Trump’s Genius Plan to Release Gaza Hostages: More War

Donald Trump promised “HELL TO PAY” in the Middle East if hostages held by Hamas in Gaza aren’t released by his inauguration on January 20, 2025.

In a Truth Social post on Monday afternoon, Trump promised consequences “for those who perpetrated these atrocities against humanity,” saying those responsible “will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”

Trump’s comments came after Hamas issued a video statement saying 33 of its captives have been killed during Israel’s brutal war on Gaza dating back to October last year, when Hamas attacked Israel and took more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel has killed more than 44,000 people, including 17,492 children, in its war on Gaza.

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister and accused war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly promised Trump a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon before Trump’s inauguration. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire was agreed upon last week, although it is already showing signs of unraveling.

Now Trump seems to want the release of hostages before his presidency begins but made no mention of a Gaza ceasefire as a prerequisite. The president-elect has remarked that Israel should “finish the job” in Gaza, basically endorsing the country’s yearlong campaign that has resulted in a humanitarian crisis and war crimes charges.

Trump’s latest comments raise the question of what “hell to pay” would mean for Gaza, whose infrastructure has been reduced to rubble. Is Trump threatening to use the U.S. military in airstrikes in the Middle East against Hamas’s allies in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran? If so, that would very much set off the regional war that Trump has claimed he doesn’t want.

Elon Musk is butting his head into the auction of Alex Jones’s InfoWars.

Satirical outlet The Onion purchased InfoWars’ parent company last month for $1.75 million in conjunction with the families of children murdered during the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, to whom Jones lost a $1.5 billion lawsuit for repeatedly claiming that the mass shooting was a hoax.

That sale included InfoWars’ websites, its studio equipment, its dietary supplements, its branding—as well as its heavily trafficked social media accounts.

The deal appeared to be cut-and-dried, but on Monday, Musk alerted the court that he would not accept the ownership transfer of InfoWars’ X accounts. In filings with a Texas bankruptcy court, X argued that the sale violated its terms of service, which prevent the sale of its accounts, writing that the company objects “to any proposed sale or other purported transfer of any account used by Jones or FSS that is maintained on the X platform (‘X’).”

“Elon Musk, hands down, is a hero,” Jones previously said in a video message posted to his account, praising the world’s richest man for lending him a hand in maintaining his connection to the brand.

It is, nonetheless, a stark reversal of how Musk felt about Jones’s social media presence in the wake of his court judgments. In 2022, shortly after Jones lost his lawsuit to the Sandy Hook families, Musk said he wouldn’t allow Jones back on his social media platform, paraphrasing the Bible in his explanation that Jones deserved “no mercy” for using the “deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”

Meanwhile, social media attorneys have been stunned by the intervention, noting that this appears to be the first instance in which a social media company has gotten involved in a legal dispute over account ownership.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a social media platform arguing to a court that no one can transfer ownership during a dispute over who owns an account because they will just switch it off,” Toby Butterfield, a professor of social media law at Columbia University Law School, told CNN.

Jones repeatedly claimed that the 2012 shooting that left 20 first graders and six teachers dead was a front to lure voters toward gun control policies.

In the run-up to the auction last month, Jones had appeared to be under the impression that “good guys” on the right would buy his fringe network, though he did not reveal who they were. Several groups expressed interest in InfoWars assets, including a coalition of liberal and anti-disinformation watchdog groups, according to The Daily Beast, as well as some of Jones’s own supporters, such as Donald Trump ally Roger Stone. The sale, however, has effectively crushed what was arguably Jones’s most successful endeavor while marking the beginning of his descent into irrelevancy.

Jones is currently working to appeal the sale.

Representative Jamie Raskin launched a campaign Monday to replace Representative Jerry Nadler as ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.

In a letter to his colleagues, the Maryland Democrat warned that they were in “the fight of our lives.” Raskin asked for the party to support his burgeoning bid, explaining that “the stakes have gone way up since the election” as “this time the MAGA movement has not only a trifecta but a complicit Supreme Court waiting in the wings and a dominant media propaganda system parroting all the lies.”

