Tight spot....

Johnson faces tough fight ahead in speaker’s race even after Trump endorsement

By Lauren Fox, Clare Foran, Sarah Ferris and Haley Talbot

House Speaker Mike Johnson faces a tough fight to retain the gavel even after an endorsement from Donald Trump, a test of the president-elect’s influence over his party amid the limits of an extraordinarily narrow majority.

Trump’s endorsement could help Johnson shore up support, especially after the speaker navigated a chaotic government funding fight earlier this month that drew the ire of his right flank. But with a historically small majority in the new Congress, Johnson can afford only a single Republican defection when the House picks a new speaker on Friday if every member votes.

And one House Republican – Rep. Thomas Massie – has already said he doesn’t plan to vote for Johnson. The Kentucky Republican told CNN on Monday that Trump’s endorsement does not change his position.

Members had been preparing for a Trump endorsement, one source told CNN. But the same source warned that it may not be enough. For now, Johnson allies are keeping close tabs on members who have not yet committed to backing him.

In addition to Trump’s endorsement, any GOP holdouts could also face pressure from Johnson allies over the potential consequences for the incoming president if the House does not quickly elect a speaker.

Congress has never before tried to certify a presidential election without a House speaker in place, and Republicans across Washington are privately trying to game out what might happen if that scenario were to arise.

So far, GOP lawmakers and senior advisers say they have found no clear options to certify Trump’s win without a speaker, according to multiple sources. Some Johnson supporters are pointing to that as part of their argument for why on-the-fence GOP lawmakers should support the current speaker.

“To oppose Johnson now weakens the GOP and strengthens Hakeem Jeffries. It also puts at risk the Electoral College Certification scheduled for 6 Jan. These guys serve as a ‘fifth column’ for the Dems,” Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon told CNN.

Johnson allies undertake extensive whip operation

Over the last several weeks, Johnson’s deputies have launched an expansive whip operation, but there are still intense challenges to getting the Louisiana Republican to 218 votes – the magic number needed to win the gavel.

One Republican lawmaker familiar with the outreach told CNN that while the vast majority of GOP members understand how “monumentally stupid” it could be to have an extensive speaker’s battle, not every member is swayed by an argument that the party needs to be united going into the inauguration.

“A vast majority of Republicans are rational, but not every member of the Republican conference is rational,” the member lamented.

A CNN tally of members prior to Trump’s endorsement found that nearly a dozen others had not yet committed to Johnson.

Trump said on Monday that Johnson has his “complete” and “total” endorsement.

“The American people need IMMEDIATE relief from all of the destructive policies of the last Administration. Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man. He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN. Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement. MAGA!!!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

The big shadow over Johnson’s speaker race: Trump certification

Even former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz — who has previously clashed with Johnson and his leadership team — suggested his onetime colleagues should back the current speaker rather than risking Trump’s certification as president.

“We could never have held up McCarthy two years ago for concessions if a Trump certification hung in the balance. Now, it does,” Gaetz said on X, calling resistance to Johnson “futile.”

While the speaker has no formal role in certifying the results, the House needs to be called into session. And without a speaker, the House can do nothing besides vote to elect a speaker, vote to recess and vote to adjourn. Lawmakers can’t even be sworn in or set the rules of the House.

“You’re literally just stuck in a cyclical pattern of speaker votes with the clerk overseeing,” one GOP source said, describing what would happen without a speaker at the start of a new Congress.

And unlike during the House’s last speaker-less debacle in 2023, there will be no temporary leader poised to take over. When former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted, Rep. Patrick McHenry took over as speaker pro tempore because he was McCarthy’s pick when he first took the gavel. But in the 119th Congress, a speaker must first be elected before he or she can appoint a pro tempore.

Some Republicans are privately discussing ways to push the procedural limits so that Congress can certify Trump’s win without a leader. One person described an “emergency break glass option” that would involve allowing the House to vote to go into a special session. But that would be a tough sell for many institutionalist Republicans.

Another option that is being privately floated around Washington: Pushing the date of Trump’s certification.

“There is no constitutional mandate that it’s got to be on January 6,” another GOP source said, as long as it happens before January 20, the day of inauguration.

Johnson’s allies insist he will keep his gavel on Friday and is working hard to lock down the votes. But Republicans and Democrats alike are searching for answers about what would happen to certification if the House remains speaker-less three days later.

“When you don’t have a speaker, that impacts thousands of the important tasks of governing,” said one GOP lawmaker who is helping Johnson whip votes. “Clearly the whip team is aware that not having a speaker is a problem for lots of reasons.”

Johnson faces conservative ire after spending fight

After Johnson cut a deal with Democrats over spending in mid-December, Trump injected a last-minute demand to raise the debt ceiling that left Johnson grasping for a Plan B. A revised GOP plan ultimately failed to get enough Republican votes to pass and caused grumbling among Johnson’s right flank that the speaker wasn’t up to the job. It also caused some to wonder whether Trump would stick with Johnson ahead of the speaker fight.

Massie said earlier this month that he did not plan to back Johnson in the speaker’s race. In response to Trump’s endorsement, Massie wrote on X, “I respect and support President Trump, but his endorsement of Mike Johnson is going to work out about as well as his endorsement of Speaker Paul Ryan. We’ve seen Johnson partner with the democrats to send money to Ukraine, authorize spying on Americans, and blow the budget.”

Another challenge: The House Freedom Caucus, which includes some of the members most wary of reelecting Johnson, has not come out with a unified list of demands, creating a situation in which every member is acting a bit as a free agent.

For some members, there are concerns about how the party will begin to pass individual spending bills again that address reducing the country’s debt and deficit. That could be difficult given that House Republicans have shown repeatedly they don’t have the votes to pass all 12 spending bills with just GOP votes. Not to mention the fact that Republicans will continue to need Democratic votes even in a Trump administration to keep the government funded given that Republicans don’t have the 60 votes needed in the Senate to pass bills on their own.

Johnson is also telling people that he is not open to reducing the number of members it would take to force a vote to oust a speaker after the GOP conference agreed to raise the threshold. As part of a conference-wide negotiation in November, Republicans decided to increase the number of members it would take to force a vote on what is known as the motion to vacate from one member to nine. A source familiar with Johnson’s thinking said the speaker does not believe he can reverse course on what he sees as a conference-negotiated position.

When McCarthy went 15 rounds to get the speaker’s gavel in 2023, he eventually acquiesced to conservative demands to lower the threshold for the motion to vacate to a single member, a move that ultimately led to his ouster.

NGC 4753

What do you think this is? Here’s a clue: it's bigger than a bread box. Much bigger. The answer is that pictured NGC 4753 is a twisted disk galaxy, where unusual dark dust filaments provide clues about its history. No one is sure what happened, but a leading model holds that a relatively normal disk galaxy gravitationally ripped apart a dusty satellite galaxy while its precession distorted the plane of the accreted debris as it rotated. The cosmic collision is hypothesized to have started about a billion years ago. NGC 4753 is seen from the side, and possibly would look like a normal spiral galaxy from the top. The bright orange halo is composed of many older stars that might trace dark matter. The featured Hubble image was recently reprocessed to highlight ultraviolet and red-light emissions.

The end of 2024... The start of Shit Show 2025....

New Years is here... The shit show is starting... Hold on.. To the Maggots, you will get what you deserve... But are to stupid to understand...

Unsettling discovery

Scientists made an unsettling discovery in the Antarctic. It's likely an omen.

By Ariana Bindman

A surreal phenomenon is unfolding in one of the most barren, mystifying regions on Earth, and according to a recent article from NASA, scientists say that it could be a new byproduct of global warming.  

According to an October 2024 study published in Nature Geoscience, vegetation is taking over the Antarctic Peninsula, turning its edges into a verdant landscape worthy of plein air painting. After analyzing satellite data collected from 1986 to 2021, scientists from the universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire were shocked to discover that the greenery grew from 0.86 square kilometer to 11.95 square kilometers, spreading much faster than initially thought. It seems to have grown quicker in the last five years in particular, the paper continued. Though the region has been significantly warming for the past 60 years, rates of warming are highest in the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctic, authors wrote. 

Previous studies by some of the same researchers revealed that moss creates “carpets” along these frozen tundras, transforming them into green panoramas. Ardley Island, a 1.9-kilometer-long isle on the outskirts of the Antarctic, is just one example — but after analyzing data collected from several sites over the course of 150 years, scientists found that this vegetation grew exponentially in the past half century due to climate change.

And now, they say that this explosion of lush, emerald-green plants could be an omen.  

“The regional sensitivity of moss growth to past temperature rises suggests that terrestrial ecosystems will alter rapidly under future warming, leading to major changes in the biology and landscape of this iconic region,” authors wrote in a 2017 study. 

“Based on the core samples, we expected to see some greening,” Exeter University researcher Tom Roland told NASA, “but I don’t think we were expecting it on the scale that we reported here.” 

