ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

The New York Times

By Catie Edmondson and Andrew Duehren

Something unusual happened this week after President-elect Donald J. Trump ordered House Republicans to back legislation raising the debt limit: Dozens refused.

It was a rare breach by a group of Republicans who have traditionally backed Mr. Trump’s policy preferences unquestioningly and taken pains to avoid defying him.

And it laid bare a disconnect between Mr. Trump and his party that could upend their efforts next year to pass transformative tax and domestic policy legislation with the tiniest of majorities. Even as Mr. Trump has displayed a laissez-faire attitude to the federal debt and a willingness to spend freely, a number of lawmakers in his party fervently adhere to an anti-spending philosophy that regards debt as disastrous.

In this week’s spending bill fight, Mr. Trump was intent on trying to absolve himself of responsibility for dealing with the debt ceiling, which is expected to be reached sometime in January. Raising it while President Biden was still in office and Democrats still held the Senate, he apparently believed, could avoid a messy internal Republican fight over the issue next year when Mr. Trump is in the White House and his party in full control of Congress.

Instead, he only accelerated that clash, which unfolded on the House floor on Thursday night when 38 Republicans refused to suspend the borrowing limit without spending cuts.

They tanked a spending plan that would have deferred the debt cap for two years, and by Friday, when Speaker Mike Johnson advanced a third proposal to avert a shutdown to the House floor, they had jettisoned the debt limit measure entirely, promising instead to deal with it next year.

That version passed the House on Friday evening with bipartisan support, before the Senate followed suit early Saturday and sent it to Mr. Biden for his expected signature. The only lawmakers voting to oppose it in the House — all 34 of them — were Republicans.

“To take this bill, to take this bill yesterday, and congratulate yourself because it’s shorter in pages, but increases the debt by $5 trillion, is asinine,” Representative Chip Roy of Texas said on Thursday night in a scathing speech deriding the legislation carrying the debt limit increase. “I’m absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go forward to the American people and say you think this is fiscally responsible.”

Mr. Trump has never taken up the traditional spending hawk talking points that have long defined the Republican Party and became the dogma of the Tea Party wave of 2010. He has floated getting rid of the debt limit altogether — a stance embraced more by progressive Democrats than members of his own party — and once proudly declared himself “the king of debt.” He told “CBS This Morning” that he had “made a fortune by using debt, and if things don’t work out I renegotiate the debt.”

During his first administration, Mr. Trump approved $8.8 trillion of gross new borrowing and $443 billion of deficit reduction, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He saw a political upside to free-spending policies, including sending out stimulus checks stamped with his signature. And he pledged never to touch Social Security, breaking with G.O.P. fiscal hawks who have long called for overhauling the program to rein in its unsustainable costs.

On the campaign trail this past cycle, he floated a flurry of far-reaching policies with potentially hefty price tags, including exempting certain forms of pay from taxes.

But even as the Republican Party has evolved to absorb Mr. Trump’s views, a critical mass of lawmakers in his party — particularly hard-liners in the House — say that the No. 1 reason they ran for Congress was to tackle the problem of the nation’s ballooning debt. They have pledged not to vote for anything that would increase spending or the country’s borrowing limit without commensurate cuts.

Some Republicans fell in line on Thursday night and swallowed their objections to raising the debt limit. Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado said she largely favored the bill in support of Mr. Trump.

“I did not want to see a failure on the House floor for the first demand that President Trump was making,” she said.

But House Republicans’ tiny majority in both this Congress and the next means that even a small bloc of virulently anti-debt conservatives can sink critical legislation.

A New York Times analysis of votes on spending bills since 2011 found that hard-right lawmakers associated with the Freedom Caucus have voted in favor of government funding bills less than 20 percent of the time. A smaller group of ultraconservative members has almost always voted against appropriations bills — in an average of 93 percent of cases.

It was that group of lawmakers that revolted against Mr. Trump's call this week to raise the debt limit without any cuts in exchange.

Representative Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, who once held four town halls with constituents across his sprawling district in one day to talk about the national debt, said that when he cast his vote against the legislation, he was thinking about “all Oklahoma families, farmers and ranchers who lost approximately 20 percent of their purchasing power since 2020 because of Congress’s continual deficit spending.”

Others said there were limits to Mr. Trump’s clout on the issue.

“President Trump has a lot of sway with Republicans, obviously,” said Representative Bob Good of Virginia, who is leaving Congress at the end of the year after losing a primary to a Trump-backed challenger. “Things that he says, I’m sure, have influence on individuals. But the House needs to operate as the House. I think it would have been a terrible decision to raise the debt limit without really meaningful spending cuts and structured fiscal reform.”

Representative Eric Burlison of Missouri said even his affection for the president-elect could not sway him to break a promise to his constituents.

“When I ran for office, I said I would not vote to raise the debt ceiling,” he told CNN. “I’ve never voted to raise the debt ceiling. I love Donald Trump, but he didn’t vote me into office; my district did.”

In an attempt to appease both those lawmakers and Mr. Trump — and to try to win the support to pass a stopgap spending bill — House Republican leaders on Friday floated a pledge to cut spending and raise the debt limit in separate legislation next year. Republicans have been preparing to pass party-line legislation through a fast-track process called reconciliation — a procedure leaders said Friday could be used next year to address Mr. Trump’s demand to raise the debt limit.

That could introduce its own set of problems.

Roughly two-thirds of the money the federal government spends every year takes the form of “mandatory spending” — largely on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — that Congress does not need to approve every year. Mr. Trump has promised not to cut Social Security and Medicare, which pays for health care for older Americans.

That leaves Medicaid, a health care program for low-income people that makes up about 10 percent of the federal budget. Republicans have already been discussing ways to make cuts to the program, including requiring people to prove they work to receive coverage.

That promise will join cutting taxes, cracking down on immigration and allowing for more oil drilling on the G.O.P. agenda for next year. Republicans in the House and Senate have been at odds over how to tackle those priorities, with some senators pushing for multiple bills and House members demanding one huge effort.

This week’s ugly infighting showed that even one such vote could be an exceedingly heavy lift.

Already right-wing lawmakers in the Freedom Caucus are insisting that any costs incurred by extending the tax cuts Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017 will need to be offset by additional spending cuts to win their support.

Those types of reductions could run into a buzz saw among more mainstream Republicans, particularly those in competitive races who will be loath to defend approving major cuts to programs their constituents use.

Balancing it all, Representative Jodey C. Arrington of Texas, the chairman of the Budget Committee, conceded on Friday, is only going to get more difficult when the Republican majority shrinks even further next year.

But, he said, Republicans had won “an imperative window for righting the ship. And that’s why the stakes are higher now.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/us/politics/gop-spending-hawks-trump-debt.html

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

The New York Times

By Lisa Friedman

President-elect Donald J. Trump has tapped Mark Burnett, the producer who helped turn him into a household name with “The Apprentice,” as special envoy to Britain.

“With a distinguished career in television production and business, Mark brings a unique blend of diplomatic acumen and international recognition to this important role,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post, noting that Mr. Burnett had won 13 Emmy Awards.

