Bird flu mutations in the US’s first severe H5N1 case may boost the virus’s ability to infect humans (Quartz)

Genetic Sequences of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Viruses Identified in a Person in Louisiana (CDC)

We ‘have our head in the sand’: Health experts warn US isn’t reacting fast enough to threat of bird flu (CNN)  Well, then, I guess we’d better PANIC!

Bird flu virus shows mutations in first severe human case in US, CDC says (Reuters)

Tonight, We’re Gonna Party Like It’s 2019!

The Canal is off the table: Latin America closes ranks with Panama in face of Trump’s threats (El Pais)

Panama’s president calls Trump’s claims of Chinese interference “nonsense” (Axios)

‘That will never happen’: Locals react to Trump suggesting US retake Panama Canal (CNN)

Trump names Kevin Marino Cabrera U.S. ambassador to Panama (NBC News)

MAGA civil war breaks out over American “mediocrity” culture (Axios)

A MAGA ‘Civil War’ on X between Musk and the far right over H-1B visas (Washington Poop)

Uproar breaking out inside MAGA-world over H-1B visas and foreign workers (CNN)

Elon Musk responds to tech CEO who asked if foreign-born workers are really taking jobs away from Americans (Times of India)

What would it mean for the U.S. to end birthright citizenship? (NPR)

Inside the Trump team’s plans to try to end birthright citizenship (CNN)

Fact check: Would Trump’s immigration plan affect his own children? (WRAL NEWS)

Trump vs. the Constitution: The question of citizenship (Daily Kos)

‘It’s a scary time’: US universities urge international students to return to campus before Trump inauguration (CNN)

China’s 6th-Gen Fighter “White Emperor” Takes To Skies Ahead Of Trump’s Second Term

WORST OF 2024: The Trashing Trump Award

GOP Moves to Advance Voting Reforms Pushed by Trump

Trump wants federal workers back in the office. It may be a tall task. (Lisa Rein/Washington Post)

Trump Will “Un-California” US Energy Policy On Day One

After backing Trump, low-income voters hope he doesn’t slash their benefits (Tim Craig/Washington Post)

Corporate interests commit millions to celebrate Trump’s inauguration (Fredreka Schouten/CNN)  Oooooh, Corporate Interests!

CNN’s Sour Grapes! Whining About Corporations Funding the Trump Inaugural

These MAGA farmers could be ruined if Trump follows through with mass deportations (Camille Von Kaenel/Politico)

Americans are exhausted by political news. TV ratings and a new AP-NORC poll show they’re tuning out (Associated Press)

Congress has the power to block Trump from taking office, but lawmakers must act now (The Hill)

Trump has pressed for voting changes. GOP majorities in Congress will try to make that happen (Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press)

Expect a quieter Jan. 6 this time around – as long as Republicans avert a looming speakership crisis (Politico)

NBC Pearl Clutches Over Trump’s Christmas Foreign Policy Posts

House Speaker Fight May Delay Trump Win Certification

CNBC Survey: Investors Say Trump ‘Great’ for Economy

PBS News Hour Touts Its Partner PolitiFact Awarding Trump/Vance ‘Lie of the Year’

Trump ‘Border Czar’ Plans to Separate Families or Let Them Leave Together (Naomi LaChance/Rolling Stone)

Elon Musk Suggests Cognitive Testing For Elected Officials

Counting down the DOGE Days of Winter (Alexander B. Howard/CIVIC TEXTS)

Trump’s Immigration Shutdown Could Create a Dystopian Humanitarian Crisis (Lillian Perlmutter/Rolling Stone)

What if Trump Does Everything He’s Promised–and the People Don’t Care? (New Republic)

Trump could thrust low-key ambassador picks in spotlight as he eyes Greenland and Panama Canal takeovers (Ramsey Touchberry/Washington Examiner)

Most adults feel the need to limit political news consumption due to fatigue and information overload (AP-NORC)

Wasserman Schultz: Trump’s Takeover Threats ‘Preposterous’

What Was So Different This Time About Trump’s Election?

Playbook: How Schumer is prepping for Trump 2.0 (Eugene Daniels/Politico)

Former FBI and CIA head prods Senate to reject Patel, Gabbard (Kierra Frazier/Politico)

Washington Post Finds CNN’s Ratings Collapse Due to Trend Toward Softness on Trump!

How the Left Will Defend Its Censorship Regime Against Trump

‘Should MAGA stay home in 2026?’ Laura Loomer wages ‘racist’ war against ‘tech bros’ over Indian migrants (Justin Baragona/The Independent)

MAGA in Total Mayhem as Laura Loomer Goes to War With Elon Musk (Hafiz Rashid/New Republic)

CNN Reporter on Biden Legacy: ‘Guy Between Trump Terms’

Republicans Have Crashed a National Economy Before To Enable Power Grabs and Privatizations (Ruth Ben-Ghiat/Lucid)

The press is ignoring the real Liz Cheney scandal (Stephen Robinson/Public Notice)

The Work Visa Debate: Not All Immigration Is Bad, But Focus On Americans First

Elon Musk’s Critics Stripped of Verification Badge After Publicly Challenging Billionaire: ‘The Beginning Stages of Censorship’ (Charlie Nash/Mediaite)

Biden Admin Invoked ‘Indigenous Knowledge’ To Cut Alaska Drilling, But Some Tribal Leaders Are Ready For Trump

Biden Oblivious About Leaving Trump an Economy on the Precipice of Disaster

Who Got Duped? MAGA Activists Worry That Nativism And Tech Oligarchy May Not Go Hand In Hand (Josh Kovensky/Talking Points Memo)

Oops! Consumers finally realize that Trump could worsen inflation. (Catherine Rampell/Washington Post)

MAGA civil war breaks out over American “mediocrity” culture (Axios)

Forget Beijing – The House China committee is up against Trump and Elon Musk (Politico)

NPR and PBS Stations Brace for Funding Battle Under Trump (New York Times)

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy open rift with MAGA loyalists over skilled worker visas (Katherine Doyle/NBC News)

Window closing for Gaza hostage-ceasefire deal before Trump takes office (Barak Ravid/Axios)

Lawmakers can subpoena Fani Willis over Trump election case, judge rules (Associated Press)

The Deep State, The Media, And Academics Circle Their Wagons Against Kash Patel

Steve Bannon Joins War Against Elon Musk as MAGA Implodes (Hafiz Rashid/New Republic)

CDC Data Reveals Why Everyone Around You Is Coughing (Gizmodo)

Whooping cough cases in the US are the highest they’ve been in a decade (CNN)

New Hampshire sees increase in number of whooping cough cases; trends back to pre-pandemic levels (WMUR Manchester)

‘Very concerning’: Whooping cough cases surge in Douglas County (KETV Omaha)

Whooping Cough Cases Hit Record High in 2024

CDC: Bird Flu Shows Mutations in First Severe Human Case in US

‘We are screwed’: Virologists warn about disease they say could become the next pandemic (Brad Reed/Raw Story)

New Yorkers should mask up as RSV cases spike, health officials say

Trump announces ambassador to Panama amid fight over canal (The Hill)

What’s the history of the Panama Canal, and why is Trump threatening to retake control of it? (CNN)

Trial of Trump Alleged Assassin Pushed Back

Companies Are Scrambling to Fund Trump’s Inauguration. He’s Keeping Track (Rolling Stone)

Playbook: Mr. Musk goes to Washington (Eli Okun/Politico)

“Sudden Spike” In US Marijuana Substitution For Alcohol Ahead Of Trump-Era

Trump Trolls Political Foes in Flurry of Christmas Posts

CNN Pushes Sour Grapes On Trump Win, But Republican Brad Todd Scores The Zinger

Trump Threatens to Take Over Canada, Panama Canal, Greenland in Christmas Day Message (Charisma Madarang/Rolling Stone)

What Was So Different This Time About Trump’s Election?

Trump Jokes About Canada Joining US: What Would It Take?

In Trump’s America, There’s Democracy Only When He Wins (Marc Elias/Democracy Docket)

SHOCKER!: PolitiFact Tags Trump for ‘Lie of the Year’ for Seventh Time

Trump’s first day frenzy: Everything he promised to do on “day one” (Axios)

Leaders in ‘uncommitted’ and ‘abandon Harris’ movements reflect on Trump’s victory and early moves (Jillian Frankel/NBC News)

What could Trump 2.0 mean for NYC public housing? Here’s what experts say.

Susan Quinn: They Still Don’t Get Trump

The Other McCain.

One should never try to “make sense” of Amanda Marcotte. Ever since she first burst upon the national consciousness in 2007 — as one of two feminists (the other being the execrable Melissa McEwan) hired to blog on behalf of Democratic presidential aspirant John Edwards — Marcotte has been an inspiration for mockery hereabouts, and it is still difficult for me to imagine that anyone actually takes her seriously.

Nevertheless, Dana Pico has undertaken to analyze one of Ms. Marcotte’s recent outbursts, concluding that her enthusiasm for transgender athletes is rooted in a secret fear of inferiority: “To Miss Marcotte, any differences [between men and women] at all are a mark of inferiority, and she just can’t let the facts get in her way.” Yes, exactly so.

Example: Conspiracy theory is the new normal: 2024 was the year QAnon went mainstream (Salon)

Trump’s election sparks fight over judicial retirements, new judgeships (Washington Poop)

Who controls Greenland, and why does Trump want to buy it? (Washington Poop)

What’s really behind Trump’s Greenland obsession (MSNBC) As if anyone at MSNBC would have a clue.

Spending Fight Shows Limits of Trump Power to Change Fiscal Path (New York Times) It’s easy for the government to spend money, much less easy for it to cut spending.