They didn’t expect the moss to spread so rapidly, either. “When we first ran the numbers, we were in disbelief,” co-author Olly Bartlett told the agency. “The rate itself is quite striking, especially in the last few years.” Though scientists have long warned the public about global warming, this new study seems to illustrate what happens after the ice actually melts. It could also spell disaster for the region’s balanced ecosystem by weakening the landscape, creating a window of opportunity for nonnative species to take over. 

Though the vast majority of the Antarctic is blanketed in snow and ice, its outer fringes have a surprisingly diverse ecosystem, including about 100 species of moss. It’s home to an array of liverworts, lichens and fungi, as well as two flowering plants — Deschampsia antarctica and Colobanthus quitensis — which grow in the South Orkney Islands, the South Shetland Islands and along the western Antarctic Peninsula, where temperatures are typically warmer than the rest of the region. 

According to previous studies from 2019, the areas that aren’t shielded by ice are vulnerable to biological invaders that could seriously threaten the environment: Warming temperatures, combined with Antarctic tourism, increases the risk of introducing non-native species, painting a “troubling future” for the region, study authors Grant Duffy and Jasmine Lee wrote. The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, an organization that has been monitoring tourism trends in the region since 1991, said that more than 80,000 people visited on foot in 2023-2024 alone, while more than 43,000 traveled to the area by cruise.  

According to the December NASA story, it’s still unclear which plants are part of this blooming area and how they’re changing the fabled Antarctic landscape. “We need to go to these places where we’re seeing the most distinctive changes,” Roland told the agency, “and see what’s happening on the ground.” 

resident Jimmy Carter

Former President Jimmy Carter dead at 100

The nation’s 39th president left a long meaningful legacy after a difficult four years in the White House.

By Todd S. Purdum

Jimmy Carter had such confidence in his improbable path to the White House that he bet Americans worn down by Vietnam and Watergate would welcome a new kind of president: a peanut farmer who carried his own bags, worried about the heating bill and told it, more or less, like it was. And for a time, the voters embraced him.

Yet just four years later, in the aftermath of a presidency that was widely seen as failed, it sometimes seemed as if all that was left of Carter was the smile — the wide, toothy grin that helped elect him in the first place, then came to be caricatured by countless cartoonists as an emblem of naïveté.

But it was Carter’s great fortune to enjoy a post-presidency more than 10 times as long as his tenure in office — in March 2019, he became the longest-lived president ever — and by the time he died at 100, he had lived to see history’s verdict soften.

Carter entered home hospice care after a series of hospital stays, the Carter Center confirmed Feb. 18. His wife, Rosalynn Carter, passed away Nov. 19, 2023.

If the 39th president did not achieve all he sought in four years in the White House — and he did not — his abiding concern for human rights in international affairs, and for energy and the environment as a defining challenge of our time, can now be seen as prescient. If, in later years, his unyielding support for Palestinian rights (and his frequent sharp criticisms of Israel) drew many detractors, his brokering of the 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt stands as a milestone of modern diplomacy.

If he was the first president to confront what we now call “Islamic extremism,” he was far from the last. And if he sacrificed his re-election to the super-powerlessness of the Iranian hostage crisis — and a botched military raid to rescue the captives — his administration’s persistence nevertheless brought all 52 diplomats safely home in the end.

At a time when only six women had ever served a president’s Cabinet, Carter had appointed three of them — along with three of the five women ever to serve as departmental undersecretaries, and 80 percent of those to serve as assistant secretaries. There is almost no battle over policy or public image that Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama ever faced as first lady that Carter’s trusted wife, Rosalynn, did not fight first — whether campaigning for mental health, or sitting in on Cabinet meetings.

James Earl Carter Jr. could be pious (“I’ll never lie to you,” he pledged while campaigning in 1976). He could be petty (his micromanagement of the White House tennis court was roundly mocked). He could be tone-deaf (lecturing his countrymen on a national “crisis of confidence” in a way that only accented the problem, and dispensing with some of the pomp of the presidency that ordinary people actually liked and expected).

But he could also be disarmingly candid, in a political culture that almost never rewards that trait (who can forget his confession to Playboy magazine that he had lusted after women not his wife and committed adultery many times in his heart?). And he had a gift for improbable friendships — not least with the man he so narrowly and bitterly defeated, Gerald Ford, and with John Wayne, the arch-conservative whose support nevertheless helped him pass the 1977 treaty surrendering the Panama Canal.

He grew up in a house without indoor plumbing, on a dirt road in rural Georgia, surrounded by poor Blacks, and was the only president ever to live in public housing — upon his discharge from the Navy, when he went home to take over his family’s peanut business after his father’s death. He was the son of a staunch segregationist, and in his early career, right up to his election as governor of Georgia in 1970, he often finessed the issue of race. But on taking office in the state house, he proclaimed that “the time for discrimination is over,” and Time magazine hailed him on its cover as the face of America’s New South.

Carter’s life had a classic Horatio Alger arc. As a teenager, he joined the Future Farmers of America and cultivated, packed and sold his own acre of peanuts. He fulfilled his dream of an appointment to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, and went on to become a protégé of Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear Navy, in the post-World War II submarine fleet. He married a childhood friend of his sister Ruth, and raised four children.

His first political post was that quintessential American office: chairman of his local school board, where in the early 1960s, he first spoke up in favor of integration. Two terms in the Georgia State Senate and an unsuccessful run for governor in 1966 paved the way for his election as governor in 1970. By the end of 1972, he had become determined to launch a presidential campaign, but the long odds against him were exemplified in a 1973 appearance on “What’s My Line,” where none of the celebrity panelists recognized him and only the movie critic Gene Shalit eventually guessed he was a governor.

But Carter’s status as an unknown outsider was a distinct advantage in the wake of Watergate — an edge understood early by the late R.W. Apple Jr. of The New York Times — and he quickly became the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, winning the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. In 1976, he published his campaign manifesto-cum-memoir, the self-confidently titled, “Why Not the Best?” and the rest is history.

At his inauguration, Carter brought a bracing fresh breeze to Washington, walking from the Capitol to the White House after his swearing-in. But soon enough he brought a stern and scolding tone as well, ordering the White House thermostats to be set at a frigid 65 degrees (a move he ostentatiously announced in a televised “fireside chat,” wearing a tan cardigan), selling off the presidential yacht Sequoia, banning hard liquor from White House parties and limiting the playing of “Hail to the Chief” at official functions.

Much of the national media and Washington’s chattering class quickly pronounced the new president a rube, out of his depth and surrounded by a “Georgia Mafia” equally unschooled and uncouth. He requited with prickly disdain for his critics. The very style that had seemed unpretentious and refreshing now seemed sanctimonious and crabbed, and on the substance, he just couldn’t seem to catch a break. He was saddled with a national economy stuck in “stagflation,” and by June 1978, Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution was analyzing why his presidency had failed: because it lacked an overriding vision.

In an afterword to excerpts from his White House diaries, published in 2010, Carter would write: “As is evident from my diary, I felt at the time that I had a firm grip on my presidential duties and was presenting a clear picture of what I wanted to accomplish in foreign and domestic affairs. The three large themes of my presidency were peace, human rights and the environment (which included energy conservation).” But, he added, “In retrospect, though, my elaboration of these themes and departures from them were not as clear to others as to me and my White House staff.”

In 1980, Carter faced a challenge for re-nomination from Sen. Ted Kennedy, and then lost the November election to his polar opposite, Ronald Reagan. He sulked for a while, then bought a $10,000 Lanier word processor, composed the first of the more than two dozen books he would write on leaving office, and set about establishing his presidential library and Carter Center in partnership with Emory University in Atlanta.

Over the ensuing decades, he would build houses Habitat for Humanity, monitor foreign elections, conduct semi-sanctioned (and sometimes unsolicited) diplomacy, and continue to offer various unvarnished assessments of his successors of both parties. Posing in 2009 in the Oval Office with all the living members of the presidential club just after Barack Obama’s election, he could not restrain himself from leaving a conspicuous physical distance between himself and his fellow southerner Bill Clinton, an old frenemy whose extramarital affair in office so offended Carter, long the nation’s Sunday school teacher-in-chief. (He continued to live the part: Carter kept teaching Sunday school in Georgia year after year, taking a picture afterward with everyone who attended.)

Most surveys of professional historians still rank Carter in the third quartile of effective presidents (as it happens, on par with his friend Jerry Ford). Carter himself preferred the simple summary of his vice president, Walter Mondale: “We obeyed the law, we told the truth, and we kept the peace.”

In the long line of the presidency, that’s not the best boast ever. But it’s far from the worst.

Upholds $5 million verdict

Appeals court upholds $5 million verdict against Trump for sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carroll

“[T]he jury could reasonably infer … that Mr. Trump engaged in similar conduct with other women,” the panel wrote in a 77-page opinion.

