"Dating apps are on the cusp of a major transformation," argues CNN, suggesting AI-powered possibilities like "personalized chatbots dating other chatbots on your behalf," as well as "AI concierges fielding questions about potential matches," and "advanced algorithms predicting compatibility better than ever before."
At its investor day last week, executives from Match Group — the parent company of Match.com, Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Our Time and more — teased plans to use AI to improve user experiences and help make better connections. Justin McLeod, CEO of Hinge, outlined how the company intends to fully embrace AI next year: more personalized matching, smarter algorithms that adapt to users and better understand them over time and AI coaching for struggling daters. "While AI is not going to be a panacea when it comes to the very deeply and personal problem of love, I can tell you that it is going to transform the dating app experience, taking it from a do-it-yourself platform to an expertly guided journey that leads to far better outcomes and much better value to our daters," he told investors....
It's already starting to play a bigger role. Tinder, for example, uses AI to help users select their best profile photos. Meanwhile, Bumble's recently enhanced "For You" roundup uses advanced AI when delivering its daily set of four curated profiles based on a user's preferences and past matches. Bumble also uses AI in safety features like its Private Detector — an AI-powered tool that blurs explicit images — and Deception Detector, which identifies spam, scams and fake profiles. Similarly, Match Group offers tools like buttons that say "Are You Sure?" to detect harmful language and "Does This Bother You?" to prompt users to report inappropriate behavior....
According to Liesel Sharabi, an associate professor at Arizona State University's Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, the dating industry is still "very much in the early stages" of embracing AI. "The platforms are still figuring out its role in the online dating experience, but it really does have the potential to transform this space...." Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd previously said she envisions AI functioning as a dating concierge, helping users navigate matches, set up dates and respond to messages. Startups such as Volar and Rizz have already experimented with chatbots that help respond to messages. On Rizz, users upload screenshots of conversations they're having on other dating apps, and the platform helps create flirty replies. (Volar, a standalone dating app that trains on users' preferences and automatically responds to other chatbots, shut down in September due to lack of funding.) While the concept of chatbots dating on your behalf may seem strange, it could reduce the tedious early-stage communication by focusing more on highly compatible matches, Sharabi said...
During Match Group's investor day, Hinge's McLeod announced plans to build the "world's most knowledgeable dating coach" using years of insights from the dating process... McLeod said Hinge has already seen a higher number of matches and subscription renewals with its improved AI algorithm among early test groups. It plans to roll this out globally in March.
And of course, some users are already using ChatGPT to write online dating profiles or respond to messages, the article points out...
This is a lot of words for "because Merrick Garland can't bear to prosecute Republicans"
The House Ethics Committee report about former Rep. Matt Gaetz offers some hints about why the Justice Department decided not to prosecute the former Florida congressman after a wide-ranging federal investigation into whether he committed sex trafficking.
The decision likely stemmed from concerns about the strength of the evidence and the department’s history of applying sex-trafficking laws narrowly, former prosecutors said Monday.
The modern federal sex trafficking law is limited to cases involving coercion, fraud or the interstate or international movement of minors for sex. Despite its damning evidence of wide-ranging violations of law and House rules by Gaetz, the Ethics Committee report did not find those factors.
The most egregious allegation Gaetz faces is having sex with a 17-year-old. But the Ethics Committee report does not say that he transported or arranged for transport of the alleged victim across state lines — an important point because some connection to interstate commerce is required for it to become a federal sex-trafficking crime. The report also says the then-17-year-old told investigators she did not tell Gaetz her age at the time, and that he didn’t ask.
The report does bluntly accuse Gaetz of having violated Florida’s statutory rape law. But it concluded that a state prosecution is impossible at this point because he allegedly had sex with the 17-year-old in 2017, and the state’s statute of limitations has expired.
The report also found “substantial evidence” that Gaetz committed other illegal conduct, including hiring prostitutes and using illicit drugs. Some of that conduct was connected to interstate commerce — but federal prosecutors likely felt it did not rise to the level of what is typically prosecuted under the relevant federal statutes.
The Mann Act is traditionally reserved “for situations where there's severe forms of trafficking and exploitation of the victims,” said Margaret Gandy, a former federal prosecutor.
Because Gaetz’ alleged interstate and international conduct involved women over 18 and there was no suggestion of violence or duress, DOJ may not have thought it was an appropriate Mann Act case to charge, Gandy said.
“When it is exploitative and abusive, when there's obviously physical force, coercion, duress, all those things, that makes it easy,” Gandy said. “There's more of a gray area sometimes around some more transactional sex with consenting adults that warrants that additional pause and consideration.”
Another former federal prosecutor, Robert Bittman, agreed that the department rarely brings sex-trafficking charges in cases of consensual sex between adults, even if money changed hands.
“It’s a crime, it’s a statute on the books that they can prosecute — but it’s not a high-priority thing,” he said. “It’s not something that’s often prosecuted, and really would only be prosecuted if there are significant, other aggravating factors.”
Federal prosecutors have also historically hesitated to bring cases that involve quid-pro-quos for sex that involve things other than an explicit payment.
The Justice Department concluded its investigation into Gaetz last year. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.
However, a law enforcement official said all DOJ decisions about Gaetz were made by career prosecutors. The official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly, added that this has been the standard practice for the Public Integrity Section, which handles sensitive investigations into political figures.
An attorney for Gaetz did not respond to a request for comment, and Gaetz directed reporters seeking comment to his social media posts.
“There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve-Eve report and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses,” Gaetz wrote on X, contending that many of the claims in the report were inaccurate. He has repeatedly denied having sex with anyone under 18 and said money he transferred to women was to compensate girlfriends or ex-girlfriends for their travel.
Chris Dorworth, the former Florida state representative at whose home Gaetz allegedly had sex with the 17-year-old, denounced the report and said its release was an act of retaliation against Gaetz for helping to bring down former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
“This is clearly a congressional hit job. It is painfully clear these women are lying,” Dorworth wrote on X. “This is a shakedown that caught fire because Matt kicked Kevin McCarthy out of his job. This DID NOT HAPPEN. Every thing they said about me being there and witnessing any of it is a lie.”
Some former DOJ officials cautioned that the feds’ decision not to bring a criminal case does not amount to the “exoneration” Gaetz has repeatedly claimed.
“Generally speaking, the Justice Department’s decision to not charge an individual doesn’t mean that he or she didn’t commit wrongdoing,” former DOJ spokesperson Anthony Coley said. “Criminal prosecution is a high bar that relies on a variety of factors — evidence, witnesses, etc. Bottom line: No charges does not equal full exoneration.”
The Mann Act, originally passed in 1910 and formally called the White-Slave Traffic Act, made it a crime to cross state lines “for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” The phrase about immoral activity was used by some prosecutors to target interracial couples as well as LGBTQ people.
Due to those concerns, Congress amended the law in 1986 to remove the reference to immorality, while maintaining the application to prostitution and adding "any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense."
Among the potential criminal violations discussed in the committee’s report is the possibility that Gaetz lied on financial disclosure reports by failing to disclose various gifts he received in the form of free trips or entertainment. Those reports are readily available, so prosecutors presumably had them when they decided last year not to charge Gaetz.
The committee also suggested that Gaetz may have violated the law prohibiting obstruction of congressional proceedings through his “attempts to mislead and deter” the panel’s investigators.
The panel noted that it had subpoenaed Gaetz for his testimony and that he refused to appear without providing “a legal basis,” although he did turn over some documents. The committee indicated Gaetz told them he expected there would be no effort to enforce the subpoena against him, which turned out to be correct. Instead, the panel responded that it would make findings in the case without his testimony.
It’s unclear whether the committee intends to seek permission to send its records to federal prosecutors to review the potential for charges. There’s precedent for the Justice Department to seek charges against recalcitrant witnesses, however. Prosecutors charged Trump ally Roger Stone for obstruction and lying after lawmakers delivered the transcript of his appearance to prosecutors.
As HUD secretary, Scott Turner would oversee billions in housing aid, but as a Texas state legislator he voted against protections for poor tenants and has called government assistance “one of the most destructive things for the family.”
As Donald Trump’s nominee to run the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Scott Turner may soon oversee the nation’s efforts to build affordable apartments, protect poor tenants and aid the homeless. As a lawmaker in the Texas House of Representatives, Turner voted against those very initiatives.
Turner supported a bill ensuring landlords could refuse apartments to applicants because they received federal housing assistance. He opposed a bill to expand affordable rental housing. He voted against funding public-private partnerships to support the homeless and against twobills that called merely to study homelessness among young people and veterans.
Behind those votes lay a deep-seated skepticism about the value of government efforts to alleviate poverty, a skepticism that Turner has voiced again and again. He has called welfare “dangerous, harmful” and “one of the most destructive things for the family.” When one interviewer said receiving government assistance was keeping recipients in “bondage” of “a worse form to find oneself in than slavery,” Turner agreed.
Such views would seemingly place Turner at odds with the core work of HUD, a sprawling federal agency that serves as a backstop against homelessness for millions of the nation’s poor, elderly and disabled. With an annual discretionary budget of $72 billion, the department provides rental assistance to 2 million families, oversees the country’s 800,000 public housing units, fights housing discrimination and segregation and provides support to the nation’s 650,000 homeless. If Turner’s record indicates how he will direct the agency’s agenda, it is those clinging to the bottom of the housing market who have the most to lose, researchers and advocates said.
Scott Turner and Donald Trump listen during a meeting on opportunity zones in the Cabinet Room of the White House on May 18, 2020.
“It just doesn’t seem to me like this is someone who is at all aligned with what the values of that agency should be,” said Cea Weaver, director of the advocacy group Housing Justice for All. “It’s a deregulatory agenda, and it’s an anti-poor people agenda.”
Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project, said Turner’s views, if translated into policy, could increase homelessness. “If, at a fundamental level, you believe that people getting assistance with their rent when they’re very poor and struggling, if you think that’s actually dependence and a bad thing, you’re going to try to undermine those programs,” he said.
