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House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks to the media following the passage of spending legislation to avert a government shutdown, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, on Dec. 20, 2024.
US lawmakers early Saturday struck an 11th-hour deal to avert a government shutdown. On Friday, the House voted overwhelmingly to pass a stopgap spending bill after a week of chaos on Capitol Hill in which President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk intervened to scuttle two earlier bipartisan bills. The Senate followed suit shortly after midnight.
The final measure passed on Friday funds the government through March, includes $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers, and earmarks $100 billion in fresh disaster relief funds. It doesn’t include Trump’s demand to suspend the debt ceiling, which limits how much the federal government can borrow.
Three things are immediately clear from this week:
First, Elon Musk has real government power even without a real government position. Musk’s extensive criticisms of the initial bill’s length and contents, some of which included false or misleading claims, shaped the politics immediately, sinking the first version of the spending bill. Musk does not hold an elected or even an official post, but with his 208 million followers on X, which he owns, he hardly needs to.
Trump’s grip on the GOP is hardly complete. The president-elect could not force his party to accept the idea of scrapping the debt ceiling, which would have given him substantially more spending room during his first two years in office. Instead, lawmakers pledged to take up the issue separately once he is in office.
This week was a preview. With a bold and controversial Trump policy agenda, a slim House GOP majority, and another hugely influential risk cook in the kitchen, the past few days offer a window into what legislating may often look like beginning in January. Buckle up.German army servicemen participate in NATO's Quadriga 2024 military exercise in Pabrade, Lithuania May 29, 2024.
He’s not even president yet, and Donald Trump is already making huge waves in Europe. According to the Financial Times, his aides have been quietly letting European capitals know that the incoming president will do three things:
- Demand that NATO countries increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP. That’s nearly triple the current non-binding standard of 2%. During his first term, Trump used the implied threat of withdrawing from the treaty organization to scare members into meeting that benchmark Mr, and about two-thirds of NATO members now do. But no one is even close to 5%, a level that would put an immense strain on most European economies. Poland currently leads with just over 4%, while the US is at about 3.5% – a level that, reports say, Trump might settle for alliance-wide.
- Link trade policy preferences to this standard – in other words, countries that meet this standard will get better terms with the US than those that don’t. In this context, remember that Trump has promised to put blanket tariffs of at least 10% on all imports to the US.
- Continue supplying weapons to Ukraine to ensure that the country is well-armed enough to sustain any peace deal with Russia, but without ever joining NATO.
The context: For decades, European allies were confident in the US commitment to collective defense through NATO and to free trade. No longer. Trump wants Europe to contribute more to its own defense rather than rely on the Cold War legacy security umbrella provided by the US. He has no problem linking that demand with trade policy in order to use America’s economic muscle to get what he wants.
The caveat: Trump won’t take office for another month. These demands may be preliminary, and they could certainly be flexible. But at a minimum they bring into focus the main features of Trump’s foreign policy towards Europe.It’s Christmas time again, and people in America are looking up at the sky and believing insane things.
I don’t mean the story about a jovial old man who surveils our kids’ behavior all year, and then steals into our homes to bring them gifts – made with apparently unpaid labor – based on a “naughty-nice” social credit score.
No. This year, a new gift comes to us from an improbable place: the night skies over New Jersey, where for several weeks now people have been seeing, or think they have been seeing, hundreds of mysterious drones.
These drones are already the stuff of legend. They are strangely big. They are weirdly small. They turn off their lights when you see them. They instantly drain the batteries of any other drones that come near them. They are going to military bases. They are actually coming from military bases. They all live on an offshore mothership belonging to an alien regime: this regime is either Iranian or extraterrestrial.
The memes, as you might imagine, have been superb. Here’s a coked-up Henry Hill in Goodfellas, driving around North Jersey in a state of sweaty, chain-smoking paranoia about that helicopt–, I mean that drone up there. Here’s a real life paisan’ unveiling a drone shaped Italian cheese-bread at a restaurant in North Bergen.
It’s endless and of course it’s become political. The governor of New Jersey has been holding press conferences about the issue. The newly-elected junior Senator of New Jersey even went out with local cops one night to try to capture video. The frenzy and the fear have gotten so intense that both the Pentagon and the White House have had to respond: we don’t know exactly what these alleged sightings are, they’ve been saying, but we do know they aren’t a threat.
That may be reasonable and true, but it has done little to sway millions of people looking at blurry images of some lights in the sky over the industrialized swamplands of north Jersey and concluding that Independence Day just got real. After all, this is a country where the government and the media have -- in some ways deservedly -- lost the trust of a majority of Americans.
That so many of these sightings seem, upon further inspection, to actually be conventional airplanes or ordinary recreational drone users, none of this matters now.
The story isn’t the story. As ever, the story is the story of the story. And the story of the story is this: our problem isn’t up there in the skies, it’s down here on the ground.
As always, there is a grain of truth to the madness. St Nicholas of Myra really was a patron saint of toymakers who is said to have dropped a few gold coins down a chimney into a fireplace stocking for a poor family. And yes, in turn, we really do have a problem with drone security. “Unmanned systems pose both an urgent and enduring threat” – that was the word from the Pentagon, which earlier this month signed off on a massive, classified new strategy meant to improve US ability to track, trace, and fend off drone threats at home and abroad.
