Following Musk’s lead, Trump comes out against funding bill, making government shutdown more likely – National & International News – WED 18Dec2024

Trump comes out against funding bill, making government shutdown more likely.

House Ethics Committee secretly votes to release Gaetz report.

Supreme Court to hear arguments over TikTok ban.

Trump comes out against funding bill, making government shutdown more likely

President-elect Donald Trump and several prominent figures in his orbit, including vice president elect JD Vance and tech billionaire Elon Musk, have come out against a proposed continuing resolution that would keep the government funded until March 14, 2025. Trump’s opposition seems to have taken members of Congress by surprise. It is a major setback in efforts to prevent a partial government shutdown at midnight on Friday.

Many GOP Reps seem to have been waiting to take their cue from Trump on whether or not to support the continuing resolution. Trump’s objections, and those of his associates, are rather vague and don’t point to any specific language in the bill. They hint at $100 billion in “unnecessary spending”, which would seem to correspond to the $100 billion earmarked for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

FEMA is disastrously sort of funds just at the point where there are many massive and critical demands on its resources. Just to name a few examples, the lack of funds hampers FEMA’s efforts to shelter victims of Hurricane Helene, help homeowners and businesses affected by Hurricane Milton, and help residents of Lahaina, Hawaii, to rebuild after the devastating wildfire last year. No one in Congress wants to be seen to be voting against this funding, even as it seems to be featuring prominently in their objections.

Other objections raised are the bill’s length (1500 pages), pay rises for members of Congress (who haven’t had a pay rise since 2009), and funding for “government censorship” (none of those objecting name who these “government censors” are). However, posts on Twitter by Elon Musk indicate that he is opposed to passing any legislation before January 20, 2025, and that he is fine with a government shutdown. This would mean that members of the military and federal workers (including firefighters, park rangers, flight controllers, etc.) would go without pay for nearly a month, at the very least.

Many federal workers in key roles who are in on the job training would be furloughed, increasing demands on workers and essential roles who will already be working without pay. This will further diminish the federal workforce and create dysfunction across the country. It would also hamper efforts to aid those left in desperate due to natural disasters and other circumstances beyond their control.

It appears that Trump has not arrived at his opposition independently, but is simply following Musk’s obstructionist lead. It was Musk who first tweeted cryptically yesterday after the bill was released saying “This should not pass”. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) observed on Twitter, “Why do the billionaires — Musk, Ramaswamy, Trump — want to shut down the government for Christmas? Because they still get paid.”

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House Ethics Committee secretly votes to release Gaetz report

Unnamed sources have told several news outlets that members of the house ethics Committee voted secretly early this month to release the report detailing the findings of their years -long investigation of former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). Gaetz, who was Donald Trump’s first choice to lead the Department of Justice before withdrawing from the nomination, has been accused of twice having sex with an underage girl. The girl, along with several women, had been trafficked by a former associate of Gaetz, Joel Greenberg, who is serving an 11-year sentence for sex trafficking.

When President-elect Trump initially named him to be Attorney General, Gaetz immediately withdrew from Congress, despite having been reelected to his seat only weeks before. By resigning from Congress, Gaetz brought an immediate end to the House investigation. However, there was still a debate as to whether to release the findings of the investigation as a matter of public interest.

The House Ethics Committee, which is made up of five Democrats and five Republicans, initially voted not to release the report. If today’s reporting is correct, this means that at least one of the committee’s Republicans changed their mind and sided with the panel’s Democrats. There is no indication yet of when the full report would be released.

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Supreme Court to hear arguments over TikTok ban

A federal appeals court ruled last week that a January 19, 2025, deadline for the video platform TikTok to either be sold or banned in the US would be enforced, despite the company’s efforts to appeal the constitutionality of the law passed by Congress earlier this year. The Supreme Court announced today that it will hear TikTok’s appeal on an expedited basis to get ahead of the deadline.

The court will hear arguments on January 10th. There’s no indication as to when they would make their ruling. However, if at least five of the nine justices believe the law may be unconstitutional, the court could act to prevent the law from going into effect on the 19th pending their final ruling. TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance argues that the law violates the First Amendment of the Constitution by restricting free speech. TikTok has over 170 million users in the US. Many American creators rely on TikTok as a source of income, or use it to promote their businesses.

The federal government has argued that TikTok’s Chinese ownership poses a threat to national security by collecting data from the millions of users who have the app downloaded on their mobile devices. Temu, a popular shopping app is also Chinese owned, and over 50 million users in the US access the Temu mobile app at least once a month. There are no plans to ban Temu in the US or to force its sale.

The Supreme Court’s announcement of an expedited hearing came after TikTok CEO Shou Chew met with president-elect Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Although it was Trump who first attempted to force TikTok’s sale during his previous Presidency, Trump now seems to have a newfound fondness for the platform. Trump told reporters at a press conference earlier this month, “You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points and there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with it”.

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