One former colleague offered a more optimistic view of Turner’s stewardship of HUD. “My sense of him is he will try to help people,” said Richard Peña Raymond, a Democratic Texas House member who served on a committee with Turner. “I do think he’ll do a good job.”
Turner did not respond to detailed questions. A spokesperson for the nominee said: “Of course ProPublica would try and paint a negative picture of Mr. Turner before he is even given the opportunity to testify. We would expect nothing less from a publication that solely serves as a liberal mouthpiece.”
The Trump transition team and HUD did not respond to requests for comment. Trump’s announcement of Turner’s nomination praised him for “helping lead an Unprecedented Effort that Transformed our Country’s most distressed communities” as head of a White House council that promoted opportunity zones, a plan to spur investment in low-income neighborhoods by offering generous tax breaks, during Trump’s first administration. “Under Scott’s leadership,” the announcement went on, “Opportunity Zones received over $50 Billion Dollars in Private Investment!”
Turner is hardly the only Trump cabinet nominee to display skepticism or outright hostility toward the work of agencies they may lead. But, while other nominees have faced intense scrutiny in recent weeks, Turner has attracted little public attention and said even less about his intentions, beyond vowing to “bring much-needed change” to HUD, as he wrote on Facebook last month. ProPublica pieced together his views on housing through a review of legislative records and of Turner’s public speeches, podcast appearances and sermons at the Plano, Texas, megachurch where he is a pastor.
A possible HUD agenda for Turner can be found in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s recommendations for a conservative presidential administration. The report calls for cutting funding for affordable housing, repealing regulations that fight housing discrimination, increasing work requirements and adding time limits for rental assistance and eliminating anti-homelessness policies, among other changes. The Project 2025 chapter on HUD lists Ben Carson, the department secretary during the first Trump administration and a mentor to Turner, as its author. Carson, as secretary, was involved in efforts to end an anti-segregation rule, add work requirements for housing assistance and make it harder to prove housing discrimination.
Turner’s views appear to be deeply rooted in his upbringing outside Dallas, where he was, as he later put it, “a young kid from a broken home, from a poor family.” His parents’ relationship was “filled with violence, domestic violence, abuse, a lot of anger [and] alcohol.” Years later, as a legislator, Turner said that his sister had been “on state assistance and wasn’t feeding [Turner’s] nephew while she was on drugs.” (ProPublica was unable to locate Turner’s sister for comment.)
Football proved an escape. Turner received a scholarship to play for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and then he went on to a nearly decadelong career in the National Football League. He began transitioning into politics while still in the league, interning for California Rep. Duncan L. Hunter. After an unsuccessful run for a California congressional seat in 2006, Turner moved back to Texas and was elected in 2012 to the state House of Representatives, where he served for four years.
There, Turner solidified his position as a deeply conservative member opposed to many government interventions into the housing market, legislative records show. He voted against supporting foreclosure prevention programs. He opposed legislation to help public housing authorities replace or rehabilitate their property (although he voted for a minor expansion of that bill two years later). He also sought to require drug testing for poor families applying for government assistance, the Houston Chronicle reported at the time. Turner did support some modest housing assistance measures, such as bills helping housing developments for seniors and in rural areas seek low-income housing tax credits.
During his time in office, Turner was the lead author of 17 substantive bills. None were related to housing, and none of them became law.
“He’s a very nice guy,” but “he didn’t really make much of a legislative impression,” said a former high-ranking Republican Texas lawmaker, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about a former colleague. “He didn’t leave a deep footprint.”
That did not stop Turner, however, from mounting an audacious bid for the House speakership, a move reportedlybackedby Tim Dunn, a West Texas pastor and oil billionaire who has used his fortune to push the state Legislature far to the right. Turner’s speaker campaign failed, but it helped solidify his position within Texas’ deep-red Christian political milieu, where he has remained ever since.
Turner is an associate pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church, a political force in Texas that has counted numerous statewide elected officials as congregants. Jack Graham, the church’s senior pastor, prayed over Trump at an event in October and praised his electoral victory from the pulpit in November. Turner’s skepticism about government assistance has found its way into his sermons there, where he has derided the “perverse incentives created by the government and the welfare system, which in turn creates an epidemic of fatherlessness in our country.”
Turner or his political staffers also used campaign money to attend three conferences held by WallBuilders, an organization that seeks “to reveal the historical truths” about the “Christian foundation of our nation,” campaign finance records show. In 2016, Turner gave a $10,000 gift to WallBuilders from his campaign account.
Scott Turner, accompanied by Donald Trump, speaks during at an Opportunity Zone conference at the White House on April 17, 2019.
Turner’s allies on the Christian far right also include Ziklag, a secretive network of ultrawealthy Christian families and religious influencers that support Trump. As ProPublica reported, Ziklag has raised millions of dollars as part of a larger mission to help Christian leaders “take dominion” over key areas of American society, from education and business to media and government. This year, Ziklag spent millions of dollars to mobilize Republican-leaning voters in swing states despite being a tax-exempt charity that isn’t allowed to intervene in politics. (A lawyer for Ziklag previously told ProPublica that the organization does not endorse candidates for political office.)
In June 2019, Turner and his wife, Robin, attended a private Ziklag conference at the Broadmoor luxury resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado, according to photos of the event posted by an attendee. At the time, Turner was working in the first Trump administration as executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, where he served as a public salesman for the opportunity zones initiative. Turner has praised the program as a way to improve neighborhoods with high poverty and unemployment rates. Previous reporting by ProPublica found that the program was exploited by wealthy, politically connected investors, which drew scrutiny from members of Congress.
Internal documents obtained by ProPublica and Documented show that Ziklag members sought to take advantage of the program; in May 2019, Ziklag said in one of its newsletters that members of the group had met with three administration officials about opportunity zones. “The administration informed the group they are in a state of listening and learning about the program,” the document reads. “Ziklaggers are exploring additional avenues to make an impact on the program moving forward.”
After leaving the Trump administration, Turner started a nonprofit that promotes “Christ-centered reading enhancement programs” for children and helps people get driver’s licenses. He also became “chief visionary officer” at the multifamily housing developer JPI.
Now, if confirmed, Turner will be in charge of an agency with some 10,000 employees at a critical time. “We’re dealing with a pretty terrible housing crisis all across the country,” said Roller, of the National Housing Law Project. HUD will be “essential to any effort” to solve it.
The UK Post Office has appointed Paul Anastassi as interim CTO amid efforts to replace its controversial Horizon IT system, which led to hundreds of wrongful convictions of subpostmasters due to software errors since 1999.
The appointment, the news of which an anonymous reader shared, comes as the Post Office grapples with its $1.25 billion over-budget New Branch IT project, which was recently paused after being deemed "unachievable" in a government report. The organization is reportedly considering purchasing the Horizon system from Fujitsu while combining it with in-house and commercial software solutions.
The Prime Minister of Greenland has rejected a strange proposal from Donald Trump, who argued that the United States should take over the territory.
“Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom,” Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede said in a statement in response.
The rejection occurred after Trump announced the appointment of Ken Howery as ambassador to Denmark. Howery, who was a part of a group of wealthy former PayPal executives including Elon Musk, funded the pro-Trump super PAC America PAC that spent millions to elect Trump.
“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 on Truth Social.
Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark and has been making strides toward self-government over the last decade and a half. Most of the territory’s population of nearly 56,000 people is of Inuit descent.
Trump has been fixated on taking over Greenland for years despite it being an issue that most Americans have neither heard of nor thought about. According to multiple reports, Trump suggested to aides that the United States trade Puerto Rico for Greenland during his first term.
“I love maps. And I always said: ‘Look at the size of this. It’s massive. That should be part of the United States,’” Trump reportedly said, justifying his obsession.
The clash with Greenland’s government echoes acrimonious exchanges Trump has had with several other governments, including in Mexico, Canada, and Panama. In contrast, Trump has shown openness toward traditional U.S. adversarieslike Russia and North Korea.
Even before being sworn in as president, Trump has been returning to his destructive brand of foreign policy after outgoing President Joe Biden worked to repair alliances.
Director Denis Villeneuve's stunning two-part film adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune has received many well-deserved accolades—with Dune: Part 2 being crowned Ars Technica's top movie of 2024. The films also spawned a lavish HBO spinoff TV series, Dune: Prophecy, just renewed for a second season right before a momentous season finale.
(Some spoilers below for S1 of Dune: Prophecy, but no major plot reveals.)
Dune: Prophecy is a prequel series inspired by the novel Sisterhood of Dune, written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, exploring the origins of the Bene Gesserit. It's set 10,000 years before the ascension of Paul Atreides and follows two Harkonnen sisters as they combat forces that threaten the future of humankind, establishing the fabled sect that will become the Bene Gesserit in the process.
Embattled ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida was allegedly found to have paid multiple women—including a 17-year-old high school student—for sex and to have consumed illegal drugs while in office, according to a report from his former peers.
Gaetz, who resigned from the House in November as part of his brief stint as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, bowed out of consideration for the role once it became clear that even his fellow Republicans wouldn’t support his bid. A damning, comprehensive investigative report from the House Ethics Committee, whose final draft was analyzed by CBS News and other outlets, makeS it clear why.
Investigators found that Gaetz allegedly violated several state laws related to sexual misconduct while in office. The committee released the 37-page report Monday, even as Gaetz sought a restraining order.
“The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” panel investigators wrote, according to CBS News.
The committee reports speaking with more than a half-dozen witnesses who attended various parties and trips with Gaetz between 2017 and 2020, when he was representing Florida’s 1st Congressional District.
“Nearly every young woman that the Committee interviewed confirmed that she was paid for sex by, or on behalf of, Representative Gaetz,” the panel’s report reads.
Gaetz has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and has not been criminally charged. In a Wednesday post to the social media platform X, the former representative said that he “NEVER had sexual contact with someone under 18.” In the same message, he also made the eyebrow-raising admission that he “often sent funds to women I dated—even some I never dated but who asked.”
“My 30’s were an era of working very hard—and playing hard too,” Gaetz added. “It’s embarrassing, though not criminal, that I probably partied, womanized, drank and smoked more than I should have earlier in life. I live a different life now.”
