Why is a Democratic Senator Fawning Over Elon Musk?

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, gushed over Elon Musk Thursday, calling the technocrat billionaire who helped elect Donald Trump “the foremost champion of free speech in the tech industry.”

Blumenthal’s compliment for the far-right troll king came less than a week after he and Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn released a statement announcing that they had collaborated with X, Musk’s social media company, on changes to their new bill, the Kids Online Safety Act. That bill, by their own admission, featured a number of changes that had been spearheaded by the increasingly toxic social media platform.

“Led by X, the new changes made to the Kids Online Safety Act strengthen the bill while safeguarding free speech online and ensuring it is not used to stifle expression,” Blumentahl and Blackburn wrote in a statement. “These changes should eliminate once and for all the false narrative that this bill would be weaponized by unelected bureaucrats to censor Americans.

“We thank Elon and Linda for their bold leadership and commitment to protecting children online and for helping us get this bill across the finish line this Congress,” the pair added, implying that Musk and X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino had been directly involved in the process.

X has been supporting the KSOA, which has already passed the Senate, since the summer, so Blumenthal’s obvious posturing raises some concerns and questions. It is possible, of course, that this is all just politics: The Democratic senator is simply making nice with a powerful player with a sizable platform who could easily become a huge problem for both him and his currently bipartisan bill. It is possible, however, that Blumenthal is trying to play a longer game, hoping to influence the man who both stands to influence everything in the incoming Trump administration and who currently influences everyone (or at least everyone on X) via the endless stream of pro-Trump, right-wing propaganda he posts. That, however, is a losing battle for obvious reasons: Musk has little affinity—to put it mildly—for progressives like Blumenthal, Democrats in general, or the policy goals of any left-leaning group or politician. Attempting to influence Musk, moreover, is a mug’s game. For every Democrat in his ear, there are a hundred (likely more) arch MAGA loyalists. 

Democrats like Blumenthal might better spend their time warning their constituents of the creeping power of technocrats like Musk, who are plotting to dismantle essential features of the federal government via draconian cuts to public services and welfare programs, while pushing legislation that would effectively allow them to regulate their own industries and policies that would make them vastly richer than they already are.  

Donald Trump’s sudden appointment of one of his staunchest allies, two-time failed MAGA candidate and former news anchor Kari Lake, to run the federally funded international broadcasting service Voice of America has resulted in widespread concern and outrage, amid fears that she could transform it into a reactionary propaganda arm of the Trump presidency. Lake, for her part, has done little to assuage those fears.

“I am honored that President Trump has asked me to lead the Voice of America,” Lake wrote in a statement on social media. “@VOANews is a vital international media outlet dedicated to advancing the interests of the United States by engaging directly with people across the globe and promoting democracy and truth.

“Under my leadership, the VOA will excel in its mission: chronicling America’s achievements worldwide,” she continued.

But rules passed in 2020 could get in the way of her plans. Recent regulations prevent the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media from hiring or firing Voice of America’s network leadership without the express approval of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board, a seven-person panel composed of presidential appointees, reported former Washington Post journalist Paul Farhi.

Of course, Trump has also not yet appointed anyone to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, further stretching the possibility of Lake’s appointment to the public network.

Meanwhile, Trump’s appointees to the not-yet-existent Department of Government Efficiency have promised to leverage recent Supreme Court decisions to slash and burn spending on beloved domestic public broadcasters. In a joint op-ed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy published in The Wall Street Journal last month, the duo said they would cut $500 million a year from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, among other seismic blows to national programs.

NATO chief, Mark Rutte, warned members on Thursday that the international alliance must shift to a “wartime mindset,” predicting years of conflict with Russia as the superpower batters down Ukrainian forces.

“Russia is preparing for long-term confrontation, with Ukraine and with us,” Rutte said during a speech in Brussels in which he highlighted the short distance to where “Russian bombs are falling … Iranian drones are flying,” and “North Korean soldiers are fighting,” he said, referencing the complexity—and global nature—of conflict with Russia.