Is Trump Looking For A Grand Bargain With China?

Elon Musk Takes Aim at Wikipedia (James Bickerton/Newsweek)

Trump Cabinet Picks’ Fate Unclear as GOP Prepares to Take Senate Power

How to have a Trumpy Christmas, and make the president-elect richer, too (Cat Zakrzewski/Washington Post)

Companies Donate to Trump Inaugural After Denouncing Jan. 6

The Big Companies Funding Trump’s Inauguration Despite Denouncing Jan. 6 (Wall Street Journal)

Trump Atop Worst Censorship of 2024: Election Interference and Beyond

Trump and his allies say the GOP is the party of free speech. Their actions say otherwise. (Ayman Mohyeldin/MSNBC)

Trump’s Immigration Agenda Could Face Challenges

The Atlantic, a Voice of the Crust.

New research suggests that the company makes the communities it operates in poorer—even taking into account its famous low prices.

SUGGESTS! THAT PROVES IT!

Two new research papers challenge that view. Using creative new methods, they find that the costs Walmart imposes in the form of not only lower earnings but also higher unemployment in the wider community outweigh the savings it provides for shoppers. On net, they conclude, Walmart makes the places it operates in poorer than they would be if it had never shown up at all. Sometimes consumer prices are an incomplete, even misleading, signal of economic well-being.

‘Creative new methods’. Uh-huh. Somebody needs to remind these ‘researchers’ that correlation doesn’t imply causation.

As Biden commutes death row sentences, how Trump plans to expand executions (BBC) The mind-readers of the Narrative Media are in fine form today.

Trump renews calls to buy Greenland from Denmark (PBS)

Trump is teasing US expansion into Panama, Greenland and Canada (CNN) And jerking their chains all the while.

Trump dreams of empire expansion (Axios) Or at least that’s what they’d have you believe. I doubt that anybody writing for Axios has a clue about Trump’s dreams.

Trump says ownership of Greenland ‘is an absolute necessity’ (NBC News)

Greenland Hits Back After Trump’s Dangerous, Asinine Threat (The New Republic) DANGEROUS! ASININE! Don’t hold it in, tell us how you really feel.

Trump’s FCC pick sends stern letter to Bob Iger, blasting ‘erosion in public trust’ (Brian Stelter/CNN)

Gaetz report renews debate about how he escaped federal charges (Politico)  Uh, they didn’t have any real proof? If they’d been able to gin something up, they’d have indicted him just like they did Trump.

Trump isn’t fooling anyone by saying Elon Musk’s “not going to be president” (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)  Amanda Marcotte can see through his sneaky little game.

Trump’s Pick to Lead Federal Housing Agency Has Opposed Efforts to Aid the Poor (ProPublica)  Not really, but that’s what they want people to believe.

At Trump’s inauguration, reports of a pay-to-pray (Jack Jenkins/RNS)  REPORTS! THAT PROVES IT!

The Men and Women Swirling Around Elon Musk (New York Times)

Elon Musk wants to ‘delete’ many Americans’ financial lifeline (Sharon McGowan/The Hill)

Biden Ramps Up Search for DEI Hires Ahead of Trump Administration

Biden gives life in prison to 37 of 40 federal death row inmates so Trump can’t have them executed (Associated Press)

Trump demands return of Panama Canal if rates aren’t cut (Axios)

Trump threatens to try to take back the Panama Canal. Panama’s president balks at the suggestion (Associated Press)

Panama’s Leader Takes Up Feud With Trump Over Canal Control (Bloomberg)

Why Big Tech is funding Trump’s inauguration (Miranda Nazzaro/The Hill)

Refugees Are Bracing for Trump to Cut the Resettlement Program Again (New York Times)

Trump Threatens To Take Back Panama Canal As He Declares “Golden Age Of America Is Upon Us”

GOP congressman says it feels like Elon Musk is ‘our prime minister’ (Alexandra Marquez/NBC News)

Trump suggests he wants to buy Greenland (Rebecca Falconer/Axios)  Trump has ALWAYS wanted to buy Greenland. Doesn’t mean it will happen.

Inside the Trump team’s plans to try to end birthright citizenship (CNN)

Biden Commutes 37 Death Sentences Ahead of Trump’s Plan to Resume Federal Executions (Aishvarya Kavi/New York Times)

Trump’s big Mike Johnson decision (Rachael Bade/Politico)

Biden commutes most federal death row sentences to life in prison before Trump takes office (Sam Fossum/CNN)

Musk Derangement Syndrome

Trump bristles at Musk’s rocketing profile as Democrats play on the president-elect’s vanity (Stephen Collinson/CNN)

By stepping on rakes, Trump ruins his own ‘honeymoon’ phase (Steve Benen/MSNBC)

Greenland is not for sale, its leader says in response to Trump (Reuters)  Oh, I think Trump could make him an offer he would be reluctant to refuse.

Supercharged Monroe Doctrine: First Panama Canal, Now Trump Revives Greenland Purchase Talk For US Security 

Trump’s lawsuit against Ann Selzer is textbook authoritarianism (Lisa Needham/Public Notice)

Trump Transition Live Updates: Ethics Panel Draft Report Accuses Gaetz of ‘Regularly’ Paying for Sex and Using Drugs (New York Times)

Trump addresses Elon Musk’s growing political influence: ‘He’s not going to be president’ (Peter Nicholas/NBC News)

Trump Organization Accused of Tax Evasion in Panama: What We Know (Sean O’Driscoll/Newsweek)  ACCUSED! THAT PROVES IT!

NY Times ‘Never Trumper’ Stephens: Let’s Stop It

Panama Pres. Balks at Trump Threat to Take Back Panama Canal

JD Vance appears to defend Germany’s far-right AfD party  APPEARS! THAT PROVES IT!

Democrats shouldn’t try to find ‘common ground’ with Trump (Jennifer Rubin/Washington Post)  Jennifer Rubin loses her shit.

Biden commutes most federal death sentences before Trump takes office (Washington Post)

Donald Trump, American Imperialist (Daniel W. Drezner/Drezner’s World)  If only….

Biden Clears Out Most of Federal Death Row Before Trump Can Kill Them (Naomi LaChance/Rolling Stone)  Democrats: Party of Criminals.

WashPost PANICS: ABC News Settling with Trump Will Spur Media to ‘Self-Censor’  If only….

The Trumpian Attitude at the Heart of the Gaetz Report (David Firestone/New York Times)  More like the Bidenian attitude.

US Editor of UK Guardian Fundraises Off Pledge to Never ‘Capitulate’ to Evil Trump

A Pro-Trump Group’s Risky Bet on Infrequent Voters Seems to Have Paid Off (Nick Corasaniti/New York Times)

‘Back To South Africa’: Democrats Call For Biden To Deport Elon Musk

Elon Musk Is a Paid Subscriber to Shockingly Racist Pro-Apartheid South African X Account (Isaac Schorr/Mediaite)  And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

Trump’s MAGA merchandise business operations are unacceptably opaque (Zeeshan Aleem/MSNBC)

Get ready for turf battles among Trump’s many foreign envoys (Nahal Toosi/Politico)

Trump’s TikTok Passion Raises Battle Stakes

Read it.

Mexico either refuses to or is utterly incapable of getting their drug cartel problem under control as they ravage innocent people. So instead, they’ve chose to shift blame to the United States and target American gun rights in a pair of lawsuits in American courts. In a segment on Sunday’s 60 Minutes, CBS News chose to cheer on Mexico’s effort as they willing pushed foreign propaganda in an effort to tear down Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

“There`s been a lot of talk about stopping the flow of illegal immigration and drugs from Mexico. But few people are talking about another crisis at the border — guns. Specifically, American guns,” chided correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi.

She parroted Mexican talking points that blamed American gun rights for cartel violence, not Mexico’s refusal to crackdown and their rampant corruption. She even suggested that Mexico’s actions against the U.S. could “fix” the “problems” with America’s gun rights:

Read it.

In 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB-1322, the Oil Refiner Price Disclosure Act, into law. The legislation was hailed as a major step toward transparency, requiring refiners in California to report detailed monthly data on their gasoline profit margins. Specifically, refiners must disclose:

The cost of crude oil purchased

The wholesale price of gasoline sold

The gross and net profits earned per gallon of refined gasoline

Supporters, including consumer advocacy groups like Consumer Watchdog, argued that SB-1322 would expose “excessive profits” earned by refiners and hold them accountable amid California’s notoriously high gasoline prices. In fact, as captured in this recent TikTok video from Matt Randolph, Gavin Newsom continues to claim that oil companies are fleecing California consumers.

However, a little over two years after signing the bill into law, the data tells a different story.

Far from uncovering windfall profits, the disclosures reveal razor-thin — and often negative — margins for refiners in the state.

Read it.

Three days before Christmas, the nation is horrified to learn details of the murder by fire of a woman on the New York city subway. The one legacy media newscast that bothered to report this story omitted significant details regarding the suspect’s immigration status.

Nothing to see here–move along, move along….

Read it.

Washington Week with The Atlantic’s year-in-review episode Friday contained a fleeting reference to a bombshell Wall Street Journal story about how the White House and Democrats actively hid President Joe Biden’s descent into decrepitude, including several public stumbles, shaking hands with the air, and taking the “short stairss” up Air Force One.

The supposedly vigilant media acceded to Democratic wishes and showed astonishingly little curiosity about Biden’s decline, even issuing defenses of Biden’s acuity in the face of Republican observations, defenses that look simply pathetic in retrospect, like the New York Times story lamenting so-called Republican “cheap fakes.”

Such defenses also appeared on tax-funded PBS including a notorious exchange from the September 1, 2023 edition of the network’s political roundtable, Washington Week with The Atlantic, after a disastrous Biden press conference spurred by a damning special counsel report from Robert Hur.