Mr. Burnett, 64, is perhaps best known for reshaping American television with the reality TV hit “Survivor” in 2000. He also helped produce shows like “Shark Tank,” “The Voice” and “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”

But it is “The Apprentice” that will forever bind Mr. Burnett and Mr. Trump. The show, which debuted in 2004 on NBC and ran through 2017, was credited with rehabilitating Mr. Trump’s image after it was tarnished by financial difficulties. As The New Yorkerput it, the reality show “mythologized him anew, and on a much bigger scale, turning him into an icon of American success.”

The show presented Mr. Trump as the ultimate successful, self-made billionaire. On it, contestants competed to prove their business skills through a series of challenges. One would be eliminated at the end of each episode with Mr. Trump’s catchphrase, “You’re fired!” He wielded it on the campaign trail, too. “Kamala, you’re fired!” Mr. Trump said frequently at his rallies this year.

The show eventually spawned a spinoff, “The Celebrity Apprentice.” Mr. Trump initially hosted that program, too, but he ended up being fired himself. In 2015, NBC severed ties with himafter he referred to Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers in a speech announcing his bid for the White House.

Mr. Burnett played a pivotal role in one of Mr. Trump’s first major scandals, when several women came forward in 2016 to say they had been groped or assaulted by Mr. Trump, and a video surfaced of Mr. Trump boasting that he could sexually assault women and get away with it. Mr. Burnett resisted intense pressure to release footage from the “Apprentice” set that some former crew members said could reveal Mr. Trump acting in vulgar ways.

But days after Mr. Burnett said in a statement in October 2016 that he did “not have the ability nor the right to release footage or other material from ‘The Apprentice,’” he also distanced himself from Mr. Trump.

“I am not now and have never been a supporter of Donald Trump’s candidacy. I am NOT ‘Pro-Trump,’” Mr. Burnett said in a second statement.

“Further, my wife and I reject the hatred, division and misogyny that has been a very unfortunate part of his campaign,” he added.

But, by year’s end, he was involved in planning the festivities for Mr. Trump’s inaugural week.

It is unclear what Mr. Burnett’s duties as special envoy will be. Mr. Trump has already named Warren Stephens, an investment banker and billionaire, as his choice for ambassador to Britain.

Mr. Trump said that Mr. Burnett, who was born in London, would “work to enhance diplomatic relations, focusing on areas of mutual interest, including trade, investment opportunities and cultural exchanges.”

Also unknown is whether Mr. Burnett’s prospective role will require Senate confirmation. Since 2023, special envoys have required Senate confirmation if they meet a specific standard set out in U.S. law, but Mr. Trump and a Republican-controlled Senate could decide that Mr. Burnett’s position does not meet that standard.

Mr. Burnett served as president of United Artists Media Group from 2014 to 2018 and as chairman of MGM Worldwide Television Group from 2018 to 2022. The only child of Ford factory workers, Mr. Burnett was raised in Dagenham, Essex. He served in the British Army and in 1982 immigrated to the United States.

Mr. Trump has announced several ambassadorial and special envoy positions over the past week, including one for his former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, whom he chose as envoy for “special missions.”

On Saturday, Mr. Trump also named Tilman J. Fertitta, the billionaire owner of the Houston Rockets, to be his ambassador to Italy. Mr. Fertitta is the owner of the restaurant group Landry’s, and he became the star of the CNBC show “Billion Dollar Buyer.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/us/politics/mark-burnett-special-envoy.html

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

By Charlie Savage Dec. 21, 2024

Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two additional trips from a billionaire patron that had not previously come to light, Senate Democrats revealed on Saturday after conducting a 20-month investigation into ethics practices at the Supreme Court.

The findings were part of a 93-page report released by Democratic staff members of the Judiciary Committee along with about 800 pages of documents. It said the two trips, both of which had been previously unknown to the public, took place in 2021 and were provided by Harlan Crow, a real estate magnate in Texas and a frequent patron of Justice Thomas’s.

One trip took place that July by private jet from Nebraska to Saranac, N.Y., where Justice Thomas stayed at Mr. Crow’s upstate retreat for five days. The other came in October, when Mr. Crow hosted Justice Thomas overnight in New York on his yacht after flying him from the District of Columbia to New Jersey for the dedication of a statue.

The disclosures were one of the few new revelations in a report that otherwise largely summarized information about largess accepted by justices — and failures to disclose it — that had already become public. Justice Thomas had not disclosed the trips, even after refiling some of his past financial forms, and the committee learned about them through a subpoena to Mr. Crow, the report said.

In a posting on X on Saturday, Mark Paoletta, a friend of Justice Thomas’s, dismissed the report as “pathetic.” Mr. Paoletta, a former top lawyer for the White House budget office in the last Trump administration who is set to reprise that role in the next one, has offered public defenses of the justice amid scrutiny of his ties to Mr. Crow.

The committee also issued a subpoena to Leonard Leo, a conservative power broker who had helped organize a fishing trip to a remote part of Alaska in 2008 for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., with private jet travel provided by a billionaire hedge fund manager. Justice Alito had not disclosed that trip — and later said he was not required to by the rules as they then existed.

Mr. Leo has refused to comply with the subpoena, the report said. The appendix included a letter from his lawyer calling it “unlawful and politically motivated,” a portrayal the Democrats rejected.

For most of its history, the Supreme Court had no formal ethics code, unlike lower-court judges, and resisted pressure to adopt one for itself. For constitutional reasons, it is difficult to impose enforceable rules on the justices, who have life tenure and answer only to themselves on ethical matters like whether to recuse from cases.

The death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016 during a free stay at a Texas businessman’s hunting lodge brought attention to the more than 250 privately funded trips he had accepted over a 10-year period, many to luxurious destinations.

In March 2023, the Judicial Conference of the United States, the policymaking body for the federal courts, adopted rules to clarify what counts as “personal hospitality” that judges need not reveal on judicial disclosure forms. They explicitly required judges to disclose certain free travel by private jet and stays at commercial hotels, resorts and hunting lodges.

But the Supreme Court did not consider those rules binding on itself, and there was no clear way to enforce them on justices. And critics said the conference has still defined the personal hospitality exemption in a way that gives judges and justices too much latitude to keep other gifts of luxury vacations hidden.

Soon after, a series of reports from ProPublica revealed the extent of undisclosed gifts to Justice Thomas by Mr. Crow and financial arrangements between them. Among them were lavish trips and Mr. Crow’s paying the private school tuition for a relative Justice Thomas had raised like a son.

That November, the Supreme Court for the first time adopted a binding ethics code, although critics said it remained toothless and had significant gaps.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee were investigating ethics at the Supreme Court while pushing a bill to impose a tighter ethics code on the court, sponsored by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island. Republicans largely resisted, defending Justice Thomas and portraying the broader effort as nothing more than a bid by liberals to delegitimize the rulings of the conservative-controlled court.

