I hope all you readers are safe from the wildfires in California. It sounds terrible.

The latest — at the present time, AG Merrick Garland plans to release the Jack Smith J6 report, probably on Friday, but hold back on the documents report. There are still two defendants in the documents case, Trump employees Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who are asking the report not be released. I assume any report not released before Trump takes office will be buried, and all traces of it in the Department of Justice likely destroyed. One assumes Jack Smith is keeping copies. Just for posterity, of course.

In other Trump crime news, today Trump asked the Supreme Court to stop Judge Juan Merchan from issuing a sentence in the hush money case. As reported in Business Insider,

Lawyers for Donald Trump have asked the US Supreme Court to block the president-elect’s Manhattan hush-money sentencing, currently set for Friday.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor is assigned to handle emergency applications from New York for the court, and she will get first pass at the application.

Sotomayor, nominated by President Barack Obama in 2009, issued a scathing dissent of the high court’s July 1 opinion granting presidents broad immunity from prosecution. The 525-page application filed by Trump on Wednesday morning refers to presidential immunity more than 300 times, and argues that it voids his conviction and indictment.

Sotomayor, nominated by President Barack Obama in 2009, issued a scathing dissent of the high court’s July 1 opinion granting presidents broad immunity from prosecution. The 525-page application filed by Trump on Wednesday morning refers to presidential immunity more than 300 times, and argues that it voids his conviction and indictment.

If she is unpersuaded by Trump’s application, she will refer it to the full panel of justices, where he would need a majority 5/9 vote to prevail.

The Court asked for a response by 10 a.m. Thursday from Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, so if they have a full panel vote I assume it will be after that. I like David Kurtz’s headline on this — Does The Roberts Court Have Any Dignity Left To Surrender?

In more other news: President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico suggested today that the United States be renamed “Mexican America.” 

This is embarrassing. The Associated Press reports,

President-elect Donald Trump told residents of Greenland that “we’re going to treat you well” as his oldest son visited the mineral-rich Danish territory that’s home to a large U.S. military base, heightening speculation that the incoming U.S. administration could seek to acquire it.

The president-elect later told a news conference he wouldn’t rule out using military force or economic coercion to take control of Greenland, saying that “we need it for national security.”

Earlier, the president-elect posted a video showing a TRUMP-emblazoned plane landing in Nuuk, the Arctic territory’s capital, in a landscape of snow-capped peaks and fjords.

“Don Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland,” Trump wrote. “The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!” Supporters later posted video of Trump speaking by phone to locals.

Just look at the headline on this mess:

The 56,000 inhabitants of Greenland must be getting alarmed. But was there some groundswell of demand for annexing Greenland I never noticed? Who other than Trump wants this? And what makes me suspect Putin put the idea in Trump’s thick head?

And, of course, he’s still talking about invading Panama and making Canada a state.

Anyway — in other news, Jack Smith was preparing to release his final report on Donald Trump by this Friday. This is a two-part report, one volume on J6 and one on stolen documents. Yesterday Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that the Justice Department may not release the report. (Some news stories have her blocking the documents part, but other says she’s trying to block the whole thing.) I take it there is question whether Loose has the authority to block either part of the document. So we’ll see what happens.

It’s January 6 again. Back in the day January 6 was the Feast of the Epiphany and the official end of the Christmas season. Now we remember The Insurrection. There are a number of Insurrection retrospectives online today. Joyce Vance reposted something she wrote on 1/7/2021. Don Moynihan has a good commentary headlined Jan. 6 and the Path Not Taken. President Biden has an op ed at WaPo headlined What Americans Should Remember About Jan. 6. But then see David Kurtz at TPM, who says Biden was mistaken when he wrote that we’re “beyond” the Insurrection.

The Insurrection isn’t over. It continues even now. Ever since the 2020 election we’ve been locked in a struggle against a faction of socially alienated and angry neo-fascists who have been whipped up into believing that Trump was robbed of an election — or, at least, are willing to say they believe it to justify their burn-it-all-down agenda. Standing against this faction are those who support the Constitution, democracy the rule of law, and the institutions of government, flawed though they may be. Plus there’s a big third faction of low-information voters who don’t know what the bleep is going on but voted for Trump because they think he’ll bring down the price of groceries. Which he won’t.

And I understand The Weather is dumping a ton of snow on Washington, DC. Seems poetic.

Meanwhile, MAGA freakazoid Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, has been pushing the claim that the FBI planned the January 6 insurrection. Yeah, he’s just the guy to head the bureau. Trump is putting his people into critical positions so that the work of January 6 — to destroy the guard rails that keep us safe from tyranny — can continue. He may yet succeed. And I fear the Republican majority in the Senate will meekly let him get away with it.