Trump says he might demand Panama hand over canal (Reuters) Since it was ours in full sovereignty until it was handed over by The Peanut, that would be a step in the right direction.

Trump Gets Lump of Coal From Republicans as Shut Down Looms (Daily Beast)

Elon Tries to Kill “President Musk” Allegations After Total Disaster (The New Republic)

From Illegal Immigration to ‘No Tax on Tips,’ Youngkin Models States Working with Trump on America First Policies

How The Left Will Defend Its Censorship Regime Against Trump

Fmr. WaPo Editor: Trump ‘Salivating’ to Prosecute Journalists

Trump: Panama will lose control of Canal if it continues to ‘rip-off’ US (Sophia Vento/The Hill)

How Trump and Musk set off the shutdown crisis – but got little in return (Washington Post)

Republicans averted a shutdown, yet showed boundaries of Trump’s power (Dan Balz/Washington Post)

Trump signals plans to use all levers of power against the media (Washington Post)

MAGA’s Orban-esque Plan to Control What Universities Teach (Francis Wilkinson/Bloomberg)

Rev. Al Sharpton Plans MLK Rally Opposite Trump Inaugural

MSNBC’s Weekend Despair Over Media Rolling Over for ‘Tyrant’ Trump

Donald Trump’s transition team seeks to pull US out of WHO ‘on day one’ (Financial Times)

Trump suggests Panama Canal be returned to US control (Tara Suter/The Hill)

Read it.

On Friday’s PBS airing of Amanpour & Co., host Christiane Amanpour introduced “the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, who’s written his last column for The New York Times, after 25 years of sharp and often indispensable takes on major issues that shape America and the world.”

Stop laughing, please.

NewsBusters has compiled decades of research proving Krugman’s knee-jerk partisanship is the opposite of sharp, and his conventional wisdom opinions far from indispensable. And he continues to claim Bidenomics has been vindicated. None of this penetrated the liberal PBS bubble, which didn’t offer the economist a single challenging question.

How the U.S. Lost Control of Bird Flu, Setting the Stage for Another Pandemic (‘Scientific’ American)

California declared an emergency. How serious is bird flu? (Associated Press)

California backyard chicken owners worried for flock’s safety amid avian flu (KDRA Sacramento)

How America lost control of the bird flu, setting the stage for another pandemic (Missouri Independent)

Read it.

This finding suggests that extreme calving events such as the recent 2017 Larsen C iceberg, A68, are statistically unexceptional and that extreme calving events are not necessarily a consequence of climate change.

‘Co-president’ Elon Musk? Trump ally tests influence in spending fight (Washington Poop)

24 hours that exposed a schism between Trump and Johnson and sent the government hurtling toward a shutdown (CNN) HURTLING!

Fact Check: Trump’s birthright citizenship ban will not affect his children (Reuters) FACT CHECK!

What is US birthright citizenship and can Trump end it? (Reuters)

Tom Homan Doesn’t Think Birthright Citizenship Is Enshrined in Constitution (Newsweek)

Trump girds for battle with Democrats, Supreme Court over birthright citizenship (The Hill)

Elon Musk Is Already Scamming Washington (The New Republic)

Elon Musk is the ultimate chaos agent (The Guardian)

Hillary Clinton says Republicans are taking orders from ‘world’s richest man’ to shut down government (Fox News)  Well, whom would you rather take orders from? The world’s richest man, or the world’s crookedest woman?

Trump threatens primary against Texas conservative Chip Roy (The Hill) Just a reminder that TRUMP IS NOT A ‘CONSERVATIVE’. TRUMP IS A BUSINESSMAN. [Explaining the Beef Between Donald Trump and Chip Roy (The Foundry)] “Cross him and he’ll send you back to Kansas, whether you came from there or not.” — Doonesbury

Shutdown threatens ‘chaos’ for Trump’s transition and inauguration (Politico)

‘President Elon Musk!’ MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell And Dem Dan Goldman Taunt Trump Over Musk Taking Lead (Tommy Christopher/Mediaite)

PARTISAN PUSH: All But 2 Democrats Vote Against Trump-Endorsed Government Funding Bill, Despite Debt Ceiling Increase

John Bolton Warns Republicans To Take Trump’s New Threat Against Cheney Seriously (S.V. Date/HuffPost)

Does California’s Bird Flu Emergency Portend The Next Trump-Era Outbreak?  TIME TO PANIC! ORANGE MAN BAD!

Trump team affirms he’s leader of GOP amid ‘President Musk’ barbs (Miranda Nazzaro/The Hill)

WATCH: Whoopi Goldberg Suggests Musk and Vance Want to Assassinate Trump, Blames Cat in Apology 

‘Effectively Dead’: Fani Willis’s Case Against Trump Is Toast After Appeals Court Ruling, Lawyers Say

Transcript: Chris Murphy’s Ominous New Warning About Trump Nails It (New Republic)

‘President-elect Musk’: Elon’s influence on display in government spending fight (USA Today)

Musk floods X with spending bill misinformation (The Hill)

Republicans Cut Child Cancer Research From Funding Bill After Musk’s Meddling (Rolling Stone)  OH NOES!

A MAGA power play roils Senate GOP campaign groups (Politico)

PBS: Amanpour Laments Media’s ‘Kiss-the-Ring Progression to Mar-a-Lago’

The GOP Is Treating Musk Like He’s in Charge (Charles Sykes/The Atlantic)

Alaska governor asks Trump to roll back restrictions on oil and gas drilling (Becky Bohrer/Associated Press)  OH NOES!

Shocker! PolitiFact Tags Trump For ‘Lie of the Year’ For the 7th Time

How the Left Will Defend Its Censorship Regime Against Trump

Elon Musk is becoming a one-man rogue state – it’s time we reined him in (Alexander Hurst/The Guardian)

Trump is not immune in NY case, and he’s big mad about it (Liz Dye/Public Notice)

The View Quickly Walks Back Suggestion Elon Musk & JD Vance Are Plotting To Kill Trump

NY Democrat: ‘Elon Musk has Donald Trump in a vise’ (Joanne Haner/The Hill)

Trump Wins–and the Censorship Begins (American Greatness)

Major Trump donors who complained of immigrant ‘invasion’ used Mexican workers illegally, sources allege (The Guardian)

Backlash builds as Elon Musk endorses Germany’s far right (Nette Nöstlinger/Politico)  To Politico, there is no right but the ‘far-right’.

Trump says any shutdown ‘is a Biden problem to solve’ (Andrew Howard/Politico)  They’ll have to wake up him up first.

Leaders of federal managers reject Trump’s plans to politicize workforce (Joe Davidson/Washington Post)  They don’t want anything to interfere with the way it’s already politicized.

Musk Shows Trump That He’s the New Chaos in Town (Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo)

Where do Musk and Trump stand after that spectacle? (Politico)

‘Co-president’ Elon Musk? Trump ally tests influence in spending fight (Washington Post)

Elon Killed the Budget Deal. Cancer Research for Kids Was Collateral Damage. (Sam Stein/The Bulwark)  The Kristol Krew are now fully turned Left.

On Morning Joe, Michael Tomasky Blames ‘Right-Wing Media’ For Trump Popularity

GOP lawmakers urge Trump to replace all US attorneys (Kadia Goba/Semafor) Yes.

Judges increasingly alarmed as Trump’s Jan. 6 clemency decision nears (Kyle Cheney/Politico)

Dozens of House Republicans Defy Trump in Test of His Grip on G.O.P. (Michael D. Shear/New York Times)  GRIP!

Elon Musk backs Germany’s far-right AfD (Anne-Sylvaine Chassany/Financial Times) For the Financial Times, there is no right but the ‘far-right’.

Why Republicans will probably be blamed for a shutdown (Aaron Blake/Washington Post)  Hint: The Narrative Media will guarantee it.

Dozens of Republicans broke with Trump. Are primary challenges next? (Politico)  Bet your bippy.

Musk Expresses Support for Far-Right Party in Germany’s Election (New York Times)  For the New York Times, there is no right but the ‘far-right’.

Trump was poised to inherit a strong economy. Then things got rocky and he added to the uncertainty (Josh Boak/Associated Press)  And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

As Musk forces a shutdown, the Trump presidency is already collapsing into chaos (Dana Milbank/Washington Post)  He hopes, he hopes,  he hopes….

I’ve faced Trump’s crusade to punish his enemies. Congress can still stop him. (Rep. Eric Swalwell/MSNBC)  How’s Fang Fang?

Trump Moves to Replace Officials Whom New Presidents Traditionally Leave Alone (Charlie Savage/New York Times)  Unless the President is a Democrat, in which case it’s perfectly alright to replace them.

Trumpism’s healthcare fracture-lines (permalink) (Pluralistic)

‘It Will Be a More Robust Check on Trump Than the G.O.P. Congress’: Three Legal Experts on Trump 2.0 (New York Times)

Caroline Glick interviews Lee Smith on Trump and Netanyahu and the lawfare against them

Trump and Musk unleash a new kind of chaos on Washington (CNN)  As opposed to the Old Kind of Chaos.

Shutdown watch: Musk barrages GOP to blow up “criminal” spending deal (Axios)

Government shutdown nears after Trump and Musk kill compromise (Washington Poop)

Trump brings chaos back to Washington by attempting to kill bipartisan budget deal with Musk’s help (Associated Press) Chaos was gone! And all of a sudden Trump brought it back. Orange Man Bad.

What is US birthright citizenship and can Trump end it? (Reuters)

Most Voters Disagree With Donald Trump on Birthright Citizenship: Poll (Newsweek)  Or at least that’s what they want you to believe. After all, Orange Man Bad.

Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship could be decided by the Supreme Court (Politico) As everything these days is.

Trump girds for battle with Democrats, Supreme Court over birthright citizenship (The Hill) I guess he was ungirded before this came up.

Done With Never Trump (Bret Stephens/New York Times)

“They Hate Trump” – Steve Quayle Fears ‘Nuke False Flag’ To Keep Him Out Of Office

Judge says a pardon of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes would be ‘frightening’ (Kyle Cheney/Politico)

Democratic senator says Trump’s plan to ‘cripple our democracy’ underway (Lauren Irwin/The Hill)

More On Ethical Populism – The sweet spot lies in demagogic appeals that can withstand factual scrutiny. (Brian Beutler/Off Message)

The contortions GOP senators are making for RFK Jr. (Politico)

After investigating January 6, House GOP sides with Trump and goes after Liz Cheney (Annie Grayer/CNN)

Musk’s Alleged Russia Contacts Worry Air Force’s Kendall (Anthony Capaccio/Bloomberg)  Only the government is allowed to have ‘Russian contacts’. I thought everybody knew that.

Canada proposes joint police force with US to tackle Trump’s border concerns (Mickey Djuric/Politico)  That way, the U.S. could help pay for that Canada ought to be doing for itself.

Reid Mocks CEOs and Republicans for Support of ‘Toddler’ Trump

Trump’s Attorneys Allege Juror Misconduct In New York Case

‘What choice do they have?’: America’s CEOs bend the knee to Donald Trump (Financial Times)

Republicans scrap spending bill, under pressure from Trump and Musk (Washington Post)

Trump, Musk Threaten Government Shutdown. Here’s What That Costs (Ari Natter/Bloomberg)

Georgia prosecutors urge appeals court not to toss Trump election interference case (NBC News)

Trump opposes funding bill, pushing government closer to a shutdown (NBC News)

What Elon got wrong about the CR (Politico)

Just to Be Clear, No, Trump Can’t Be Elected President Again (David S. Cohen/Rolling Stone)

LA Times owner asks editorial board to ‘take a break’ from writing about Trump – report (Dani Anguiano/The Guardian)

The Wrath of Trump: House Republicans Map a Case Against Liz Cheney (New York Times)

In Massive Twist, Trump’s Georgia Case Might Not Be Dead Yet (Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling/New Republic)

Four Ways to Unbend the Media’s Knee (Jonathan Alter/Washington Monthly)

Trump’s transition is happening over private emails. Federal officials are nervous. (Alice Miranda Ollstein/Politico)

Elon Musk fueled backlash to spending plan with false and misleading claims (Politico)

Musk Kills Government Funding Deal, Demands Shutdown Until Trump Is Sworn In (Miles Klee/Rolling Stone)

Regime Media FREAK OUT Over Elon Musk’s Role in Exposing and Killing Congress’s Christmas Cromnibus

Dems Troll ‘Vice President’ Trump as Musk Meddles With Government Funding Bill (William Vaillancourt/The Daily Beast)

In Wake of Trump Win, Biden State Department Issued Internal DEI Cable Touting ‘Reflection Rooms’ and ‘All-Gender Restrooms’ at US Embassies

Playbook: How Musk and Trump killed the CR (Politico)

‘Actually,’ MSNBC, Trump’s Energy Secretary Pick is Right, Climate Change Does Have Benefits

Anti-Trump forces build a network to aid potential political targets of the incoming administration (NBC News)

‘Unelected President Musk’: Elon posts 70 times trashing GOP bill, Trump caves (MSNBC)

Bernie Sanders blasts ‘President Elon Musk’ for derailing spending deal (Juliann Ventura/The Hill)

Behind the Curtain: Musk’s America (Axios)

Democrats: The Surrender Party

Study: Broadcast Transition Coverage Aimed At Sinking Trump’s Picks

Trump calls for abolishing the debt ceiling (Garrett Haake/NBC News)

The World’s Richest Man Wants to Burn It All Down (William Kristol/The Bulwark)

Trump Effect? US Leading Economic Indicators Positive For First Time Since Feb 2022

Appeals court removes prosecutor Fani Willis from Georgia election case against Trump and others (Kate Brumback/Associated Press)

Fani Flushed: Court Rules Fulton DA Disqualified From Trump ‘Election Interference’ Case

Georgia appeals court removes Fani Willis from Trump 2020 election case (Melissa Quinn/CBS News)

House Democrat: ‘Unelected oligarch’ Musk ‘governing by tweet’ (Ashleigh Fields/The Hill)

Trump’s Trump – As you’ve likely seen, things kind of went off the rails today on Capitol Hill. (Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo)

Trump Tossed a Debt Limit Grenade Into Spending Talks. Here’s Why. (Alan Rappeport/New York Times)

Republicans Turn Eating Their Own Into A Spectator Sport (David Kurtz/Talking Points Memo)

Can the Muskrat shut the United States government? (Robert Reich)

Class War or Culture War? (Timothy Snyder/Thinking about)

Trump and Musk unleash a new kind of chaos on Washington (Stephen Collinson/CNN)

Democrats rage at “unelected co-president” Elon Musk (Andrew Solender/Axios)

Even some in the pro-Trump media environment are wary of his plans (Washington Post)

Trump wants to kill the debt ceiling (Dave Lawler/Axios)

Dems Troll Trump by Calling Elon the Real President (Rolling Stone)

Musk’s dangerous, exaggerated conflation of social media and democracy (Philip Bump/Washington Post)

Google Turns Up Heat on Trump Nominees, Continues to Rig Results

Whoopi Claims Musk, Vance Plotting Trump’s Murder, Blames Her Cat

Trump’s demands leave Republicans flailing with no plan on eve of shutdown (NBC News)

Democrats, readying to battle Trump, shake up House committees (Marianna Sotomayor/Washington Post)

‘It’s Frightening’: ABC News Staffers Incensed by ‘Capitulation’ to Trump (Rolling Stone)

Trump’s lawyers allege juror misconduct in latest bid to get his hush money conviction dismissed (Michael R. Sisak/Associated Press)

A Big Pile of Money and Lawyering to Defend Trump’s Legal Targets? (Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo)

Trump lawyers allege ‘grave juror misconduct’ in their latest attack on hush money conviction (NBC News)

Trump’s ‘hush money conviction’…. Who knows what he was ‘convicted’ for? Anybody? Bueler? Bueler?

Trump eyes donor for Air Force chief (Politico)

Trump’s tariffs could be leading to buyer’s remorse (Aaron Blake/Washington Post)

Schumer’s last sprint to beat McConnell and Trump’s judges record (Stephen Neukam/Axios)

Attorney for RFK Jr. blasts ‘hysterical’ media report as distortion of HHS pick’s views on vaccines (Jamie Joseph/Fox News)

GOP senator blocks proposal to protect federal workers from Trump (Alexander Bolton/The Hill)

How Many Illegal Aliens Reside in Sanctuary Jurisdictions? (Jason Richwine/CIS.org)

The upcoming GOP assault on Social Security (David R. Lurie/Public Notice)

The next great reform movement is poised to begin now (Chuck Todd/NBC News)

In Trump World, RFK Jr. and Elon Musk Highlight Debate Over Obesity Treatment (Gina Kolata/New York Times)

‘One of the dumbest ideas’: Abolishing the FDIC could backfire on Trump and his allies (Matt Egan/CNN)

Feds Look To Hire Up To 1,200 New DEI Bureaucrats Before Trump Takes Office (Luke Rosiak/The Daily Wire)

Trump Sues The Des Moines Register, Escalating Threats Against the Media (New York Times)  Not ‘The Media’, just the ones that lie.

Trump Takes His Canada Trolling Up a Level in Bizarre Early Morning Post (Dan Ladden-Hall/The Daily Beast)

Trump Pledged to Cut Taxes for Expats. This Republican Wants to Make It a Reality. (Richard Rubin/Wall Street Journal)

Musk and Trump are viewed roughly the same by Americans, an AP-NORC poll finds (Associated Press)

Scarborough Desperately Clings To Wisconsin to Downplay Trump Win

High tariffs proposed by Trump could wipe out corporate profits (Emily Peck/Axios)

Trump’s pick for IRS chief touted troubled tax credit to businesses (Brian Faler/Politico)

Trump planning to target progressive non-profits, US watchdog warns (David Smith/The Guardian)

Trump: Canada becoming 51st state ‘great idea’ (Filip Timotija/The Hill)

Biden Must Free the Man Who Exposed Trump’s Tax Avoidance (Rolling Stone)

Trump’s Vengeance Tour Has Already Started (William Kristol/The Bulwark)

Why conservatives condemn Luigi Mangione and celebrate Daniel Penny (Zack Beauchamp/Vox)  One was a cold-blooded murderer, the other was acting in defense of other people. That’s all you need to know, and that’s the distinction that the Left is trying to handwave away.

PBS, NY Times Fear ABC’s Trump Defamation Settlement Sends ‘A Really Chilling Message’  And rightly so.

What it’s like to cook for Donald (Politico)

Transcript: Trump’s Angry New Tirade on Truth Social Signals Dark 2025 (New Republic)

Here’s what we WON’T do when Trump takes over (Mark Jacob/Stop the Presses)

Majority of Americans are ready to support Trump and large parts of his agenda, says CNBC survey (Steve Liesman/CNBC)

Why Would CBS Sports Minimize Pro-Trump Crowd at the Army-Navy Game?  That’s a real head-scratcher.

ABC, CBS Ignore Trump Winning $16 Million in Defamation Settlement  Nothing to see here, move along, move along….

