It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like a Republican Government Shutdown

Government shutdown is back on the menu. The House GOP has made some ominous omissions from this week’s agenda: the appropriations bills that are meant to forestall—say it with us, once again—the impending government shutdown that is now scheduled to occur in mid-January.

After this week ends, the House will have just 16 legislative days to come up with a solution before the first of a two-part deadline is breached, which will set off a partial shutdown on January 19. Should the House continue to flail after that date, the government will roll into a full shutdown two weeks later, on February 2.

Funding the government for which they work hasn’t been a major priority for House Republicans this year. So far, the caucus has passed two stopgap spending measures, narrowly avoiding shutdowns on crunched deadlines, all while garnering attention for their penchant for toxic infighting, which reached a fever pitch in early October when former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his leadership position for daring to arrange a bipartisan spending bill to prevent a shutdown calamity.

It has yet to be determined if the man who replaced him, Speaker Mike Johnson, is operating under the same conditions—risking losing the gavel for simply doing what needs to be done to keep Capitol Hill’s lights on.

“We need to show some real guts [on spending cuts],” Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett told The Hill. “That’s what we’ve kind of asked for.”

While the names have changed atop the House GOP caucus, Johnson faces the same predicament as McCarthy—a divided yet rambunctious GOP with a razor-thin majority, set against a Democratic Party with a strong opposition to any cuts.

Conservatives are hoping to get through all 12 of the government’s annual appropriations bills on a case-by-case basis, a strategy that might give them a slight edge in negotiations with the Senate, reported The Hill.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said he supported that plan on Monday, noting that he’d prefer to see the bills passed before Congress breaks for Christmas. His Democratic counterparts weren’t so hopeful.

“If you can’t do it by September, then you can’t do it by the middle of November, and you can’t do it by December, why the hell do you think you’re gonna get it done in January?” Montana Senator Jon Tester told Politico. “There’s never any urgency around this place to get shit done.”

However, the appropriation bills are just one part of the puzzle. Congress has several big legislative matters on the near-term horizon, including about a half-dozen major priorities that could touch off showdowns of their own, including a border security bill and contentious foreign aid packages to Israel and Ukraine.

The same time constraints apply in these instances as well. But rather than forging ahead on this long parliamentary to-do list, the House GOP will first have to cope with another salacious story that’s returned to the front and center this week: the proposed expulsion of Representative George Santos, who faces 23 charges related to wire fraud, identity theft, and credit card fraud. And if Santos gets expelled, that thin margin that Johnson is working with to prevent a shutdown and keep the lower House on track will become even more fragile.

Hunter Biden’s lawyer offered Tuesday to have the embattled first son publicly testify in front of the House Oversight Committee, a marked shift in what has, until now, been a much less aggressive strategy.

Biden has until recently made a practice of keeping his head down as he battles multiple legal cases—including federal charges for owning a gun while using illegal drugs, as well as the ongoing House Republican investigation into his business dealings. Led by Oversight Chair James Comer, the probe has accused Biden and his father, President Joe Biden, of corruption. It has yet to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by the president.

“Here we are, eleven months into your so-called investigation, and every objective review of your ‘revelations’—including by some of your colleagues—has declared your exploration as one turning up only dry holes,” Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a Tuesday letter to Comer, which was obtained by The New Republic.

Comer issued subpoenas in early November to multiple members of the Biden family, including Hunter and his uncle Jim. He has repeatedly demanded that they testify. Lowell accused Comer in the letter of using “closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public.”

“We therefore propose opening the door,” Lowell wrote. “Mr. Chairman, we take you up on your offer. Accordingly, our client will get right to it by agreeing to answer any pertinent and relevant question you or your colleagues might have, but—rather than subscribing to your cloaked, one-sided process—he will appear at a public Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing.”

Based upon recent reporting, this more tenacious approach to Hunter Biden’s legal defense will become the norm, as his legal team abandons an old strategy that sought to keep the president’s son out of the spotlight. As Politico reported in its Tuesday morning edition of Playbook, Biden attorney Kevin Morris says the rationale behind the shift to a more “bare-knuckled approach” is simple: “We want to go on offense because we know we can win. That’s the whole point.”