By Kyle Cheney

A federal appeals court has upheld a jury’s $5 million civil verdict against Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation claims brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll.

A three-judge panel ruled unanimously Monday that the trial judge did not violate Trump’s rights when he allowed Carroll to present evidence suggesting Trump had committed other sexual assaults. That evidence included Trump’s comments on the infamous Access Hollywood tape as well as testimony from other two other women who accused Trump of sexual assault.

“[T]he jury could reasonably infer … that Mr. Trump engaged in similar conduct with other women — a pattern of abrupt, nonconsensual, and physical advances on women he barely knew,” the panel wrote in a 77-page opinion. The judges ruling on the matter were Obama appointees Denny Chin and Susan Carney, as well as Biden appointee Myrna Perez.

M27

Is this what will become of our Sun? Quite possibly. The first hint of our Sun's future was discovered inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused with comets. The 27th object on Messier's list, now known as M27 or the Dumbbell Nebula, is a planetary nebula, one of the brightest planetary nebulas on the sky and visible with binoculars toward the constellation of the Fox (Vulpecula). It takes light about 1000 years to reach us from M27, featured here in colors emitted by sulfur (red), hydrogen (green) and oxygen (blue). We now know that in about 6 billion years, our Sun will shed its outer gases into a planetary nebula like M27, while its remaining center will become an X-ray hot white dwarf star. Understanding the physics and significance of M27 was well beyond 18th century science, though. Even today, many things remain mysterious about planetary nebulas, including how their intricate shapes are created.

Stupidity crushed a country...

New Hampshire’s Governor Thinks Elon Musk Is Too Rich for Conflicts of Interest

Chris Sununu clearly doesn’t understand billionaires.

Michael Mechanic

A news clip making the rounds Sunday morning had CNN’s Dana Bash talking with Chris Sununu, New Hampshire’s Republican governor, about Elon Musk’s potential conflicts of interest. Here, after all, we have a hecto-billionaire with massive federal contracts via SpaceX—and whose carmaker, Tesla, likely wouldn’t have survived without generous state and federal subsidies—serving as an advisor to an incoming president on how the government should be spending its money, or not.

Sununu told Bash he liked that Musk is an “outsider”—an interesting choice of words—who is “not looking for anything.” When she challenged that notion, he responded, “The guy is worth $450 billion” and therefore is “so rich he’s removed from the potential financial influence.”

“I don’t think he’s doing it for the money,” Sununu said. “He’s doing it for the bigger project and the bigger vision of America.” The exchange is worth a listen:

What this tells me is that Sununu doesn’t understand the mentality of excessive wealth and he probably shouldn’t be on the air talking about it. He’s correct, in one sense, that Musk is not doing it for the money. I mean, the guy could probably afford to buy Greenland. But “the greater project and the bigger vision”? That’s the sort of nonsense Col. Potter from the old TV series M.A.S.H. would have called “horse hockey”—among other things.

Musk is doing this for the power—the opportunity to dominate his peers. Let’s not forget that joining forces with Trump put Musk’s wealth, at least on paper, on a very steep upward trajectory. I haven’t done the math, but I’m pretty sure he’s now the richest person who has ever lived on our planet. He doesn’t need money to buy stuff. He needs it to nourish his narcissism.

I interviewed quite a few super-rich folks, and people in their close orbits, while researching my 2021 book, Jackpot, and we talked a lot about these kinds of matters. It became clear that, once a person attains a certain level of wealth, any further accumulation of assets is like a game. It’s all about score-keeping and social comparisons—and also maintaining one’s dynastic position by creating trusts to circumvent gift and estate taxes and pushing to maintain stupid loopholes like the discounted tax rate on carried interest, which even one private equity guy admitted to me was “bullshit,” though he was part of a group that made an annual pilgrimage to DC to lobby for it.

Here’s a abridged snippet from one of my interviews with Richard Watts, an attorney in Southern California who serves as a consigliere for some of America’s wealthiest families. Here he was talking about a conference he’d just spoken at—an annual shindig hosted by Mitt Romney and attended by loads of Fortune 500 CEOs and billionaires with names you’d know, in addition to former presidents and senators and other power players.

“I’m very well off, so I certainly don’t need to be working and doing all that stuff, and I’ve got a beautiful home down by the ocean. But when I spend the weekend with people that probably have a minimum net worth of $500 million, at some point I just have to leave, because you can feel in the discussion the measure is how big you are…

In those situations it’s always about what spectacular thing have you done, invented, created: What do you do? “Well, I own 35 mobile home parks free and clear, and we built them, and we’re going green with all of them. And it’s really been a great, wonderful thing.” And the guy’s 40 years old, and that’s a true story…

Now, if you’re Jamie Dimon, everybody kind of wants to see what you’re thinking and you know, “Hey, that’s a good guy. I want to be around him.” And then if it’s the governor of Maine, or let’s say it’s Mitt or it’s Paul Ryan, these are really interesting people. And the interesting thing is they kind of don’t want to have that discussion, but everyone has it with them. So, it’s like, “Hey Paul, since you’ve been out of the Speaker of the House, what is it you’re doing this year?” “Oh my god, I’m on the board of Fox News.” (And of course Murdoch was there lecturing as well.)

And it’s just this feeling that the only measure in the room—I don’t mean that they always stay this way, I’m just saying when they group together—it’s about who’s got the biggest boat, and I can say that in a lot of different ways that are nasty, but the biggest boat is pretty quickly identified.

One month prior to the election, Elon Musk’s estimated net worth was about $263 billion. Now, at year’s end, it is $437 billion. The “biggest boat” has been identified. It’s Elon and it ain’t even close. Musk would like to keep it that way. and his relationship with Trump helps him do that. So Sununu can spare us the “greater project” nonsense.

This is a dick-measuring contest, no more, no less.

The little people.....

Don’t Expect Donald Trump to Tackle America’s Record Homelessness

This year’s unprecedented counts are an indictment of the world’s leading economy, where many can’t afford basic necessities.

Julianne McShane

Homelessness in America reached the highest level on record last year, according to new data released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development—and it will likely only get worse, in light of both a Supreme Court decision issued in June and President-elect Donald Trump’s forthcoming presidency.

The annual report—which estimates the number of people staying in shelters, temporary housing, and on the streets on a single night—found more than 770,000 people experiencing homelessness on a single night this past January, up 18 percent from a night in January 2023. The increase in the rate of families experiencing homelessness was even steeper, rising 39 percent from 2023 to 2024. And there was a 33 percent increase in children experiencing homelessness, bringing the amount recorded earlier this year to nearly 150,000 kids. (Experts say the numbers are likely an undercount.)

HUD attributes this rise to “significant increases in rental costs, as a result of the pandemic and nearly decades of under-building of housing,” as well as natural disasters—such as the deadly August 2023 Maui wildfires—that destroyed housing. Other factors include “rising inflation, stagnating wages among middle- and lower-income households, and the persisting effects of systemic racism [that] have stretched homelessness services systems to their limits,” the report says. (Black people remain overrepresented, accounting for 12 percent of the US population but 32 percent of those experiencing homelessness, according to the report.) California and New York had the highest numbers of people experiencing homelessness.

Some of the nationwide increase, the report notes, was also due to “a result of [communities’] work to shelter a rising number of asylum seekers.” In New York City, for example, asylum seekers accounted for almost 88 percent of the increase in sheltered homelessness. HUD points out that the counts were conducted after Republicans in Congress blocked a bipartisan Senate deal that would have funded border security and before President Joe Biden’s border crackdown via executive action—a reference Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) aimed to use to his advantage.

Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, responded on X that this was a “misdiagnosis of its causes,” adding that he has a report forthcoming on “this easy scapegoating of migrants for the homelessness crisis.”

Despite the bleakness of the data, there were some signs of progress: Homelessness among veterans dropped to the lowest number on record: 32,882—an 8 percent decrease from 2023. The report also spotlights a few places (Dallas, Los Angeles, and Chester County, Pennsylvania) that saw significant decreases in people experiencing homelessness thanks to targeted efforts to increase the availability of housing and other supportive services.

Still, it’s hard not to see the data as an indictment of one of the world’s wealthiest nations, where basic necessities—housing, food, and healthcare—are out of reach to many low- and middle-income families. And, as the report intimates, it is likely that people experiencing homelessness will face even greater challenges in light of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the June Supreme Court decision that essentially greenlit the criminalization of homelessness. (As I have reported, domestic violence prevention advocates expect the ruling will be catastrophic for survivors, given the role abusive relationships can play in driving victims to homelessness.)

Ann Olivia, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said in a statement she hopes the data will spur lawmakers “to advance evidence-based solutions to this crisis.” (Vice President Kamala Harris made new housing construction a key part of her campaign.) Some Democrats agree that politicians have to act—and fast:

“As housing prices increase, homelessness increases,” Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) posted in response to the same AP article. “Homelessness is a housing problem.”