“House Democrats must stand in the breach to defend the principles and institutions of constitutional democracy. That is our historic assignment now. We dare not fail,” Raskin wrote.

“After a week consulting most of our Colleagues and engaging in serious introspection about where we are, I am running today to be your Ranking Member on the House Judiciary Committee in the 119th Congress,” he wrote. “This is where we will wage our front-line defense of the freedoms and rights of the people, the integrity of the Department of Justice and the FBI, and the security of our most precious birthright possessions: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the rule of law, and democracy itself.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was among several House Democrats who spent days urging a rather reluctant Raskin to challenge the 77-year-old Nadler, a pillar of the House’s older Democratic guard. Democrats have reportedly grown concerned that Nadler wouldn’t be as meaningfully effective in quashing Donald Trump’s abuses of power as Raskin, who headed the House’s investigation into the deadly January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Democrats and Republicans alike would prefer Chris Wray to continue as FBI director and not be replaced by the controversial Kash Patel.

President-elect Donald Trump announced that he plans to replace Wray—whom he appointed in 2017—with election-denying, far-right loyalist Kash Patel. FBI directors have a 10-year tenure unless they are fired or resign. And most people in Congress seem to think Wray has done a fine job and deserves to fulfill his term until 2027.

South Dakota Republican Mike Rounds called Wray a “very good man” and had no issues with how Wray led the FBI. Other Republicans, however, like Senator Chuck Grassley, have been quick to fall in line behind Trump, whose primary beef with Wray was that he didn’t investigate Joe Biden for election fraud in 2020.

“Chris Wray has failed at fundamental duties of [FBI Director]. He’s showed disdain for [congressional] oversight & hasn’t lived up to his promises It’s time 2 chart a new course 4 TRANSPARENCY +ACCOUNTABILITY at FBI,” Grassley wrote on X. “Kash Patel must prove to Congress he will reform &restore public trust in FBI.”

Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin offered his own take, telling NBC that Wray had “demonstrated too much independence and objectivity in the job for Donald Trump, who wants much more of a personal loyalist in the position. And that’s why he’s gone to Kash Patel.”

Patel is a staunch Trump advocate with a thirst for political revenge, and he’s made that very clear. To fire Wray and hire Patel would just be another shameless effort on Trump’s part to surround himself with highly unqualified yet deeply vindictive yes-men. It seems to be working.

Karoline Leavitt, who Donald Trump has chosen as his White House press secretary, once criticized the Capitol insurrection and reposted praise for then–Vice President Mike Pence certifying the 2020 presidential election, before later deleting the social media posts.

CNN reports that Leavitt made two posts on X (formerly Twitter) after the January 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol: one video of Pence calling the attacks “a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol” as he presided over the election’s certification in Congress, and another post calling a Capitol police officer who led rioters away from members of Congress “a hero.”

At the time, Leavitt, then 23, had just left Trump’s White House press office and accepted a job working for Representative Elise Stefanik. Later, despite her criticism of the January 6 riots, she unsuccessfully ran for Congress in New Hampshire in 2022, denying that Trump lost the presidential election.

In two separate interviews in 2021, one with OANN and one with New Hampshire talk radio, Leavitt denied that Trump lost the 2020 election.

“I do believe that if we were to audit all 50 states in this country, there is absolutely no way we would find Joe Biden legitimately won 81 million votes,” Leavitt told New Hampshire’s WKXL. “I fundamentally do not believe that, and I will tell you the majority of voters on the Republican side do not believe that either. We feel as though this election was taken away from us.”

After her 2022 loss, Leavitt went on to work for Trump’s PAC and later his presidential campaign, becoming its national press secretary. At 27, she’ll be the youngest White House press secretary ever, but far from the only Republican (and Trump staffer) to go from criticizing the Capitol insurrection to denying that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. But that won’t matter to Trump, who sees immediate loyalty as the most important thing. As long as Leavitt does what Trump wants in her new role, she will have his approval.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, Donald Trump’s pick to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, could face many different and serious conflicts with his business interests if he is confirmed to run the agency.