In June, Democrats had brought to light three other previously undisclosed gifts of private jet travel to Justice Thomas from Mr. Crow. The report reprised those as well as other episodes that have attracted ethics-related controversy, including the decisions by Justice Thomas and Justice Alito not to recuse themselves from cases involving the attempt by former President Donald J. Trump and his supporters to overturn his loss of the 2020 election.

Text messages have shown that Justice Thomas’s wife, a conservative activist, helped shape the legal effort to overturn the election. An upside-down flag associated with supporting that so-called Stop the Steal movement had been displayed at the time at Justice Alito’s home — a decision he attributed to his own wife.

The release of the report is most likely the end of Democrats’ efforts for now given that next month, Republicans will take control of the Senate.

Still, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said there was a need for a continued push for “a legislative solution to this crisis to restore trust in the highest court.”

“Whether failing to disclose lavish gifts or failing to recuse from cases with apparent conflicts of interest,” Mr. Durbin said in a statement, “it’s clear that the justices are losing the trust of the American people at the hands of a gaggle of fawning billionaires.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/us/politics/clarence-thomas-trips-disclosure-investigation.html

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

The NY Times

By Alan Rappeport Dec. 19, 2024

President-elect Donald J. Trump injected debt limit politics into already-fraught congressional spending talks this week, urging lawmakers to lift the debt limit or abolish it entirely before he takes office next month.

The re-emergence of the debt limit comes 18 months after Republicans and Democrats staved off a fiscal crisis and agreed to suspend a cap on how much the government can borrow until after the 2024 presidential election. That was supposed to clear the decks and sidestep a politically difficult vote during the heat of campaign season.

But now the problem is waiting for Mr. Trump. As he prepares to push an agenda of tax cuts and border security, Mr. Trump fears that a debt limit fight next year could interfere. His plans are expected to cost trillions of dollars, much of which will most likely need to come from borrowed funds. A drawn-out debt limit fight next year could force Mr. Trump and Republicans to bow to the demands of Democrats and could consume the congressional calendar.

“This is a nasty TRAP set in place by the Radical Left Democrats!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Wednesday night.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump successfully pushed Republican Speaker Mike Johnson to include a two-year suspension of the debt limit in a spending deal that is needed to prevent a pending government shutdown. But the House rejected the proposal on Thursday night, with right-wing lawmakers opposed to a debt limit increase joined by Democrats to scuttle the legislation. It failed by a vote of 174 to 235, with one member voting “present.”

Republicans are always reluctant to lift the debt limit, particularly when a Democrat is in the White House, saying it enables runaway spending. G.O.P. lawmakers regularly use it as a tool to extract concessions, such as spending cuts, from Democrats when they are in power.

But Republicans will soon control Congress, as well as the White House, putting the onus squarely on them to either deal with the debt limit or face the prospect of a default. The standoff over the debt limit last year roiled markets and led to a downgrade of the long-term credit rating of the United States. Mr. Trump would like to avoid a similar scenario on his watch.

By trying to address the debt limit during the final weeks of the Biden administration, Republicans are hoping to prevent Democrats from weaponizing it against them once they are in power. And, as Mr. Trump has made clear, a decision to raise the cap would allow him to blame Mr. Biden for increasing the borrowing limit.

“It’s clear Trump wants to clear the deck so he doesn’t have to have a budget/debt limit showdown on his watch to clean up the mess from the Biden spending sprees,” said Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation economist who has been an adviser to Mr. Trump.

Democrats demonstrated on Thursday that they did not want to go along with that plan, with the vast majority voting against the House measure to advance the bill.

Democrats have long criticized Republicans for playing dangerous games with the debt limit, and called for it to be abolished. But it is not clear how willing they might be to let go of it as a potential source of leverage. And while Mr. Trump has indicated that he is willing to spearhead a move to eliminate the debt limit, many Republicans might fear that following his lead would be fiscally reckless.

What is the debt limit?

The debt limit is a cap on the total amount of money that the United States is authorized to borrow to fund the government and meet its financial obligations.

Because the federal government runs budget deficits — meaning it spends more than it brings in through taxes and other revenue — it must borrow huge sums of money to pay its bills. Those obligations include funding for social safety net programs, interest on the national debt and salaries for members of the armed forces.

Approaching the debt ceiling often elicits calls by lawmakers to cut back on government spending. But lifting the debt limit does not actually authorize any new spending — in fact, it simply allows the United States to spend money on programs that have already been authorized by Congress.

When will the debt limit be reached?

After a protracted fight, lawmakers agreed in June 2023 to suspend the $31.4 trillion debt limit until Jan. 1, 2025.

On that day, the limit would have to be increased by the amount of debt that has been incurred since the suspension — about $5 trillion. If it is not lifted or suspended again, the Treasury secretary will then have to use “extraordinary measures” to ensure that the United States pays its bills, including interest payments to investors who have bought government debt. Those payments are essential to preventing the United States from defaulting on its debt.

It is not yet clear how long the Treasury secretary will be able to use extraordinary measures, which temporarily curb certain government investments so that the bills can continue to be paid. However, it is expected that the so-called X-date would come sometime in the middle of next year.

“The summer could be a period that we zero in on as an X-date time frame,” said Shai Akabas, the executive director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Economic Policy Program, adding that natural disasters or new legislation passed early next year could bring that date forward.

How could the debt limit complicate Trump’s agenda?

Republicans will soon control the White House, the Senate and the House, but with narrow majorities. That means Republican lawmakers will have to work with Democrats on most legislation to find enough votes for passage.

That is what happened during Mr. Trump’s first term, when Republicans controlled Congress but were reluctant to raise the debt limit. Mr. Trump was trying to force Democrats to fund his proposed border wall, threatening a government shutdown as a debt limit deadline approached.

Ultimately, he had to rely on Democrats, who drove a tough bargain over his demands, and he broke with his party to strike a deal with Democrats. Republicans were frustrated at the time over an agreement that included disaster relief money and a debt limit increase without including many of their policy priorities.

The machinations over the debt limit distracted Republican efforts to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, although lawmakers ultimately pushed it through at the end of 2017.

Republicans most likely want to avoid another paralyzing event this time around as they determine which of their many priorities they want to push through first. They are still deciding whether to first focus on extending the 2017 tax cuts next year, which is estimated to cost $4 trillion over 10 years, or to prioritize border security legislation.

They will need the votes of Democrats to deal with the debt limit, and a long standoff could hobble their ability to get other things done.

Abolish the debt limit?

One idea that Mr. Trump floated this week was to do away with the debt limit entirely.

According to the Constitution, Congress must authorize government borrowing. In the early 20th century, the debt limit was instituted so that the Treasury would not need to ask Congress for permission each time it had to issue debt to pay bills.

During World War I, Congress passed the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 to give the Treasury more flexibility to issue debt and manage federal finances. The debt limit started to take its current shape in 1939, when Congress consolidated different limits that had been set on different types of bonds into a single borrowing cap.

But the drama surrounding the debt limit has led to bipartisan calls for it to be ended. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen in 2021 called the debt limit “destructive” and said it should be eliminated. Her predecessor, Steven T. Mnuchin, expressed similar sentiments in 2017 when he described it as a “somewhat ridiculous concept” that does not limit spending.