But don’t hold your breath: Trump’s acolytes have signaled their desires to slash the social safety net and enact mass deportations of undocumented people, which experts have said will likely exacerbate the housing crisis given the role immigrants play in the construction industry. The closest his budding administration has come to offering a solution is VP-elect JD Vance’s claim that mass deportations will solve the housing shortage by freeing up units.

National unity

Syrians demonstrate for national unity in several cities

By  THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Hundreds of Syrian demonstrators gathered after Friday payers in several cities calling for unity against sectarian divisions and to memorialize rebel fighters who have died.

It marked the third consecutive Friday of demonstrations since Bashar Assad’s government was overthrown in a sweeping offensive led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Many Syrians are fearful that the relatively peaceful conditions since Assad’s fall could break down into sectarian fighting.

Mass rallies took place in the capital Damascus, Hama, Daraa, and Homs, with participants carrying the new Syrian flag and chanting slogans in support of the country’s new leadership, as seen by an Associated Press journalist and reported by Syria’s state media.

Scores of former rebels took part in the protest in Damascus, marching in crisp camouflage uniforms and raising weapons and flags.

“These people shed their blood for such a day,” said Mohammad Abu Safi, a protester in Umayyad Square. “We must remember them and keep them in our minds.”

A group of people held a large wooden cross next to a copy of the Quran, chanting for unity. Other participants carried banners with slogans rejecting division and extremism, urging Syrians to unite against the remnants of the Assad government.

Sawsan Abbasi held posters of her cousin Rania Abbasi and her six children who went missing during Syria’s civil war. “We don’t know what happened to them. We have six missing children. We want to find them,” she said.

Burn a hospital

Israeli troops burn a hospital in north Gaza after forcibly removing staff and patients, officials say

By  THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Israeli troops stormed and set fire to one of the last hospitals operating in the northernmost part of Gaza on Friday, forcing many of the staff and patients out of the facility, the territory’s health ministry said.

The Kamal Adwan Hospital has been hit multiple times over the past three months by Israeli troops, according to staff. Israel says it is waging an offensive against Hamas fighters in surrounding neighborhoods.

Israel’s military said it was conducting operations against Hamas infrastructure and fighters in the area of the hospital, without providing details. It repeated claims that Hamas fighters were operating inside Kamal Adwan , though it provided no evidence.

Hospital officials have denied the accusations.

The Health Ministry said troops forced medical personnel and patients to assemble in the hospital yard and remove their clothes amid the winter temperatures. They were led out of the hospital, some to an unknown location, while some patients were sent to the nearby Indonesian hospital, which was knocked out of operation after an Israeli raid earlier this week.

The ministry said troops set fires in several parts of Kamal Adwan, including the hospital’s lab and surgery department. It said 25 patients and 60 health workers remained in the hospital out of 75 patients and 180 staff who had been there. The ministry’s account could not be independently confirmed, and attempts to contact hospital staff were unsuccessful.

Since October, Israel’s offensive has virtually sealed off the north Gaza areas of Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and levelled large parts of the districts.

Last week, the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders accused Israel of systematically attacking Gaza’s healthcare system and restricting essential humanitarian assistance.

More airstrikes

Israel carries out more airstrikes deep inside Lebanon, state media say

By  THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Israeli warplanes carried three airstrikes deep into eastern Lebanon on Friday for the second time since a ceasefire ended the war between Hezbollah and Israel a month ago, Lebanon’s state-run news agency said.

No casualties were reported in the strikes on the Bekaa Valley town of Qousaya and the target remained unclear. The Israeli military said its air force struck “infrastructure used to smuggle weapons via Syria” to Hezbollah near the Janta crossing on the Syrian-Lebanese border, about 9 kilometers (5 miles) north of Qousaya. Israel accused Hezbollah’s Unit 4400 of overseeing smuggling operations from Iran through Syria, adding that it had killed the unit’s commander in early October.

Since the ceasefire took effect on Nov. 27, the Israeli army has conducted near-daily operations in southern Lebanon, including shootings, house demolitions, excavations, tank shelling and airstrikes. These actions have killed at least 27 people, wounded more than 30 and destroyed residential buildings, including a mosque.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, said it has observed “concerning actions” by Israeli forces, including the destruction of homes and road closures.

On Thursday, the Lebanese army accused Israeli troops of breaching the ceasefire by encroaching into southern Lebanon. Israeli bulldozers erected dirt barricades to block roads in Wadi Al-Hujayr.

The Lebanese army later on Thursday said that following intervention by the ceasefire supervision committee, Israeli forces withdrew, and Lebanese soldiers removed the barriers to reopen the road in the area.

The U.S.-brokered ceasefire, which ended the 14-month war, demands that Hezbollah and Israeli forces withdraw from southern Lebanon within 60 days, allowing Lebanese troops to gradually deploy south of the Litani River.

Fire a missile at Israel

Houthi rebels fire a missile at Israel following airstrikes on Yemen’s main airport

By  THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired a missile toward Israel early Friday, hours after Israel carried out a wave of airstrikes on Yemen’s main airport.

The Israeli military said the Houthi missile was intercepted by air defenses before it entered Israeli territory. Air raid sirens were set off in several areas in central Israel.

A day earlier, a wave of Israeli airstrikes hit Yemen’s main airport outside the capital, Sanaa, killing three people and wounding dozens of others, according to the U.N.

The strikes hit just as the World Health Organization’s director-general was about to board a flight at the airport. Israel said it attacked infrastructure used bv the Houthis.

For several days this past week, Houthi launches have set off air raid sirens in Israel. The Houthis have also been targeting shipping in the Red Sea corridor, saying their attacks are in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Last week, Israeli jets bombed Sanaa and Hodeida, killing nine people. The U.S. military also has targeted the Houthis in Yemen in recent days.

Trump Supporters start to show up...

 

Greenland obsession

What's really behind Trump's Greenland obsession

The president-elect's desire to acquire the Danish territory reportedly came from the most predictable, and ridiculous, of sources.

By Hayes Brown

President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday shared the name of his chosen ambassador to Denmark. Compared with other high-profile appointments, Ken Howery’s naming won’t raise many eyebrows. What did elevate those eyebrows was Trump’s statement announcing Howery, in which Trump resurrected his past interest in taking Greenland off the Danes’ proverbial hands.

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote in his statement. It was an unwelcome throwback to his first term when the policymaking came down to the president’s whims and a recognition that this time around there’s going to be even fewer people able to dissuade him from his most quixotic of ventures.

We probably should have seen this week’s resurgence coming given how long he’d pressed for American ownership of Greenland before that news became public. The Wall Street Journal first reported in 2019 that Trump harbored an interest in buying the immense ice-covered island. As the diplomatic spat between the U.S. and Denmark grew, The New York Times reported that “while Mr. Trump has long derided nation-building, his flirtation with nation-buying turned out to be more serious than many originally thought. He has been talking privately about buying Greenland for more than a year and even detailed the National Security Council staff to study the idea.”

But what to make of Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland in the first place? There’s been a concerted effort to make the energy poured into his half-baked fantasy make sense. Maybe it’s about controlling the rare earth minerals that Greenland possesses and are crucial to high-tech manufacturing? Perhaps it’s about ensuring continued American access to Pituffik Space Base, the Pentagon’s northernmost military outpost? Or is Trump interested in countering Chinese influence in the Arctic as more waterways open because of climate change?

As tends to be the case with Trump, the real answer is both entirely on-brand and deeply weird. In their book “The Divider,” The New York Times’ Peter Baker and The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser reported that the proposal originally came from his longtime friend Ronald Lauder, an heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune. As Baker wrote for The New York Times in 2022:

Mr. Trump later claimed the idea was his personal inspiration. “I said, ‘Why don’t we have that?’” he recalled in an interview last year for the book. “You take a look at a map. I’m a real estate developer. I look at a corner, I say, ‘I’ve got to get that store for the building that I’m building,’ etc. It’s not that different.”

He added: “I love maps. And I always said: ‘Look at the size of this. It’s massive. That should be part of the United States.’”

But in fact, Mr. Lauder discussed it with him from the early days of the presidency and offered himself as a back channel to the Danish government to negotiate. John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, assigned his aide Fiona Hill to assemble a small team to brainstorm ideas. They engaged in secret talks with Denmark’s ambassador and produced an options memo.

We can discern three things from Baker and Glasser’s reporting. First, even if Trump really did come up with the idea of buying Greenland himself as he claimed, the motivation of “it’s massive” doesn’t speak highly of his strategic vision for the United States — or his own business sense as a developer. Trump would eventually discard the options presented to him in favor of insisting that Denmark put Greenland up for sale. When the Danes insisted that was off the table, he lashed out at Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, calling her refusal “nasty,” and canceled an official trip.