The Biden/Garland DOJ spent years reviewing allegations that I committed various crimes. I was charged with nothing: FULLY EXONERATED. Not even a campaign finance violation. And the people investigating me hated me. Then, the very “witnesses” DOJ deemed not-credible were…
According to CNN, the ethics panel reviewed transactions Gaetz made—often using mobile payment service apps, including PayPal or Venmo—to over a dozen women.
“From 2017 to 2020, Representative Gaetz made tens of thousands of dollars in payments to women that the Committee determined were likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use,” reads the report, which lists over $90,000 in payments to 12 women.
Investigators also zeroed in on a 2018 trip to the Bahamas, which they said “violated the House gift rule.” On this trip, according to investigators, Gaetz “engaged in sexual activity” with four women, including one who said that the trip was “the payment” for sex. Gaetz also took ecstasy during the Bahamas rendezvous, one attendee told the House panel.
In addition, the report said that investigators received testimony from a 17-year-old girl who alleged that Gaetz had sex with her twice at a 2017 party. The victim said that she had just completed her junior year of high school and recalled receiving $400 in cash from Gaetz that evening “which she understood to be payment for sex.”
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz speaks at AmericaFest, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024, in Phoenix.
“Victim A said that she did not inform Representative Gaetz that she was under 18 at the time, nor did he ask her age,” the report read.
In his written response to the committee, Gaetz reportedly denied having sex with a minor. He also denied using illicit drugs, despite investigators finding “substantial evidence” to the contrary, according to CBS News. Investigators apparently obtained text messages sent by Gaetz where he referred to drugs as “party favors,” “rolls,” or “vitamins.” He also reportedly created a fake email address from his Capitol Hill office “to purchase marijuana,” the report noted.
All of the women who testified said that their sexual encounters with Gaetz were consensual, but one complained that the drugs may have “impair[ed their] ability to really know what was going on or fully consent,” according to CBS’ analysis of the report.
“When I look back on certain moments, I feel violated,” another woman told the committee.
The probe into Gaetz reportedly did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that he violated federal sex trafficking statutes. Although he allegedly transported women across state lines for the purpose of sex, they were all 18 or older at the time.
Someone suggested the following plan to me: 1. Show up 1/3/2025 to congress 2. Participate in Speaker election (I was elected to the 119th Congress, after all…) 3. Take the oath 4. File a privileged motion to expose every “me too” settlement paid using public funds (even of…
— Former Congressman Matt Gaetz (@FmrRepMattGaetz) December 18, 2024
The release of the report may finally bring to a close Gaetz’s incendiary tenure on Capitol Hill. The firebrand Freedom Caucus conservative, a vocal supporter of Trump, was a thorn in the side of House leadership and his fellow Republicans.
Yet this likely won’t be the last we hear of Gaetz. He’s set to join the far-right One America News Network with an eponymous show launching in January, and just last week, Gaetz suggested on X that he was considering briefly returning on the first day of the new 119th Congress in 2025.
Once there, he said that he would force a vote on a resolution to rip the lid off secretive “Me Too” settlements made by current and former lawmakers using taxpayer dollars.
It’s also possible that Gaetz will make his return to the political world in 2026. Gaetz has hinted that he might run to be Florida’s next governor.
Beleaguered automaker Nissan is going to throw its lot in with Honda. The two Japanese OEMs want to merge by 2026, creating the world's third-largest car company in the process. In fact, earlier this year the two signed memorandums of understanding to create a strategic partnership focused on software and electrification. Now, the changing business environment calls for deeper integration, they say.
"Today marks a pivotal moment as we begin discussions on business integration that has the potential to shape our future. If realized, I believe that by uniting the strengths of both companies, we can deliver unparalleled value to customers worldwide who appreciate our respective brands. Together, we can create a unique way for them to enjoy cars that neither company could achieve alone," said Makoto Uchida, Nissan's president and CEO.
"Creation of new mobility value by bringing together the resources including knowledge, talents, and technologies that Honda and Nissan have been developing over the long years is essential to overcome challenging environmental shifts that the auto industry is facing" said Honda director Toshihiro Mibe. "Honda and Nissan are two companies with distinctive strengths. We are still at the stage of starting our review, and we have not decided on a business integration yet, but in order to find a direction for the possibility of business integration by the end of January 2025, we strive to be the one and only leading company that creates new mobility value through chemical reaction that can only be driven through synthesis of the two teams."
We've got a shiny new trailer for Star Trek: Section 31, the long-awaited spinoff film that brings back Michelle Yeoh's magnificent Phillipa Georgiou from Star Trek: Discovery. The film will give us the backstory for Georgiou's evil Mirror Universe counterpart, where she was a despotic emperor who murdered millions of her own people.
As previously reported, Yeoh's stylishly acerbic Georgiou was eventually written out of Discovery, but fans took hope from rumors of a spinoff series featuring the character. That turned into a spinoff film, and we'll take it. Miku Martineau plays a young Phillipa Georgiou in the film. Meanwhile, Yeoh's older Georgiou is tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets as part of a black ops group called Section 31, while dealing with all the blood she's spilled in her past.
Any hardcore Star Trek fan will tell you that Section 31 was first introduced as an urban legend of sorts in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Apparently Ira Steven Behr—who came up with the idea of a secret rogue organization within Starfleet doing shady things to protect the Federation—took inspiration from Commander Sisko's comment in one episode about how "It's easy to be a saint in paradise." The name is taken from Starfleet Charter Article 14, Section 31, which allows Starfleet to take extraordinary measures in the face of extreme threats—including sabotage, assassination, and even biological warfare.
“He could theoretically become the head of the Defense Department,” Fetterman told Politico in explaining his logic. “I've discovered in my time in D.C. that that’s important. And, ‘Are you having a conversation with someone?’ I don’t know why that’s shocking.”
Fetterman also said he’s aware of “some” allegations against Hegseth. Those include, but are not limited to, Hegseth allegedly raping a woman in 2017—Hegseth said the sex was consensual—and supposedly drinking on the job. But that hasn’t stopped the Pennsylvania senator from being open to joining Republicans in confirming the Fox News host.
Fetterman said he’s not sure why it’d be “controversial” to meet with Hegseth—and even suggested the two might find common ground on some issues. And on its own, meeting with the likely next defense secretary may not be a strange thing. But that’s not the only eyebrow-raising action Fetterman has taken recently.
On Wednesday, Fetterman apparently became the first Democratic senator to join Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform. And in his debut post, he made the surprising call to pardon Trump in his New York hush money case.
Fetterman also said he was a “hard YES” on confirming Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York as the next ambassador to the United Nations.
Always was a hard YES for @EliseStefanik but it was a pleasure to have a conversation. I support defunding UNRWA for its documented Hamas infiltration and fully look forward to her holding the @UN accountable for its endemic antisemitism and blatant anti-Israel views. https://t.co/DvyYIYCd0h
Stefanik isn’t the first Trump Cabinet pick that Fetterman has voiced his support for. In November, he said he would vote to confirm Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as the next secretary of state.
Unsurprisingly, the other team’s pick will have political differences than my own. That being said, my colleague @SenMarcoRubio is a strong choice and I look forward to voting for his confirmation. pic.twitter.com/OUIDx5KK4J
Once a self-described progressive, Fetterman has pivoted to the right since winning his 2022 Senate election. But backing Trump’s Cabinet picks isn’t the first time the senator has found himself on the outs with the progressive movement. He’s one of many Democrats to make stringently pro-Israel statements during its ongoing war in Gaza. In that, he found allies in the Democratic Party, such as New York Rep. Ritchie Torres.
However, Fetterman is making the case that he hasn’t abandoned progressivism—but that the movement dumped him.
“I didn’t leave the label, it left me on that,” Fetterman said in a June interview with comedian Bill Maher.
But a review of his history with the label makes his change appear more cynical in nature. After all, the senator happily embraced the label for years and courted the endorsement of independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, when Fetterman successfully ran to be Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor. Now, though, Fetterman seems more keen to taunt progressivism than to embrace it.
It’s a convenient scapegoat for Fetterman to blame the left for his shift to the right. It keeps his name in the limelight while making him seem to be some sort of brave truth-teller who isn’t afraid to stand up to his own party.
At least for now, Fetterman hasn’t made clear what his end goal is in fighting his own party’s interests. But in the short-term, he is apparently trying to fill the void of the non-Republican rabble-rouser now that independent Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are leaving.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: A new survey suggests that Apple Intelligence matters to iPhone buyers, but the majority say that the initial features add little to no value. It remains to be seen whether Genmoji and ChatGPT integration will change that view. Things are even worse for Samsung smartphones, with an even greater majority of owners saying they can't see much point in the AI features offered
A new survey by tech trade-in site SellCell found that AI is an important factor when choosing a new smartphone: "iPhone users showed relatively higher interest in mobile AI than Samsung users as almost half (47.6%) of iPhone users reported AI features as a 'very' or 'somewhat' important deciding factor when buying a new phone vs. 23.7% of Samsung users who said the same." "Smartphone users in general are unsatisfied with the existing AI features as the survey recorded 73% of Apple Intelligence users and 87% of Galaxy AI users stating the new features to be either 'not very valuable' or they 'add little to no value' to their smartphone experience," reports SellCell.
According to the survey, these are the most popular Apple Intelligence features:
- Writing Tools (72%)
- Notification summaries (54%)
- Priority Messages (44.5%)
- Clean Up in Photos (29.1%)
- Smart Reply in Mail and Messages (20.9%)
Many of President-elect Donald Trump’s supporters, who believed his promise to “Make America Great Again,” are about to face an inconvenient truth: tariffs will hurt them more than they anticipated. New data from Global Strategist Group show that three in five Americans view tariffs unfavorably, oppose Trump’s tariffs, and believe that they’ll increase costs.
This comes as Google search trends showed a sharp increase in the search results for “what is a tariff” and “will tariffs raise costs” in the days after Trump's win.
World-renowned Nobel economists tried to warn us about the cost of tariffs back in October. Alas, we at Daily Kos also tried to sound the alarm in the weeks leading up to the election.