Mr. Trump previously suggested that the borrowing cap was not necessary and said this week that the “Debt Ceiling guillotine” should be either extended or terminated before he takes office.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/business/trump-spending-talks-debt-limit.html

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

The NY Times

Catie Edmondsonl

The House has rejected Trump’s demands.

The House on Thursday rejected a hastily produced plan to avert a shutdown by tying a government funding extension to a two-year suspension of the federal debt ceiling, as conservative Republicans defied President-elect Donald J. Trump’s orders to support it.

The vote sent Speaker Mike Johnson back to the drawing board ahead of a Friday night deadline to find a way to keep government funding flowing. Right-wing lawmakers balked at increasing the government’s borrowing limit.

They were joined by Democrats who savaged Republicans for reneging on a bipartisan spending deal and refused to back a plan they said would be used to finance extensive tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of working people.

The vote was 235 to 174, with one member voting “present.”

Even before the measure hit the House floor, it appeared doomed to fail. It was made public roughly two hours before the vote was held, and Mr. Johnson used a special procedure to fast-track it to a vote that required two-thirds of lawmakers voting in support to push it across the finish line.

Like the original bipartisan deal Mr. Johnson struck with Democrats, which Mr. Trump blew up on Wednesday in a hail of criticism, the bill would extend government funding at current levels through mid-March, and provide $100 billion in disaster aid and $10 billion in direct payments to farmers. It would also extend the expiring farm bill for a year. The measure omits an array of other policy changes that had been included in the initial deal.

But by far the biggest change was the addition of a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling, a demand that Mr. Trump abruptly issued on Wednesday — two days before the shutdown deadline — and then insisted that Republicans include in any measure to keep government spending flowing.

The proposal was at odds with the stated position that many G.O.P. lawmakers have held for years — that they would never back an increase in the government’s borrowing limit without spending cuts to slow the growth of the national debt.

“You never have any ounce of self-respect,” Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, said in heated remarks to his G.O.P. colleagues on the House floor. “To take this bill and congratulate yourself because it’s shorter in pages, but increases the debt by $5 trillion, is asinine.”

He added that he was “absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility” but was prepared to support legislation that would pave the way for so much more debt.

Mr. Johnson’s original plan to avert a shutdown imploded on Wednesday amid a backlash by G.O.P. lawmakers that was fueled by Elon Musk, who spent much of the day trashing the measure on social media and threatening the political future of any Republican who supported it. Mr. Trump later joined in with his debt limit demand, saying he would rather raise it while President Biden is still in office than be responsible for doing so next year after he takes office and Republicans are in full control of Congress.

Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, tore into Republicans for rejecting the deal Mr. Johnson negotiated with her party, arguing that G.O.P. leaders had caved to Mr. Musk.

“We must unequivocally reject the illegitimate oligarchy that seeks to usurp the authority of the United States Congress and of the American people,” Ms. DeLauro said.

Congress must clear a funding extension and Mr. Biden must sign it before 12:01 a.m. Saturday to prevent a lapse in government operations.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/19/us/trump-spending-government-shutdown#trump-johnson-spending-bill-shutdown

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/us/politics/elon-musk-politics.html

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/us/politics/elon-musk-politics.html

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

The NY Times

By Michael D. ShearAnnie Karni and Ryan Mac

When President-elect Donald J. Trump picked “the Great Elon Musk,” the world’s richest man, to slash government spending and waste, he mused that the effort might be “the Manhattan Project of our time.”

On Wednesday, that prediction looked spot on. Wielding the social media platform he purchased for $44 billion in 2022, Mr. Musk detonated a rhetorical nuclear bomb in the middle of government shutdown negotiations on Capitol Hill.

In more than 150 separate posts on X, Mr. Musk demanded that Republicans back away from a bipartisan spending deal that was meant to avoid a government shutdown over Christmas. He vowed political retribution against anyone voting for the sprawling bill backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Mr. Musk reposted the complaints by conservative Republicans about the spending measure, celebrating each as a win. He also shared misinformation about the bill, including false claims that it contained new aid for Ukraine or $3 billion in funds for a new stadium in Washington.

By the end of the day, Mr. Trump issued a statement of his own, calling the bill “a betrayal of our country.”

It was a remarkable moment for Mr. Musk, who has never been elected to public office but now appears to be the largest megaphone for the man about to retake the Oval Office. Larger, in fact, than Mr. Trump himself, whose own vaunted social media presence is dwarfed by that of Mr. Musk.

The president-elect counts 96.2 million followers on X, while Mr. Musk has 207.9 million. (Mr. Musk is also far richer than Mr. Trump. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he is worth $442 billion, while the president-elect is worth a mere $6.61 billion.)

Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk dined at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort on Wednesday night even as Mr. Musk’s tweets were roiling Washington. Mr. Musk was not initially expected to be part of the dinner but joined as it was underway, according to two people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private dinner.

Mr. Musk and Jeff Bezos are among a string of tech billionaires who have flocked to Mr. Trump’s Florida estate. Mr. Bezos, the Amazon and Blue Origin founder who also owns The Washington Post, recently gave $1 million to the committee planning Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

On Thursday morning, Mr. Trump sought to reclaim control of the political debate for himself, issuing a threat of sorts to Mr. Johnson that he must not give in to Democrats as he tries to find a way to keep the government operating without incurring the wrath of Mr. Musk.

“If the speaker acts decisively, and tough, and gets rid of all of the traps being set by the Democrats, which will economically and, in other ways, destroy our country, he will easily remain speaker,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Digital.

Left unclear was whether Mr. Musk is a loose cannon pursuing his own agenda or the tool that Mr. Trump envisioned to rein in an out-of-control bureaucracy when he appointed him to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, with Vivek Ramaswamy, another billionaire.

Many House Republicans have been left deeply frustrated by Mr. Musk’s involvement in spending negotiations and legitimately concerned about his threat to find primary challengers to take on any lawmakers who vote for a spending bill he doesn’t like. Lawmakers said they were alarmed and that they have never seen a donor outwardly exact so much influence on policy after his preferred candidate won an election.

They are also stuck taking their cues from Mr. Musk’s social media feeds, where he is promoting members who are in agreement with him. Despite his occasional presence on the Hill and in his role leading DOGE, Mr. Musk does not interface directly with many members of Congress. Mr. Ramaswamy has been the one talking directly with them.

On the House floor on Thursday, lawmakers were fuming that Mr. Musk is not a member of Congress and is exerting too much influence on their proceedings. Representative Glenn Thompson, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Agriculture committee, told reporters that he “didn’t see where Musk has a voting card.”

Mr. Thompson, who was deeply involved in negotiating direct payments for farmers that are now effectively dead because of Mr. Musk, added, “I’m not sure he understands the plight of the normal working people right now.”

