Smartmatic Wants to Air Rupert Murdoch’s Dirty Succession Laundry

The Murdoch family, which owns Fox News, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, and several other conservative media outlets, could soon have the details of their internal succession battle exposed to the public.

The voting machine company Smartmatic, which sued Fox News for defamation over false claims about the company committing election fraud during the 2020 election, is trying to gain access to evidence from the battle over 93-year-old patriarch Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, CNN reports.

In Nevada probate court earlier this year, members of the Murdoch family secretly fought over who gets to inherit the many properties Rupert owns. The original plan was to have the eldest Murdoch hand off control of the media properties to his three children in a power-sharing agreement, but Rupert sought to change the trust to give his oldest, most conservative son Lachlan control of the Fox Corporation.

That attempt was rejected by a probate commissioner, who criticized Lachlan and Rupert for acting in “bad faith” in their attempts to change the family trust and attacked Rupert for proposing a “carefully crafted charade.” The commissioner noted that Rupert’s representatives “demonstrated a dishonesty of purpose and motive.” Lachlan and Rupert can appeal the decision, which was sealed but obtained by The New York Times earlier this month.

An anonymous source told CNN that Smartmatic thinks testimony in the Nevada battle contradicts Fox’s claim in the defamation lawsuit’s proceedings that who controls the company doesn’t affect Fox News’s editorial direction. According to the source, Rupert claimed in Nevada that Lachlan has to take over after him in order to continue Fox News’s right-wing stances. An outside party to the Nevada case filed a motion just last week, though the records are still sealed.

Smartmatic’s lawsuit is being aided by billionaire Reid Hoffman, who has invested in the company to help fund its legal expenses. The trial is set to begin next year in New York, barring an out-of-court settlement, and Smartmatic’s attempt to gain access to the Nevada records is part of the discovery process in the defamation case.

In April 2023, Fox News settled a similar defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million. It remains to be seen if Smartmatic’s case will be resolved in the same way, or if the conservative news network will be dragged into public court proceedings next year.

On Friday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene jumped into MAGA’s infighting over immigration, specifically regarding the tech industry and H-1B visas.

The far-right Georgia congresswoman attempted to thread a needle between both sides of the argument, which has divided anti-immigration hard-liners and tech barons led by Elon Musk. In a long post on X Friday morning, Greene seemed to give deference to Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency partner Vivek Ramaswamy.

“When you spend years trying to constantly hire/train/maintain a good reliable workforce, which is a 24/7 never ending cycle, your real world experience will produce an opinion based on reality and all of your followers on X don’t translate to this,” Greene said.

Ramaswamy provoked much of the right on Thursday by attacking American culture for promoting “the jock over the valedictorian” as a major reason why foreign tech workers were needed in the United States. Greene seemed to agree with at least some of Ramaswamy’s words, blaming young people in particular.

“Too many of our young people, are killing their bodies and minds on alcohol and drugs, wasting years and money earning useless college degrees, chasing unrealistic dreams, spending all their time trying to be the next you tuber/content creator/social media influencer instead of pursuing a useful skill set/trade/education in order to become a part of our much needed American workforce,” Greene wrote in her post.

Greene did give a slight nod to immigration opponents, saying that the U.S.’s economic situation is “like having a crumbling foundation in our house and currently we are importing foreigners to hold up the foundation walls and plug the leaks.” But her words aren’t likely to satisfy people like Steve Bannon or Laura Loomer, whose opposition to H-1B visas, meant for specialized foreign workers, stems from racism.

Plus, Loomer and Greene have long been enemies, and a (surprisingly) somewhat nuanced take from the Georgia congresswoman is likely to draw the ire of Loomer’s fellow travelers among the conspiracy-addled extreme right. It seems that the only resolution to this right-wing infighting will be the opinion of Donald Trump himself, who has been uncharacteristically silent.

Homelessness in the United States is soaring, increasing 18.1 percent in 2024 after a 12 percent increase the year prior. Natural disasters, inadequate options for migrants, and a devastating lack of affordable housing are the primary catalysts. 

There are now 770,000 homeless individuals in the United States, according to data collected by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in January of this year. This number does not include those who are transient—like those couch surfing and staying with friends or family.   

There are some troubling developments within this data. For one, Black Americans are sorely overrepresented, making up just 12 percent of the country but 32 percent of the homeless population. Family homelessness also spiked by nearly 40 percent, particularly in cities that saw larger waves of migrants, like Denver, Chicago, and New York City. Almost 150,000 children were homeless on any given night in 2024, a shocking 33 percent increase from 2023. And the destructive Maui wildfire left over 5,000 in homeless shelters. 

This is a damning development for a country that boasts to be the greatest on earth. And it comes as communities large and small, liberal and conservative, grow more and more hostile towards their homeless neighbors, many of whom are already battling with mental illness. The Supreme Court ruling that allowed cities to ban sleeping outside has empowered classic liberal strongholds like San Francisco and Portland to start clearing homeless encampments, as they simply move the problem somewhere else rather than solve it. 