Despite growing opposition, Trump still seems determined to repeat the same mistakes in his second term.
Trump is now threatening to impose tariffs on multiple countries—including some of our closest allies—in his second term, ostensibly placing the blame on the fentanyl epidemic as coming from across the borders of Mexico and Canada.
What’s particularly ironic is the realization that many of Trump's supporters, who voted for him based on his promises of economic prosperity, will soon have to reconcile that Trump’s support for tariffs is likely to hurt them directly through rising prices on goods and services. This is the classic case of "the cost of doing business" being passed down to the consumer, something experts and advocates have been warning about for years.
During his first term as president, Trump threatened tariffs against Mexico, then called them off. He eventually implemented tariffs against China, sparking a trade war with one of our biggest importers that economic experts highly criticized.
Retailers, like Walmart’s Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey, have said that they would pass on the increased cost of goods to consumers. Trump has falsely claimed that foreign companies pay tariff increases, but American companies pay and then raise prices for customers so that the increase doesn’t affect their revenue.
“We never want to raise prices,” Rainey said in an interview with CNBC on Nov. 19. “Our model is everyday low prices. But there probably will be cases where prices will go up for consumers.”
“The vast majority of that tariff will probably be passed on to the consumer as a price increase,” saidBest Buy CEO Corie Barry, reported Yahoo Finance.
Now, small businesses are bracing themselves for higher supply costs. Consumers are also reportedly preparing for higher fees, and some are even making significant purchases like cars and appliances before prices go up even more.
While the public's growing familiarity with tariffs is a positive development, it’s too little, too late for consumers, particularly MAGA voters, who will be the ones reeling from the consequences of their actions.
After reading this statutory language, you’re probably wondering why this legal dispute triggered a lawsuit in the first place — the law, after all, is perfectly clear that “any” Medicaid patient is allowed to choose “any” person qualified to provide them with care. But there are two reasons, one legal and one political, that explain why Kerr is contentious enough to make it to the Supreme Court.
The first reason is that the Supreme Court’s rules governing when someone can sue to enforce a provision of federal Medicaid law are somewhat complicated, although not nearly complicated enough to justify denying Medicaid patients their right to choose a health provider. The second, more salient, reason is that this case involves Planned Parenthood, and so a handful of outlier judges have allowed anti-abortion politics to trump a clearly written federal law.
South Carolina is one of several states that attempted to exclude Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program, effectively preventing Medicaid patients from seeking care at the venerable reproductive health care institution. In 2018, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster issued an executive order prohibiting “abortion clinics” from being paid to provide care to Medicaid patients. (Although the Supreme Court permitted states to ban abortion in 2022, South Carolina still allows some abortions up to the sixth week of pregnancy.)
Shortly after McMaster issued this order, both Planned Parenthood’s South Carolina affiliate and an individual Planned Parenthood patient sued, pointing to the federal law giving Medicaid patients a right to choose their health provider. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the federal appeals court that oversees North Carolina, has repeatedly ruled that these plaintiffs are correct — the federal law does exactly what its plain text says that it does.
Most federal appeals courts ruled similarly when other states announced rules similar to McMaster’s. But two outlier circuits, the Fifth and the Eighth, did not. Notably, both the Fifth and the Eighth Circuit’s decisions were handed down before the Supreme Court decided Health and Hospital Corporation v. Talevski (2023), a significant decision clarifying the rights of Medicaid patients to bring federal lawsuits, which cuts against the Fifth and Eighth Circuit’s reasoning.
In any event, it’s hard to imagine that such a straightforward legal dispute would produce such a circuit split if it didn’t involve the contentious question of abortion. It’s also possible that the Supreme Court took the Kerr case simply to reaffirm its decision in Talevski and reverse the two courts that created this split.
The whole point of having one Supreme Court at the top of the federal judiciary is to maintain uniformity in federal law — an act of Congress should mean the same thing in South Carolina as it does in Texas — so the justices often step in to resolve legal questions that divide federal appeals courts.
Still, this case does involve abortion. Republicans have a 6-3 supermajority on the Supreme Court. And five members of that majority have a history of reading the law in absurd ways to diminish abortion rights. So there’s at least some risk that the Court may lash out at Medicaid patients’ right to choose their own health provider.
What is the specific legal issue at the heart of Kerr?
Arguably the most important federal civil rights law is a provision known as “Section 1983,” which permits state officials to be sued in federal court if they deprive someone of “any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws.” Without this law, people whose constitutional or federal statutory rights are violated would often have no recourse, because they would be unable to bring a lawsuit seeking to vindicate those rights.
Notably, however, Section 1983 does not permit anyone to file a lawsuit challenging any violation of any federal statute whatsoever. As the Supreme Court said in Blessing v. Freestone (1997), “a plaintiff must assert the violation of a federal right, not merely a violation of federal law.” And the Court has developed a framework governing which federal laws create individual rights that can be enforced through private lawsuits.
Yet, while this framework sometimes creates uncertainty about which federal laws can trigger such suits, the issue in Kerr is straightforward. As the Court recently reaffirmed in Talevski, the key question is whether a federal law is “phrased in terms of the persons benefited,” and whether it “contains ‘rights-creating,’ individual-centric language with an ‘unmistakable focus on the benefited class.’”
Thus, for example, a hypothetical federal statute that provides that “no state may deny someone who owns golf clubs the ability to play golf” could be enforced by federal lawsuits, because this statute’s language focuses on the people who benefit from it (people who own golf clubs). A statute that says that “states shall not impede enjoyment of the game of golf,” by contrast, would not permit individual lawsuits because this statutory language does not even mention which individuals are supposed to benefit from the law.
A State plan for medical assistance must … provide that … any individual eligible for medical assistance (including drugs) may obtain such assistance from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform the service or services required (including an organization which provides such services, or arranges for their availability, on a prepayment basis), who undertakes to provide him such services.
This language is full of the kind of “individual-centric language” with an “unmistakable focus on the benefited class” that the Court spoke of in Talevski. It provides a right to “any individual” eligible for medical benefits. It states that these individuals “may obtain” medical care from the provider of their choice. And it concludes with a pronoun (“him”), which refers back to the individuals who benefit from the law.
All of which is a long way of saying that, if the Court follows existing law, including the rule it recently announced in Talevski, then it will rule in favor of the plaintiffs in Kerr. But it is unlikely the case would have made it to the Supreme Court in the first place — or that any appeals court would have read this particular provision of Medicaid law to deny similar plaintiffs their right to sue — if this case did not involve a politically contentious issue like abortion.
As Daily Kos previously reported, dissent broke out in the House on Dec. 11 after GOP Speaker Mike Johnson muscled in the provision. If approved, the bill will ban transgender minors from using TRICARE (the military’s health insurance) for gender-affirming care.
Seemingly referencing the controversial provision, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor Wednesday that the bill “isn’t perfect, but it still includes some very good things that Democrats fought for.”
The bill passed by a vote of 85-14 and now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk for final approval. Three Republicans and 10 Democrats, and one independent senator voted against the bill.
A spokesperson for Republican Sen. Joni Ernst told Daily Kos prior to the vote that Ernst was on board with “trimming the fat” of the spending bill by banning gender-affirming medical care.
“Our defense dollars should protect Americans, not fund gender transition services,” the spokesperson said.
“By ending this radical funding source, [Ernst is] restoring the integrity of our tax dollars and prioritizing the military’s primary mission: defending the American people.”
On the opposing side of the bill, Sen. Ed Markey—one of the ‘no’ voters—said via X on Tuesday night that the bill was an attack on “trans rights and access to health care.”
“Politicians shouldn’t insert themselves between servicemembers, their families, and health care providers,” he said.
Schumer noted upsides to the bill—which heads to Biden’s desk next—including the “strong provisions to stand up against the Chinese Communist Party.”
The bill also includes a pay raise for junior enlisted service members.
This provision targeting transgender youth comes on the heels of a historic Supreme Court hearing challenging a Tennessee law that also bans transgender youth’s access to gender-affirming medical care.
Hundreds of anti-trans laws have popped up across the nation in the past few years, with over 400 bills being introduced in 2020 alone.
Speaking about the SCOTUS hearing, ACLU spokesperson Gillian Branstetter told Daily Kos that the lawmakers banning abortion are the “exact same politicians” who are targeting the trans community.
GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, who once praised the LGBTQ+ community, has become a mouthpiece for anti-trans legislation and pushed for the Capitol Hill bathroom ban now in place.
The topic of medical care for transgender minors has set off a worldwide debate, with the U.K. indefinitely banning the use of puberty blockers earlier this month.
Renters in the U.S. spent an extra $3.8 billion last year because of pricing algorithms used by landlords, according to an analysis from White House Council of Economic Advisers. Axios reports: The report puts some hard numbers to accusations that have piled up against RealPage, a company that makes software that helps big landlords and property managers set prices. In August, the Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against the company, alleging its pricing algorithm allows landlords to collectively push rents higher.
No shit: when you succeed at getting broadband pricing removed from FCC regulation, the states get to step in. It's always been this way.
The Supreme Court yesterday rejected the broadband industry's challenge to a New York law that requires Internet providers to offer $15- or $20-per-month service to people with low incomes.
In August, six trade groups representing the cable, telecom, mobile, and satellite industries filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court ruling that upheld the state law. But the Supreme Court won't take up the case. The high court denied the telecom groups' petition without comment in a list of orders released yesterday.
Although a US District Court judge blocked the law in 2021, that judge's ruling was reversed by the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in April 2024. The Supreme Court's denial of the industry petition leaves the 2nd Circuit ruling in place.
Shortly before Donald Trump nominated him to be Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth ventured to the podcast studio of Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL now serving as the Joe Rogan of conservative military media.
Early in the interview, Hegseth reads aloud the dramatic tagline on the back cover of his new book, The War on Warriors: “I joined the Army to fight extremists in 2001. Twenty years later, that same Army labeled me one.” Later, Hegseth flashes his right pectoral muscle, and the tattoo that, he says, led to the label: a large, inky Jerusalem cross associated with the Christian right.