“We are not ready for what is coming our way in four to five years,” the secretary general continued. “It is time to shift to a wartime mindset, and turbocharge our defense production and defense spending,”

Raising the 32-nation alliance’s 2 percent defense spending is, according to Rutte, a “top priority.” Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, called on NATO members to “stop creating barriers” between one another and their industries, calling it “simply unacceptable” that European banks and pension funds were refusing to invest in defense spending.

At one point during his speech, Rutte spoke directly to the defense industry, promising that more money was on its way while daring weapons manufacturers to “innovate and take risks.”

On the other side of the conflict, Russia has approved a draft budget that plans to increase its military expenditures through 2027 to more than 6.2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Rutte, however, predicts that could grow even more, to as much as 8 percent of the country’s GDP.

“That’s a third of Russia’s state budget—and the highest level since the Cold War,” Rutte said. “And Russia’s defense industry is producing huge numbers of tanks, armoured vehicles, and ammunition. What Russia lacks in quality, it makes up for in quantity—with the help of China, Iran, and North Korea.” Troops from North Korea—and military hardware and technology from China and Iran—have helped Russia recover from the heavy losses it has suffered in Ukraine, a shrinking pool of available recruits, and growing apathy about the war as it drags on.

President-elect Donald Trump has long threatened America’s withdrawal from the Western military and trade alliance, sparking condemnation from some of his former allies. In February, Trump claimed he once told a European leader that he’d allow Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies if they didn’t “pay” their “bills.” (NATO dues are determined by guideline rather than mandate, and the United States has never been shortchanged by other members. The Cold War organization has “no ledger that maintains accounts of what countries pay and owe,” according to former Obama staffer Aaron O’Connell, who explained to NPR in 2018 that “NATO is not like a club with annual membership fees.”)

While Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton cast doubt on the incendiary story, he didn’t question his desire to nix the strategic alliance. “Look, I was there when he almost withdrew, and he’s not negotiating,” Bolton said at the time. “His goal here is not to strengthen NATO, it’s to lay the groundwork to get out.”

One of Trump’s biggest and boldest campaign promises was that he would immediately end the Russian invasion of Ukraine—though his philosophy on how to achieve that was suspiciously scant of details and, at times, veered toward solutions that would invariably aid Russia. In June, meanwhile, Trump said he would be open to an increase in U.S. weapons aid to Ukraine so long as it shows up for peace talks with Russia, reported Reuters.

Trump’s advisers envisioned that the peace talks—which Trump promised to facilitate after reentering the White House—would also quietly include Ukraine seceding large, resource-rich regions of the country that is currently occupied by Russian forces. The concept was drawn up by retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, both former chiefs of staff in Trump’s National Security Council. Such a deal would put NATO in a precarious position.

Russia has made considerable advances in recent months, but its growing reliance on allies suggests that it is stretched perilously thin. An end to the war in Ukraine—particularly one that gives it much of the territory it desires—would be an enormous gift to the country and would put it on NATO’s doorstep. Article 5 of NATO’s treaty says that an attack on any member of the alliance will be treated as an attack on all NATO members: Should Russia look to invade Poland or one of the Baltic nations next, it could quickly spiral into a devastating global conflict.

Eric Adams is trying his best to get on the incoming border czar’s good side in the hopes that President-elect Trump blesses him with a pardon.

The corruption-addled New York City mayor met with Tom Homan on Thursday to discuss the city’s role in Trump’s imminent mass deportation plans. Homan is tasked with overseeing Trump’s “largest deportation operation in American history.”

Adams, who personally requested the meeting with Homan, has made it clear that he plans to fully cooperate with any and all of the Trump administration’s immigration plans. He even noted that he’d be open to helping place immigrants who’d been accused but not convicted of a crime in ICE custody, as he does not believe that people who “snuck in” deserve the right to due process. 