Related: I recommend The Internet Is Worse than a Brainwashing Machine at The Atlantic. No paywall.

In other news: The White House announced that “Today President Biden will take action to protect the entire U.S. East coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California, and additional portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska from future oil and natural gas leasing.” Great, but won’t Trump just reverse that as soon as he’s sworn in? Maybe not. According to The Daily Beast,

Biden is invoking the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) to prevent new fossil fuel developments off the East and West coasts of the U.S. as well as in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s North Bering Sea.

The law gives presidents the power to permanently withdraw parts of the Outer Continental Shelf from future oil and gas leasing—but doesn’t include a provision for how another president could revoke such an order. Trump would therefore likely have to get Congress to change the law before he could undo Biden’s action.

Trump’s pack of flying monkey supporters are screeching bloody murder about this, of course. None of the news stories I’ve seen are mentioning that there was a record oil production boom during the Biden Administration.

That’s an awkward milestone for President Joe Biden, who has arguably done more than any modern president to facilitate America’s transition away from fossil fuels to greener alternatives.

It turns out the Las Vegas Tesla cybertruck guy had a political motive after all. This is from Josh Marshall, who is a pro who is careful with facts:

…there is a pretty striking lack of attention to the political motives he expressed in at least two documents or what I guess we might call minifestos that investigators found on his iPhone.

Those documents denounce Democrats and demand they be “culled” from Washington, by violence if necessary, and express the hope that his own death will serve as a kind of bell clap for a national rebirth of masculinity under the leadership of Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Bobby Kennedy Jr.

Did you miss that stuff?

Yeah, me too!

It’s also still true that the Livelsberger possibly was suffering from PTSD and traumatic brain injury, and his second marriage was falling apart. But it seems peculiar (cough) that news outlets aren’t reporting this part of the story. Some news outlets have reported that these notes were found on his phone, but I haven’t found the parts where he said some of this:

Military and vets move on DC starting now. Militias facilitate and augment this activity.
Occupy every major road along fed buildings and the campus of fed buildings by the hundreds of thousands.
Lock the highways around down with semis right after everybody gets in. Hold until the purge is complete.
Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.

Or this:

Consider this last sunset of ‘24 and my actions the end of our sickness and a new chapter of health for our people. Rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans! We are second to no one.

All the news stories I’ve found about the notes just say he wanted his death to be a “wake-up call.” And that’s it. You can find the texts from Livelsberger’s phone here, courtesy of the Nevada Current.

It may be that news outlets didn’t want to inspire more armed insurrection, but I think the public needs to know that this guy was a Trump-loving terrorist. There will be more.

Here’s another outrage: I didn’t mention this earlier, but last month a guy in Virginia was found to have a huge stockpile of explosives in his home. FBI agents who searched the home found more than 150 homemade bombs. This was the largest seizure of homemade weapons in FBI history, the agency said. He also had an unregistered short-barrel rifle and has been stockpiling ammunition for that. Further,

[Detective] Cardwell testified that Spafford, in conversations with the informant, allegedly expressed a desire to “bring back political assassination” and had been using a photograph of President Joe Biden for target practice at a shooting range where he was pursuing a 300- to 400-yard sniper qualification. 

Brad Spafford, the bomb maker, has been connected to a far right movement called No Lives Matter that apparently just wants to burn everything down. If convicted of everything he appears to be guilty of, he could face decades in prison. But here’s the kicker — a federal judge released him on a $25,000 bond. Um, what? I understand he’s supposed to stay with his mother and not possess any firearms. Let’s hope he doesn’t kill anybody before the trial.

In other news: Ann Telnaes, the Washington Post cartoonist, has left WaPo after it killed one of her cartoons. This is it:

I guess Jeff Bezos was offended.

President Biden has awarded Presidential Medals of Freedom to Hillary Clinton and George Soros, which should make the MAGAts happy. It’ll give them something to be mad about. He also honored Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. — so not the Lesser — and the late George Romney, Mitt’s father, who was governor of Michigan.

We’ll keep Mike Johnson as Speaker for a while longer. He appeared to be two votes short on the first vote, but then a couple of holdouts changed their minds. I understand some of the Freedom Caucus creatures only voted for Johnson to avoid electing Hakeem Jeffries. Trump had endorsed Johnson, possibly to avoid there not being a Speaker to certify Trump’s election on January 6. And that was barely enough.

There has been whining from the creatures that Johnson isn’t the leader the House Republicans need. But as David Kurtz points out at TPM, House Republicans have been ungovernable for a while now.