The backstory to Hegseth’s bitter complaint is this: Just after Jan. 6, 2021, when scores of active-duty troops and veterans participated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, a fellow member of the Army National Guard flagged Hegseth’s tattoos as evidence he was a potential “insider threat.” Along with the Jersualem cross, Hegseth also has a tattoo that reads “Deus Vult” or “God wills it” — a motto from the Crusades that has been adopted by white supremacists and was seen at the deadly march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
“My orders were revoked to guard the Biden inauguration,” Hegseth says.
“What a punishment,” Ryan responds sarcastically, and the two men laugh.
Hegseth, a veteran of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and the recipient of two Bronze Stars, resigned voluntarily from the military shortly after the episode, and has decried criticism of his tattoos as anti-Christian bias. The way he tells the story indicates a profound sense of betrayal. “The military I loved, I fought for, I revered … spit me out,” he writes in the book.
If he is confirmed by the Senate to lead the largest and most powerful bureaucracy in the U.S. government — a big if given mounting allegations of sexual assault, public drunkenness and financial mismanagement — Hegseth will be well positioned to fight back against the leadership class that spurned him. He will also likely bring his aggressive combination of conservatism and Christian ideology — the one vividly displayed in the tattoos — into the role. Based on numerous public statements and writings, it’s likely he will aim to undermine the military’s long-standing nonpartisan pluralism by scrubbing diversity from the ranks, banning women in combat, urging the military to choose sides in a “civil war” against “domestic enemies” on the left, and orienting the military’s mission around his fixation on the Muslim world, which he feels represents an existential threat to Western civilization.
His desire to gut the Pentagon’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and censor critical race theory stem, in part, from his belief that these are their own ideologies, a “religion,” he’s written, for “woke zealots” that threatens to divide the military rather than unite it. He has invoked the need for “a 360-degree holy war” to exorcise “the leftist specter dominating education, religion and culture.” He has also repeatedly suggested that a shared dogma is the key to dominance, including on Fox News, when he tied America’s forfeiture of Afghanistan to the enemy’s enduring religious beliefs. “The fanaticism,” he said, “was an advantage for them we barely even accounted for.”
In his 2016 memoir, In the Arena, Hegseth says he relates to an online image of a triumphant ISIS fighter — a Quran in one hand, an AK-47 in the other: “With God on his side and the wind at his back, he is a conquering warrior,” Hegseth writes. “He is fighting for something greater than himself. He is fighting for his God.” In this photo, Hegseth sees a warped version of himself. “I recognize that fighter, even though I’ve never met him. I am drawn to him because I relate to him,” he writes. “I deplore what he stands for, what he does and how he does it. He is a soldier of hate, subjugation and sheer evil. But I understand his passions.”
Since his 2021 resignation from the military, Hegseth has increasingly turned to his other tribe, Christianity. Two years ago, he moved his family from New Jersey to Tennessee, where Hegseth joined a school and church associated with reformed reconstructionism, an ideology helmed by the far-right theologian Doug Wilson.
Wilson’s denomination opposes religious pluralism and embraces the idea of a nation founded on the premise that Jesus Christ is the “lord of all.” He has written that owning slaves in biblical times was not antithetical to being a Christian and, while he says he rejects racism, he has asserted that “the system of slave-holding in the South was far more humane than that of ancient Rome, although it still fell short of the biblical requirements for it.” Wilson, himself a former submarine navigator for the Navy, has also described himself asphilosophically “indebted”to Robert L. Dabney, the military chaplain to Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson who defended slavery and believed in white supremacy. He claims border defenseand Christian dominance are divine conflicts, and claims God has deemed women and children legitimate military targets in such affairs. “The word of God,” Wilson preaches, “tells Christian soldiers what to do, even if Christian soldiers are in the service of an unbelieving magistrate.”
Members of Wilson’s flock are admitted only after an intense theological grilling from a board of elders. There’s also a system of church courts that metes out punishments for heresy. “They think the Bible applies to every area of life, and they want to see that made into law,” explained Julie Ingersoll, a religious studies professor at the University of North Florida. “In that sense, they are not unlike the Taliban.”
Some may see hypocrisy in Hegseth’s religiosity. He is twice divorced and had a child out of wedlock. In 2017, he was accused of rape at a conference for Republican women. (Hegseth’s lawyer has vigorously denied the assault allegations laid out in a now-public police report. While Hegseth was not ultimately charged, he settled out of court with the woman who accused him for a confidential sum.) But Ingersoll explained that Wilson’s denomination is happy to accommodate indiscretions. “This world makes all kind of space for people to come along and say, ‘I repented,’ and then that’s the end of it,” she said. “Well, not people, mostly men. Women get held accountable, but men don’t.”
Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, said Hegseth’s new faith community, coupled with his writings and tattoos, indicates his deep belief in holy war. In his 2020 book, American Crusade, Hegseth asserted that Islam “is not a religion of peace,” and has lamented growing numbers of Muslim Americans. “Our present moment is much like the 11th Century. We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must,” he wrote. “Arm yourself — metaphorically, intellectually, physically. Our fight is not with guns. Yet.” This week, the New Yorker reported a 2015 incident wherein Hegseth, drunk at a bar in Ohio, allegedly chanted “Kill all Muslims!”
The Trump transition team and Hegseth’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment to discuss how Hegseth would balance his religious views with his government role.
“The vast majority of modern Christians see the crusades as a low point in history where Christian theology was literally weaponized to slaughter Jews and Muslims,” Taylor said. “It’s a very macabre and ominous and dark vision of Christian dominance that Hegseth is toying with.
“The last thing we need,” Taylor concluded, “is a Christian ISIS.”
Hegseth was, by his own account, raised by “God-fearing” parents who valued secular education. He attended Minnesota public schools, then Princeton. When he arrived on campus, in 1999, Hegseth considered himself nonideological, a Christian “more out of diligent habit than deep conviction.” It was the attacks on Sept. 11, it seems, that awakened him. Hegseth writes in his memoir that he found himself repelled by the campus chapel’s “gospel of moral relativism,” and disparaged his fellow students for focusing on peace and “mutual understanding” rather than “condemnations of Islamic terrorism.”
When one student argued that the Bush administration was working to “arouse the anger and hatred of the American people to justify their rash, outdated and hawkish military action,” Hegseth co-wrote a forceful rebuke in the student newspaper, insisting President George W. Bush’s rhetoric “is by no means a sign of hatred toward innocent Arabs.”
“The Pete I knew in college could have been a principled ‘Never Trumper,’” said a former friend and confidant who was granted anonymity because of fear his career would suffer retribution under a second Trump term. “He was this nuanced constitutional conservative who believed that America was doing good in the world with all these interventions.”
Hegseth commissioned into the Army through Princeton’s ROTC program. Upon his 2003 graduation, he deployed with the Army National Guard as a guard at Guantanamo Bay prison, an 11-month experience that seemed to inculcate his disdain for the enemy. Hegseth describes Guantanamo in his memoir as a “dirty place” that “housed some of the world’s most dangerous Islamic extremists.”
By July 2005, Hegseth was working as a capital markets analyst at Bear Stearns, when, while sipping coffee and reading the Wall Street Journal one morning, he read about a suicide bombing in Baghdad that had killed 18 children and a 24-year-old American soldier. Hegseth spent the following days pulling strings to secure a mission to Iraq. He tucked the newspaper clipping in his wallet — a reminder, he wrote in 2016, of the “stakes of our fight against Islam.”
Talking about this period of his life years later, Hegseth has dramatically emphasized moments of faith. He has said he felt divine intervention on his first mission in enemy territory, when his platoon was dropped in the wrong spot. “I remember feeling a sense of peace and calm that I had no business having in that moment,” he recently told Nashville Christian Family magazine. “I didn’t think much about it until weeks later when my mom said she had felt a strong urge to fall on her knees and pray for me. We realized she was praying at the exact time I was on that raid with my platoon. The power of prayer is real.”
He later moved to another dark money group, Concerned Veterans for America, where he championed an even less popular cause: the privatization of Veterans Affairs health care. In 2012, after he returned from a tour in Afghanistan, he launched a brief and unsuccessful bid for Amy Klobuchar’s Minnesota Senate seat.
Hegseth’s failed run focused on standard conservative fare: job creation, government deregulation, repealing Obamacare. And he remained steadfast in supporting the conflict, pushing the Obama administration for more troops, only to see what he called a “faux-counterinsurgency surge.” By this time, the War on Terror was deeply unpopular, including among many troops, and yet Hegseth retained his zeal, still seemingly caught up in the early grandiose framing of the war by Bush, who, on the first Sunday after 9/11, declared it a “crusade.”
“I never got the feeling that [Hegseth] wanted to abandon the Middle East,” said a former official at Concerned Veterans for America, who was granted anonymity because he feared retribution from the Trump administration.
This was a tumultuous transitional period in Hegseth’s personal and professional lives. In the decade following his loss, he steadily began to braid his conservative views with an increasingly public profession of faith, which he expressed in a series of provocative books, and from his platform as a host on Fox News.
According to Vanity Fair, he’d ended his first marriage in 2008 by admitting to infidelity and declaring that he no longer believed in God. As the New Yorker has reported, Hegseth’s tenure at Concerned Veterans for America and Vets for Freedom was also marked by reckless behavior and irresponsible leadership, including sexual impropriety and heavy drinking. One memo claims Hegseth became so intoxicated during a 2014 Christmas party that he had to be carried up to his room. The report reveals he was pushed out of both organizations.
In 2014, he became a Fox News contributor. There, applied the militant language he’d used to defend the wars to new enemies, including two previously beloved institutions: the Army and academia. He hosted religiously imbued specials on Fox News’ streaming service, including “Battle in Bethlehem” and “Life of Jesus.” And he continued to comment on the conflicts, including a memorable call-in from the middle of his RV vacation to deliver a tirade about the strategic failures of the Afghanistan withdrawal that flashed his hawkish urge to keep “a small footprint” in the country.
