Brand Logo
Musk flexes, Putin pontificates and Fani Willis loses case

 
Today's politics story

Democrats blame 'President Musk' for looming shutdown

What happened
The House yesterday rejected a Republican spending package, pushed by President-elect Donald Trump, that would have kept the government running through March 14 and suspended the debt limit for two years. The 174-235 vote, with 38 Republicans joining 197 Democrats to sink the bill, fell short of a simple majority, much less the two-thirds support needed to pass it under fast-track rules. Without a spending bill signed by President Joe Biden, the federal government shuts down at midnight Friday.

Who said what
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) put together the spending bill with other Republicans yesterday, after a 12-hour online barrage of criticism from Elon Musk and, later, condemnation by Trump made him scrap a more expansive bipartisan package.

The 38 hardline conservatives voted against Johnson's new bill because it raised the debt ceiling — a last-minute demand from Trump. Democrats were "largely frustrated over how Republicans abandoned their previous agreement," The Washington Post said. Lawmakers had been preparing to leave for the holidays, Politico said, and the "shutdown blame game" began immediately.

"Musk and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance tried to blame Democrats," arguing that Johnson's package had most of what they wanted from the bipartisan deal, The Associated Press said. Democrats, partly to "get under Trump's skin," aimed their criticism at the unelected Musk, The Wall Street Journal said. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said on the House floor that Republicans "got scared" because "President Musk said, 'Don't do it, don't do it, shut the government down.'" On X, which Musk owns, "'President Musk' became a trending topic," The Washington Post said. 

What next?
Johnson and other House GOP leaders "planned to work through the night and into Friday on a Plan C for funding the government," Politico said. "We will regroup, and we will come up with another solution," Johnson told reporters. "So stay tuned."

 
 
Today's iNTERNATIONAL story

Putin says Russia isn't weakened by Syria setback

What happened
Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Russia was winning in Ukraine and wasn't "weakened" by the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a key ally. Russia was negotiating with all major groups in Syria to retain its key naval and air bases in the country, Putin said in his marathon end-of-year press conference. But Moscow has been seen transferring a lot of its military equipment from Syria to its other Middle East "military foothold" in eastern Libya, The New York Times said.

Who said what
"You want to present everything that is happening in Syria as sort of Russia's defeat — rest assured that is not so," Putin told reporters. But Assad's ouster "undermined Russia's prestige and its ambition to be a major power broker in the Middle East," The Wall Street Journal said, and it "tarnishes Putin's image as a reliable global leader" and bulwark against the West.

What next?
Putin offered to negotiate an end to his war with Ukraine, possibly alongside President-elect Donald Trump. But he also boasted it would be "interesting" to stage "a kind of high-tech duel" pitting Russia's new Oreshnik nuclear-capable ballistic missile against Western air defenses at a predetermined target, "for example in Kyiv." "People are dying, and he thinks it’s ‘interesting,'" Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X. "Dumbass."

 
 
Today's LEGAL Story

Georgia DA Fani Willis removed from Trump case

What happened
A Georgia Court of Appeals panel ruled 2-1 yesterday to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump and others. The appellate decision reversed a lower court ruling that had allowed Willis to continue pursuing the criminal racketeering case after she disclosed a romantic relationship with one of her prosecutors.

Who said what
The panel of Republican-appointed judges ruled that Willis' romantic relationship created the "appearance of impropriety," prompting a "rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings." The dissenting judge, Benjamin Land, said his colleagues overstepped their legal authority, as Willis "has no actual conflict of interest."

The ruling was a "surprise move that threw the entire case into disarray," The New York Times said. Trump afterward told Fox News Digital that the case "should not be allowed to go any further." But the court denied his motion to dismiss the case.

What next?
Willis immediately filed a motion of appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court. If the appellate court decision stands, "it will be up to the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council of Georgia to find another prosecutor to take over the case," The Associated Press said.

 
 

It's not all bad

Researchers at the University of Oregon have developed tiny implantable sensors that help guide rehabilitation for broken bones. The devices provide real-time data, allowing protocols to be adjusted for optimal recovery. In lab tests, rats with femur fractures recovered significantly faster using resistance-training exercises monitored by the sensors. By the end of an eight-week study, the resistance-trained rats showed denser tissue and bone strength, comparable to uninjured bones. The team hopes the technology will soon help human patients.

 
 
Under the radar

For years, pharmacy benefit managers "took payments from opioid manufacturers," including Purdue Pharma, in return for "not restricting the flow of pills," The New York Times said in a recent exposé. As tens of thousands of Americans succumbed to overdoses and the opioid crisis raged on, "the middlemen collected billions of dollars in payments."

Benefit managers "exert extraordinary control over what drugs people can receive and at what price," the Times said. Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and Optum Rx, the three top companies, "oversee prescriptions for more than 200 million people" and are "part of health care conglomerates that sit near the top of the Fortune 500 list." A prior Times investigation found that the companies often "pursue their own financial interests in ways that increase costs for patients, employers and government programs."

Even as the opioid epidemic swept the nation, these companies "collected ever-growing sums," the Times said. Between 2003 and 2012, for example, the amount of money Purdue paid benefit managers in rebates "roughly doubled to about $400 million a year, almost all of it for OxyContin." 

President-elect Donald Trump recently criticized the companies, "blaming them for high drug prices," said The Wall Street Journal. "We're going to knock out the middleman," Trump said at a press conference. "The horrible middleman" rakes in more "money frankly than the drug companies, and they don't do anything."

 
 
On this day

December 20, 2019

President Donald Trump established the Space Force as the sixth branch of the U.S. military. The division, part of the Department of the Air Force, is one of two independent space forces in the world, alongside China's. Today, the Space Force has about 9,400 personnel and works to protect American interests in space.

 
 
TODAY'S newspaperS

Alleged CEO murderer Luigi Mangione was moved from Pennsylvania to New York, where he "faces new federal charges," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said on Friday's front page. "Death penalty on the table," the New York Daily News said. "Welcome back, plotter," the New York Post says, after a "small army returns him to New York." In France, "51 men convicted of rape" of Gisèle Pelicot, whose ex-husband was sentenced to 20 years, The New York Times says. Americans are "holding onto ghost of Christmas past" as retail "closures and consolidations" threaten treasured "holiday display traditions," USA Today says. As Elon "Musk flexes influence" in budget talks, "another funding bill fails in the House," The Washington Post says, while "tariff-wary consumers go on a spree that could cost us all."

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

Brown Christmas

Residents of Rumford, Maine, have been asked not to touch or eat strange brown snow. The town was recently "treated to a not-so-white pre-Christmas snowfall," Fox8 said, as a paper mill malfunction caused spent black liquor, a by-product of the paper-making process, to be released into the air. "Out of an abundance of caution," town officials advised, residents should "avoid ingesting or direct skin contact with the brown snow."

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Devika Rao, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Brandon Bell / Getty Images; Contributor / Getty Images; Alex Slitz / Pool / Getty Images; Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images