In addition to offering to publicly testify, Biden has threatened to sue Fox News for former host Tucker Carlson’s claims that Joe and Hunter Biden were involved in a money-laundering scheme. Biden has sued Rudy Giuliani and his former lawyer Robert Costello for allegedly hacking into and distributing Biden’s data.

Biden has also sued the IRS for allegedly failing to keep his tax information private, and he has attempted to subpoena former Trump Justice Department officials, including former Attorney General Bill Barr.

This new strategy has ruffled feathers at the White House, where officials worry it could hurt the president’s reelection chances, Politico reported Tuesday. But some political experts think the new approach might pay off in a way that benefits the president.

“The American public likes to see people fight back,” Jamal Simmons, a former communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris, told Politico. “People who fight for themselves tend to get the benefit of the doubt from the public. And I actually think that probably does help the president in the long run.”

Something funky is going on at Sports Illustrated—several of their authors don’t seem to exist.

According to an investigation by Futurism, the illustrious sports magazine lately seems to be relying on work produced by artificially generated journalists, who sometimes publish artificially generated articles, as well.

“Drew has spent much of his life outdoors, and is excited to guide you through his never-ending list of the best products to keep you from falling to the perils of nature,” read the bio of Drew Ortiz, one of the publication’s new robot stowaways. “Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend that goes by where Drew isn’t out camping, hiking, or just back on his parents’ farm.”

Ortiz, however, has no social media presence and no publishing history outside of Sports Illustrated. One thing the son of a farmer and allegedly avid hiker does have going for him, however, is a profile picture harvested from a website selling A.I.-generated headshots, according to Futurism’s Maggie Harrison, who confirmed with several sources at Sports Illustrated that Ortiz’s content was fabricated.

Ortiz is apparently not the only digital apparition hard at work in their newsroom.

“There’s a lot,” one anonymous source told Futurism regarding the fake authors. “I was like, what are they? This is ridiculous. This person does not exist.”

Over the summer, Ortiz’s account vanished, and in its wake the author’s byline suddenly redirected to a new A.I.-generated writer with no social media presence, no publishing history, and a profile picture from the same A.I.-photo marketplace: someone named Sora Tanaka.

None of these changes came with editor’s notes or corrections explaining the switch-up. What’s more, Harrison’s inquiry was met with a puzzling response: “After we reached out with questions to the magazine’s publisher, the Arena Group,” Harrison reports, “all the AI-generated authors disappeared from Sports Illustrated’s site without explanation.”

Sports Illustrated is not the only publication that’s gotten caught dipping its toes into the murky, plagiarism-laden waters of A.I.-generated content. In January, CNET was caught red-handed publishing A.I.-generated articles containing what have been charitably referred to as “very dumb errors.” In August, newspaper giant Gannett opted to pause its own A.I. experiments when it became clear their bot had no idea how to describe a high school football game. (It’s still unclear if the national publication is still utilizing A.I. for product reviews.) The U.K.-based publications The Daily Mirror and The Express also began publishing artificially generated content in 2023, though their owner says they’re not looking to fire their journalists anytime soon.

Meanwhile, the media industry cut more than 17,000 jobs in 2023 alone—a record number—thanks in large part to dwindling subscriptions and a slow ad market. Losses were felt at some of the industry’s largest and sometimes revolutionary players, including the Los Angeles Times, Buzzfeed, VICE, Vox Media, NPR, and The Washington Post. We may never know what, if anything, Drew Ortiz thinks about that—or anything else.

Tesla sued the Swedish Transport Agency on Monday, accusing the government office of discriminating against the electric carmaker and gumming up the firm’s ability to provide its customers with new cars. How did the automaker run afoul of the Swedish Transport Agency? Well, first the firm ran afoul of its workers—and then the government agency joined in the conflict, in accordance with a specific labor tradition that’s popular in the Nordic states.