The Washington Post reports that Oz, who has a long history of promoting questionable medical cures and diet solutions, also has business ties to pharmaceutical companies such as Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of Ozempic. If Oz is confirmed to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, his decisions would have considerable effects on these businesses.

Oz founded Sharecare, a digital health and media company, with Oprah Winfrey and WebMD founder Jeff Arnold in 2009. Novo Nordisk was a client of Sharecare. Being in charge of Medicare and Medicaid, two taxpayer-funded health care programs, would call into question whether he’d be affected by lobbying efforts from Big Pharma, particularly over weight-loss drugs like Ozempic.

Oz has repeatedly touted the benefits of Ozempic on his TV show as well as his website. He has also promoted Wegovy, another similar drug. Both are manufactured by Novo Nordisk, and the company has been lobbying the federal government to cover the drugs through Medicare and Medicaid.

The Biden administration proposed covering the weight-loss drugs last week, which raises the question of whether the incoming Trump administration will do the same. Such a move would raise a conflict within the administration between Oz and Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has attacked pharmaceutical companies for selling drugs like Ozempic.

“They’re counting on selling it to Americans because we’re so stupid and so addicted to drugs,” Kennedy told Fox News in October.

There’s also Oz’s long history of touting questionable medical cures and diet solutions, which undercuts his medical credibility and even resulted in a congressional hearing. Will Oz’s quackery, as well as his business interests, affect his confirmation? In the Trump administration, after all, conflicts of interest are routinely ignored when money is involved.

It seems that Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to transform the FBI into the president’s billy club, hasn’t quite won over all of the president-elect’s allies, according to MSNBC.

Patel, who held intelligence and defense roles during Trump’s first term, is considered one of his most dangerous picks yet—and not everyone is happy about the president-elect’s choice.

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Jonathan Lemire discussed reports Monday of unease in Trump’s inner circle around Patel’s nomination.

“Kash Patel is not just controversial among media outlets or Democrats, he is not just controversial among Republican senators,” Scarborough said. “He is controversial inside Trump’s own orbit.

“You go inside Trump’s own orbit and it is split down the middle with half the people thinking he is going to be a disaster for any Donald Trump administration, and they never wanted this nomination to see the light of day because—again—that divide goes straight through MAGAworld for those around Donald Trump.”

Lemire explained that Patel, with his penchant for “deep state” conspiracy theories and threatening journalists, is a pick designed to please far-right extremists.

“People I talked to say this pick was a nod to the extreme right-wing portions of Trump base, the Steve Bannon, ultra-MAGA sector here who had been disappointed by Trump’s picks like treasury secretary and secretary of state,” Lemire explained, referring to billionaire money manager Scott Bessent and Republican Senator Marco Rubio, respectively.

“This is Trump throwing them red meat because he knows he needs to keep them happy, but other people in Trumpworld are deeply worried about this pick; that Patel is not only not qualified but dangerous, that he will not think twice or hesitate in carrying out whatever Trump wants, people say, even for people breaking the law.”

It’s hard to believe Trump hasn’t already satisfied the more extreme among his base with his slate of far-right conspiracy theorists, autocrat apologists, and alleged sexual predators. At a certain point, so many “nods” to the far right aren’t really just nods anymore, as Trump’s loyalist picks for intelligence and law enforcement constitute the makings of an increasingly accelerating authoritarian takeover.

An unelected federal bureaucrat spent his weekend complaining about how much he hates unelected federal bureaucrats.  

Former presidential candidate and Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy offered a pretty oblivious take on X on Sunday. Chiming in on a discussion between Elon Musk and Stephen Miller about the deep state, Ramaswamy responded, “The real ‘threat to our democracy’ is the unelected federal bureaucracy.” 

This stunning lack of self-awareness—or unabashed hypocrisy—was quickly ridiculed. 

“You have already launched and are reportedly staffing a department of the United States government that has never actually been created or authorized by any statute enacted by the democratically elected Congress of the United States,” former Bernie Sanders adviser David Sirota wrote.

“Vivek is literally an unelected federal bureaucrat,” said MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler Cohen.