Trump says he supports polio vaccine despite signs of RFK Jr’s opposition – live (Chris Stein/The Guardian)

Trump Says He’d Consider Pardoning NYC Mayor Eric Adams (Bloomberg)

Trump downplays possibility of DeSantis appointing Lara Trump to the Senate (Kimberly Leonard/Politico)  Let’s read those tea leaves, shall we?

Morning Joe: Pete Hegseth’s a ‘Retrograde Throwback’ to ‘The Crusades’  I like him already.

Trump vows to fire 49K work-from-home federal employees if they don’t return to office (Sarah K. Burris/Raw Story)  Heaven forbid!

The polio vaccine, Eric Adams and more media lawsuits: Donald Trump’s freewheeling Mar-a-Lago press conference (Megan Messerly/Politico)

Trump Says He’ll Sue Pollster Ann Selzer for Wrong Prediction (Grace Harrington/The Daily Beast)

‘That’s A Sickness’: Donald Trump Criticizes Fans Of Shooting Suspect Luigi Mangione (Igor Bobic/HuffPost)

How Trump could gut the refugee program (Ellen Ioanes/Vox)

Another Federal Judge Reverses Decision To Retire, Ruins Trump’s Plans To Fill His Seat (Jennifer Bendery/HuffPost)  Ruined! Curses, foiled again!

MSNBC Whines About Defamation Settlement, Fearmongers ‘Chilling Effect’

Failed Judicial Nominee Adeel Mangi Lashes Out at Democrats, Predicts ‘Tsunami of Bigotry’ Under Trump

Hegseth’s Guard Left the Army After the Beating of a Civilian During Training (New York Times)

Why ABC News settled with Donald Trump for $15 million (Brian Stelter/CNN)  Look out, pig, here comes some lipstick.

Trump Team Already in Backchannel Talks on Deportations (Eric Martin/Bloomberg)

Oh, Never Mind (Dan Rather/Steady)  Still lying after all these years.

‘There’s Not A Darn Thing Anybody Can Do’: Rash Of Jan. 6 Pardons Will Mean Trouble, Former Prosecutor Says (Brandi Buchman/HuffPost)

Analysis: George Stephanopoulos Now Responsible for Contributing 200 Times More to Trump Library Than He Ever Did to Clinton Foundation

Mitch McConnell Attacks Trump’s ‘America First’ Approach Despite Electoral Mandate

“Deeply Conflicted” Judge Rules Trump Doesn’t Have Immunity In New York ‘Hush Money’ Case

Republicans cry foul with some judges ‘unretiring’ before second Trump term (Anthony Adragna/Politico)

Meddling for MAGA – Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times … (Oliver Darcy/Status)

Trump is surrounding himself with vaccine skeptics (Aaron Blake/Washington Post)  Surrounding!

Republicans see agriculture and abortion, not vaccines, as top Kennedy concerns (Semafor)  But the Narrative Media will keep hammering on VACCINES! until everybody is sick of it.

Trump sues Des Moines Register, top pollster for ‘brazen election interference,’ fraud over Harris poll (Fox News)

Trump’s Retribution Tour Begins (Tara Palmeri/Puck)

Elizabeth Warren asks Trump to set conflict-of-interest rules for Musk (Michael Scherer/Washington Post)

Trump’s Time interview provides a sobering reminder (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)  Of what, you might ask? Why, Orange Man Bad, of course.

After Trump’s Victory, Republicans Trust the Election System Again (Charles Homans/New York Times)  No, they don’t.

Trump’s for-profit presidency (Nicole Narea/Vox)

Emboldened by ABC settlement, Trump threatens more lawsuits against the press (Hadas Gold/CNN)

Thirteen 2020 fake electors will cast real Electoral College votes for Trump on Tuesday (Marshall Cohen/CNN)

The Real Scandal of Our Media Tycoons (William Kristol/The Bulwark)

KFile: Pete Hegseth spread baseless conspiracy theories that January 6 attack was carried out by leftist groups (CNN)

Masayoshi Son and the Art of the Fake Deal (Paul Krugman/Krugman wonks out) No matter what the headline, it’s Always About Trump.

From big tech to the media, the rush to kiss Trump’s ring is on (Politico)

The Battle Against Trump 2.0 Begins in the States (Tim Dickinson/Rolling Stone)

Donald Trump makes Christmas shopping easy! (Bill Press/The Hill)

Trump Presser A Gauzy, Nostalgic Harbinger Of The Next Four Years Of Suck (Gary Legum/Wonkette)

‘Still Able To Connect’: MSNBC Host Says She Called Trump Directly, But ’50 People’ Were Between Her And Harris, Biden (IJR)

NY Times Heads Into Battle Vs. Trump Alongside Radical ‘Youth Climate Activists’

‘Return on investment’: Robert Reich explains why Trump 2.0 will make billionaires even richer (Alex Henderson/Alternet.org)

CNN Fact-Checker Flags ‘Most Dangerous Part’ Of Donald Trump’s News Conference (Lee Moran/HuffPost)

Possible Trump FEMA Pick Made Millions After Florida Disaster-Response Gig (Rolling Stone)

CNN’s Bash Takes Issue With Trump Saying People Want to Be His Friend

‘They’re eating the pets:’ Trump, Vance earn PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year for claims about Haitians (PolitiFact)

Transcript: Trump’s Unhinged New Vaccine Ramblings Reveal Big Weakness (New Republic)

Kremlin Insiders Spill Putin’s Secret Plan to Manipulate Trump (Julia Davis/The Daily Beast)

Hollywood Celebrities Terrified That If Trump Deports Illegal Immigrants They May Have To Start Watching Their Own Kids (Babylon Bee)

12 Democrats Boycotting Trump’s Inauguration

Make America the Great Depression Again: Trump’s plan to kill the FDIC (Catherine Rampell/Washington Post)

Read it.

Responsible journalism requires more than repackaging doomsday scenarios; it demands rigorous fact-checking and a willingness to present a balanced view of the evidence. By failing to meet these standards, Newsweek not only erodes public trust but also diminishes the legitimacy of meaningful environmental discussions. Readers deserve better than recycled, unfounded predictions—they deserve facts. Until outlets like Newsweek prioritize accuracy over hype, they will remain complicit in the spread of misinformation masquerading as science.

Read it.

On Dec. 11, ABC News’ Jay O’Brien reported false information about Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. secretary of education, on “ABC News Live Prime.”

In the first minute of an eight-minute overview, O’Brien stated that McMahon has no formal education training and little experience:

“If she receives Senate confirmation, McMahon, who has no formal teaching training and little experience in education, will be tasked with setting policies for the nation’s schools.”

This is patently false.

While receiving a bachelor’s degree in French at East Carolina University in the late 1960s, McMahon earned a teaching certificate after completing a teacher preparation program at the school. This information has been available publicly for years, reported in outlets like The Washington Post and USA Today, was confirmed in a Hartford newspaper in 2011, and has been listed in official statements from East Carolina University.

The most recent data from National Center for Education Statistics on educator qualifications reported that at least 8% of public schoolteachers in the United States had a teaching certificate instead of a bachelor’s degree in education.

Additionally, teacher transition programs, in which non-education career individuals obtain a certificate to teach their skillset in schools, are common in the United States. Almost 20% of teachers enter the education field in this way, and are not described as “unqualified” or “untrained” by any state department of public education or public instruction.

NBC News, a Voice of the Crust.

David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 shooting at his high school in Parkland, Florida, who turned into a national anti-violence activist, has launched a bid to serve in leadership of the Democratic National Committee.

Hogg, 24, announced on Monday he is running to become a vice chair of the DNC, arguing he would focus on winning back young voters who have drifted from the Democratic Party to Republicans. That shift came profoundly, and abruptly, in November, when young voters who predominantly favored President Joe Biden just four years earlier backed Donald Trump in larger numbers than any Republican presidential candidate since 2008, according to NBC News exit polling.

“Moving forward, we must have a renewed focus on our youth outreach in all states and territories to rebuild our coalition after the massive shift to the right among young voters this election,” Hogg said in a statement. “We need a collaborative environment where we don’t just surround ourselves with people who agree with us. We must confront the mass exodus of people from Blue states to Red States, driven by our party’s failure to address the housing crisis at scale—which if left unaddressed, will spell disaster for us by 2030.”

Incidentally keeping the cameras on me, of course.

Trump plan to end birthright citizenship is more conceivable in second term (The GuardianO

Trump girds for battle with Democrats, Supreme Court over birthright citizenship (The Hill)

Trump said he would revoke birthright citizenship. It hasn’t worked in the past (L.A. Times)

Trump aims to end birthright citizenship, says American citizens with family here illegally may be deported (NBC News)

Post-Settlement Stephanopoulos: Defanged But Still Venomous

Panicked CEOs left ‘scratching their heads’ as Trump ignores their warnings: WSJ (Tom Boggioni/Raw Story)

Thom Tillis warns pressure campaign to push Cabinet nominees could backfire (Greta Reich/Politico)

Hegseth to release sexual misconduct accuser from non-disclosure agreement, Lindsey Graham says (Greta Reich/Politico)

Graham Says Hegseth Plans to Release Accuser From Confidential Agreement (Karoun Demirjian/New York Times)

“Trump’s Stooge” Gets His Reward (Julianne McShane/Mother Jones)

Will Trump Be Called On His Inflation Lie? (Paul Krugman/Krugman wonks out)

Journalists anticipate a renewed hostility toward their work under the incoming Trump administration (David Bauder/Associated Press)

Trump’s ‘explosive’ economic growth claims are no match for the $36 trillion debt (Sam Sutton/Politico)

Steve Bannon Is Already Claiming Trump Can Run Again in 2028 (David Gardner/The Daily Beast)

Trump vows to ‘hire American.’ His businesses keep hiring foreign guest workers (Curt Devine/CNN)

How Pam Bondi boosted Trump’s election fraud claims in a key swing state (Beth Reinhard/Washington Post)

Trump Allies Fear Watered Down Deportation Efforts (Wall Street Journal)

Senate Republicans Could Still Deny Trump His Worst Picks (Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark)  According to the Narrative Media, that would be all of them.

