large protests early this year. Then, starting in May, a leading light of the party was twice given a hefty fine for using Nazi-era slogans during campaign stops.
Last month in the eastern state of Saxony, police arrested eight people suspected of being members of what they called a right-wing extremist terrorist organization, which they said had been plotting to overthrow the government. Three of the eight were AfD members; one was an elected local official.
The online endorsement from Mr. Musk garnered a quick response from Alice Weidel, the AfD’s top candidate. “Yes! You are perfectly right,” she posted just an hour after Mr. Musk’s post went up.
Mr. Musk has long made heavy use of X, which he bought in 2022, to express his views on politics in the United States and abroad.
In Britain, he has thrown his weight behind another insurgent, anti-immigrant party, Reform U.K., which is led by the longtime political disrupter Nigel Farage. He met on Monday with Mr. Farage and the party’s new treasurer, Nick Candy, at Mr. Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, to discuss the possibility of a donation by Mr. Musk to Reform U.K.
Mr. Musk has yet to write Mr. Farage a check, and lawmakers in Britain are calling on the government to tighten campaign-finance laws to restrict foreign donations. But he has left little doubt of his endorsement.
When Mr. Farage posted a photo of himself with Mr. Candy and Mr. Musk posing in front of a portrait of a younger Mr. Trump, along with the line “Britain needs Reform,” Mr. Musk replied, “Absolutely.”
He also has picked repeated fights online with Britain’s Labour government, accusing it of using police-state tactics in going after people who used his X platform to spread misinformation after anti-immigrant riots broke out across Britain last summer, following a mass stabbing at a dance studio.
Mr. Musk claimed that “civil war” was inevitable in Britain. After Prime Minister Keir Starmer activated an emergency plan to relieve pressure on overcrowded jails, under which defendants can be held longer in cells until space opens in prisons, Mr. Musk posted, “The U.K. is turning into a police state.”
In Germany, Christian Lindner, the leader of the small, pro-business Free Democratic Party, suggested this month that the country should look toward Mr. Musk and Mr. Milei when thinking about disruption and reform.
In her crudely edited video message on X, Ms. Seibt criticized Mr. Merz’s opposition to that idea as well as his repeated vow not to work with the AfD.
The AfD is polling at 19 percent, and its leaders appeared ready to make the most of the post, apparently hoping that it could help attract more voters and serve as a jumping-off point for communications with the Trump White House.
Some hours after her initial post, Ms. Weidel recorded a video addressing Mr. Musk’s post. “The Alternative for Germany is indeed the only alternative for our country; our very last option,” she said.
On Friday, Mr. Lindner also addressed Mr. Musk over X: “Elon, I’ve initiated a policy debate inspired by ideas from you and Milei,” he said, explaining why Mr. Musk should not endorse the AfD. “Don’t rush to conclusions from afar.” (New York Times).
Just in case you were wondering, Musk comes by his admiration for Nazis legitimately.
Elon Musk’s Anti-Semitic, Apartheid-Loving Grandfather.
The billionaire has described his grandfather as a risk-taking adventurer. A closer read of history reveals something much darker.
In Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Elon Musk, a mere page and a half is devoted to introducing Musk’s grandfather, a Canadian chiropractor named Joshua N. Haldeman. Isaacson describes him as a source of Musk’s great affection for danger—“a daredevil adventurer with strongly held opinions” and “quirky conservative populist views” who did rope tricks at rodeos and rode freight trains like a hobo. “He knew that real adventures involve risk,” Isaacson quotes Musk as having said. “Risk energized him.”
But in 1950, Haldeman’s “quirky” politics led him to make an unusual and dramatic choice: to leave Canada for South Africa. Haldeman had built a comfortable life for himself in Regina, Saskatchewan’s capital. His chiropractic practice was one of Canada’s largest and allowed him to possess his own airplane and a 20-room home he shared with his wife and four young children. He’d been active in politics, running for both the provincial and national parliaments and even becoming the national chairman of a minor political party. Meanwhile, he’d never even been to South Africa.
What would make a man undertake such a radical change? Isaacson writes that Haldeman had come “to believe that the Canadian government was usurping too much control over the lives of individuals and that the country had gone soft.” One of Haldeman’s sons has written that it may have simply been “his adventurous spirit and the desire for a more pleasant climate in which to raise his family.” But another factor was at play: his strong support for the brand-new apartheid regime.
An examination of Joshua Haldeman’s writings reveals a radical conspiracy theorist who expressed racist, anti-Semitic, and antidemocratic views repeatedly, and over the course of decades—a record I studied across hundreds of documents from the time, including newspaper clips, self-published manuscripts, university archives, and private correspondence. Haldeman believed that apartheid South Africa was destined to lead “White Christian Civilization” in its fight against the “International Conspiracy” of Jewish bankers and the “hordes of Coloured people” they controlled.
To continue to read Joshua Benton’s account of Musk’s grandfather, click # here.
Letter to the New York Times editor
To the Editor:
Re “Musk Wields Political Might at Fiscal Deal” (front page, Dec. 20):
It is beyond maddening that Mr. Musk is able to exert such influence over the actions of the United States government, which exists, let us remember, to serve the interests of all Americans.
Mr. Musk has not been elected and has never faced any kind of vetting or confirmation by appointed or elected officials.
Perhaps worst of all, his wealth completely insulates him from any negative effects of his meddling. If things go wrong and he loses a few hundred million dollars, he won’t suffer.
Mr. Musk reminds me of a child who is playing a game. Hey! I’m at Mar-a-Lago! When I speak, markets and legislators react! Isn’t this fun?
Geoffrey S. Poor Shoreline, Wash.
Evidently the GOP really doesn’t have a problem with foreigners taking over the country.
— Adam Kinzinger (@adamkinzinger.bsky.social) 2024-12-20T13:17:19.852Z
Biden is always busy.
Still.
The Senate confirmed on Friday the 235th lifetime federal judge nominated by President Biden, topping the four-year record set during the first Trump administration by a single judge. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/us/politics/senate-democrats-judges-biden.html?smtyp=cur∣=bsky-nytimes
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) 2024-12-21T04:15:10.158Z
BREAKING President Biden is considering commuting sentences of most, if not all, of the 40 men on federal death row. If he does commute, they would serve life without parole. A broad coalition of religious and civil-rights groups has been pressing him to take the step. https://bit.ly/4iLlKfG
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yasharali.bsky.social) 2024-12-21T00:19:46.547Z