As their offices were flooded with calls, appropriators and lawmakers from rural areas were livid that Mr. Musk had spent the day posting on social media to effectively kill the bill. Members were glued to his nonstop feed as they walked to and from votes, and some privately expressed concerns about their own political futures if he went through with his threats.

Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who has long railed about the undeserved power of wealthy business executives, appeared to have reached his own conclusion, sarcastically referring to Mr. Musk, the owner of X and Tesla, as the president.

“Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government,” Mr. Sanders wrote— on X, of course. “The richest man on Earth, President Elon Musk, doesn’t like it. Will Republicans kiss the ring? Billionaires must not be allowed to run our government.”

Conservative Republicans rallied behind Mr. Musk’s barrage of posts.

Representative Andy Barr, Republican of Kentucky, told Fox News that “this is exactly what the American people voted for when they voted for Donald Trump.”

After Mr. Musk threatened on X to “vote out” any member who voted for the spending bill, Representative Dan Bishop of North Carolina cheered. “In five years in Congress, I’ve been awaiting a fundamental change in the dynamic,” he wrote online. “It has arrived.”

Some Republicans even went so far as to suggest that the party should replace Mr. Johnson with Mr. Musk as speaker, noting that speaker candidates don’t have to be a sitting member of Congress to win the gavel.

“I’d be open to supporting @elonmusk for Speaker of the House,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia wrote on social media. She added: “The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday. This could be the way.”

That kind of lavish praise could come back to haunt Mr. Musk.

The president-elect gets famously irritable when the people in his orbit outshine him. Steve Bannon, once the chief strategist in the White House during his first term, abruptly departed after journalists focused attention on the power and influence he wielded. (One “Saturday Night Live” skit weeks into his presidency featured Mr. Bannon as the Grim Reaper standing behind the president and calling the shots in the Oval Office.)

One of Mr. Musk’s first posts about the spending bill came at 4:15 Wednesday morning in Washington.

“This bill should not pass,” the billionaire wrote on his social platform.

Between posts about his own video game antics and SpaceX’s satellite internet service, he used his X account to call the bill “criminal,” spread misinformation about its contents and issue a rallying cry to “stop the steal of your tax dollars!”

His posts followed a similar pattern of past activity on X, where he can become hyper-fixated on a single issue that bothers him. As the most popular user on X, Mr. Musk has used his feed as a bullhorn to drive conversation on the platform and beyond.

Wednesday, however, was the first time Mr. Musk has been able to use his website as a digital whip, driving lawmakers to support his desired outcome. By the afternoon, House representatives and senators — some of whom had already voiced their disapproval of the bill before Mr. Musk’s outbursts — were posting on X about their “no” votes and echoing Mr. Musk’s calls to curb spending and support the efficiency effort.

“Any Member who claims to support the @DOGE should not support this “CR of Inefficiency” that does not have offsets!!,” Representative Ralph Norman, a Republican from South Carolina, wrote on X, using shorthand for a continuing resolution to keep federal funding flowing. “Don’t get weak in the knees before we even get started!”

On Wednesday, narrative eclipsed truth. “The terrible bill is dead,” Mr. Musk posted just before 4 p.m. in Washington, closing his post with the Latin phrase “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” which translates to “the voice of the people is the voice of God.”

He’s used the refrain before, most notably when restoring Mr. Trump’s Twitter account in November 2022, shortly after buying the company. This time, the man who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars this election cycle to support Mr. Trump’s campaign used it to frame his own actions as the will of American citizens.

“No bills should be passed Congress until Jan. 20, when @realDonaldTrump takes office,” Mr. Musk wrote on X. “None. Zero.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/us/politics/elon-musk-politics.html

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

The NY Times

By Danny Hakim and Richard Fausset

Dec. 19, 2024

Georgia’s Court of Appeals on Thursday disqualified the Atlanta prosecutor who brought an election interference case against President-elect Donald J. Trump and his allies, a surprise move that threw the entire case into disarray.

In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel reversed the decision of the trial judge, who in March allowed Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., to keep the case, despite revelations about a romantic relationship she had with the lawyer whom she hired to manage the prosecution.

All three of the appeals judges were appointed by Republicans. Ms. Willis’s office swiftly filed court papers indicating that it would appeal the decision to the Georgia Supreme Court, which is also dominated by Republican-appointed judges. If the lower court’s decision stands, it could doom the case, which is the last active criminal prosecution involving charges against Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump and 14 of his allies are charged with conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

Judge Scott McAfee, the trial court judge, had rejected a defense claim that Ms. Willis’s relationship with the lawyer she hired had given her a financial stake in the case. But he found that the relationship had raised “a significant appearance of impropriety” that needed to be addressed, and he effectively forced Ms. Willis to dismiss the lawyer, Nathan J. Wade.

The appeals panel’s majority decision, written by Judge Trenton Brown, said that Judge McAfee’s decision “did not cure the already existing appearance of impropriety.”

The ruling came as a surprise, in part because Judge McAfee has a conservative record and was originally appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican. In a dissent, Judge Benjamin A. Land of the Court of Appeals, another Kemp appointee, wrote that he was “particularly troubled by the fact that the majority has taken what has long been a discretionary decision for the trial court to make and converted it to something else entirely.”

“If this Court was the trier of fact and had the discretion to choose a remedy based on our own observations, assessment of the credibility of the witnesses, and weighing of the evidence,” Judge Land continued, “then perhaps we would be justified in reaching the result declared by the majority.” He added: “But we are not trial judges, and we lack that authority.”

The Trump camp celebrated the win. In a statement, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said: “In granting President Trump an overwhelming mandate, the American people have demanded an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all the witch hunts against him.”

Steve Sadow, Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer in the Georgia case, said “as the court rightfully noted, only the remedy of disqualification will suffice to restore public confidence.”

“This decision puts an end to a politically motivated persecution of the next president of the United States,” he added.

Ms. Willis’s office did not comment beyond its appeal.

Ms. Willis, an elected Democrat, began her investigation of Mr. Trump and his allies nearly four years ago, but her case could be effectively dead if her office is not able to preserve its hold on the case. When a case is stripped from Georgia prosecutors, its fate is decided by a Republican-controlled state panel.

That panel already decided not to bring charges against Georgia’s lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, who acted as a fake elector for Mr. Trump in 2020. Ms. Willis and her office were barred from bringing charges against Mr. Jones as part of the Trump election interference case, because she had headlined a fund-raiser for one of his political rivals.

Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, called the ruling “exceptionally bad” in a series of posts on X and said that the appellate judges were encroaching on the trial court’s job.

Chris Timmons, a former Georgia prosecutor who has followed the case closely, said that “it’s a tough call to say whether the Court of Appeals got it right,” adding that “their reasoning was that the people lost confidence in the case.”

But he noted that Ms. Willis recently “won re-election in a landslide, suggesting that Fulton County at least has confidence in her.”

The prosecution was upended in January after a lawyer for one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants revealed in a court filing that Ms. Willis had engaged in a romantic relationship with Mr. Wade. Defense attorneys accused Ms. Willis of “self-dealing” because she took a number of vacations with Mr. Wade after hiring him, while using public funds to pay him more than $650,000 for his work on the case.