Zuckerberg, once a champion for the undocumented, embraces Trump (Popular Information)  We all wake up eventually.

ABC bends the knee (Lisa Needham/Public Notice)

Trump claims a ‘massive’ mandate, but presidents often overread their victories (Domenico Montanaro/NPR)

Humiliation for Stephanopoulos as Trump Secures Historic Defamation Settlement With ABC News–But Former Clinton Adviser Still Reportedly Inks Lucrative New Deal (Collin Anderson/freebeacon.com)  The Crust take care of their own.

Many Unhappy Returns: Journalists Deserve All the Angst Trump’s 2nd Term Brings

Read it.

NBC’s Meet the Depressed pulled off an interesting feat today, wrapping a justification of the murder of the CEO of United HealthCare into an attempted cleanup of the previous justification that ran on NBC air time.

Watch as host Kristen Welker sets Senator Bernie Sanders up for a double “but”.

Alarming Mutation in H5N1 Virus Raises Pandemic Red Flags (SciTechDaily)

Bird flu is a real pandemic threat. Are we prepared for the worst? (The Guardian)

‘America’s handling of the bird flu crisis is putting, and will continue to put, the entire world at risk’ (Le Monde) Those wascally Amewicans!

Mega-Farms Are Driving the Threat of Bird Flu (WIRED)

ABC agrees to give $15 million to Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle defamation lawsuit (Associated Press)

ABC News settles defamation suit with Trump for $15 million (CNN)

George Stephanopoulos and ABC apologize to Trump, are forced to pay $15 million to settle defamation suit (Fox News)

ABC Faces Anger After $15M Trump Settlement: ‘Democracy Dies’ (Newsweek)

Chris Rock stuns SNL audience with brutal Bill Clinton dig as he savages anti-Trump liberals (The Guardian)

New Mexico Governor Refuses National Guard Deployment for Mass Deportations (Billal Rahman/Newsweek)

D.C. restaurant server fired after comments about refusing service to some Trump officials (Fox News)

Politico’s Biggest Trump Hater Warns Against Kash Patel FBI Appointment

Ex-CNN Host Don Lemon Uncorks TikTok Tantrum Over Trump as TIME ‘Person of the Year’

Universities warn international students to return before Trump inauguration (Axios)

‘Trump has been explicit about revenge’: Asif Kapadia on his new film about the threat to democracy (Carole Cadwalladr/The Guardian)

Big donors secure big roles in the incoming Trump administration (CNN)  As always happened with Democrats.

Trump’s CDC pick wouldn’t let go of false theory vaccines cause autism (Washington Post)

McConnell has the chutzpah to complain about Trump’s ‘America First’ (Jennifer Rubin/Washington Post)  Jennifer Rubin loses her shit.

His Family Voted to Support Trump’s Deportation Plan. That Includes Him. (New York Times)

Trump and His Picks Threaten More Lawsuits Over Critical Coverage (David Enrich/New York Times)

Read it.

It was 25 years ago this week (December 14, 1999) that conservative powerhouse William F. Buckley recorded the final episode of his award-winning talk show, Firing Line. That occasion, as with other important milestones in Buckley’s long and influential career, brought to the surface the liberal media establishment’s hostility toward the retiring host as well as their disdain for the broader conservative movement he helped launch.

Trump Team Weighing Options For Preemptive Airstrikes On Iran’s Nuclear Program

Experts predict mass deportation would damage US economy (Patrick Terpstra/Scripps News)  Experts!

Mitch McConnell Decries ‘Dangerous’ Push Against Polio Vaccine After RFK Jr. Report (Igor Bobic/HuffPost)

Trump calls for mystery drones to be shot down (Juliann Ventura/The Hill)

The Biden administration is trying to thwart Trump on its way out

Trump wants to turn the clock on daylight saving time (Jill Colvin/Associated Press)

McConnell Defends Polio Vaccine, an Apparent Warning to Kennedy (Sheryl Gay Stolberg/New York Times)

The Memo: Trump revels as establishment figures pay homage at home and abroad (Niall Stanage/The Hill)

Polio survivor Mitch McConnell criticizes efforts to undermine vaccine (Maegan Vazquez/Washington Post)

PBS Re-Uses Radical ‘Expert’ to Rip Hegseth Cross Tattoo, Compare Him to Mass Shooters

In Display of Fealty, Tech Industry Curries Favor With Trump (New York Times)

Trump’s Transition Business Largely Happens After Night Falls (Michael D. Shear/New York Times)

CNN’s Jake Tapper Reheats Leftist Hot Take on Trump as Vicious ‘Jurassic Park’ Velociraptor

Trump nominates conservative culture warrior to lead DOJ civil rights (NBC News)

PBS Mourns Wray ‘Allowed’ Trump ‘To Shatter Yet Another Norm’

LA Times billionaire owner killed op-ed that was critical of Trump’s cabinet picks, report says (Justin Baragona/The Independent)

The Trump Show Is Returning. Will It Be Triumph, Tragedy or Farce? (James Poniewozik/New York Times)

Inside Democrats’ emerging Trump inauguration boycott (Axios)  Good riddance.

Trump brings political drama to Army-Navy game sidelines (Michael Dorgan/Fox News)

How GOP Senators Are Secretly Getting Ready to Surrender to Trump (Greg Sargent/New Republic)

Ruhle Tries To Tie Celebrating CEO’s Murder To Taking Daniel Penny To Army-Navy Game

Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship could be decided by the Supreme Court (Politico)  Of course it will. Everything is decided by the Supreme Court these days.

Sigh… Gen Z Interns Are Still Tweeting About Project 2025 From Biden’s X Account

Posts Falsely Question Citizenship of Trump’s Children Under His Birthright Plan.

The Cracks Are Already Starting to Show (Politico)

Newsom said he’s going to ‘Trump-proof’ California. What does that mean? (SFGate)

Newsom lines up resistance to Trump’s second term (The Hill)

Daily Shows Mocks Hegseth’s Pledge Not To Drink, GOP For Believing Him

Drones, Dogs, Drug Labs: Canada’s Plan to Avoid Trump’s Tariffs Takes Shape (New York Times)

Republicans Would Not Be That Bothered if Trump Goes After Political Enemies (Victoria Prodeline/Monmouth University …)  Considering that Democrats do it as a matter of course. Sauce for the goose….

‘It’ll Be Brutal’: Inside Trump’s Planned War on Leakers and the Press (Rolling Stone)

Jan. 6 committee chair says he’d accept preemptive pardon if Biden offers (Sarah Fortinsky/The Hill)

Rep. Raskin: Dems in ‘Fight of Our Lives’ Post Trump Victory

Christopher Wray Is Preparing to Sabotage Trump and Patel (Matt Margolis/PJ Media)

EXCLUSIVE: Biden Races To Sell Off Border Wall Parts Before Trump Takes Office (James Lalino/The Daily Wire)

The FBI’s Turning Point (Sarah Longwell/The Bulwark)

SEC charges Cantor Fitzgerald, led by Trump’s Commerce pick, with breaking securities laws (Christina Wilkie/CNBC)

‘Now she’s the world’s problem’: Some Arizona Republicans relieved Lake is heading to Washington (Megan Messerly/Politico)

PBS Warns of Rising Misogyny After Trump Win Based on 24-Hour Leftist Study

Should the Trump Administration Do to the Democrats What They Did to Him?

Trump allies pressure GOP senators to back Cabinet picks – or else (Liz Goodwin/Washington Post)

Trump to discuss ending childhood vaccination programs with RFK Jr. (Reuters)

Hegseth does a 180 on women and gays in combat (Politico)

Trump’s Tax Cuts May Fail to Drive Much, If Any, Economic Boost (Enda Curran/Bloomberg)

Dr. Mehmet Oz had up to $33 million in companies doing business with agency he’d run (Erin Mansfield/USA Today)  Jeez, you’d think he was a Democrat.

Trump’s Border Czar Is a Terrible Person (Bill Lueders/The Bulwark)

Meyers Wonders How Voters Could Chose Trump Amid His Wall Street Trip

Biden Admin Scrambling To Auction Off Border-Wall Sections Before Trump Takes Office

America voted for a dumpster fire – Democrats just need to let it burn itself out (Chris Truax/The Hill)

Trump Is About to Betray His Rural Supporters (Ronald Brownstein/The Atlantic)

The Conspiracy World Is Pushing Paranoia About a Post-Inauguration “Plandemic” (Anna Merlan/Mother Jones)

NYC Mayor Eric Adams Stuns Lefty Reporters By Going Full MAGA  Well, he was once a Republican.

‘Everyone’s demoralized.’ Trump’s climate threats rattle world’s biggest science meeting (Politico)

Networks Go All Out to Paint Trump as Admitting He Can’t Improve Economy

Survey: Most voters disapprove of RFK Jr.’s nomination after learning his views (Nathaniel Weixel/The Hill)  Or, rather, the Narrative Media’s distortions of his views.

Read it.

Of course she lied. We all know that she lied.

Rolling Stone, a Voice of the Crust.

Democrats, in the minority, always act as if they were in the majority, issuing demands.

Democrats invariably demand that their opponents not do what Democrats habitually do.

CNN, a Voice of the Crust.