It’s especially fitting that a real estate developer whose properties have declared bankruptcy multiple times is besotted with this particular landmass. Greenland is one of the oldest bait-and-switch real estate cons in the book, named to encourage settlement on what is a mostly barren expanse of ice. And, as any cartography fan would tell you, the way Greenland looks on most common maps is extremely misleading thanks to the distortion needed to make a globe flat. Instead, the island — while still huge — isn’t quite as massive as Trump seems to think.

Second, Lauder’s suggestion becoming an obsession for Trump highlights a habit that the president-elect has only leaned into further lately. More than ever, it appears that Trump is more easily influenced by his fellow billionaires than people with actual expertise. In his first term, he turned to the now-former head of Marvel Entertainment, Isaac Perlmutter, to act as a shadow secretary of veterans affairs. This time, he’s tapped Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to co-lead a glorified cost-cutting commission. According to The Wall Street Journal, the idea came out of a breakfast between Musk and Trump at the house of another billionaire, investor Nelson Peltz.  

Finally, the whole affair speaks to Trump’s inability to take no for an answer. The Danish government was exceedingly firm in 2019 that Greenland is not for sale. His own national security staff was frustrated by the petulance on display that scuttled any chance of a deeper Danish-American security arrangement regarding Greenlandic territory. Greenland itself is pushing for total independence from Denmark, not for trading one overlord for another. And yet here we are, five years later, seeing Trump making the same demands all over again much to Greenland’s dismay.

One mystery remains: Why bring back the whole Greenland boondoggle now? While it’s not apparent where Lauder first got the idea or why he was interested, he likely isn’t the one who replanted the seed in Trump’s head. Lauder said in 2022 that despite his long relationship with Trump, he wouldn’t donate to the former president’s election campaign. Federal Election Commission filings from this year seem to indicate that he kept his word, focusing instead on getting Republicans elected to Congress.

Much like Trump’s threat to reclaim the Panama Canal, there may be something darker at work with his Greenland obsession — a desire to see American territory expanded under his watch, a neo-colonial bent that would fit all to uncomfortably well with his mercantilist worldview. But it’s also entirely possible that, having latched onto an idea previously, Trump is simply now unwilling to let it go, no matter how much people around him try to correct him. It’s a stubbornness that would be unbecoming in most children, let alone in the Oval Office. Now it has the potential to wreak havoc once returned to a seat of power on the world stage.

Likely to exacerbate the housing crisis

Why Trump's pick for HUD secretary is likely to exacerbate the housing crisis

Opposing government intervention in the housing market would make cost of living problems even worse.

By Zeeshan Aleem

As far as federal agencies go, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development doesn't get a ton of attention in the news. It makes sense then that Donald Trump's pick to head it, former Trump administration official and former Texas state lawmaker Scott Turner, didn't attract the same level of scrutiny as many of the president-elect's other head-turning picks.

But Turner's background underscores how poor of a choice he is for an agency tasked with keeping many of America's most vulnerable people housed. Turner's hard-line right-wing positions on housing policy foreshadow how he's likely to undermine the purpose of the agency he's been picked to head. It's a reminder of how Trump's campaign promises to address cost of living grievances were a charade.

The point of HUD is to help Americans meet their housing needs through, among other things, rental assistance for low-income households, mortgage insurance and combating housing discrimination. Its very premise is that the government has a serious role to play in the housing market. But Turner's record shows a commitment to oblique and often ineffective programs to help the poor and, in some cases, outright opposition to assisting them.

As head of Trump’s White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump's first term, Turner advocated for “opportunity zones,” a concept ostensibly designed to offer tax breaks for investment in select low-income communities under Trump's 2017 tax law. But this group failed at that goal in practice: Low-income areas were largely neglected while financially well-off areas received investment, in part because politically connected players steered "opportunity zone" designations and investment to areas that benefited their own pocketbooks. As PBS reported in 2021, “There are 8,764 Opportunity Zones across the country. In 2019, 84 percent of the Opportunity Zones got no money at all, and half the money went to the best-off 1 percent of zones.” (Notably, economically flourishing downtown Portland, Oregon, was designated an opportunity zone, and a Ritz Carlton complex was among the beneficiaries.) None of this is encouraging as far as Turner taking a position designed to help people in need.

And reporting from ProPublica shows that Turner took positions that hurt people in need on housing policy during two terms as a member of the Texas House of Representatives in the 2010s:

Turner supported a bill ensuring landlords could refuse apartments to applicants because they received federal housing assistance. He opposed a bill to expand affordable rental housing. He voted against funding public-private partnerships to support the homeless and against two bills that called merely to study homelessness among young people and veterans.

As ill-advised as this pick may be, it also makes a lot of sense. Turner’s instincts on housing align with the directives of Project 2025, the right-wing policy program and personnel database that Trump unconvincingly disavowed on the campaign trail and has since returned to for making hires. As ProPublica reports, among other things, Project 2025 calls for "cutting funding for affordable housing, repealing regulations that fight housing discrimination, increasing work requirements and adding time limits for rental assistance and eliminating anti-homelessness policies."

A big part of why Trump won the White House again is because of widespread anger over inflation and the general sense that basic costs of living are too high. From what we can see, Trump's federal housing policy program will only make that problem worse.

Threats, insults....... Normal.....

Trump unleashes threats, insults in Christmas Day posting frenzy

Trump is no stranger to spending his holidays posting insults and airing his grievances on social media.

By Clarissa-Jan Lim

Amid a social media posting frenzy on Christmas Day, President-elect Donald Trump expressed his desire to somehow seize control of Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal as he lobbed insults at his political enemies.

In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump repeated his recent complaints about the Panama Canal, which have been coupled with threats to take over the shipping lane in Central America. He accused China of operating the canal and lamented that the United States “puts in Billions of Dollars in ‘repair’ money, but will have absolutely nothing to say about ‘anything.’” Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino has fiercely insisted on his nation’s control over the canal, and Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning has said it will “always respect Panama’s sovereignty over the canal and recognize the canal as a permanently neutral international waterway.” (As The Associated Press explained, unless Trump goes to war with Panama, his threat to take over the canal is effectively meaningless.)

Trump also suggested once again that Canada should be the 51st American state and hinted at his desire for the U.S. to purchase Greenland, a notion he first raised in his first term as president. (Greenland’s prime minister reiterated that the island, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, is not for sale.)

In a subsequent post, Trump wished a “Merry Christmas” to “Radical Left Lunatics” whom he accused of trying to meddle in the justice systems and elections, and “are always going after the Great Citizens and Patriots of the United States but, in particular, their Political Opponent, ME.”

He then insulted President Joe Biden and criticized his decision to commute the sentences of 37 people on death row.

“I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky ‘souls’ but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL!” the president-elect wrote.

Trump is no stranger to spending his holidays posting on social media, often attacking his rivals and airing his grievances online. Meanwhile, as The Washington Post reported, the Trump Organization used the holiday to sell a variety of Trump-themed Christmas merchandise, from a $47 “AmeriChristmas” sweater to a $92 MAGA glass hat tree ornament.

Uncomfortable conversation

Case of ‘missing’ congresswoman sparks uncomfortable conversation

Republican Rep. Kay Granger moved to an assisted-living facility months ago and stopped casting votes — a detail that wasn't disclosed to the public.

By Steve Benen

When it comes to understanding the final months of Rep. Kay Granger’s congressional career, a handful of details are unambiguously true. We know, for example, that the Texas Republican — the first Republican woman to lead the House Appropriations Committee — announced in March that she would give up her gavel and forgo re-election, though Granger committed to serving the remainder of her term.

We also know that it was around this time when the congresswoman appeared to struggle with short, prepared remarks on the House floor. Finally, we know that in July, Granger stopped casting votes altogether. The Texan, who turned 81 earlier this year, was still a member of the House in good standing, but she was, for all intents and purposes, missing from Capitol Hill.

As for where Granger has spent her time while her colleagues were working, the answer is just now coming into sharper focus.

There were some reports last week suggesting that Granger has been living in a nursing home for dementia patients over the last several months. While her office quickly pushed back against those claims, aides issued a statement clarifying that the congresswoman moved to a retirement facility that provides memory care.

Her adult son, meanwhile, told The Dallas Morning News that the longtime GOP lawmaker has experienced “some dementia issues.”

As a matter of basic human decency and compassion, people of good will can certainly wish Granger well and hope that she receives quality care at a difficult time. What’s more, it appears the mystery about her whereabouts has effectively been resolved.

But there are a couple of lingering areas of concern.

For one thing, there’s the issue of transparency: A sitting member of Congress, instead of resigning, moved to an assisted-living facility and simply stopped casting votes. As The New York Times report noted, her office chose not to disclose this arrangement to the public.