His move to Fox also coincided with a switch of pastors, from Bob Merritt, an optimistic and conventional Evangelical leader in Minnesota, to Chris Durkin, a more politically inclined minister in Colts Neck, New Jersey. In a recent appearance on the “Reformation Red Pill Podcast,” Hegseth explained that a factor in his faith journey was the “wreckage of my own life,” a veiled reference, perhaps, to his multiple marriages and infidelity, which, he has written, risked “family breakdown.” Durkin later participated in a Fox special with Hegseth in Israel, supported his fiery book on religious education, The Battle for the American Mind, and recently endorsed his nomination on YouTube. (Durkin didn’t respond to press inquiries. In an e-mail, Merritt declined to discuss Hegseth, writing “that’s not something I’m willing to do for many reasons.”)
In his recent interview with Nashville Christian Family magazine, Hegseth acknowledged that, for a long time, “I had a Christian veneer but a secular core,” adding “many people miss Jesus by 12 inches — the distance from their head to their heart.”
On the Red Pill podcast, Hegseth said another factor was his realization that both politics and culture were downstream from religion, and that he should “start at the source.” He’s taken his own directive literally, making a series of trips in recent years to Israel, which exposed him to another pitched Middle East conflict that he views in sacred terms. It was on one of these trips, Hegseth writes, where he first spotted the Jerusalem Cross and later tattooed it on his chest “to show that my religion is front and center in my life.”
Still, there’s little question that the arrival of Trump on the political scene, in 2015, marked an inflection point in the evolution of Hegseth’s public persona as a proponent of not only conservative ideas, but a more combative form of Christianity.
“There’s always been undercurrents of the us-versus-them stuff — Christian versus Muslim, liberal versus conservative,” the confidant told me. “But when I knew him there was always a lot of intellectual curiosity, a lightness. He had space for the idea that people were people. Trump spoke to the darker side of him.”
Hegseth first talked to Trump through the TV, as Fox’s token veteran voice. When, in 2015, Trump told NBC’s Chuck Todd that he got his military advice from “the shows,” Hegseth swiftly showed up on Fox. “I get some of the positions and the visceral and gut reactions he has,” Hegseth explained on Fox, but suggested that Trump consult with established foreign policy voices to better understand the world’s complexity. “He’s going to want to refine that approach.”
And yet, as Trump surged to the presidency, it was Hegseth who changed, positioning himself as a pundit Trump could trust. Veteran Fox watcher Brian Stelter has reported that, during the first Trump term, Hegseth would frequently peek at his phone during commercial breaks to see if the president had cribbed any of his talking points. “His co-hosts,” Stelter wrote, “felt like he was putting on a show specifically for Trump.”
The former confidant views Hegseth as a “true believer” in his religious and political beliefs but added: “You never totally know how much your views are actually changing versus you wanting them to change because there’s this massive opportunity in front of you.”
In 2019, Hegseth championed Eddie Gallagher, a former Navy SEAL accused of shooting at civilians and stabbing a young ISIS captive, throughout his war crimes trial. (Hegseth successfully lobbied Trump to intervene in Gallagher’s case, earning profane praise from Trump: “You’re a fucking warrior, Pete.”) In an interview, Gallagher, who grew up Catholic, reasoned that Hegseth’s renewed faith is a natural outgrowth of leaving the military. “Guys find all sorts of things to cling to when they get out to keep them going,” he said. “And I think a lot more men are clinging to Jesus. And I don’t see a problem with that one bit.” This population includes Shawn Ryan, the SEAL podcaster, who recently said that “the only thing that makes sense to me anymore is the word of God.” Then he plugged a product called “the Warrior’s Rosary.”
In 2020, Hegseth authored a more religious and domestically focused book, American Crusade. While the cover of his 2016 memoir featured Hegseth in a staid tie and jacket, his new book accentuated an AR-15 tattoo embedded in an American flag on his bicep, and the words “We the People” spanning the length of his forearm. The book borrows much of Trump’s bellicose language, like when Hegseth asserts the need to “mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents.” He also predicted that a 2020 win by Joe Biden would decimate “the only powerful, pro-freedom, pro-Christian, pro-Israel army in the world.”
Hegseth represents an old-school and still powerful soldier archetype: white, masculine and God-fearing. According to 2019 Department of Defense data, approximately 70 percent of active duty service members are Christian. It’s the people who look, talk and pray like Hegseth who are most receptive to his tirades against the military’s elevation of women to combat roles, a fierce and largely unresolved debate thanks to a limited and conflicting tranche of research on the topic. Hegseth frames the issue in extreme and unfounded ways, asserting that integration destroys morale and loses wars, when, in fact, women have been serving in productive military roles for more than 200 years. Hegseth derides DEI and CRT initiatives for similar reasons, calling them discriminatory ideologies that “turn off the young, patriotic, Christian men who have traditionally filled our ranks.”
It’s quite possible that Hegseth’s crusade against the Pentagon — in which he elevates people that look and think like him while pushing out top brass en masse — may make recruitment even more difficult by alienating non-Christians, erode effectiveness by reducing retention of qualified military personnel and, ironically enough, make it more difficult to fight the sorts of battles he’s spoiling for. Conversely, it could help reverse the Army’s massive decline in the recruitment of white men, which some have attributed to widespread anger over two decades of war that cost thousands of lives, trillions of dollars and ended in defeat. U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Republican representing Hegseth’s new home state of Tennessee, recently told ABC News that Hegseth would be a boon for recruitment and retention. Hegseth recently told Hagerty that he was being inundated with messages from troops saying, “I was thinking about getting out. But now that you’ve come to lead us, Pete, I’m going to stay in.”
There are legitimate grievances that Hegseth has embraced, among them the VA’s overburdened and underfunded health care system, the revolving door between the Pentagon and defense contractors and the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan that permanently damaged Biden’s approval rating, and for which the president has not expressed contrition. But Hegseth’s belligerent anti-government views, wrapped in religious crusade rhetoric, also threaten to worsen a problem of extremism in the military; according to a 2023 study by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, people with military backgrounds are now “2.41 times more likely to be classified as mass casualty offenders than individuals who did not serve in the armed forces.”
Some insist that, no matter his plans, veteran Pentagon brass will bring Hegseth to heel. “The four-stars will run circles around him,” argued Paul Eaton, a retired major general and the chair of the left-leaning group VoteVets. “He will not be running the Pentagon. The Pentagon will be running him.”
But Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s post-Jan. 6 efforts to root out military extremism were swiftly stymied. One of the few reforms to survive — standardized extremism evaluations — have been woefully implemented. An audit last year from the Pentagon’s Inspector General found, among other things, that only 9 percent of new recruits were screened for extremist tattoos.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of military authoritarians, believes Hegseth can accomplish a lot without traditional bureaucratic levers. “I see him as a bridge to radicalizing the military,” she told me. “If you’re planning a fundamental reorientation of the military — and you’re going to go past the third rail of deploying against Americans — you have to really shift the whole mentality, shift the culture, permit radicalization. Already, I think we’re pretty far down the road.”
Hegseth, for his part, feels he can accomplish a lot with a little. In The War on Warriors, he draws inspiration from the biblical story of Gideon, a military leader who led a pared-down force of 300 hardcore believers to a decisive victory over an army of thousands. Hegseth notes that Gideon was imperfect, and fell prey to personal vengeance, but that he ultimately enjoyed divine grace and was named one of the heroes of the faith. “When we maintain our covenant, we are Gideon,” he concluded. “God on our side, heroism and victory in our future.”
The incoming Trump administration has even more plans to delay electric vehicle adoption than previously thought. According to Reuters, which has seen transition team documents, the Trump team wants to abolish EV subsidies, claw back federal funding meant for EV charging infrastructure, block EV battery imports on national security grounds, and prevent the federal government and the US military from purchasing more EVs.
During the campaign, candidate Trump made repeated references to ending a supposed EV mandate. In fact, policies put in place by current US President Joe Biden only call for 50 percent of all new vehicles to be electrified by 2032 under EPA rules meant to cut emissions by 56 percent from 2026 levels.
More pollution
Instead, the new regime will be far more friendly to gas guzzling, as it intends to roll back EPA fuel efficiency standards to those in effect in 2019. This would increase the allowable level of emissions from cars by about 25 percent relative to the current rule set. US new vehicle efficiency stalled between 2008 and 2019, and it was only once the Biden administration began in 2021 that the EPA started instituting stricter rules on allowable limits of carbon dioxide and other pollutants from vehicle tailpipes.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware, written by Avram Piltch: Microsoft's Recall feature recently made its way back to Windows Insiders after having been pulled from test builds back in June, due to security and privacy concerns. The new version of Recall encrypts the screens it captures and, by default, it has a "Filter sensitive information," setting enabled, which is supposed to prevent it from recording any app or website that is showing credit card numbers, social security numbers, or other important financial / personal info. In my tests, however, this filter only worked in some situations (on two e-commerce sites), leaving a gaping hole in the protection it promises.
When I entered a credit card number and a random username / password into a Windows Notepad window, Recall captured it, despite the fact that I had text such as "Capital One Visa" right next to the numbers. Similarly, when I filled out a loan application PDF in Microsoft Edge, entering a social security number, name and DOB, Recall captured that. (Note that all info in these screenshots is made up). I also created my own HTML page with a web form that said, explicitly, "enter your credit card number below." The form had fields for Credit card type, number, CVC and expiration date. I thought this might trigger Recall to block it, but the software captured an image of my form filled out, complete with the credit card data. Recall did refuse to capture the credit card fields on the payment pages of Pimoroni and Adafruit. "So, when it came to real-world commerce sites that I visited, Recall got it right," adds Piltch. "However, what my experiment proves is that it's pretty much impossible for Microsoft's AI filter to identify every situation where sensitive information is on screen and avoid capturing it."
Donald Trump admitted in an interview with Time magazine that he likely cannot lower the cost of groceries—a key promise of his campaign that helped him get elected despite the fact that he faced multiple criminal indictments.
"Look, they got them up. I'd like to bring them down. It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard," Trump said in his rambling and incoherent interview with Time, which is helping to sanitize the felon-elect by giving him its “Person of the Year” award.