“Although reasonable minds could differ, I think that it’s very reasonable for the Court of Appeals to feel that public confidence in the district attorney’s office has been irreparably damaged in relation to this case,” said Clark D. Cunningham, an expert in legal ethics and a law professor at Georgia State University.

While not all of the 15 defendants took part in the appeal, Mr. Cunningham said that he expected all of the remaining defendants to now join it and that their chances of success were good.

Mr. Trump’s legal outlook has improved considerably since the November election. The U.S. Justice Department dropped its two cases against him since it has a policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. While Mr. Trump was convicted earlier this year of 34 felonies in a Manhattan case related to falsifying business records, the judge recently put off the sentencing, and prosecutors have signaled a willingness to freeze the case while Mr. Trump holds office.

Besides Georgia, four other states are pursuing criminal cases related to efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to cling to power after his 2020 election loss. But Georgia is the only state to have brought charges against Mr. Trump himself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/us/fani-willis-georgia-trump-case.html

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

President-elect Donald J. Trump has issued a veiled threat to Speaker Mike Johnson over the imperiled stopgap spending bill, telling Fox News Digital on Thursday morning that the speaker will be “easily” re-elected to the role next year if he does what Mr. Trump wants. Republicans and Democrats reached a deal this week that would avert a government shutdown set to start early Saturday, but Mr. Trump on Wednesday ordered Republicans not to support it, piling on to a barrage of criticism from Elon Musk. 

There is precious little time to make the major changes Mr. Trump has demanded. Congress has until Friday night to pass a bill that can clear the Republican-led House and the Democratic-controlled Senate and be signed by President Biden before government funding lapses at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. Here’s what to know ›

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/19/us/trump-news

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

A bipartisan spending deal to avert a shutdown was on life support on Wednesday after President-elect Donald J. Trump condemned it, leaving lawmakers without a strategy to fund the government past a Friday night deadline.

Mr. Trump issued a scathing statement ordering Republicans not to support the sprawling bill, piling on to a barrage of criticism from Elon Musk, who spent Wednesday trashing the measure on social media and threatening any Republican who supported it with political ruin.

It was not yet clear how Speaker Mike Johnson planned to proceed as the package, which was stuffed full of unrelated policy measures as well as tens of billions of dollars in disaster and agricultural aid, appeared to be hemorrhaging support. Some Republicans suggested he was mulling stripping the bill of everything but the spending extension and putting it to a vote, but the fate of such a measure was also very much in doubt.

The blowback from Republicans to the agreement underscored the complications top G.O.P. leaders will have to manage next year when they control all of Congress and face a president with a penchant for blowing up political compromises. It also showed the power of a circle of influential outside players in Mr. Trump’s orbit who appeared willing to punish Republicans if they failed to accede to his wishes.

Even before Mr. Musk began making noise, a swell of Republican lawmakers — both ultraconservatives and some mainstream members — had been furious about the funding measure, which was rolled out on Tuesday night. It began as a simple spending bill to keep government funds flowing past a midnight deadline and into mid-March, but it emerged from bipartisan negotiations laden with $100 billion in disaster aid and dozens of other unrelated policies.

The G.O.P. resistance meant that in order to pass the bill, Mr. Johnson was going to have to rely, yet again, on Democratic votes to pass it, using a special procedure that requires the support of two-thirds of those voting. But by Wednesday afternoon, the backlash to the legislation had spread so far and wide in G.O.P. ranks that it was unclear whether he would even be able to muster a bare minimum of Republicans to partner with Democrats and push it across the finish line.

The bill appeared doomed when Mr. Trump weighed in late Wednesday afternoon, saying lawmakers needed to pass a “temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS,” and said it should be combined with an increase in the debt ceiling, the cap on how much money the United States is authorized to borrow to meet its financial obligations.

“We should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want,” Mr. Trump wrote in a lengthy statement on social media that he issued jointly with Senator JD Vance, the vice president-elect.

They spoke up after Mr. Musk, who Mr. Trump has tapped to scale back the scope of federal government, had gone on a daylong rampage against the bill, posting nearly nonstop on his social media platform X about how lawmakers needed to kill it. He was joined by Vivek Ramaswamy, another billionaire who is partnering with Mr. Musk on the effort to streamline the government and slash spending.

Republicans gauging support for the legislation said they were bleeding votes as a result of Mr. Musk’s barrage.

“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Mr. Musk wrote in one post.

Mr. Johnson appeared on “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday morning to make a case for the bill, and said he had spoken to Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy earlier in the day.

“They said, ‘It’s not directed to you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending,’” Mr. Johnson recounted. “I said, ‘Guess what, fellas, I don’t either. We’ve got to get this done because here’s the key: By doing this, we are clearing the decks, and we are setting up for Trump to come in roaring back with the America First agenda.’”

Even before Mr. Trump got involved, typically reliable Republican votes for stopgap funding measures had begun to balk. Senator John Cornyn of Texas called the bill a “monstrosity.”

And anti-spending conservatives were livid.

“The American people wanted change,” said Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina. “They didn’t say go out and spend more money, put us more into debt. It’s the opposite of what the American people voted for.”

But just as conservative Republicans and Mr. Musk were railing against the bipartisan deal for adding too much spending to the national debt, Mr. Trump called for raising the debt ceiling, insisting that Republicans must increase it as part of the spending package so the borrowing limit would go up while President Biden was still in the White House.

It reflected a recognition by the president-elect that his party would have a difficult time raising the limit next year when they have full control of Congress, and that he would not want to sign such a measure. Many Republicans refuse to back debt ceiling increases, viewing them as politically toxic.

The borrowing limit is expected to be reached sometime in January, and a failure to increase it would cause a default on the nation’s debt. Mr. Trump acknowledged that he did not want to shoulder the responsibility for doing so.

“Increasing the debt ceiling is not great,” Mr. Trump said in his statement, “but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch.”

Later, in a separate social media post, he said that any Republican who “would be so stupid” as to vote for a funding extension without raising the debt ceiling “should and will” face a primary challenge.

Democrats, for their part, appeared in no mood to start any new negotiations.

“House Republicans have now unilaterally decided to break a bipartisan agreement that they made,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said on Wednesday evening. “House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt every day Americans all across this country. House Republicans will now own any harm that is visited upon the American people that results from a government shutdown.”

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/18/us/trump-news

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

A bipartisan spending deal to avert a shutdown was on life support on Wednesday after President-elect Donald J. Trump condemned it, leaving lawmakers without a strategy to fund the government past a Friday night deadline.

Mr. Trump issued a scathing statement ordering Republicans not to support the sprawling bill, piling on to a barrage of criticism from Elon Musk, who spent Wednesday trashing the measure on social media and threatening any Republican who supported it with political ruin.

It was not yet clear how Speaker Mike Johnson planned to proceed as the package, which was stuffed full of unrelated policy measures as well as tens of billions of dollars in disaster and agricultural aid, appeared to be hemorrhaging support. Some Republicans suggested he was mulling stripping the bill of everything but the spending extension and putting it to a vote, but the fate of such a measure was also very much in doubt.