“Increased homelessness is the tragic, yet predictable, consequence of underinvesting in the resources and protections that help people find and maintain safe, affordable housing,” said Renee Willis, incoming interim CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “As advocates, researchers, and people with lived experience have warned, the number of people experiencing homelessness continues to increase as more people struggle to afford sky-high housing costs.”

Expect even more hostility from President-elect Trump this upcoming term, as he has floated institutionalizing the homeless population. “The homeless have no right to turn every park and sidewalk into a place for them to squat and do drugs,” he said in a 2023 campaign video.

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

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

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

Musk set off the MAGA faithful on social media on Wednesday morning, posting on X about how more foreign tech workers need to be allowed to work in the United States because “there is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent.” Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency sidekick, generated his own backlash from the right Thursday by suggesting American culture was to blame for why employers seek tech employees from overseas.

Many on the right disagreed vehemently, particularly racists like Laura Loomer, who spent most of Thursday on her X account attacking Musk and tech executives who share his views. Musk then retaliated against Loomer and his other MAGA friends turned critics that evening, allegedly censoring them on the platform by removing their verification badges and hurting their engagement.  

Neither side is right on the issue, though. Bannon, Loomer, and other anti-immigration conservatives are motivated by nativism and racism in their opposition to foreign tech workers, and tech CEOs like Musk seek low-wage immigrants to work for long hours in their companies instead of American workers who don’t have a fragile visa status hanging over their heads.

Trump has yet to weigh in on this new controversy, and in the past advocated for green cards for foreign college graduates in the U.S. before his campaign retracted the proposal. However, his past immigration policies have been xenophobic, racist, and cruel, and he’s pledged to implement a mass deportation program for undocumented immigrants. Where does he stand now?

The GOP has eliminated a critical government agency fighting disinformation just in time for Trump’s second term.

The State Department’s Global Engagement Center, responsible for leading efforts to combat foreign disinformation, was shut down this week after Republican lawmakers at the last minute removed its funding from the spending bill to avert a government shutdown.

The GEC is a spin-off of an Obama-era creation, the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications. Obama signed an executive order to make the GEC an official body in 2016. Since then, the center has tracked things like Russian and Chinese Covid-19 conspiracy theories and accused the Kremlin of trying to destabilize U.S. influence domestically and abroad. 

But the GEC has been under fire since billionaire Elon Musk called it “the worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation.” Shortly after that, Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee members began to call for its closure, claiming that it was censoring conservative voices and choosing to partner with liberal NGOs.  

The effort to close the GEC, which only has a $60 million budget, is deeply troubling in a time of deeply pervasive misinformation. 

“[The GEC] has played an indispensable role in combating Russian and Chinese disinformation,” Senator Chris Murphy said in October while trying to save the center. “It would unnecessarily undermine U.S. national security if we eliminated this tool.”

Despite still being on holiday break, some Republicans are not in the giving mood when it comes to House Speaker Mike Johnson.

On Thursday, Representative Andy Harris, who chairs the far-right House Freedom Caucus, told Fox Business that Republicans need to think about whether their current leadership “is what we need.”

“Before the last couple of weeks, I was in his corner, but now we should consider what’s the best path forward,” Harris said about Johnson. “We do need to consider whether—if we’re going to advance Mr. Trump’s agenda—whether the current leadership is what we need.”

On Friday, Representative Thomas Massie also expressed a lack of confidence in Johnson’s leadership in a post on X, saying that he “will vote for someone other than Mike Johnson.”

“I’m not persuaded by the ‘hurry up and elect him so we can certify the election on J6’ argument,” Massie’s post said, referring to the certification of the 2024 election set to take place on January 6, 2025. “A weak legislative branch, beholden to the swamp, will not be able to achieve the mandate voters gave Trump and Congress in November.”

Last week, Harris said in a statement that he was “now undecided on what House leadership should look like in the 119th Congress,” possibly signaling that the Freedom Caucus may lead the charge in unseating and replacing Johnson when the new Congress is sworn in. If this is the case, then who would replace Johnson as the new speaker?

Earlier this year, Harris floated Representative Jim Jordan as a possible candidate, while outspoken Republicans like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator Rand Paul have made an outlandish call for Elon Musk to take over the speakership. In this Republican Party, however, another crazy leadership shake-up is not out of the question.

The only person to be in charge of both the CIA and FBI wants everyone to know that Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel don’t have what it takes to do the job.

William Webster, who is literally 100 years old, took the time to write a letter to the Senate to outline just how bad Patel and Gabbard would be as FBI head and director of national intelligence, respectively.

“His record of executing the president’s directives suggest a loyalty to individuals rather than the rule of law—a dangerous precedent for an agency tasked with impartial enforcement of justice,” Webster said of Patel.

He went on to say that Gabbard had “a profound lack” of experience with the intelligence community.

“Effective management of our intelligence community requires unparalleled expertise to navigate the complexities of global threats and to maintain the trust of allied nations,” Webster penned. “Without that trust, our ability to safeguard sensitive secrets and collaborate internationally is severely diminished.”