The meeting with Homan, who along with Trump has floated deporting entire families and killing birthright citizenship, drew sharp criticism from Adams’s mayoral opponents.

“We do not trust Mayor Adams to meet with Mr. Homan,” mayoral candidate Jessica Ramos said in a statement. “He has made it abundantly clear where he stands, saying migrants will destroy the city, spreading dangerous misinformation about immigrants’ constitutional rights, and cozying up to the incoming administration in the hopes that his corruption will be pardoned.” She went on to describe Adams as a potential “accomplice of mass deportations” that would “ruin the cultural and economic edge that makes our city special.”

“Since Eric Adams is seeking a federal pardon and the good graces of Donald Trump, this meeting has the potential to be dangerous to New York City,” said mayoral candidate and former City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

This is not the first time the mayor has made a blatant appeal to Trump. Adams has been federally indicted on charges of bribery, wire fraud, and soliciting political donations from a number of foreign nationals connected to the Turkish government. Earlier this month he compared his legal troubles to Hunter Biden’s, suggesting that he too was just a target of a politicized Justice Department, and should be pardoned. He simultaneously went on a rightward tilt during that speech, saying that “those who are here committing crimes, robbery, shooting at police officers, raping innocent people.… I would love to sit down with the border czar and hear his thoughts on how we are going to address those who are harming our citizens.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reportedly working behind the scenes to tank Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s bid to become ranking member on the House Oversight Committee.

Punchbowl News reported Thursday that Pelosi, arguably the most powerful Democratic playmaker in a generation, is set on quashing the New York progressive’s shot at leading the House of Representatives’ key investigative arm.

Pelosi is making calls on behalf of Representative Gerry Connolly, a 16-year House veteran from Virginia, who is also running for the coveted leadership spot.

Last week, Pelosi told Politico who she wanted for one of the most influential positions in the House. “I have supported Mr. Connolly for that, should it be open,” she said.

Pelosi and AOC have had a somewhat tumultuous professional relationship, predicated on the slate of differences between establishment Democrats and a younger, progressive vanguard. Pelosi reportedly took issue with certain progressive tactics, like AOC’s “Abolish ICE” slogan, according to Ryan Grim’s 2023 book The Squad: AOC and the Hope of Political Revolution.

In 2021, Pelosi publicly criticized AOC and other members of the Squad for being the lone Democrats to withhold support for an immigration bill that she had backed. “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” she told The New York Times in an interview. “But they don’t have any following. They’re four people, and that’s how many votes they got.”

AOC and her chief of staff publicly pushed back on Pelosi’s dismissive response, and Pelosi told them to back off, according to Politico. In a private meeting between the two women, things got particularly heated, according to Grim. Pelosi has nevertheless dismissed claims that there is bad blood between her and the Squad.

Meanwhile, AOC has garnered support  from an unexpected place: Representative James Comer, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, who has spent years waging investigations into the political enemies of Donald Trump, including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Tim Walz. “I’m a big AOC fan. Obviously, I don’t agree with very much of her policy, but I think she’s a good person,” Comer said on CNN Thursday. 

In her bid for the top Democratic spot on the House Oversight Committee, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has found a perhaps unlikely supporter in the committee’s Republican chairman, James Comer.

Last week, Ocasio-Cortez announced her candidacy for ranking member of the Oversight Committee, writing in a statement that, under Trump, Democrats on the committee “will face an important task” of balancing “our focus on the incoming president’s corrosive actions and corruption with a tangible fight to make life easier for America’s working class.”

Politico reported Wednesday that Ocasio-Cortez, who has served as vice–ranking member on the committee under outgoing ranking member Jamie Raskin, has garnered the support of most Democrats on the committee, though her success will require the approval of the Steering and Policy Committee.