The blowback from Republicans to the agreement underscored the complications top G.O.P. leaders will have to manage next year when they control all of Congress and face a president with a penchant for blowing up political compromises. It also showed the power of a circle of influential outside players in Mr. Trump’s orbit who appeared willing to punish Republicans if they failed to accede to his wishes.

Even before Mr. Musk began making noise, a swell of Republican lawmakers — both ultraconservatives and some mainstream members — had been furious about the funding measure, which was rolled out on Tuesday night. It began as a simple spending bill to keep government funds flowing past a midnight deadline and into mid-March, but it emerged from bipartisan negotiations laden with $100 billion in disaster aid and dozens of other unrelated policies.

The G.O.P. resistance meant that in order to pass the bill, Mr. Johnson was going to have to rely, yet again, on Democratic votes to pass it, using a special procedure that requires the support of two-thirds of those voting. But by Wednesday afternoon, the backlash to the legislation had spread so far and wide in G.O.P. ranks that it was unclear whether he would even be able to muster a bare minimum of Republicans to partner with Democrats and push it across the finish line.

The bill appeared doomed when Mr. Trump weighed in late Wednesday afternoon, saying lawmakers needed to pass a “temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS,” and said it should be combined with an increase in the debt ceiling, the cap on how much money the United States is authorized to borrow to meet its financial obligations.

“We should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want,” Mr. Trump wrote in a lengthy statement on social media that he issued jointly with Senator JD Vance, the vice president-elect.

They spoke up after Mr. Musk, who Mr. Trump has tapped to scale back the scope of federal government, had gone on a daylong rampage against the bill, posting nearly nonstop on his social media platform X about how lawmakers needed to kill it. He was joined by Vivek Ramaswamy, another billionaire who is partnering with Mr. Musk on the effort to streamline the government and slash spending.

Republicans gauging support for the legislation said they were bleeding votes as a result of Mr. Musk’s barrage.

“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Mr. Musk wrote in one post.

Mr. Johnson appeared on “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday morning to make a case for the bill, and said he had spoken to Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy earlier in the day.

“They said, ‘It’s not directed to you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending,’” Mr. Johnson recounted. “I said, ‘Guess what, fellas, I don’t either. We’ve got to get this done because here’s the key: By doing this, we are clearing the decks, and we are setting up for Trump to come in roaring back with the America First agenda.’”

Even before Mr. Trump got involved, typically reliable Republican votes for stopgap funding measures had begun to balk. Senator John Cornyn of Texas called the bill a “monstrosity.”

And anti-spending conservatives were livid.

“The American people wanted change,” said Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina. “They didn’t say go out and spend more money, put us more into debt. It’s the opposite of what the American people voted for.”

But just as conservative Republicans and Mr. Musk were railing against the bipartisan deal for adding too much spending to the national debt, Mr. Trump called for raising the debt ceiling, insisting that Republicans must increase it as part of the spending package so the borrowing limit would go up while President Biden was still in the White House.

It reflected a recognition by the president-elect that his party would have a difficult time raising the limit next year when they have full control of Congress, and that he would not want to sign such a measure. Many Republicans refuse to back debt ceiling increases, viewing them as politically toxic.

The borrowing limit is expected to be reached sometime in January, and a failure to increase it would cause a default on the nation’s debt. Mr. Trump acknowledged that he did not want to shoulder the responsibility for doing so.

“Increasing the debt ceiling is not great,” Mr. Trump said in his statement, “but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch.”

Later, in a separate social media post, he said that any Republican who “would be so stupid” as to vote for a funding extension without raising the debt ceiling “should and will” face a primary challenge.

Democrats, for their part, appeared in no mood to start any new negotiations.

“House Republicans have now unilaterally decided to break a bipartisan agreement that they made,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said on Wednesday evening. “House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt every day Americans all across this country. House Republicans will now own any harm that is visited upon the American people that results from a government shutdown.”

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/18/us/trump-news

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

A bipartisan spending deal to avert a shutdown was on life support on Wednesday after President-elect Donald J. Trump condemned it, leaving lawmakers without a strategy to fund the government past a Friday night deadline.

Mr. Trump issued a scathing statement ordering Republicans not to support the sprawling bill, piling on to a barrage of criticism from Elon Musk, who spent Wednesday trashing the measure on social media and threatening any Republican who supported it with political ruin.

It was not yet clear how Speaker Mike Johnson planned to proceed as the package, which was stuffed full of unrelated policy measures as well as tens of billions of dollars in disaster and agricultural aid, appeared to be hemorrhaging support. Some Republicans suggested he was mulling stripping the bill of everything but the spending extension and putting it to a vote, but the fate of such a measure was also very much in doubt.

The blowback from Republicans to the agreement underscored the complications top G.O.P. leaders will have to manage next year when they control all of Congress and face a president with a penchant for blowing up political compromises. It also showed the power of a circle of influential outside players in Mr. Trump’s orbit who appeared willing to punish Republicans if they failed to accede to his wishes.

Even before Mr. Musk began making noise, a swell of Republican lawmakers — both ultraconservatives and some mainstream members — had been furious about the funding measure, which was rolled out on Tuesday night. It began as a simple spending bill to keep government funds flowing past a midnight deadline and into mid-March, but it emerged from bipartisan negotiations laden with $100 billion in disaster aid and dozens of other unrelated policies.

The G.O.P. resistance meant that in order to pass the bill, Mr. Johnson was going to have to rely, yet again, on Democratic votes to pass it, using a special procedure that requires the support of two-thirds of those voting. But by Wednesday afternoon, the backlash to the legislation had spread so far and wide in G.O.P. ranks that it was unclear whether he would even be able to muster a bare minimum of Republicans to partner with Democrats and push it across the finish line.

The bill appeared doomed when Mr. Trump weighed in late Wednesday afternoon, saying lawmakers needed to pass a “temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS,” and said it should be combined with an increase in the debt ceiling, the cap on how much money the United States is authorized to borrow to meet its financial obligations.

“We should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want,” Mr. Trump wrote in a lengthy statement on social media that he issued jointly with Senator JD Vance, the vice president-elect.

They spoke up after Mr. Musk, who Mr. Trump has tapped to scale back the scope of federal government, had gone on a daylong rampage against the bill, posting nearly nonstop on his social media platform X about how lawmakers needed to kill it. He was joined by Vivek Ramaswamy, another billionaire who is partnering with Mr. Musk on the effort to streamline the government and slash spending.

Republicans gauging support for the legislation said they were bleeding votes as a result of Mr. Musk’s barrage.

“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Mr. Musk wrote in one post.

Mr. Johnson appeared on “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday morning to make a case for the bill, and said he had spoken to Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy earlier in the day.

“They said, ‘It’s not directed to you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending,’” Mr. Johnson recounted. “I said, ‘Guess what, fellas, I don’t either. We’ve got to get this done because here’s the key: By doing this, we are clearing the decks, and we are setting up for Trump to come in roaring back with the America First agenda.’”