If you trace the current era of Republicanism to the tea party era that started in 2010, then we’re 14 years into the kind of chaos being demonstrated again today on the Hill, where the GOP is unable to govern itself let alone a country.

I suppose that if Speaker Mike Johnson pulls out a re-election win, you could argue no harm/no foul. But the structural incentives that create this kind of recurring chaos will remain. It’s a mix of things we’ve talked about for years: a close margin in the House that gives the hard-right members more clout; performative destruction as a form of politics that eventually eats its own; extremism both collectively and individually that is rewarded with high media profiles and adoration from the right-wing base.

Consider the last few Republican speakers, going back to the 1990s. Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and now Johnson. There’s a pack of mutts for you. During the same period the Democratic speakers have been, um, Nancy Pelosi and then Nancy Pelosi again.

We’re learning a bit more about the Las Vegas Tesla cybertruck guy. Now it’s being said he shot himself in the head shortly before the Tesla combusted. The  deceased was Matthew Livelsberger, an active-duty soldier who is said to have sustained a head injury in the military and who also apparently had a history of spousal abuse. His second wife had just left him. He also was a big Trump supporter, his family said. The motive here may have been that he wanted to go out in a way that would be noticed. As of now there is no apparent connection between Livelsberger and the New Orleans truck killer, Shamsud-Din Jabbar. That probably was terrorism.

Well, 2025 is off to a volatile start already. I woke up this morning to a news story that lightning struck the Washington Monument and Capitol Building last night. If I were a superstitious person, I’d think this was an omen. Lightning also struck the Empire State Building. I can verify there was thunder last night here in New York. Which is weird for midwinter in New York. An omen of climate change?

Then we learned that in the early morning hours a guy drove a pickup truck into crowds in New Orleans, then got out of his truck and started shooting. Most recent news updates say that 15 people are dead as a result of the attack. Trump immediately began whining about migrant criminals. It turns out the shooter was born in Texas.

And a Tesla cybertruck exploded outsideTrump’s Las Vegas hotel. It’s not clear that this was intentional. The driver was killed; he appeared to be carrying fireworks. It may be awhile before we know what was up with the driver.

I’ve been working on a piece about Jimmy Carter’s version of evangelical Christianity, which is light years different from the MAGA version. It’s online now at Patheos, if you’re interested.

It’s sad the country is in such a mess now, as he departs. I haven’t heard any details about the funeral. I hope that doesn’t become a political mess. But everything does these days.

Greenland is preparing to defend itself from MAGA:

Let’s hope that not even Trump is stupid enough to send troops to Greenland.

Moving on … an online war has broken out among the MAGAts. As you may recall, a big part of Trump’s campaign pitch was that he was going to save Americans from all those evil immigrants. But there are a whole lot of immigrants — plus first-generation children of immigrants — being appointed to his administration. And some of them want to expand immigration. In particular, the techbros of Silicon Valley want the government to issue more H1b visas and green cards so that Silicon Valley companies can import more technonerds from India to work here.  This is not sitting well with the nativists. This is from Axios:

Catch up quick: The skirmishes started Sunday when Trump named venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as his adviser on AI policy.

Krishnan’s appointment triggered an anti-Indian backlash on social media, particularly given his past advocacy for lifting caps on green cards.

Vivek Ramaswamy escalated the conflict into a full-blown war Thursday morning with a post on X blaming an American culture that “venerated mediocrity over excellence” for the growth in foreign tech workers.

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy wrote, calling for a 1950s-style “Sputnik moment” to prioritize “nerdiness over conformity.”

“That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence,” he said.

Between the lines: Elon Musk’s X is the town square for the MAGA movement, and by stepping into that square and firmly criticizing American culture — while praising the immigrant work ethic and parenting model — Ramaswamy threw down a gauntlet.

Musk also weighed in, saying  that the number of “super talented” and “super motivated” techies in the U.S. is “far too low.” And why do I suspect that “super motivated” means “willing to work longer hours for less money”? Hmmm.

Here’s Ramaswamy’s entire X rant about the deficiencies of American culture, if you want to read it. After Ramaswamy posted this, White Supremacist Nick Fuentes accused Ramaswamy of trying to lure “500 million Indians to move here,” essentially accusing Ramaswamy of being an agent of the Great Replacement Theory.

When Trump appointed Indian-born venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence, alarms went off among the nativists. Laura Loomer has been blowing up social media over it.

Describing workers from India as “third-world invaders,” Loomer also took issue with Musk and Ramaswamy defending the tech industry importing “super talented engineers” from overseas.

“The average IQ in India is 76,” Loomer tweeted at one point, along with several other posts disparaging Indians and their home country.