But this whole episode exposes a much more basic and easily exploited vulnerability: it's just laughably easy to stoke distrust and hysteria in America these days.
And if you are a Russia, or a China or, say, some inter-galactic civilization keen to travel fifty million light years just to conquer a piece of northern New Jersey, this piece of information is, itself, the greatest holiday gift of all.
Poll: Americans split on military response to hostage crisis
As negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire enter what officials describe as a “decisive and final phase,” GZERO’s exclusive poll reveals deep divisions among Americans over potential US military involvement in securing hostage releases. The survey, done in partnership with Echelon Insights, comes as Israel and Hamas appear close to agreeing on a staged ceasefire plan that would include the release of remaining hostages.
Thirty-four percent of Americans support direct US military intervention if Hamas fails to release the remaining hostages, while 29% prefer increased military support to Israel without direct US involvement. Only 15% oppose any military action, while 22% are unsure.
The poll results emerge as peace prospects improve, with both Israeli and Palestinian officials signaling progress in negotiations. It’s also a process that the US is very keen to see succeed. Trump’s team has reportedly been working alongside Biden officials for weeks to secure a ceasefire deal before the president-elect takes office — with Trump repeatedly threateningthat if the hostages are not home by Jan. 20, inauguration day, “all hell is going to break out.”Victorville joined the nationwide Amazon workers strike as employees there demand higher wages, better benefits and safer working conditions.
9,000: The Japanese city of Fukushima is about to go through the trash and put people on blast. Beginning next year, city authorities will rummage through bags that have been incorrectly sorted or improperly disposed of in order to identify, and in some cases publicly shame, those responsible. The move is part of a wider push to improve waste disposal in a city where 9,000 garbage disposal violations were recorded last year.
100: So far, at least 100 North Korean soldiers have been killedand nearly 1,000 wounded while fighting on Russia’s behalf in the Ukraine war, according to South Korea. Those are heavy losses for a total force of about 10,000 that arrived in late summer to help the Kremlin repel a Ukrainian invasion of the Russian border region of Kursk. The North Koreans’ lack of experience with drone warfare is believed to be one reason they are getting hit so hard.
225: The Bosnian capital of Sarajevo grounded flights and asked people to stay indoors on Thursday as a toxic winter fog settled over the city, bringing the air quality index to a “very unhealthy” level of 225. The widespread burning of coal and wood for heat in the winter months contributes to pollution, which tends to gather in the city, which lies in a valley surrounded by mountains.
2.2 million: This year, only 2.2 million tourists visited Cuba, a full million short of the communist government’s target, and less than half the pre-pandemic average. The collapse of the tourism industry — once responsible for more than 10% of GDP — has dealt a crippling blow to the island nation, which has suffered blackouts and shortages of fuel and food. The deepening economic crisis has caused more than 10% of Cuba’s population to flee the communist-led country over the past two years.
Representatives on Capitol Hill spent all day Thursday scrambling to cobble together a deal to keep the government open, after pressure from President-elect Donald Trump sank must-pass legislation on Wednesday.
Representatives on Capitol Hill spent all day Thursday scrambling to cobble together a deal to keep the government open, after pressure from President-elect Donald Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk sank must-pass legislation on Wednesday.
If lawmakers can’t agree and pass a continuing resolution — legalese for kicking the financial can down the road — by the end of the day on Friday, the government will shut down. Late on Thursday, Republicans presented a deal that Trump called a “SUCCESS,” while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) called it “laughable” and insisted the caucus would not support anything but the originally negotiated plan.
While the new plan would fund federal agencies through March 14, and preserve provisions for disaster relief and farm aid, it also gives Trump a major concession. The bill would suspend America’s debt ceiling from Jan. 1, 2025, to Jan. 30, 2027, giving the president a break through his first round of midterm elections. Without Democratic votes, Republicans don’t have the numbers to pass the bill.
If the deal falls through, millions of Americans will see their government benefits halted, the military will work without pay, and much of the federal government will be furloughed just ahead of the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays.
We’re watching how Congress hammers its way out of this dilemma, but longer term, we have our eye on the influence of Musk, whose social media rampage — over 150 posts starting before dawn on Wednesday — kicked off this maelstrom.
A French courtsentencedDominique Pelicot, 72, to 20 years in prison on Thursday for drugging and orchestrating the mass rape of his ex-wife, Gisèle Pelicot.
Gisèle Pelicot, who chose towaive her anonymity, has become a global feminist icon. Despite enduring horrific abuse and a grueling trial, she thanked her supporters, saying, “I think of the unrecognized victims. … We share the same fight.”
After the verdict, rape survivors fromacross the world sent messages of support and admiration, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad,Argentine actress Thelma Fardin, and Scottish campaigner and rape survivor Ellie Wilson, who said Pelicot has “an army of women behind her.”
Pelicot’s bravery also sparked debates on updating rape laws in France, where 94% of rape cases are reportedly dropped and only 10%-15% of defendants convicted. Other countries have also taken note: German Chancellor Olaf Scholtzwrote, “You gave women around the world a strong voice. The shame always lies with the perpetrator,” while Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchezsaid, “Let shame change sides.”
We’ll be watching to see whether legislators follow their words with action.