Comer sang the 35-year-old progressive lawmaker’s praises in a Thursday interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown—though he spoke well too of her leading opponent, 74-year-old Representative Gerry Connolly.

Asked if he would “like to co-chair with” her, Comer replied that he’s “a big AOC fan.” “Obviously I don’t agree with very much of her policy,” he continued, “but I think she’s a good person. I think she’s very well spoken.”

Mentioning his history of trading barbs with Raskin, who is running for the top Democratic position on the House Judiciary Committee, Comer said, “The Democrats have nowhere to go but up after having Jamie Raskin for the last four years.”

The Oversight chair added that Representative Connolly, who is reportedly being boosted by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in hopes of sinking AOC’s bid, “would be great,” as would two others who were initially considered possible contenders but have since declined: Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi, who has indicated his disinterest in the role, and Ro Khanna, who endorsed Ocasio-Cortez for the position, according to NBC News.

“But I certainly look forward to the next ranking member,” Comer continued. “If it’s AOC, I think we’ll have a good working relationship. We’ll obviously have a lot of differences on policy, but I think she’s a good, well-spoken person for the Democrats to serve in that position.”

Drone sightings over Northern New Jersey have sparked feelings of confusion and fear from residents and local officials alike—but some attention-seeking, alien-obsessed politicians in D.C. appear to be milking the fear cycle for all it’s worth.

In a video rant posted to her X account Thursday, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene insisted that the government’s continued inability to identify the strange lights hovering over the Garden State was “total bullshit” that put every American “in danger.”

“They can track down a guy that just killed a CEO, but they can’t identify what nightly drones are and where they’re coming from,” Greene continued, referring to Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

“Secondly, if they’re telling the truth, then this country is in horrible shape. We’re all in danger,” Greene added. “I mean, seriously, if our great government can’t identify what these drones are—they’re flying every single night, the people are sitting out there videoing with their cell phones—then no American is safe. And I have no respect if our government cannot say what these are.”

Commercial-grade drones were first spotted lingering over sections of Northern Jersey in mid-November, sparking an FBI investigation into the aerial gathering. At a Wednesday briefing between the office of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and the Department of Homeland Security, mayors from the region lamented that no one from state or federal agencies had been able to tell them exactly how many drones were flying over the state, with estimates ranging from 400 to thousands, according to NBC News.

“I’m not sure how I can go back to my residents and say that I’m satisfied from this meeting, when now I know that I have 180 drones that have been flying over the state of New Jersey,” Middletown Mayor Tony Perry told NBC after the meeting. “We have no more information as to where these drones are coming from, where they’re launching from, where they’re landing.”

Greene, famously, loves a space-based conspiracy. In a 2018 Facebook post (two years before she took office), Greene linked alleged sightings of “lasers or blue beams of light” to the cause of the California wildfires. She then, apropos of nothing, further tied those sightings to the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish banking family often targeted by antisemitic conspiracies, whom she believed were clearing the land for rail stations.

But she’s not the only D.C. politico to thoughtlessly stoke the flames over the unusual drone sightings. New Jersey Representative Jeff Van Drew suggested to Fox News on Wednesday that the drones were coming from an Iranian “mothership”—a claim that the Pentagon quickly shot down.

“There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States, and there’s no so-called ‘mothership’ launching drones towards the United States,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said the same day.

One of MAGA’s favorite January 6 conspiracy theories seems to have fallen apart.

On Thursday, a report released by a Justice Department watchdog found no evidence that FBI agents helped incite the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

The idea that there were undercover FBI agents in the crowd acting as mob catalysts on January 6 has gone from internet fringe to being peddled by multiple right-wing leaders and politicians, including Donald Trump himself.

“There was antifa and there was FBI … leading the charge. You saw the same people that I did,” Trump said at an Iowa rally in January. At other times, he has referred to the January 6 riots, which he encouraged his supporters to attend, as “Entrapment Day.”