Trump went on to spew a bunch of gibberish about ports in Palos Verdes, California, and how fixing the supply chain there will lower grocery costs—at least, it seems like that was his point. His answer is so inarticulate it’s hard to follow.
Buckle up, here’s the rest of his grocery response:
I think a better supply chain is going to bring them down. You know, the supply chain is still broken. It's broken. You see it. You go out to the docks and you see all these containers. And I own property in California, in Palos Verdes. They're very nice. And I passed the docks, and I've been doing it for 20 years. I've never seen anything like it. You know, for 17 years, I saw containers and, you know, they'd come off and they'd be taken away—big areas, you know, you know, in that area, you know, where they have the big, the big ships coming in—big, the port. And I'd see this for years as I was out there inspecting property and things, because they own a lot in California. And I look down and I see containers that are, that are 12, 13, 14 containers. You wouldn't believe they can hold each other. It's like crazy. No, the supply chain is is broken. I think a very bad thing is this, what they're doing with the cars. I think they lost also because of cars. You know, there are a lot of reasons, but the car mandate is a disaster. The electric, the EV mandate.
“A month after the election Trump admits his promises on voters' top issue were lies,” Democratic Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia wrote Thursday in a post on BlueSky. “He will not lower costs, in fact his plans will lead to Americans paying higher prices.”
Time also asked Trump how his mass-deportation plans would impact grocery prices. Experts and farm owners alike have said that deporting the undocumented immigrants who pick much of the country’s crops would spike inflation.
"Many of the people who voted for you, as you mentioned a moment ago, cited high prices, particularly of food and groceries. If you deport millions of migrant agricultural workers, won’t the price of food rise sharply?" Time asked.
Trump falsely replied that deportation wouldn’t impact prices, then rambled off lies about how migrants are coming in from mental asylums—which Trump continues to seemingly conflate with migrants seeking political asylum, which has nothing to do with mental health.
"[W]e're going to let people in, but we have to let them in legally,” Trump said of his mass-deportation plan and how it would impact the price of food. “We don't want people to come in from jails. We don't want the jails of Venezuela and many other countries, and not just South American countries. We don't want the jails to be opened up into our country. We're not accepting their prisoners. We're not accepting their murders. We're not accepting their people from mental institutions. We're not doing it."
Trump has said he won the 2024 election because Americans were frustrated with the cost of groceries—bizarrely saying in a recent interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he is responsible for the word “groceries.”
“I won on groceries. Very simple word, groceries. Like almost—you know, who uses the word? I started using the word—the groceries,” Trump said of a universally used word. “When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time, and I won an election based on that. We’re going to bring those prices way down.”
Trump: I won on groceries. Very simple word, groceries. Like almost, you know, who uses the word. I started using the word. The groceries. When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time. pic.twitter.com/4hDzdJFrTz
Aside from admitting he probably can't do much about lowering grocery costs, Trump also gave incredibly stupid answers on a host of other topics and often spoke in circles to avoid answering questions.
On whether Melania Trump—who was basically absent from the campaign and has barely been seen alongside her odious husband—would be living in the White House, Trump told time:
Oh yes. She was, she was very, she actually became very active towards the end, as you saw with interviews. And she does—she does them well. People really watch. She's very beloved by the people, Melania. And they like the fact that she's not out there in your face all the time for many reasons. Many political people have that, you know. But she's, she's really, they really like her. They really love her. Actually, in many ways, when I make speeches, we love our First Lady. [T]hey have signs, we love our First Lady. No, she'll be–she'll be active, when she needs to be, when she needs to be.
On whether he will ban the use of abortion medication, Trump also gave a rambling response:
Look, I’ve stated it very clearly and I just stated it again very clearly. I think it would be highly unlikely. I can't imagine, but with, you know, we're looking at everything, but highly unlikely. I guess I could say probably as close to ruling it out as possible, but I don't want to. I don't want to do anything now. I want to do it at some point. There will be a time in the future where people are going to know everything about subjects like that, which are very complex subjects for people, because you have other people that, you know, they feel strongly both ways, really strongly both ways, and those are the things that are dividing up the country. But you know my stand from a very long, hard thing, and I think it's highly unlikely that I ever change that. Is it 100% unlikely that I change or that I stay—
And in response to a question about whether he will pardon the criminals who ransacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, assaulted law enforcement officers, and tried to block the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, Trump gave this rambling answer about lord knows what.
I'll be looking at J6 early on, maybe the first nine minutes. I'll be looking at oil prices bringing down, you know, coming down very substantially—meaning energy, energy costs coming down. And with energy comes everything else. See, they really hurt themselves. It went away from my energy policies, totally. It was going to crash. The numbers were through the roof. And then they went back to them. They said, Okay, just let it be. That was the difference between the energy, what they did on energy, and what they did at the border. At the border, they just opened it up to the world. They didn't stop it. You know, we had Remain in Mexico. We had—that border was in was in great shape. Not easy to do. But on that one, they just said, open it up. And they didn't change. They just did that. With energy, they opened, you saw what was going on. The energy was going through the roof. And then they said, just go back to Trump's policy. And they went back. Now the difference is that I would have had three times as much now. They have essentially, sort of, they tried to get to equal but if they didn't do that, you'd have energy, you'd have you'd have inflation that would have been much worse than it is. And it already was probably the worst this country has ever had. We've had the inflation. They lost on inflation, they lost on immigration, they lost on—as a part of immigration, I think a very big part is the border, the border itself. You know, if you can self subdivide the word immigration. They lost on the economy. But it was a different kind of—it was the economy as it pertains to groceries and small things that are actually big things for a family.
Hard to believe someone this stupid is going to be president. Again.
When Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, in 2017, I was about to drive my daughter and some of her friends to a soccer tryout. I remember that the news came moments before we left; once we arrived, I sat on a bench next to the soccer field, scrolling through incredulous and fearful reactions on Twitter. The news was widely considered akin to Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre, one of the most odious scandals in American history. TRUMP FIRES COMEY AMID RUSSIA INQUIRY, screamed a banner headline on the front page of The New York Times.
Now Trump, preparing for his second term as president, has decided to replace the FBI director again. The figure he picked to replace Comey—the lifelong Republican Christopher Wray—proved unable to meet Trump’s expectations for the position, which are (1) to permit Trump and his allies to violate the law with impunity, and (2) to investigate anybody who interferes with (1). Wray, wrestling with the problem of Trump’s desire to separate him from a job he apparently liked, chose to step down on his own. This raises the likelihood that the media will treat the replacement of Wray as normal administrative turnover rather than as a scandal.
But a scandal it most certainly is. By tradition, FBI directors serve 10-year terms, a norm designed to insulate the FBI from pressure to serve the president’s whims. Trump supporters have two philosophical rationalizations for his demand to violate that tradition. The lowbrow, populist version favored by Trump cultists is that Trump is beset by a “deep state” conspiracy that has kneecapped him at every turn because it is loyal to globalists, neoconservatives, or some other corrupt network. The highbrow version, preferred by conservative-movement elites, is that presidents possess an inherent right to control the executive branch from top to bottom, and all norms designed to prevent the president from abusing that power are an affront to the Constitution.
Neither theory can explain why Trump continues to go to war with people he appointed himself. Wray is not a Democrat, nor is he a Never Trumper. He’s a Republican picked by Trump. So was former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a Trump loyalist, and his successor, William Barr, who auditioned to succeed Sessions by performing even more obsequious loyalty to Trump.
The problem that keeps arising is that there is no way to remain in Trump’s favor while following the law. In a celebratory statement posted to Truth Social, Trump claims, “Under the leadership of Christopher Wray, the FBI illegally raided my home, without cause.” Had the FBI raid actually been illegal, he could have proved that in court. He didn’t, because by taking massive troves of classified documents when he left office, keeping them in a wildly unsecured location, refusing multiple requests to return them, lying repeatedly about it, and engaging in a clumsy cover-up, Trump had given the bureau no other choice. For Wray to allow this brazen defiance of the law would have been to simply admit that the law doesn’t apply to Trump, in or out of office.
But that is precisely the credo Trump demands that the bureau follow. It is why he has selected Kash Patel, a sycophant so childishly worshipful that he spelled out his loyalty to Trump in a literal children’s book portraying Trump as a virtuous king and himself as Trump’s loyal wizard. Perhaps Patel (or whomever Senate Republicans ultimately confirm for the position) will, once in office, somehow develop an adult, professionalized understanding of the rule of law. More likely, Trump’s FBI director will discover that actually locking up Trump’s enemies is hard. This was the anticlimactic outcome of the Durham investigation, Trump’s first-term campaign to imprison his foes, which resulted, after months of conservative-media salivating, in two embarrassing acquittals in court.
Still, the risk of turning the bureau over to a director who intends to abuse its powers is quite serious. Republicans tended to downplay these risks during the campaign, pointing to Trump’s first term, when Democrats and the media loudly decried Trump’s norm-violating authoritarian gambits, only for the system to hold. The fact that Trump is hunting down the very people who made the system hold is a logical flaw these Republicans have steadfastly refused to consider.
Discouragingly, Republican willpower to resist Trump’s most corrupt impulses appears to be a finite resource. When Wray announced that he was stepping down, three years short of completing his standard 10-year term, he poignantly confessed his regret: “It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway—this is not easy for me.”
It is, however, easy for Donald Trump. The president-elect had been facing the unpleasant task of firing a lifelong Republican whom he had selected himself, inviting the national media to raise ugly questions about his oft-confessed desire to turn the federal criminal-justice apparatus into a weapon of political vengeance. Instead, Wray, like so many Republicans who couldn’t stomach Trump’s demands, decided to go gentle into that good night. Nobody except Wray will remember where they were when Christopher Wray resigned.
On the plus side, now an incoming Democratic administration will push out the previous director and install their own right? hahaha.
FBI Director Christopher Wray announced on Wednesday that he would step down from his position on Jan. 20, coinciding with President Joe Biden’s last day in office.
Wray reportedly told employees at the agency that he made the decision so that attention would be focused on their work of fighting crime instead of on his fate.
Donald Trump has said that he intends to nominate loyalist Kash Patel to be FBI director. Wray’s term in office is not set to expire until 2027, since FBI directors usually serve for 10-year terms.