“That’s you, IDIOT,” said talk show host Roland Martin.

Even still, Ramaswamy and Musk are set to be equipped with power to radically change the federal government apparatus, or “deep state” as they like to call it—especially after their recent victory in the Loper Bright v. Raimondo Supreme Court case.

Donald Trump’s next term will benefit from a Republican trifecta at the upper echelons of government—but the party’s inner divisions and its tiny, two-seat majority in the House might stand in the way of some of his bigger policy goals.

With Congress winding down its 118th session, it’s clear that the divisions flaming both parties in both chambers have disrupted the legislature’s typical productivity. For scale: The branch’s last session, which also faced criticism for its lack of productivity, enacted 362 public laws. The 118th, by contrast, has passed just 136 laws, according to legislative data from LegiScan.

That’s partially thanks to rampant chaos in the House, which wasted months of the first half of its session unable to pick a leader, whether it was via Kevin McCarthy falling to the caucus’s far-right members last year or Speaker Mike Johnson, a relative unknown, almost accidentally acquiring the House’s highest position.

Meanwhile, Republicans, divided between traditional party values and Trump’s MAGA infusion, have continued to torpedo their own initiatives. Up next on the docket for the confused party is advancing Trump’s tax goals, which include extending his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and delaying the end of $3.3 trillion in tax breaks that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy (they’re currently set to expire in 2025).

Senior Republicans had hoped that the extension would give the president-elect the tools to expand border enforcement and begin his “mass deportations,” but even the party’s political advantages aren’t enough for a clear path forward on the issue.

“It’ll be super challenging. And the reason for that is you have razors at margins, and we’re obviously not going to get any Democrat votes. The key is going to be addressing all these coalitions that are likely going to threaten an insufficient number of votes unless they get their priorities,” Senator Thom Tillis told NBC News Sunday. “It’s infinitely more complex to get a reconciliation outcome in this cycle out of the House than the Senate.”

But the extreme nativist effort has doubly spelled out to Democrats that conservatives aren’t looking to bipartisanship to advance their policies.

“Republicans are trying to take actions that will benefit the most fortunate and grow the debt for future generations,” Representative Brad Schneider, the newly elected chair of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, told NBC. “They’ve made it very clear they’re not going to look to find any compromise. They’re going to have to work within their own caucus, this very narrow majority.”

The nominated co-chairs of the soon-to-be Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, have pinpointed a standard that will allow them to completely remake the federal government—and it’s all thanks to the Supreme Court.

Earlier this year, the nation’s highest court ruled on Loper Bright v. Raimondo, overturning a 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council and killing a long-standing mandate that federal courts should defer to executive branch agencies’ interpretation of the laws they administered (so long as that interpretation was deemed reasonable).

In a lengthy statement Monday morning, Ramaswamy highlighted that Loper Bright will allow their department to enact the sweeping budget cuts they envision for the executive branch—which includes shrinking the federal deficit and slashing $2 trillion in spending by July 4, 2026.

“Under the old standard, federal courts deferred to agency interpretations of law when a statute was deemed ambiguous,” Ramaswamy wrote on X. “Overturning Chevron deference, combined with the Major Questions Doctrine codified in West Virginia vs EPA, paves the way for not a slight but a *drastic* reduction in the scope of the federal regulatory state. It’s coming.”

Musk quote-tweeted Ramaswamy’s lengthy post, simply replying, “Yes.”

The biotech billionaire pointed to several legal studies to back his perspective, including a 2017 study that found that Chevron had become something of a standard for determining agency interpretation, being applied to close to three-quarters of relevant cases between 2003 and 2013.

An op-ed by the duo published in The Wall Street Journal last month highlighted some specific and immediate targets for their cuts. They include slashing more than $500 million a year from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which funds NPR and PBS), nearly $300 million from Planned Parenthood, and “$1.5 billion for grants to international organizations.” Musk and Ramaswamy also suggested, in vague terms, that “entitlement programs” such as Medicare and Medicaid are on the line, though they refused to acknowledge how much they intend to burn from the critical health care programs.