Thursday’s report, which came from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, did find that there were 26 informants in Washington, D.C., at the time, referred to as “confidential human sources.” But it found nothing to suggest that any of them were told to join the riots or encourage others to do so.

More than 1,500 people across nearly all 50 states have been charged in connection with the January 6 insurrection, with charges like trespassing, assault of a federal officer, and seditious conspiracy.

The private foundation of the world’s richest man failed to donate the legally required amount for the third consecutive year.

Per what’s known as “the 5 percent rule,” private foundations are required by law to direct at least 5 percent of their assets toward charitable causes. The Musk Foundation is among the largest of such foundations, boasting $9 billion in assets, including millions of shares of Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla.

But The New York Times reported Thursday that the Musk Foundation fell $421 million short of the 5 percent rule in 2023, making it the third year in a row that it missed the mark. The foundation was short by $234 million in 2022 and $41 million in 2021, but later forked up to cover those gaps and avoid a penalty tax.

In contrast to the foundations of other wealthy philanthropists, which tend to focus on broad social causes and the public good, Musk’s private foundation is somewhat unconventional in its focus on serving the interests of its founder. The charity also has no hired staff and is instead run by a three-member volunteer board, including Musk himself.

As the Times reported in March, the Musk Foundation “has been haphazard and largely self-serving—making [Musk] eligible for enormous tax breaks and helping his businesses.” In 2021 and 2022, around half of the foundation’s donations were linked in some way to Musk himself, his businesses, or his employees, according to the Times.

For failing to meet the legal minimum, the foundation “can distribute more the following year as a make-good”—or pay a hefty penalty to the IRS.

But Musk recently indicated that the IRS could be on the chopping block of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency under the Trump administration. “The IRS just said it wants $20B more money,” Musk posted on his platform X last month, asking users to vote on whether its budget should be “increased,” “same,” “decreased,” or “deleted.” The latter won with 60 percent of users’ votes.

The ex-FBI informant who accused President Joe Biden and his son Hunter of netting millions of dollars in bribes from Ukrainian energy company Burisma has admitted that the whole story was a dud.

In a plea deal, Alexander Smirnov admitted to completely fabricating the conspiracy that became central to a Republican effort to impeach the sitting president. Smirnov agreed to plead guilty to four felony charges, which include one count of obstruction of justice and three tax evasion charges, in exchange for the end of two pending criminal cases against him, according to court documents.

In June 2020, Smirnov falsely reported to the FBI that Burisma executives had paid Biden and his son millions of dollars. The fake claim was part of a larger series of unfounded allegations that accused Biden of improperly leveraging his position as vice president (at the time) to prevent a corruption investigation into Burisma, of which Hunter sat on the board. The fraudulent tale also sparked an October surprise in the 2020 election about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon insisted contained evidence that Biden and a Burisma adviser had held a “meeting.” (The New York Post, which ran the original story on its front page, later said that the contents of the laptop were mixed with fake material and that most of the data could not be verified.)

Smirnov could face anywhere between two to six years behind bars for fabricating the story, though Donald Trump could potentially commute his sentence or outright pardon the conservative witness once he returns to the White House.

In February, the Justice Department revealed that Smirnov admitted to prosecutors that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved” in developing the Hunter Biden narrative.

In the ensuing fallout over the DOJ indictment, Smirnov told investigators he was in contact with “four different [top] Russian officials,” two of whom were the “heads of the entities they represent.”

Republicans had spent months building up the hype around Smirnov as a witness, isolating his allegation that Biden had pocketed millions of dollars from the Ukrainian company as the centerpiece of their probe. But in the end, Smirnov’s faux narrative—and its ability to capture and sway overzealous and power-hungry U.S. politicians—served as just another example of how effectively the Russian government can infiltrate and undermine U.S. elections.

“It targeted the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties in the United States. The effects of Smirnov’s false statements and fabricated information continue to be felt to this day,” prosecutors wrote at the beginning of the year.