And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

UPDATE: DOJ IG reveals 26 FBI informants were present on Jan. 6 (Fox News)

New York Magazine, a Voice of the Crust.

Note the proglodyte toolbox: (1) Conflate two things at a high-level of abstraction (‘vigilante-worship”) that, when examined, aren’t even close to being the same; (2) accuse those who don’t accept this equivalence of ‘double-standards’ or ‘hypocrisy’; (3) use this verbal smash-and-grab as a stick to beat the Heretics and Sinners. Rinse, repeat.

The Guardian, a Voice of the Crust.

Experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could put humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections.

What ‘scientists’? What ‘experts’? Nobody ever says, specifically, so that we might judge their expertise and evaluate whether they are or are not credible.

World-leading scientists have called for a halt on research to create “mirror life” microbes amid concerns that the synthetic organisms would present an “unprecedented risk” to life on Earth.

The international group of Nobel laureates and other experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could become established in the environment and slip past the immune defences of natural organisms, putting humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections.

Although a viable mirror microbe would probably take at least a decade to build, a new risk assessment raised such serious concerns about the organisms that the 38-strong group urged scientists to stop work towards the goal and asked funders to make clear they will no longer support the research.

Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

Chicken Little, call your office.

UPDATE The Wailing Scientists of Washington: Fear-Mongering in Lab Coats

Trump’s Birthright-Citizenship Threat Shows His True Target (New York Magazine)

Trump vows to end birthright citizenship and pardon US Capitol rioters (BBC)

This is why Donald Trump just doubled down on mass deportation of millions of immigrants (L.A. Times)

The Republicans’ plan to redefine US citizenship is Authoritarianism 101 (The Hill)

Trump-hatred, fear, and cutoff

Trump’s Cabinet Picks Show That the G.O.P. Is Hollowed Out, Too (Jamelle Bouie/New York Times)

CNN Warns Wray’s Resignation Signals ‘Real Politicization Of The FBI’

Republican lawmakers invite a Jan. 6 felon to Trump’s inauguration (Kyle Cheney/Politico)

Trump says he supports DREAMers. His past actions say differently. (Li Zhou/Vox)

Cash-Strapped California Considers $15 Million Plan To Fight Trump Deportations

White House warns Trump of consequences of undoing key parts of Biden’s legacy (Sahil Kapur/NBC News)

Manchin and Sinema Screw Biden Yet Again, Give Trump Control of Labor Board (Miles Klee/Rolling Stone)

Colleges Warn International Students to Return Ahead of Trump Term (Sharon Otterman/New York Times)

Chris Wray folds like cheap suit. Don’t be Chris Wray. (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)

‘Broad New Precedent’: Biden Issuing Preemptive Pardons to Trump Opponents Would Be Big Expansion of Power

Power, Intimidation and the Resurrection of Trump’s Support for Hegseth (New York Times)

Far-Right Militias Seek Role in Trump Deportation Plan (Alan Feuer/New York Times) To the Narrative Media, there is no right but the far-right.

‘USA’ Chants Roar As Trump Rings NYSE Bell After Being Named TIME ‘Person Of The Year’  Not all derangements are negative.

No Winners Seen in Trump’s ‘Hugely Destructive’ Energy Tariffs (Bloomberg)  Although most of them are.

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Defense pick, says allowing gay troops to serve openly reflects a Marxist agenda (CNN)

Meyers Proves He Doesn’t Know How Tax Cuts Work As He Claims ‘Trump Lied’

Yes, It Was a Landslide … Having lost the election, demoralized Democrats now argue their defeat wasn’t a landslide. (J.T. Young/American Greatness)

Trump’s Kari Lake ‘pick’ sparks fears at Voice of America (Brian Stelter/CNN)  More accurately, the Voice of Anti-America.

Trump Says His 1st Acts Will Include Deportations and Jan. 6 Pardons (Michael D. Shear/New York Times)

Fact-Checking What Donald Trump Said in His 2024 Person of the Year Interview With TIME (Time)

Trump’s conspiracy cabinet is about to take over the deep state (Avery Lotz/Axios)

“That’s Journalism”: ProPublica Pats Itself On Back After Hegseth Hitpiece Humiliation

Trump Is Starting to Walk Back His Vow to Bring Down Grocery Prices (Ryan Bort/Rolling Stone)

Chris Wray’s Pre-Surrender (William Kristol/The Bulwark)

Google Quietly Thwarting Trump Nominees with Leftist Results for Fourth Straight Week

FBI missed ‘basic step’ when gathering intel in the lead-up to Jan. 6, DOJ watchdog finds (Ryan J. Reilly/NBC News)

Trump’s Middle East Adviser Pick Is a Small-Time Truck Salesman (New York Times)

Read it.

New York Times columnist Masha Gessen joined NPR host Michel Martin on Wednesday’s edition of Amanpour and Company on PBS, where he attacked the Supreme Court for not listening to the left’s preferred “experts” on the case involving Tennessee’s ban on so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors.

Martin declared, “You have some interesting things to say in a number of the columns that you’ve written about how this is also about a kind of loathing or resistance to expertise,” before inviting Gessen to “Say more about that, why you say that.”

Quillette.

Is there anything left to say about Ta-Nehisi Coates and his ten-day reporting trip to Israel last year? The Message—now in its eighth week on the New York Times bestseller list—has been widely celebrated on the Left for its truth-to-power indictment of the Jewish state on multiple counts of apartheid, genocide, and white supremacy. But his account has also been thoroughly vivisected by critics, who have sliced their way through the text, correcting errors, supplying missing context, and making the case for Israel that Coates impatiently dismisses as disinformation force-fed to gullible innocents like him for years.

…

But never mind. Coates believes that morality trumps facts, and he derides invocations of “complexity” by Israel’s defenders. “I would sooner hear a defense of cannibalism,” he declares, “than I would hear any brief for what I saw with my own eyes in Hebron.” Try to explain the whys and wherefores of Israeli policies to Coates and you’re no better than Chico Marx’s con-man in Duck Soup: “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Coates the reporter claims that his powers of observation are all he needs to achieve moral clarity. And on that basis, he need not consider the views of his opponents because no context or explanation of Israeli conduct could possibly be exculpatory.

Read it.

Check out the headline and lead sentence of the front-page story on the Daniel Perry acquittal in Tuesday’s New York Times, “Jury Acquits Man Who Was Choking Rider On Subway Cleared of Homicide — Split Reaction in a Case Reflecting Tensions in New York City,” by Hurubie Meko and Anusha Bayya.

Yes, a man just randomly choked an innocent subway “rider” in New York City — not a loud, threatening disruptor with a long criminal record who posed a potentially deadly threat to other passengers.

The lead was no better. Again what a bizarre way to describe Daniel Penny’s brave subduing of Jordan Neely.

Read it.

This past week, several MSNBC hosts pushed a sore loser narrative that the Republican House majority was won because of “rigged” congressional districts, with one host even claiming Republicans had been “cheating basically.”

After Joe Scarborough first started pushing the “rigged” election line on Tuesday by invoking gerrymandering, fellow hosts Nicolle Wallace, Lawrence O’Donnell and Chris Hayes joined him on Wednesday after outgoing Democrat Congressman Wiley Nickel published an op-ed in The News & Observer complaining about North Carolina Republicans redrawing his home state’s districts, and Jonathan Capehart jumped in on Friday night.

And, even though Republicans are heavily short-changed by California’s district maps, O’Donnell spoke of the liberal state as if it were a model for how districts should be drawn.

The Atlantic, a Voice of the Crust.

A week after Donald Trump won the presidency again, I sat across from Chris Murphy in his minimalist but well-appointed D.C. office. The Connecticut senator sounded like a man who had done a speedrun through all five stages of grief and was ready to talk about what comes next: how his party could learn from its loss and win over—or win back—voters in 2026 and 2028. “I have thought for a long time that there’s a race between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party,” Murphy told me. “And the question is: Does the Republican Party become more economically populist in a genuine way before the Democratic Party opens itself up to people who don’t agree with us on 100 percent of our social and cultural issues?”

…

Murphy is doing his best to make sure that his side of the aisle beats the Republicans, but he seems far from certain that it will. In an MSNBC interview after the election, the senator sketched out something of a road map for Democrats: “We should return to the party we were in the ’70s and ’80s, when we had economics as the tent pole and then we let in people who thought differently than us on other social and cultural issues.” Murphy was quick to add that this reinvention—or rather, reversion—will be challenging to pull off. “That’s a difficult thing for the Democratic Party to do, because we’ve applied a lot of litmus tests over the years,” he observed. “Those litmus tests have added up to a party that is pretty exclusionary and is shrinking, not growing.”