Relatedly, there’s been some discussion in recent days about the degree to which House Republican leaders might’ve been aware of this and deliberately chose to keep the information under wraps. A Fox News reporter quoted a senior GOP source who said, in reference to the party’s wafer-thin majority in the chamber, “Frankly, we needed the numbers.”

But as a Politico report added, there’s also a broader conversation underway related to the number of septuagenarians and octogenarians in Congress, and the health challenges some of them have faced:

The revelations are sparking a bipartisan backlash and drawing scrutiny to other elderly lawmakers. Some of the toughest comments have emerged from the right, with the Granger news prompting Elon Musk to float cognitive tests for elected officials and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky saying he’s “more concerned about the congressmen who have dementia and are still voting.”

The same report quoted Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California saying, “We need to do some norm changing at a minimum. It should really be unacceptable for members to be completely missing from communications with the public and with their own colleagues for months at a time.”

Huffman went on to say, “Loyalty is a super important part of the work we do, but there is a point at which that becomes detrimental to the institution and to our democracy — and I think we do need to have a conversation about that.”

With the Granger story in mind, it’s a safe bet that conversation is poised to become quite a bit louder.

Troubling risks

JD Vance and Elon Musk’s defense of a far-right German party has troubling risks

When two key incoming administration officials endorse an extreme foreign political party, we should pay attention.

By Cynthia Miller-Idriss

Alarm bells sounded last week when Vice President-elect JD Vance and Trump adviser Elon Musk praised the far-right German party Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), just weeks before that country’s snap national elections are scheduled to take place.

“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk posted on X, prompting backlash from conservative and mainstream German leaders and the global Jewish community about a key Trump adviser’s endorsement of a party that has flirted with Nazi and white supremacist slogans and espoused dehumanizing and hateful rhetoric against immigrants and Muslims. In the wake of the criticism, Musk doubled down, writing the next day that “AfD is the only hope for Germany.”

Vance’s more tacit endorsement for AfD came in the form of a post responding to claims that AfD is dangerous. “It’s so dangerous for people to control their borders,” Vance tweeted sarcastically Saturday, implying support for the party’s anti-immigration positions. “So so dangerous. The dangerous level is off the charts.”

Make no mistake: It is extremely dangerous to have an American vice president-elect and a core Trump adviser voice support for the AfD, therefore normalizing very extreme political positions. The AfD has called for mass deportations, argued that children with disabilities should be removed from regular schools, and runs social media ads blaming immigrants for crime and sexual violence. One anti-immigrant ad run by the AfD showed the belly of a pregnant white woman with the phrase “New Germans? We’ll make them ourselves.” Another campaign billboard used a 19th century painting of a slave market — depicting a nude, white woman having her teeth inspected by turban-clad, brown men — to warn that Europe could become “Eurabia,” a reference to a conspiracy theory favored by white supremacists.

State-level German domestic intelligence authorities formally monitor some local branches of the AfD as extremist organizations that are working against German democracy. One of the party’s regional leaders has been fined multiple times by German courts for using a banned Nazi phrase, “Everything for Germany” (Alles für Deutschland), prompting another politician to refer to the AfD itself as a “Nazi” party earlier this year.

Even other European far- right parties have disavowed the party as too extreme. In May, the far-right coalition in the European Parliament expelled the AfD after its leading candidate stated that not all Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel, the guards in World War II concentration campus) were criminals. On Dec. 20, an AfD supporter, a doctor and self-described “former Muslim” who was angry at the “Islamification” of Germany, drove his car into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing five, including a 9-year-old girl, and injuring dozens.

The overall risk of an AfD victory in the upcoming February snap election is very low. Most Germans view the party negatively, and thousands have marched in protest of its normalization of racist and xenophobic rhetoric. Still, the AfD has steadily gained voters, although it’s currently polling in second place nationally (with 19% support), trailing a conservative alliance that is widely expected to win.

The bigger risk is the normalization of democratic interference that falls outside any system of checks and balances.

Musk has already demonstrated that his social media engagement can shape political outcomes. In the weeks before and after the U.S. presidential election, he used his platform X to help amplify false election claims and push his preferred Cabinet picks for Trump’s administration. Vance has used X and other public venues to describe professional women who prioritize careers over children as choosing a “path to misery,” deride Democratic leaders as “childless cat ladies,” share widely debunked claims about immigrants eating pets in Ohio, and argue that American men have suppressed their masculinity.

We now have two key incoming administration officials using a private social media platform to tacitly or explicitly endorse an extreme foreign political party in ways that could impact a foreign election and geopolitics more broadly.

That should worry us all. America’s founding fathers sought to build a system of checks and balances to ensure that no single arm of government could operate without constraint or accrue too much power. But those founders were unable to imagine a world in which the most influential axes of power might not be in any single branch of government, but in privately-owned virtual platforms with unimaginable global reach.

Backlash

Musk and Ramaswamy defend foreign worker visas, sparking MAGA backlash

By Aaron Pellish

Social media posts by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy arguing in favor of expanding the visa program for highly skilled workers have set off a debate among supporters of President-elect Donald Trump over how the program should fit into the incoming administration’s aggressive immigration agenda.

Musk and Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tapped to lead his Department of Government Efficiency, defended companies who use workers on H-1B visas, arguing tech companies — including those owned by Musk — depend on foreign workers to operate. But their message rankled some of Trump’s most loyal defenders who expect his administration to crack down on immigration and promote American labor.

Trump restricted access to foreign worker visas during his first term and has targeted the H-1B program in past remarks. But during the 2024 campaign, Trump signaled openness to giving some foreign-born workers legal status if they graduated from a US university.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Musk said US tech companies need “double” the amount of engineers working in America today and compared the benefits of the program to a professional sports team recruiting the best talent from around the world.

“If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win,” Musk wrote on X.

“I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning,” Musk wrote in another post on Thursday. “Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct.”

Ramaswamy, a first-generation US citizen whose parents immigrated from India, concurred with Musk while defending companies that look outside the US for labor, arguing tech companies hire engineers who were born outside the US or born to American immigrants because “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” citing portrayals of smart students in TV sitcoms “Boy Meets World,” “Saved By The Bell” and “Family Matters” as evidence.

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG,” he wrote on Thursday. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

The support for foreign workers sparked attacks from MAGA supporters who are concerned that an expansion of the H-1B program could undermine their wish to see immigration curbed under Trump’s administration. Loyal Trump backers like far-right activist Laura Loomer, conservative pundit Ann Coulter and former Rep. Matt Gaetz have criticized the two tech entrepreneurs over their stance.

“We welcomed the tech bros when they came running our way to avoid the 3rd grade teacher picking their kid’s gender - and the obvious Biden/Harris economic decline,” Gaetz wrote in a social media post on Thursday. “We did not ask them to engineer an immigration policy.”

Musk and Ramaswamy’s comments also drew condemnation from former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who responded to Ramaswamy’s post by calling on the incoming administration to prioritize American workers over foreign workers.

“There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers,” Haley wrote on Thursday.

Musk and Ramaswamy’s position has found support among some Democrats as well.

“They get it partially right, absolutely,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” Thursday night, saying that he applauded their recognition of the value of immigrant entrepreneurs while hoping that they also see the role that lower-skilled immigrants have in other sectors of the American economy, such as agriculture and construction.

“There are millions of Americans that work for companies that were founded by immigrants. Those jobs wouldn’t exist today if we didn’t let those immigrants in,” Polis said.

Trump has previously opposed such visas

The H-1B visa program allows 65,000 highly skilled workers to immigrate to the US each year to fill a specific job and grants another 20,000 visas to such workers who have received an advanced degree in the US. Economists have argued the program allows US companies to maintain competitiveness and grow their business, creating more jobs in the US. The program is often associated with the tech sector, where companies have a high demand for specialized workers. Musk came to the US as a foreign student and later worked on an H1-B visa.

Trump has previously opposed H-1B visas, sharply criticizing them during his first presidential campaign as a vehicle for “abuse.” In a 2016 statement, Trump attacked the H-1B program as a method for US companies to bring foreign workers into the country “for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay.”

In 2020, Trump restricted access to H-1B visas on several occasions, part of the administration’s effort to curb legal immigration while responding to the changing economic conditions brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

But in his most recent presidential campaign, Trump has appeared more tolerant of highly skilled foreigners coming to work in the US. In a podcast interview in June, Trump said he wants to grant permanent residency to any foreign national who graduates college in the US.

“What I want to do, and what I will do is – you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,” Trump said on the “All In” podcast.

Musk’s clash with members of Trump’s base over the visa issue marks another chapter in the tech billionaire’s growing influence in the president-elect’s orbit. After Musk led the opposition to a bipartisan government funding bill that was ultimately scrapped once Trump came out against it, Democrats began derisively labeling the tech mogul “President Musk” to suggest Musk his dictating policy goals to Trump. During remarks at a conservative activist gathering in Arizona on Sunday, Trump pushed back on the attacks from Democrats.

