Showdown on Capitol Hill
In typical Washington-meets-Broadway theatrics, the House of Representatives, responsible for D.C.’s purse strings, ran the government shut-down clock to a few minutes past the midnight deadline.
The first Continuing Resolution bill (intended to only extend current government spending) was 1,547 pages and full of new initiatives, a 40% pay increase for Congress and omnibus-like resolutions seen to be damaging to the upcoming Trump administration. Elon Musk took to X to block the bill from passing.
After some back and forth, a final bill 118 pages long was negotiated and passed, removing the Congressional pay raises and some of the more egregious spending pork. Musk took credit for the victory, cheering the reduction of the bill from one that weighed “pounds” to one that weighed only “ounces.”
Of course the most important part is what it costs, not what it weighs, but under the circumstances, all parties seem satisfied, and President Biden has signed the bill into law.
Russian Nuclear Defense Chief Dead
Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense Troops, has been killed in a Moscow blast, along with his deputy. Ukraine’s SBU has taken responsibility for the assassination. A scooter loaded with explosives was parked outside a building, and when the men exited, the explosives were remotely detonated.
According to CBS News, “Ukraine's SBU has said it recorded more than 4,800 occasions when Russia used chemical weapons on the battlefield since President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion in February 2022. In May, the U.S. State Department announced sanctions against Kirillov's unit, saying the U.S. had recorded the use of chloropicrin, a poison gas first deployed in World War I, against Ukrainian troops.” Chloropicrin is a non-lethal tear gas chemical weapon. Russia has denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and, in turn, has accused Kyiv of using toxic agents in combat.
Early Saturday morning, at least eight drones were reported to have attacked Kazan, capital of the Tartarstan republic 530 miles east of Moscow.
WSJ: “How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge”
The Wall Street Journal has written an exclusive and extensive piece from their interviews and discussions with nearly fifty people, “including those who participated in or had direct knowledge of the operations” of the Biden presidency and failed re-election campaign.
While the article may seem like old news prima facie, the Biden administration has publicly defended Biden’s cognitive abilities and labeled rumors that he wasn’t functioning at 100% as “misinformation.”
Some particularly disturbing excerpts:
“Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president. The president wasn’t talking to his own pollsters as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race.”
“There were limits over whom Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him, and limits around the sources of information he consumed.”
“If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion, in the spring of 2021, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. ‘He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day, so we’re going to address this tomorrow,’ the former aide recalled the official saying.” Note the date: 202.
“They issued a directive to some powerful lawmakers and allies seeking one-on-one time: ‘The exchanges should be short and focused,’ according to people who received the message directly from White House aides. Ideally, the meetings would start later in the day, since Biden has never been at his best first thing in the morning, some of the people said. His staff made these adjustments to limit potential missteps by Biden, the people said. The president, known for long and rambling sessions, at times pushed in the opposite direction, wanting or just taking more time.”
“Interactions between Biden and many of his cabinet members were relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted. At least one cabinet member stopped requesting calls with the president, because it was clear that such requests wouldn’t be welcome, a former senior cabinet aide said. One top cabinet member met one-on-one with the president at most twice in the first year and rarely in small groups, another former senior cabinet aide said.”
Teenage Girl Fatally Shoots Two at Christian School
On Monday, a 15-year-old girl identified as Natalie Rupnow, who also went by the name Samantha, fatally shot a teacher and a teenage fellow student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin with a 9mm pistol. The shooter was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound and died en route to the hospital. Madison police detectives are still working to identify a motive in the shooting.
Pentagon Admits Troop Deployment Numbers Are Higher in Syria than Previously Reported
Instead of the 900 troops stationed in Syria, as has been reported over the last few months, there are actually 2,000. “We have been briefing you regularly that there are approximately 900 U.S. troops deployed to Syria,” Pentagon Press Secretary Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told reporters during a press briefing on Thursday. “In light of the situation in Syria, and in significant interest, we’ve recently learned that those numbers were higher.”
Infamously, during the Trump administration, as the U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement, Ambassador James Jeffrey admitted in an interview with Defense One in November 2020 that his team played “shell games” to obscure the true number of U.S. troops in Syria from Trump and other senior officials. This was done to prevent a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region. Jeffrey stated that the actual number of troops was “a lot more than” the 200 troops Trump had agreed to keep after announcing a withdrawal. Jeffrey's comments were seen as an acknowledgment of a deliberate strategy to maintain a U.S. military presence in Syria despite Trump's repeated orders for troop withdrawal, which orders initially triggered Secretary of Defense General James Mattis’s tumultuous departure from the administration.
Other News:
Fed cuts interest rates again, by 0.25 percentage points. The Fed has now trimmed rates by one full percentage point since September.
A shocking 40% of young people believe Luigi Mangione was right to shoot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Apparently Taylor Lorenz isn’t alone.
Washington Free Beacon: George Stephanopoulos now responsible for contributing 200 times more to Trump Library than he ever did to Clinton Foundation. Nearly a decade ago, ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos faced criticism for his failure to disclose the $75,000 he gave the Clinton Foundation between 2012 and 2014. But those contributions pale in comparison to the $15 million ABC News agreed to donate to Donald Trump's future presidential library to settle a defamation case prompted by Stephanopoulos's on-air remarks. Fresh off of the victory against ABC, Trump has now filed a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS over a “deceitfully” edited “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Harris.
Billionaires and CEOs late to the party. Since Trump’s historic win, Mar-a-Lago diners have included Apple CEO Tim Cook, billionaire Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg. Some are also making $1M donations to the inauguration, joined by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and hedge fund manager Ken Griffin. _These billionaires have likely considered this token gift with as much ponderation and thoughtfulness as where they should buy their next pair of ski poles. _
A driver slammed into a crowded Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, killing at least two people and injuring at least 68. Authorities said it was a deliberate attack and that they had arrested the driver. The Associated Press ran a headline that made its own news, since guns and cars do not normally shoot and drive themselves: “A car has driven into a group of people at a Christmas market in Germany,” read the AP's headline. _Next week’s story: a deep dive into the car’s motive.
