The Republican-Legislator Misinformation Meltdown of December 2024

A draft for Project Syndicate: No longer is it merely that America has "toddler-in-chief" as its Chief Executive: rather, all of Washington DC is a chaos-monkey cage...

A draft for Project Syndicate: No longer is it merely that America has "toddler-in-chief" as its Chief Executive: rather, all of Washington DC is a chaos-monkey cage...

Elon Musk tells lots of lies, GOP leaders cower, & Donald Trump & J.D. Vance try to somehow take advantage without having thought things through at all. The consequences of a government this broken so easily freaked out by misinformation are not likely to be good…

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The Scrooge Christmas-Time Government Shutdown sparked on December 18 by Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and J.D. Vance will almost surely be averted, or if not averted be over by Christmas. Almost surely.

But, even if it is, it is still worth running through what is happening right now.

The United States House and Senate leaderships had come, at nearly the last minute—the deadline to avoid a shutdown of non-essential federal government operations was December 20—to a compromise spending bill to cover the U.S. government’s operations over the next three months. None of the leaders of either party was particularly happy with it, but all could live with it, and their were very solid majorities in both the House and Senate willing to vote for it, and President Biden’s staff was willing to put in front of him for signature (I say “staff” because we really do not know what role Biden himself has been playing in administration substantive decisions over the past year and a half, do we?).

Then Elon Musk went berserk. “Elon Musk Fueled Backlash to Spending Plan with False and Misleading Claims: The billionaire stirred Republicans into a frenzy with 100-plus posts…” went the summarizing headline and subhead, accurate for once.