Even before Mr. Trump got involved, typically reliable Republican votes for stopgap funding measures had begun to balk. Senator John Cornyn of Texas called the bill a “monstrosity.”

And anti-spending conservatives were livid.

“The American people wanted change,” said Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina. “They didn’t say go out and spend more money, put us more into debt. It’s the opposite of what the American people voted for.”

But just as conservative Republicans and Mr. Musk were railing against the bipartisan deal for adding too much spending to the national debt, Mr. Trump called for raising the debt ceiling, insisting that Republicans must increase it as part of the spending package so the borrowing limit would go up while President Biden was still in the White House.

It reflected a recognition by the president-elect that his party would have a difficult time raising the limit next year when they have full control of Congress, and that he would not want to sign such a measure. Many Republicans refuse to back debt ceiling increases, viewing them as politically toxic.

The borrowing limit is expected to be reached sometime in January, and a failure to increase it would cause a default on the nation’s debt. Mr. Trump acknowledged that he did not want to shoulder the responsibility for doing so.

“Increasing the debt ceiling is not great,” Mr. Trump said in his statement, “but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch.”

Later, in a separate social media post, he said that any Republican who “would be so stupid” as to vote for a funding extension without raising the debt ceiling “should and will” face a primary challenge.

Democrats, for their part, appeared in no mood to start any new negotiations.

“House Republicans have now unilaterally decided to break a bipartisan agreement that they made,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said on Wednesday evening. “House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt every day Americans all across this country. House Republicans will now own any harm that is visited upon the American people that results from a government shutdown.”

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/18/us/trump-news

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

THE NEW YOK TIMES

By Wendell Potter

Mr. Potter is the former vice president for corporate communications at Cigna.

I left my job as a health insurance executive at Cigna after a crisis of conscience. It began in 2005, during a meeting convened by the chief executive to brief department heads on the company’s latest strategy: “consumerism.”

Marketing consultants created the term to persuade employers and policymakers to shift hundreds, and in many cases thousands, of dollars in health-care costs onto consumers before insurance coverage kicks in. At the time, most Americans had relatively modest cost-sharing obligations — a $300 deductible, a $10 co-payment. “Consumerism” proponents contended that if patients had more “skin in the game” they would be more prudent consumers of health care, and providers would lower their prices.

Leading the presentation was a newly hired executive. Onstage, he was bombarded with questions about how plans with high deductibles could help the millions of Americans with chronic conditions and other serious illnesses. It was abundantly clear that insurance companies would pay far fewer claims but many enrollees’ health care costs would skyrocket. After about 30 minutes of nonstop questions, I realized I’d have to drink the Kool-Aid and embrace this approach.

And I did, for a while. As head of corporate communications at Cigna from 1999 until 2008, I was responsible for developing a public relations and lobbying campaign to persuade reporters and politicians that consumerism would be the long-awaited solution to ever-rising insurance premiums. But through my own research and common sense, I knew plans requiring significant cost sharing would be great for the well-heeled and healthy — and insurers’ shareholders — but potentially disastrous for others. And they have been. Of the estimated 100 million Americans with medical debt, the great majority have health insurance. Their plans are simply inadequate for their medical needs, despite the continuing rise in premiums year after year.

I grew uneasy after the company retreat. But it took an impromptu visit to a free medical clinic, held near where I grew up in the mountains of East Tennessee, to come face to face with the true consequences of our consumerism strategy.

At a county fairground in Wise, Va., I witnessed people standing in lines that stretched out of view, waiting to see physicians who were stationed in animal stalls. The event’s organizers, from a nonprofit called Remote Area Medical, told me that of the thousands of people who came to this three-day clinic every year, some had health insurance but did not have enough money in the bank to cover their out-of-pocket obligations.

That shook me to my core. I was forced to come to terms with the fact that I was playing a leading role in a system that made desperate people wait months or longer to get care in animal stalls, or go deep into medical debt.

The tragic assassination of the UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson has reinvigorated a conversation that my former colleagues have long worked to suppress about an industry that puts profits above patients. Over 20 years working in health insurance, I saw the unrelenting pressure investors put on insurers to spend less paying out claims. The average amount insurers spent on medical care dropped from 95 cents per premium dollar in 1993, the year I joined Cigna, to approximately 85 cents per dollar in 2011, after the Affordable Care Act restricted how much insurers can profit from premiums. Since then, big insurers have bought physician practices, clinics and pharmacy middlemen, largely to increase their bottom line.

Meanwhile, the barriers to medical care have gotten higher and higher. Families can be on the hook for up to $18,900 before their coverage kicks in. Insurers require prior authorization more aggressively than when I was an industry spokesman, which forces patients and their doctors through a maze of approvalsbefore getting a procedure, sometimes denying them necessary treatment. Sure, the insurance industry isn’t to blame for all the problems with our health system, but it shoulders much of them. (In response to a request for comment, Cigna told The Times that Mr. Potter’s views don’t reflect the company’s and that Cigna is constantly working to improve its support for patients.)

At Cigna, my P.R. team and I handled dozens of calls from reporters wanting to know why the company refused to pay for a patient’s care. We kept many of those stories out of the press, often by telling reporters that federal privacy laws prohibited us from even acknowledging the patient in question and adding that insurers do not pay for experimental or medically unnecessary care, implying that the treatment wasn’t warranted.

One story that we couldn’t keep out of the press, and that contributed most to my decision to walk away from my career in 2008, involved Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old leukemia patient in California whose scheduled liver transplant was postponed at the last minute when Cigna told her surgeons it wouldn’t pay. Cigna’s medical director, located 2,500 miles away from Nataline, said she was too sick for the procedure. Nataline’s family stirred up so much media attention that Cigna relented, but it was too late. Nataline died a few hours after Cigna’s change of heart.

Nataline’s death affected me personally and deeply. As a father, I couldn’t imagine the depth of despair her parents were facing. I turned in my notice a few weeks later. I could not in good conscience continue being a spokesman for an industry that was making it increasingly difficult for Americans to get often lifesaving care.

One of my last acts before resigning was helping to plan a meeting for investors and Wall Street financial analysts — similar to the one that UnitedHealthcare canceled after Mr. Thompson’s horrific killing. These “annual investor days,” like the consumerism idea I helped spread, reveal an uncomfortable truth about our health insurance system: that shareholders, not patient outcomes, tend to drive decisions at for-profit health insurance companies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/18/opinion/health-insurance-united-ceo-shooting.html

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/18/business/economy/trump-us-economy.html#commentsContainer

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

Michael Moore did not hold back.

Bring on the gasoline.

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

By Ben Protess

"Donald J. Trump’s lawyers have tried just about everything to overturn his criminal conviction in New York...."

blah... blah.... blah...

rhubarb...rhubarb...rhubarb...

"And even if the evidence was “admitted in error, such error was harmless,” he added, noting the “overwhelming evidence of guilt” introduced at trial...."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/nyregion/trump-juror-misconduct.html