Trump wants to end birthright citizenship. Can that really happen? (Politico)

Why the US has birthright citizenship and how Trump could challenge it (CNN)

FactChecking Trump’s ‘Meet the Press’ Interview (FactCheck.org)

Manhattan DA urges judge not to toss out guilty verdict in Trump hush money case (Politico)

Scoop: RFK Jr. pushes his daughter-in-law for CIA deputy director (Axios)

Biden: Trump’s tax and tariffs plans are a ‘major mistake’ (Adam Cancryn/Politico)

How Catholics can urge Joe Biden to commute death row sentences before leaving office (Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy/America …)

“President-elect immunity does not exist:” Prosecutors on Trump hush money case (Avery Lotz/Axios)

Politico Foreign Affairs Reporter Wants to Drag Trump into Syria Mess

Scarborough Exploits Penny Acquittal To Suggest Trump Fairly Convicted In NYC

How Trump could try to deport immigrants to countries other than their own (Nicole Narea/Vox)

Here’s How Manhattan DA Plans To Keep Trump Case Alive

White House Threatens Biden Veto of Bipartisan Bill to Add New Judges (Carl Hulse/New York Times)

New York prosecutors urge judge not to toss out Trump hush money conviction (NBC News)

Yellen: Trump’s Tariffs Could Derail Inflation Progress, Raise Costs

LA Times Columnist Quits Amid Owner’s Trump Support

Biden Says Trump Economic Plan Will Be ‘Disaster’

Bragg says Trump’s crimes and ‘history of malicious conduct’ are too serious for his hush-money case to be dismissed (Laura Italiano/Business Insider)

The GOP’s top priority for 2025: Repeal the laws of arithmetic (Catherine Rampell/Washington Post)

CBS Rehashes Misogyny Attack Against Hegseth, OMITS Support Letter

‘FAKE NEWS’: Pete Hegseth’s Former Colleagues Speak Out Against Corporate Media Smears

Trump’s intellectuals will betray his base

Trump plots to steal Congress’s budget authority (Liz Dye/Public Notice)

Playbook: Inside Trump’s game of Senate hardball (Politico)

By All Means, Jail My Colleagues, Mr. President! (William Kristol/The Bulwark)

Transcript: Trump Lawyer Alina Habba Gives Away His Border Scam on Fox (New Republic)

Prosecutors Are Fighting to Make Sure Trump Remains a Convicted Felon (Nikki McCann Ramirez/Rolling Stone)

RFK’s Anti-Vaccine Zealotry Is an Existential Threat to Public Schools (Casey Quinlan/New Republic)  I like it already.

Exclusive: RFK Jr.’s secret push to prove CIA killed uncle (Axios)

You Should Be More Worried About Trump’s Planned Military Purge (Don Moynihan/Can We Still Govern?)

Colbert Spews Fake News About Hegseth’s Views On Women In The Military

Justice Department’s storied Civil Rights Division will fight DEI under Trump (CNN)

CNN Poll: Most Americans approve how Trump is handling his return to the White House (Jennifer Agiesta/CNN)

Trump outran the law. His allies haven’t. (Politico)

Read it.

The PBS News Hour avoided the nihilist-leftist take of too many media and social media liberals in its Monday evening segment on the capture of a suspect in the murder in Manhattan of UnitedHealthCare chief executive Brian Thompson.

Co-anchor Geoff Bennett strongly condemned the murder — but the interview also took a cheap shot at the Elon Musk-owned social media platform X (formerly Twitter) for the heartless comments, without noting they were coming almost exclusively from left-wing X users (there’s also plenty of left-wing pro-assassination ghoulishness on the “alternate” platform BlueSky: see Taylor Lorenz). That’s quite unlike the News Hour’s treatment of allegedly hateful comments and “disinformation” from right-wing social media, which are dutifully labeled with “extreme right”-type warning labels.

Bennett reported that the suspect, Luigi Mangione, was found carrying a document that “criticized health care companies and suggested violence as the answer. And that part of the story, the connections to the health care industry, has touched a nerve, sometimes with ugly results in the days since his murder.”

Newsbusters.

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel reported on his Tuesday show that several members of his staff have become infatuated with UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s alleged murderer. During his monologue, Kimmel read several text exchanges between the staff and their friends and family, including ones who promised to bake him cookies and those who desperately wanted to get on the jury.

Kimmel declared that, “So many women and so many men are going nuts over how good-looking this killer is, and there’s a huge wave of horny washing over us right now. It’s like we’re one of the guys you work with says, ‘I had a dream about you last night.’ When it’s the FedEx guy with the big muscles and rolled-up sleeves, you’re like, ‘Oh,’ but if it’s the bald IT guy wearing Crocs with black socks, you’re on the phone with HR, it’s kind of that same dynamic.”

GOPers Suddenly Fear MAGA Nitwit MTG Is Creating a New Mess for Trump (The New Republic)

Republicans wonder if MTG’s new DOGE role will make her a leadership ally — or become a headache (Politico)

Elon Musk’s Stunning $250 Million Favor to Trump Should Wake Up Dems (Greg Sargent/New Republic)

Trump Says He Would Let ‘Dreamers’ Stay. But He Once Tried to Gut the Program. (Hamed Aleaziz/New York Times)

Playbook PM: A Jan. 6 insider on the transition team? (Bethany Irvine/Politico)

CALL DOGE: Taxpayer-Funded PBS Thinks NBC Wasn’t Hard Enough on Trump

Ron who? How Trump allies brought Hegseth back from the brink (Politico)

Biden to Warn Against Another Trump Tax Cut

Musk Warns Republicans Standing in Trump’s Way, or His

Trump’s DOJ Likely to Target DEI Programs

On Issue After Issue, Trump Promises the Moon. No Word on the Rocket. (Peter Baker/New York Times)

Republican-led states are rolling out plans that could aid Trump’s mass deportation effort (David A. Lieb/Associated Press)

Patel FBI plans spark concern over agency independence, retribution (Rebecca Beitsch/The Hill)

GOP senators feel weight of Trump’s loyalty test on nominees (Alexander Bolton/The Hill)

Bomb Threat Against Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene)

Kennedy’s War on Corn Syrup Brings a Health Crusade to Trump Country (Jonathan Weisman/New York Times)

Stewart Asks Aspiring DNC Chair How He Stopped GOP From ‘Diabolically’ Altering Wisconsin  By cheating, of course. That’s what Democrats do.

Elon Musk’s phishing attack on America (Jason Sattler/I Know How Much You Care)

Democrats demand answers from Trump pick Mehmet Oz on ‘Medicare privatization’ (Sahil Kapur/NBC News)  Medicare is effectively ‘privatized’ though the Medicare Advantage program.

State Department Scrambles To Scuttle $100M Censorship Network Before Trump Takes Office

NYC schools offer guidance to schools, immigrant parents ahead of Trump’s inauguration

Donald Trump Controls a Publicly Traded Company. Now He Will Pick Its Regulator. (ProPublica)

The slippery appeal of RFK Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement (Keren Landman/Vox)

Fed Gov Rename DEI Positions to Fool Trump Admin (Daniel Greenfield/Frontpage Mag)

Trump’s mass deportation plan could threaten workforces in industries from agriculture to health care (Kate Rogers/CNBC)

Mass Deportations Will Start ‘Right Here In Chicago,’ Trump’s Border Czar Says (Mack Liederman/Block Club Chicago)

Anti-Trump Lincoln Project Paid Millions to Founders’ Companies

Acosta Takes Hegseth Out Of Context To Imply He’s Flip-Flopping To Get Confirmed

Trump’s Defense Pick Is Now Denying Things He Said on Tape (Edith Olmsted/New Republic)

Trump lawyers and aide hit with 10 additional felony charges in Wisconsin over 2020 fake electors (Scott Bauer/Associated Press)

Progressive Democrats demand major DNC reforms to reel working class back from Trump (Rachel Schilke/Washington Examiner)

Newsbusters.

After the alleged murderer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was caught on Tuesday, MSNBC’s Joy Reid was extra Joy Reid-y on The ReidOut. She gleefully noted that people on the internet are not angry at the murder, and when she welcomed progressive author and radio host Thom Hartmann, wondered how such reactions could be made in the same country that just elected Donald Trump. For his part, Hartmann declared that the reason why America does not have a socialist healthcare system is because of racism.

Reid began by pretending to be shocked that liberal Twitter sleuths are not eager to find lefty assassins, “Something a bit unexpected has happened following the murder… I don’t want to call it glee but, say, not unhappiness. Especially online, where the internet sleuths who often dedicate themselves to tracking down people accused of racist behavior in public places, criminals including January 6th fugitives, and more have actively been refusing to help.”

The Hill, a Voice of the Crust.

A federal court in North Dakota has blocked Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage for immigrants that came into the U.S. illegally as children, also known as “Dreamers.”

U.S. District Judge Daniel M. Traynor on Monday granted Kansas, alongside 18 other states, a stay regarding a final rule from the Biden administration allowing some Dreamers access to the ACA marketplace, according to court documents. He also granted Kansas and the other states a preliminary injunction barring the federal government “enforcing the Final Rule against” them.

Vox, a Voice of the Crust.

Since Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, pundits and politicians have been trying to figure out why the country’s working class is moving to the right.

“Donald Trump Won as the Champion of Working-Class Discontent,” read one headline. “How Donald Trump Gave Democrats the Working-Class Blues,” read another. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders gave Democrats a scathing post-mortem: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” he wrote in a statement after the election.

But what often gets lost in these conversations is this simple fact: There isn’t a single neat definition of “working class.” Some analysts focus on someone’s education as an indicator of class; others look at people’s incomes or jobs. A more traditional definition of “working class” encompasses both blue- and white-collar workers alike. (Many pundits also had a tendency to erroneously conflate the working class with the white working class when explaining Trump’s rise in 2016.)

Read it.

The claim that “60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck” comes from a survey by the fintech company LendingClub. The company refuses to release its survey methodology, but we can get a general idea from its website, which says: “For those Americans, [living paycheck to paycheck] means that they need their next paycheck to cover their monthly financial outflows.” So what LendingClub is probably claiming is that around 60% of Americans don’t have enough cash in their bank accounts to live off of for one month.

But LendingClub’s survey is probably just flat-out wrong about this. The Federal Reserve does a very careful annual survey called the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, or SHED.1 This survey asks whether people have a “rainy-day fund” sufficient to cover at least three months of expenses. And it pretty consistently finds that over half of Americans do have such a fund

…

If more than half of Americans have enough money to cover three months of expenses if they lose their job, then mathematically it cannot be true that 60% of Americans lack enough money to cover just one month of expenses.

It ain’t what you know, it’a what you know that ain’t so.