Trump praised Wray’s decision in a post on his Truth Social platform, writing, “The resignation of Christopher Wray is a great day for America as it will end the Weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice.”
Trump appointed Wray to the position in 2017 after firing its previous director, James Comey. Trump was angry that Comey had authorized the FBI to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, even though it is a core part of the agency’s job to defend America against threats.
Trump later soured on Wray because Wray allowed the agency to investigate allegations of criminal wrongdoing by Trump. It was on Wray’s watch that the agency raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, where they found he was in possession of classified documents. Trump was later charged, but the case was later dismissed by a Trump-appointed judge.
Patel is a conspiracy theorist who fed Trump back-channel information on Ukraine as part of Trump’s efforts to smear political opponents. Trump was later impeached for misusing his office in that campaign.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, Patel promoted lies that the race had been stolen by President Joe Biden, and argued that the federal government should target news outlets that had debunked election falsehoods.
Patel also authored three children’s books starring a thinly veiled version of himself and Trump (as a king) fighting against Democratic plotters seeking to usurp an imaginary kingdom.
Wray’s resignation will make it politically easier for Trump to install the fiction writer as the head of America’s chief law enforcement agency.
Editor’s note: The story has been updated with a statement from Donald Trump.
Newsmax, the conservative news channel, has reportedly ordered staffers to refrain from criticizing Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to be secretary of defense.
The directive comes after Newsmax host Greg Kelly argued on-air a week ago that disclosures about Hegseth had doomed his nomination.
Discussing a letter in which Hegseth’s mother said her son had abused women, Kelly said, “this secretary of defense thing is not going to happen.” Kelly also chided Hegseth for reportedly not informing Trump ahead of time about allegations of assault and public drunkenness.
Mediaite now reports that multiple sources inside Newsmax told them that network CEO, Trump ally, and longtime conservative activist Chris Ruddy was contacted by Trump’s team and told that Trump was unhappy with the commentary.
According to Mediaite, Newsmax Chief Operating Officer Elliot Jacobson held a meeting with staff on Friday and told them that network reporting on Hegseth had to “focus on the positive.” The staff was reportedly told that they should “pivot” if the allegations against Hegseth come up on air and that failure to follow the network’s directive could lead to “termination.”
The Newsmax kerfuffle comes as a recently released opinion poll from Civiqs for Daily Kos (taken Dec. 7-10) found that 48% of registered voters oppose Hegseth’s nomination and only 42% support him. Hegseth is polling behind other Trump nominees like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, despite their significant baggage. The revelations about Hegseth’s past, in connection with the major position he has been nominated for, appear to be having a real effect.
Trump needs his nominee to have support from right-wing media, and pressuring Newsmax could ensure that occurs.
Historically, Newsmax has shown few qualms in being an advocate for Trump. In fact, doing so has cost the network. In 2021, voting services companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic sued Newsmax after the network aired falsehoods about purported attempts by Democrats to steal the 2020 election from Trump.
Personalities on the network had falsely alleged that votes had been changed from Trump to Joe Biden, that Smartmatic software was used to “fix elections,” that the companies were involved in “systemic fraud,” and that the companies had previously intervened in vote counts.
In September, Newsmax eventually settled out of court with Smartmatic for an undisclosed amount and released a statement saying, “Newsmax acknowledges that the Court found that ‘allegations regarding whether the [2020 U.S. presidential election] and its results were somehow altered or manipulated by Smartmatic are factually false/untrue.’”
Trump relies on conservative media like Newsmax and Fox News to set his policy agenda and to provide individuals that he selects to operate in his administration. These outlets are also key to promoting Trump and his message and pushing back on Newsmax before he is even inaugurated would certainly set the tone for the next few years of coverage.
Anything to break government and make people hate it more
A group of nearly 30 House Republicans on Tuesday urged Donald Trump to get rid of the IRS' free program to file federal taxes—a move that would make it more expensive for millions of Americans to file their taxes.
Direct File is a product of the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided money for the IRS to create a free alternative to TurboTax and other for-profit tax-preparation companies.
The program especially benefits low-income Americans who cannot afford tax preparers. And it poses a threat to tax-preparation companies, who stand to lose revenue if the IRS has its own program for Americans to use to prepare and file their annual returns.
In the letter, Republicans tried to make Direct File sound bad but actually made the program look pretty appealing.
“As you know, during the last tax year, the IRS rolled out its Direct File pilot program in 12 states, through which taxpayers file their taxes directly to the IRS instead of through a trusted accountant or reputable third-party preparation service,” the GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter to Trump, telling him he should get rid of Direct File on “day one” of his presidency.
“Under the guise of offering a convenient ‘free-to-file’ alternative preparation service, the IRS asserts itself as the tax assessor, collector, preparer, and enforcer—all in one—when the program is used,” they continued.
In fact, Trump’s own co-president, billionaire Elon Musk, thinks an easy-to-use and free service from the federal government to file taxes is a good idea. In fact, he’s proposed a similar-sounding government-run mobile app for Americans to prepare their taxes.
It’s unclear why the Republican lawmakers think people should trust a third-party over the IRS to properly file their taxes. But campaign contributions from the tax-preparation companies—which have worked to block programs like Direct File for years—shed some light.
Many of the Republicans urging Trump to get rid of Direct File have received campaign contributions from Intuit, the company that owns TurboTax. Intuit earned $14.4 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2023.
Young Kim, Nicole Malliotakis and Andrew Garbarino, all signers of this, are among the top House recipients of donations from the accounting industry per OpenSecrets https://t.co/eu7ZI4yYYHpic.twitter.com/f6OeZw9IIP
The GOP lawmakers who oppose Direct File instead support “Free File.” According to a 2019 ProPublica exposé on TurboTax, Free File was an agreement TurboTax and other tax-preparation companies made with the federal government in which the companies agreed to provide a free service for some low-income Americans in exchange for the federal government agreeing not to create their own tax-preparation software.
From ProPublica’s report:
Since Free File’s launch, Intuit has done everything it could to limit the program’s reach while making sure the government stuck to its end of the deal. As ProPublica has reported, Intuit added code to the Free File landing page of TurboTax that hid it from search engines like Google, making it harder for would-be users to find.
While Republicans are railing against the Direct File program, studies show it is popular with Americans.
In 2024, the new Direct File service was in a pilot phase, processing more than 140,000 tax returns. But 90% of people who used it rated the software as excellent or above average, with respondents saying they liked that the software was easy to use, trustworthy, and free.
A survey from David Binder Research for the Economic Security Project, a left-leaning nonprofit focused on economic issues, also found that people preferred Direct File over paid preparers and other paid software.
“Overall, those using Direct File in the pilot states report very high satisfaction with the service and very high likelihood to recommend it to others,” the survey found. “Compared to those using alternatives, Direct Filers are much more likely to say tax filing this year was more straightforward than last year and that their costs and time spent filing were reduced.”
In 2025, Direct File will be expanded to 24 states for people who do not itemize their taxes and do not collect gig-economy, rental, or business income.
But its fate from there is unclear. In January, Republicans will have a trifecta in Washington and have been working to kill the program since its inception. In fact, Trump’s pick to be the new IRS commissioner wants to get rid of the IRS altogether.
Ultimately, killing Direct File is just another way Republicans are sticking up for big business over average Americans, and goes against the economic populism Americans voted for in 2024.
“Direct File is a free service that makes it easier to file your taxes every year. Republicans want to make your lives more difficult,” Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia wrote in a post on X, responding to the Republican’s letter.
A location-tracking company that sells its services to police departments is apparently using addresses and coordinates of doctors' and lawyers' offices and other types of locations to help cops compile lists of places visited by suspects, according to a 404 Media report published today.
Fog Data Science, which says it "harness[es] the power of data to safeguard national security and provide law enforcement with actionable intelligence," has a "Project Intake Form" that asks police for locations where potential suspects and their mobile devices might be found. The form, obtained by 404 Media, instructs police officers to list locations of friends' and families' houses, associates' homes and offices, and the offices of a person's doctor or lawyer.
Fog Data has a trove of location data derived from smartphones' geolocation signals, which would already include doctors' offices and many other types of locations even before police ask for information on a specific person. Details provided by police on the intake form seem likely to help Fog Data conduct more effective searches of its database to find out when suspects visited particular places. The form also asks police to identify the person of interest's name and/or known aliases and their "link to criminal activity."
Something very strange is going on between Musk and Missouri.
GOP Rep. Mark Alford of Missouri proposed on Monday that programs like Social Security and Medicare be cut to appease the incoming Trump administration’s bogus Department of Government Efficiency—aka billionaire Elon Musk’s vanity project.
DOGE (yes, it’s named like the meme and the cryptocurrency) is being led by Musk and fellow billionaire tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy and aims to cut $2 trillion in government spending.
In an appearance on Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria,” Alford argued that the key social safety net programs need to go on the chopping block in order to meet this goal.
“We’ve got to right the ship and it’s going to mean cuts. It’s going to mean cuts to the 24% of the discretionary spending that we have, and it’s also going to mean looking long term at the front end of some programs like Social Security and Medicare,” Alford said.
Because “people are living longer, they’re retiring later,” Alford suggested that “on the front end we can move that retirement age back a little bit.”
The House Republican’s ideas echoed sentiments expressed by Musk (who is worth over $353 billion) during the presidential campaign. Musk said in October while campaigning for Donald Trump that middle-class Americans would have to experience “hardship” as cuts are made to the government.
At the same time, Trump has proposed more tax cuts that would benefit extremely wealthy Americans like Musk and Ramaswamy.
Musk reportedly spent over $250 million during the 2024 campaign cycle on multiple efforts, meant to elect Trump, including a shady political action committee.
While Trump has said that he will not cut Social Security, he submitted federal budgets during his first term in office that proposed cuts to safety net programs, particularly those that poor communities rely on.
Economic experts have long said that Social Security can be protected for future generations by raising the current caps on contributions. That would require the extremely wealthy—like Musk—to pay more, but it would help millions of Americans avoid poverty in their golden years.