The techbros have money, which gives them an edge with Trump over the likes of Loomer and Fuentes.

Another wrinkle is that the nativists, including Loomer, who criticized Elon Musk on X have all been stripped of their blue-check verification badges. Loomer wrote (on X),

Looks like Elon Musk is going to be silencing me for supporting original Trump immigration policies.

I have always been America First and a die hard supporter of President Trump and I believe that promises made should be promises kept. Donald Trump promised to remove the H1B visa program and I support his policy. Now, as one of Trump’s biggest supporters, I’m having my free speech silenced by a tech billionaire for simply questioning the tech oligarchy.

Elon has decided to retaliate by removing my blue check and demonetizing me.

I guess he doesn’t really believe in Free speech after all.

None of these people ever believed in free speech for everybody, of course.

Update: Now Elon Musk is throwing MAGA under the bus. On X he called MAGAs who are criticizing him “contemptible fools” who “must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem.” And Steve Bannon has declared war on Elon Musk.

Steve Bannon has joined the MAGA war between hard-line immigration opponents and tech executives like Elon Musk, taking the side of xenophobia on his War Room show Friday.

“H-1B visas? That’s not what it’s about. It’s about taking American jobs and bringing over essentially what have become indentured servants at lower wages,” the former Trump adviser turned pundit said, referring to the visa program that allows immigrants in specialized fields to work in the United States temporarily. 

“This thing’s a scam by the oligarchs in Silicon Valley to basically take jobs from American citizens, give them to what become indentured servants from foreign countries, and then pay ‘em less. Simple. To let them in through the golden door,” Bannon added. 

Trump has been silent about the whole mess.

Stuff to Read

Stephen Robinson, Public Notice, The Press Is Ignoring the Real Liz Cheney Scandal

Joyce Vance, Educate or Not

Try to forget politics for a few hours, anyway.

You’d think Christmas week people would settle down and not do much, wouldn’t you? But nooooooo. There are new outrages every hour. I can’t write about them all.

For example, if you had “Trump threatens to take back Panama Canal” on your bingo card, you’re ahead of me. Apparently Trump thinks itty bitty Panama is picking on the U.S.

President-elect Donald Trump has demanded Panama reduce fees on the Panama Canal or return it to US control, accusing the central American country of charging “exorbitant prices” to American shipping and naval vessels.

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, highly unfair,” he told a crowd of supporters in Arizona on Sunday.

“This complete rip-off of our country will immediately stop,” he said, referring to when he takes office next month. …

… If shipping rates are not lowered, Trump said on Sunday, “we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, quickly and without question”.

As far as I know, Panama isn’t charging U.S. ships any more than it charges other ships. The fees are a form of tariff, I understand. Also Panama needs to restrict traffic sometimes because of water level problems, probably related to climate change. BTW, Newsweek is reporting that the Trump Organization is fighting tax evasion charges in Panama. Gee, do you think there’s a connection?

And then, Trump brought back one of his comedy routines from the first term, in which he offered to buy Greenland from Denmark.

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote in a statement announcing that he had chosen Ken Howery to serve as ambassador to Denmark.

If he’s concerned about security in the North Atlantic, you would think he would take a greater interest in NATO. And in maintaining good relationships with NATO countries. That would make sense. But it’s also believed there are billions of gallons of oil under all that ice of Greenland, which may be what Trump is really concerned about.

The Matt Gaetz ethics report is now public. Here it is. And I say the Justice Department has some ‘splainin’ to do.

Remember last week, when President Musk tweeted, or x’ed, a bunch of nonsense and blew up the bipartisan agreement to keep the government funded? Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect explains why:

Elon Musk blew up a near-complete bipartisan budget deal with an avalanche of tweets contending that it was too costly, luring Donald Trump into demanding that Republicans kill it. But Musk’s real reason—a story that David Dayen broke in the Prospect—was that the agreement included painstakingly negotiated limits on American tech investment in China. Had that provision passed, it would have been costly to Musk’s extensive Chinese Tesla operations and future AI plans.

Between Tuesday and Thursday, the budget deal collapsed. Trump, following Musk’s lead, threw in a new demand that the deal tackle the debt ceiling, always a politically tricky vote. But neither Democrats nor Republican fiscal hawks would give Trump that.

In the end, legislators of both parties wanted to get home for Christmas, and both houses overwhelmingly passed a simple “continuing resolution” keeping the government funded at roughly present levels through March, plus disaster relief and farm aid. Musk succeeded in stripping out the China provision.

I guess if you’re rich enough to buy a government you are entitled to bespoke legislation.