“I urge you to weigh the critical importance of nonpartisan leadership and experience,” he concluded. “The safety of the American people—and your own families—depends on it.”

Webster headed the FBI from 1978 to 1987 and the CIA from 1987 to 1991.

The online beef between Donald Trump’s Silicon Valley backers and the more traditionally conservative MAGA base has culminated in Elon Musk allegedly using X to censor his fellow Trump supporters.

Laura Loomer, Gavin Mario Wax, ConservativePAC, and Owen Shroyer all had their X verification badges removed Thursday night after criticizing Musk’s stances on labor and immigration earlier in the day.

“All of our influencers have now lost verification status, as well as our own page,” the Trump-supporting ConservativePAC wrote. “Our brand did nothing. We spoke out against HB1 visas and it appears that @elonmusk intentionally shut us down? Is this the new status quo from America’s ‘most free’ social media platform?”

“I mean right after @elonmusk called me a troll today, my account verification was taken away, my subscriptions were deactivated and I was banned from being able to buy premium even though I was already paying for premium,” said Loomer. “Clearly retaliation.”

“My verification badge is now under review. Weird! Didn’t change anything,” said Gavin Mario Wax, another vocal critic of H-1B visas.

This all comes after Musk and fellow Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy engaged in some post-Christmas infighting with conservatives about whether Asian immigrants on H-1B work visas or pure corn-fed Americans would make better SpaceX employees.

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy said in a long, rambling post Thursday on X. “A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best engineers.”

Musk expressed similar sentiments, noting that “the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” before soon getting into a fight with his own followers about the issue.

And apparently, the oligarch has thin skin when it comes to his critics.

“Insane that blue checks are being removed from accounts that have been vocal in their criticism of the H1B racket. Horrible look,” conservative influencer Wax said in a separate post. “I’ve supported Elon and X. Anyone who was at the @NYYRC gala can attest that I dedicated a large portion of my speech to praising Elon. Sad!”

This racialized internal strife has yet to be commented on by President-elect Trump, and may spell trouble for the future of DOGE, Musk, and Ramaswamy.

The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, is not happy with Donald Trump’s accusation that Chinese troops are stationed in the Panama Canal, calling the claim “nonsense.”  

“Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday as part of a barrage of unhinged posts on the holiday. As one might expect, Mulino was not happy with the false charge. 

“There is not a single Chinese soldier in the canal,” Mulino said to reporters Thursday, adding that there is “absolutely no Chinese interference.” 

Trump told a crowd of supporters in Arizona Sunday that “the fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, highly unfair,” saying that if shipping rates were not lowered, “we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, quickly and without question.”

Why Trump is choosing to attack Panama right now isn’t clear, although it could have something to do with the outstanding tax evasion case the president-elect faces in the country. It stems from 2019, when the owners of a Panama City hotel tower that was previously managed and operated under the Trump brand accused the Trump Organization of pocketing money meant to pay taxes. According to a lawsuit, Trump’s companies simply kept the money, “intentionally evading taxes” and leaving the new owner liable for millions.

Trump’s threats to Panama in recent days are accompanied by his renewed desire to buy Greenland from Denmark, an idea he floated during his first presidential term that was met with widespread derision. It seems as though the president-elect is bringing back the belligerent threats and bizarre attention-seeking antics that were a hallmark of his first presidential term, with even less restraint than before.

Right-wing influencer and Donald Trump gadfly Laura Loomer is attacking Elon Musk, seemingly over his desire for more immigrants to work and study in science and technology fields in the United States.

In several posts on X Thursday, Loomer railed against Musk and his influence on Trump. She attacked Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” project with Vivek Ramaswamy, calling it a “vanity project” on Wednesday before accusing it as a smokescreen for “the pet projects of tech bro billionaires” on Thursday. She also claimed that there would be a falling out between Musk and Trump soon. 

In response, Musk accused Loomer of being a troll and said she should be ignored. Loomer continued her attacks unabated, calling the tech CEO a pawn of China, resorting to homophobic and racist insults, and accusing Musk of having “bought his way into MAGA.”

“Remember when you voted for Biden and propped up @GovRonDeSantis and you said Trump was too old? We all know you only donated your money so you could influence immigration policy and protect your buddy Xi JinPing,” Loomer wrote in one post, and in a follow-up, she called Musk “a total f****ing drag on the Trump transition.”

“He’s a stage 5 clinger who over stayed his welcome at Mar a Lago in an effort to become Trump’s side piece and be the point man for all of his accomplices in big Tech to slither in to Mar a Lago,” Loomer posted.

Loomer, renowned for her Islamophobia, racism, and conspiracy theories, appears to be opposing Musk for those very reasons, as her virulent racism drives her anti-immigration views. Her attacks on Musk are flavored with that racism, from her invoking of China to repeated attacks on people from India.

On a related note, Musk’s DOGE sidekick, Vivek Ramaswamy, also got piled on Thursday by MAGA for his own immigration views after making the glaring mistake of claiming there were shortcomings in American culture, fueling racist attacks from the far right. It seems that Musk and Ramaswamy are already wearing out their welcome in Trumpworld, and soon might anger the big guy himself.