Tesla’s Sweden-based workers have been on strike for five weeks in an effort to win collective bargaining rights. The strike, organized by the union IF Metall, has sparked what are known as sympathy strikes across multiple Swedish industries (and one in Norway). In a sympathy strike, other unions in related or adjacent industries act in solidarity with their fellow laborers, lending their organizing heft to the cause.

One such sympathy strike was launched by the Transport Agency, which is refusing to deliver license plates to new Tesla owners. Naturally, the firm takes a dim view of this: “This confiscation of license plates constitutes a discriminatory attack without any support in law directed at Tesla,” its lawsuit alleged.

There’s one problem: Sympathy strikes are legal in Sweden, so Tesla’s lawsuit doesn’t have much standing there. A district court ruled that Tesla can pick up the plates itself from the manufacturer and then privately distribute them to new Tesla owners while the lawsuit plays out. The Transport Agency has seven days to agree to these terms or be fined one million kroner ($96,000).

“We at the Swedish transport agency now need to analyze the announcement and assess what consequences this has for us and what measures might need to be taken to implement the decision,” Anna Berggrund, director of the Transport Agency’s vehicle information department, told The Guardian. “It is currently too early to say exactly what that would mean.”

Meanwhile, Tesla’s Swedish workforce has been the beneficiary of other sympathy strikes on their behalf, including Swedish dockworkers refusing to unload Tesla shipments, electricians declining to repair charging stations, and cleaning companies withholding their labor, leaving Tesla’s facilities to fend for themselves in terms of cleaning. And the workers’ Norwegian neighbors have gotten into the act as well: Norway’s largest private sector union has said it will block the delivery of Swedish Teslas.

Last week, the Swedish postal union said it will no longer deliver Tesla’s mail, a move that carmaker Elon Musk called “insane.” Tesla’s Swedish subsidiary, TM Sweden, is now suing the postal union over the group’s decision.

“We note that Tesla has chosen to take the long route, starting legal proceedings,” a senior IF Metall official, Veli-Pekka Säikkälä, told The Guardian. “There is a simple and quick way to solve this situation, and that is to sign a collective agreement. As soon as Tesla does that, the conflict ends.”

Even Representative George Santos expects that this may be his last week in Congress, and he’s celebrating by going scorched-earth on some of his Republican colleagues, who he’s spent the last few days referring to as “pussies” and adulterers.

The New York Republican’s time is close to running out after nearly a year of high drama, indelible lies, occasional baby-holding, and constant fraud—capped by a scathing, 56-page report by the House Ethics Committee that found that Santos had lied about his finances and appropriated campaign funds for things such as Botox treatments, luxury clothes, and purchases on the adult content platform OnlyFans.

“I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” Santos said during an expletive-laden X Space live session on the Friday after Thanksgiving. “I’ve done the math over and over, and it doesn’t look really good.”

But before he’s out, the fabulist congressman has one more lie to weave following months of assertions that he’s not going anywhere: Apparently, he doesn’t care if he’s forced out by his peers.

“I don’t care. You want to expel me? I’ll wear it like a badge of honor,” Santos said. “I’ll be the sixth expelled member of Congress in the history of Congress. And guess what? I’ll be the only one expelled without a conviction.”

So, he’s not mad; do not report that he’s mad.

Santos faces 23 charges related to wire fraud, identity theft, and credit card fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to the first 13 charges announced in May, and has since denied another 10 charges announced in a superseding indictment in October. His trial is set to begin in September 2024.

“At nearly every opportunity, he placed his desire for private gain above his duty to uphold the Constitution, federal law, and ethical principles,” the House Ethics report read. “Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.”

The disgraced lawmaker is, in these final hours, taking the opportunity to drag some of his Republican colleagues, including calling the chairman of the Ethics Committee, Representative Michael Guest, a “pussy.” He has broadly accused other GOP members of drinking to excess and cheating on their wives instead of focusing on their jobs.

“I have colleagues who are more worried about getting drunk every night with the next lobbyist that they’re gonna screw and pretend like none of us know what’s going on, and sell off the American people, not show up to vote because they’re too hungover or whatever the reason is, or not show up to vote at all and just give their card out like fucking candy for someone else to vote for them,” Santos said, adding that “This shit happens every single week.”