“No, he’s not taking the presidency. I like having smart people,” he said. “They’re on a new kick. ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,’ ‘Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine,’ all the different hoaxes. The new one is ‘President Trump has ceded the presidency to Elon Musk.’ No, no, that’s not happening.”

External interference

Azerbaijan Airlines says plane crashed after ‘external interference’ as questions mount over possible Russian involvement

By Catherine Nicholls, Darya Tarasova and Hassan Tayir

Azerbaijan Airlines says the jet that crashed in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day experienced “physical and technical external interference,” according to an early investigation, as questions swirled about Russia’s possible involvement in the disaster.

At least 38 of the 67 people on board the plane were killed in the crash, Kazakh authorities confirmed, including two pilots and a flight attendant. People from Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were among those on board, according to preliminary data from Kazakhstan’s transport ministry.

One passenger told Reuters in an interview on Friday that he didn’t think he would survive after he heard a loud bang and the plane started to “behave unnaturally.”

“It was obvious that (the plane) had received some damage,” Subhonkul Rakhimov said.

A US official told CNN on Thursday that early indications suggest a Russian anti-aircraft system may have downed the passenger jet. Reuters also reported that the plane was downed by a Russian air defense system, citing multiple unnamed sources in Azerbaijan with knowledge of the investigation.

Russia said on Friday that the passenger jet was diverted from its original destination in Grozny, Chechnya because of Ukrainian drones in the area, as well as fog.

While flight J2-8243 was trying to land in the southern Russian republic, “Ukrainian combat drones were carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure in the cities of Grozny and Vladikavkaz,” Dmitry Yadrov, head of Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, said.

Because of this, Yadrov said, the area’s skies were closed, which meant that aircraft in the vicinity needed to leave the airspace immediately.

The plane’s pilot attempted to land in Grozny twice, Yadrov said, but was unsuccessful. He was offered other airports to land in, the official continued, but the pilot “decided to proceed to the Aktau airport” across the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan. There was also dense fog in the area of ​​the Grozny airport, he said.

In a statement on Friday, Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said Russian media has “lied about the cause of the crash,” adding that Moscow “forced the damaged jet to cross the sea, most likely in an attempt to conceal evidence of their crime.”

“Photos and videos from the cabin and after the crash are a smoking gun,” Sybiha said, calling for a “fair and impartial investigation to ensure that those responsible are held to account.”

Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, part of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, previously claimed that the plane was “shot down by a Russian air defense system.”

Video and images of the plane after it crashed show perforations in its body that look similar to damage from shrapnel or debris. The cause of these holes has not been confirmed.

Miles O’Brien, a CNN aerospace analyst, told Jim Sciutto on Thursday that the fact that the metal around the holes is bent inwards shows that there was “an explosion in proximity to the tail of that aircraft.”

That is “quite literally smoking gun evidence of a surface-to-air missile,” O’Brien said, adding that the plane was flying over Chechnya “in the midst of heightened military activity.”

“You might conclude a hair trigger approach to things,” he suggested.

Kovalenko, from Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, speculated that authorities will try to cover up the real reason behind the crash, including the holes in the plane, as it would be “inconvenient” to blame Russia.

On Thursday, Justin Crump, an intelligence, security and defense expert and the CEO of risk advisory company Sibylline, told BBC Radio 4 that the plane being fired at by Russia is “the best theory that fits all the available facts that we know of.” Crump added that Russian air defenses were active in Grozny around the time that the plane was damaged.

“I don’t think this is deliberate at all,” he noted, pointing out that Russia is “very worried” about longer-range active Ukrainian drones that are “very often not getting shot down.”

Subhonkul Rakhimov, the passenger interviewed by Reuters, described being thrown up and down inside the plane, despite his seatbelt being fastened. “Suddenly everything became quiet,” he said, and he realized that the plane had landed.

He tried to help a women out of the fuselage, but couldn’t move her as her legs were trapped, he said. Another woman was nearby was not physically trapped, Rakhimov said, but he could also not get her up. Soon after, ambulances began to arrive at the scene, he said.

Russian state media has previously reported that the plane was rerouted due to heavy fog in Grozny. Its Federal Air Transport Agency also previously said the plane crashed after colliding with birds.

As investigations continue, Azerbaijan Airlines has suspended flights from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to seven cities in Russia for safety reasons, it said.

The airline also announced that it will pay 20,000 manats (around $11,800) in compensation to injured victims of the crash and 40,000 manats (around $23,500) to the families of those who died in the disaster, Azerbaijan’s state news agency AZERTAC reported.

Really needed a vacation....

Body discovered on board flight to Hawaii

By Olivia Harden

A body was discovered in the wheel well of a United Airlines flight after it landed in Hawaii.

On Dec. 24, Flight 202 from Chicago took off on time from O’Hare International Airport around 9:30 a.m. local time, according to FlightAware. The body was found following the flight’s arrival at Kahului Airport at about 2:15 p.m. local time on Maui.

Maui Police Department spokesperson Alana Pico told SFGATE in an email that an investigation is ongoing. The department has yet to release the identity of the deceased. A spokesperson for United Airlines told SFGATE that it is working with local law enforcement on the investigation. 

The wheel well of the Boeing 787-10 is only accessible from the outside of the aircraft. It’s unclear how the person accessed the wheel well of one of the aircraft’s main landing gears.

Stowaways have previously been discovered in a wheel well of a flight.

The Federal Aviation Administration documented 132 people attempting to travel in the landing gear between 1947 and 2021, with a 77% mortality rate. Although the FAA doesn’t “formally track stowaway cases,” the government agency uses open-source reports to document the phenomenon, a spokesperson for the FAA told SFGATE in an email. 

Unauthorized passengers who travel in the wheel well risk hypothermia from the freezing temperatures, asphyxiation from the low oxygen levels and more. In 2012, a man died falling from the sky in London after attempting to stow away on a flight departing from Angola. In 2021, a man who hid on a flight from Guatemala to Miami survived. 

Beaches closed

3 California beaches closed as collapsed pier debris washes ashore

By Katie Dowd

As detritus from the badly damaged Santa Cruz pier washes ashore, California State Parks officials are keeping three beaches closed. “Because of the amount of debris washing up onto the local beaches from the collapsing Santa Cruz municipal wharf,” Twin Lakes State Beach, Seabright State Beach and San Lorenzo Point will be closed until Dec. 30 at 6 a.m., Santa Cruz State Beaches said.

Seacliff State Beach and Rio Del Mar State Beach both reopened on Christmas morning, though visitors should take care: A high-surf warning is in effect along the coast from Thursday morning until Sunday afternoon. The National Weather Service is advising people to stay off piers and jetties.

About 150 feet of the Santa Cruz pier and an entire building housing a restroom broke off into the ocean on Monday amid battering waves. Three people working on the pier plunged into the water, where two needed rescue and a third was able to rescue themselves. Since then, pieces of the wharf have been washing onto local beaches. There is no estimated reopening for the wharf itself. Waves also pulled support piling from the Cayucos Pier about 160 miles south down the Central Coast. The end of the pier was already closed as it incurred damage during stormy conditions in February.

Some of the Santa Cruz wharf debris has made its way south to Capitola, where police issued a warning to beachgoers.

“Please be cautious when near the ocean, as debris from damage north of Capitola is making its way down the coastline,” the Capitola Police Department said. “Several large pilings from the Santa Cruz wharf have found their way to our shores, creating an extreme hazard. Please use caution if you are in the area.”

Shoplifting

California police crack down on shoplifting, leading to 117 arrests

By Madilynne Medina

More than 100 people were arrested in a California retail theft crackdown amid the holiday shopping season. 

The California Highway Patrol and local police conducted an operation on Friday in various parts of the state, specifically targeting retail crime. During the operation, 117 people were arrested on suspicion of organized retail theft or similar crimes, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said in a Dec. 24 news release.

Law enforcement seized $38,000 in stolen merchandise, two illegal firearms and three stolen vehicles, Newsom’s office said.

Individuals arrested in the blitz operation may face charges from petty and grand theft to organized retail crime. 

Similar operations have happened around California, including one in San Francisco in August, where 61 people were arrested on suspicion of shoplifting. 

The arrests come as the state allocated $267 million to various cities last year to crack down on retail crimes. Several new laws set to take effect in 2025 also target retail theft.

One law will make it easier for police to arrest people suspected of theft without directly seeing it if they can obtain a witness statement or surveillance footage, for example. Another law allows stores to pursue restraining orders against suspects. 

People found guilty of retail theft may also see increased punishments in the new year because of a senate bill that was passed in August. 

NGC 5643

Viewed face-on, grand spiral galaxy NGC 5643 has a festive appearance in this colorful cosmic portrait. Some 55 million light-years distant, the galaxy extends for over 100,000 light-years, seen within the boundaries of the southern constellation Lupus. Its inner 40,000 light-years are shown in sharp detail in this composite of Hubble Space Telescope image data. The galaxy's magnificent spiral arms wind from a yellowish central region dominated by light from old stars, while the spiral arms themselves are traced by dust lanes, young blue stars and reddish star forming regions. The bright compact core of NGC 5643 is also known as a strong emitter of radio waves and X-rays. In fact, NGC 5643 is one of the closest examples of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, where vast amounts of dust and gas are thought to be falling into a central massive black hole.

Pervert child rapist.........

The Matt Gaetz ethics report, explained

The report accuses Gaetz of paying women for sex — including a 17-year-old.

by Ellen Ioanes and Li Zhou

After much back-and-forth, the House Ethics Committee released a bombshell report about alleged sexual misconduct by former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), stating that he broke multiple state laws and that he’s previously paid a minor for sex. Gaetz has categorically denied the allegations and on Monday filed a lawsuit aimed at preventing the report’s release.

The review, which is the culmination of a years-long investigation, contains multiple allegations of wrongdoing, including that Gaetz spent tens of thousands paying women, and in at least one instance a 17-year-old, for sex or drugs, and that he’s used illicit drugs like ecstasy and cocaine. Although the Ethics Committee concluded that Gaetz had not violated federal sex trafficking statutes, it found that the lawmaker had broken other state laws.

“The Committee concluded there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” the report reads.

There was some question about whether the report would be released, and substantial portions of it leaked before it was formally published. The Ethics Committee, a bipartisan panel that investigates wrongdoing by lawmakers, initially deadlocked when it came to releasing their results in the wake of Gaetz’s resignation from Congress. It’s uncommon for the panel to share its findings after a member is no longer in Congress, though it’s not unheard of.

Gaetz abruptly resigned following his nomination to be President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general. After he withdrew from consideration for attorney general when it became clear that he wouldn’t get sufficient Senate support, the Ethics panel ultimately voted to publicize the report.

The report contains detailed documentation of the allegations it levies against Gaetz and is the product of contacting more than two dozen witnesses and reviewing 14,000 documents. Whether the report will lead to additional legal consequences or political ramifications for the bombastic former member of Congress is still an open question, however. Here’s what you need to know about the report, and what may come next for Gaetz.

What does the report say?

The report centers on allegations of Gaetz paying women, and one teenage girl, for sex, his use of illegal drugs, and his acceptance of improper gifts.

“Commercial sex”: The report alleges that Gaetz paid women for sex on numerous occasions between 2017 and 2020, and paid a 17-year-old girl for sex in 2017.

In the course of its investigation, which included multiple interviews with women who said they had sexual encounters with Gaetz, the Ethics Committee’s report said there were at least 20 instances when he paid women for sexual activity or drugs. They found such payments were made on platforms including PayPal, Venmo, and CashApp, as well as via check and cash. When given an opportunity to explain the payments he made, Gaetz did not provide any information to the committee.

Gaetz allegedly met many of these women via his friend Joel Greenberg, a former Seminole County tax attorney who’s now serving 11 years in prison for multiple crimes, including underage sex trafficking and wire fraud. Greenberg connected with the women via a website called SeekingArrangement.com that aims to link older affluent men and younger women. Broadly, the report says there was evidence that women expected payment for their interactions with Gaetz and Greenberg, with the report citing explicit examples including one when a woman noted: “I usually do $400 per meet.”

One of the people who Gaetz allegedly had a sexual encounter with was 17 years old at the time of their meet-up in July 2017, the report notes. He allegedly had sex with her at a party that month; she did not disclose that she was under 18 nor did he ask her age. The committee concluded that he was not aware that that person was a minor, though the report also notes that “ignorance” of a minor’s age doesn’t shield an offending adult from being charged with statutory rape under Florida law.

Gaetz has repeatedly denied that he paid women for sex and denied that he had sex with a minor.

“In my single days, I often sent funds to women I dated - even some I never dated but who asked,” Gaetz previously wrote on X. “I dated several of these women for years. I NEVER had sexual contact with someone under 18.”

The panel determined that Gaetz’s actions were a violation of Florida state laws addressing commercial sex and statutory rape. It also did not find that Gaetz had violated federal sex trafficking laws, claiming that he did transport women across state lines for commercial sex, but that there was no evidence those individuals were under 18 or that they had been “induced by force, fraud, or coercion.”

Illegal drug use: Two women that the committee spoke with also testified to seeing Gaetz repeatedly engage in illegal drug use including that of ecstasy and cocaine, while additional evidence points to his regular use of cannabis.

Gaetz has denied allegations of unlawful drug use.

The committee found that these actions were a violation of Florida state laws, which bar the use of all three drugs for recreational purposes.

Excessive gifts: The panel alleges that Gaetz also accepted gifts in excess of the $250 limit that Congress members are supposed to adhere to (but that lawmakers, in practice, aren’t always held to). This specifically included a trip to the Bahamas in 2018, during which Gaetz allegedly accepted a flight on a private plane as well as lodgings.

Gaetz has denied these allegations, but failed to provide the committee with evidence that he paid for these services himself.

The committee determined that his acceptance of these gifts was an ethical violation of the House Gift Rule.

Obstruction of Congress: Gaetz did not voluntarily participate in an interview with the committee and also did not respond to a subpoena he faced for testimony. He provided some documents in response to the panel’s requests, but little relevant information, according to the report.

Gaetz has repeatedly cited the lack of charges levied against him by the DOJ inquiry and argued that the Congressional investigation was targeted.

The committee, however, stated that Gaetz was required by federal law to cooperate with a congressional investigation regardless of what the DOJ decided to do with its investigation, or how he may have felt about the House inquiry. Failing to answer the committee’s questions and being unresponsive to its subpoena constitutes “obstruction of Congress,” according to the report.

Why is the Ethics Committee report coming out now?

The Ethics Committee first began its investigation into Gaetz in 2021, but put it on pause once the Justice Department started its own investigation later that year. It took up its review once more after the DOJ inquiry ended in 2023. The department did not release any details about its findings or why it declined to continue its probe, though the New York Times reported that federal prosecutors were uncertain about their ability to make the case that Gaetz had broken federal law.

The panel was scheduled to release its findings in mid-November, right around when Trump announced Gaetz as his AG pick. Gaetz stepped down from Congress swiftly following that announcement, a surprising move as Congress members who are nominated typically haven’t given up their jobs before getting confirmed.

Gaetz’s departure raised questions about whether the committee would still publish the report, with some Republicans arguing that it was no longer in its “jurisdiction” since the conservative was no longer a lawmaker. While Gaetz was still under consideration for AG, the committee deadlocked about releasing the report. After he withdrew from the role, the majority — including at least one Republican member — voted on December 10 to release the report.

“The Committee has typically not released its findings after losing jurisdiction in a matter,” the report reads. “However, there are a few prior instances where the Committee has determined that it was in the public interest to release its findings even after a Member’s resignation from Congress.”

Is the Ethics Committee investigation connected to the DOJ’s investigation?

The two investigations aren’t connected in any legal way, though the Ethics Committee noted in its report that it tried to use some of the DOJ’s work in its investigation. DOJ pushed back on that effort and according to the committee, the DOJ failed to comply with a subpoena and FOIA request for information.

“The Committee hopes to continue to engage with DOJ on the broader issues raised by its failure to recognize the Committee’s unique mandate,” the report states.

The committee hoped to work with the DOJ in part because the two investigations covered many of the same allegations, primarily that Gaetz regularly paid women for sex, had sex with a minor, and transported women across state lines for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex.

The DOJ investigation, which started in 2020 during Trump’s previous term, had a more limited scope than the ethics investigation. That’s because the DOJ looks for proof that a federal crime was committed, while the ethics panel is concerned with — as the report put it — “upholding the integrity of our government institutions.” That is, an act can be deemed unethical without being a federal crime.

Again, the DOJ’s investigation did not result in any federal charges against Gaetz and is no longer open.

Will the ethics report have any legal repercussions?

Although the federal government is no longer investigating Gaetz, the ethics report highlights several acts allegedly taken by Gaetz that lawmakers claim are state crimes. And that could lead to further legal entanglements for Gaetz, Donald Sherman, executive director and chief counsel for legal advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Vox.

“Of course, the committee no longer has jurisdiction over Mr. Gaetz, but … I would venture to guess that there is some conduct that he engaged in that can and should be investigated by local law enforcement,” dependent on state laws, statutes of limitations, and local willingness to launch an investigation, Sherman said.

The ethics report finds that Gaetz violated Florida state law by having sex with the 17-year-old, paying for sex, and using illicit drugs. Florida law enforcement officials have yet to announce any investigations into Gaetz related to either allegation. The DOJ has also made no indication it intends to revisit the matter, and given Gaetz is a Trump ally who was once in line to lead that department, it seems unlikely that Trump’s DOJ would reopen the case into Gaetz.