Republicans Are Already Trying to Grant Trump Dangerous Powers

House Republicans are trying to push through a bill that would give President-elect Donald Trump powers as president to designate nonprofit organizations as “terrorist-supporting,” even after it was seemingly defeated earlier this week.

The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act would allow the secretary of the treasury the ability to revoke any nonprofit organization’s tax-exempt status by branding it with a terrorism label. Earlier this week, the bill failed to receive the necessary two-thirds majority in the House to advance to the Senate.  

But on Monday, the House Rules Committee plans to hold a hearing that could set up a new vote on the bill, which initially had the support of all but one Republican and 52 Democrats. With the GOP only holding a seven-seat majority in the chamber, they would need the support of more Democrats to advance the bill, which was introduced to combat protests against Israel’s war on Gaza.  

Under any circumstances, the bill would threaten First Amendment rights to free speech, but after Trump’s election last week, there are now fears that the president-elect could use these new powers to crack down on his enemies with little recourse. In addition to activist groups, many universities and news outlets are nonprofit organizations.

After the bill’s initial failure on Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union celebrated the rejection of “new broad and easily abused powers.”  

“The freedom to dissent without fear of government retribution is a vital part of any well-functioning democracy, and now is not the time to grant the executive branch new powers to investigate and functionally shut down and silence its critics,” said Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel for the ACLU, in a statement.

Now the bill could be given a retooling and sent up for a vote again, giving a president who has already threatened to use the military against his critics even more sweeping powers. The question is if Democrats will recognize the bill as granting dangerous powers to the presidency or see it as a chance to clamp down on protesters they have tried to ignore at their peril for the past year.  

MAGA has a new conspiracy theory: Pennsylvania Democrats are trying to steal the Senate election because of how they’re counting provisional ballots.

The Senate race is headed to a recount after an incredibly narrow margin of difference between the top two candidates. Last week, former Republican hedge fund manager Dave McCormick was announced the winner of Pennsylvania’s Senate race with 48.9 percent of the vote, at 99 percent reporting. His opponent, incumbent Democratic Senator Bob Casey, lost with 48.5 percent.

The two sat at a difference of only 29,000 votes Wednesday, and statewide, officials have estimated that nearly 80,000 votes remained outstanding as of Thursday, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Casey, who has not yet conceded his seat, has remained hopeful that buried in that remaining 2 percent of the states’ total ballots are enough votes to make up the difference. And Pennsylvania’s Republican secretary of state has already declared the initial results necessitate a recount.

The battle for the remaining votes has ignited long-standing issues between Republicans and Democrats in the state over what ballots are able to be counted. Democrats are pushing to count a number of contested provisional ballots that are missing signatures and privacy envelopes, and election boards across the state are also pushing to count a number of undated ballots.

Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia cast a vote Thursday to count certain deficient provisional ballots that were missing one of two required signatures and had previously been barred by court order.

“I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country,” said Marseglia.

“People violate laws any time they want,” she continued. “So, for me, if I violate this law it’s because I want a court to pay attention. There’s nothing more important than counting votes.”

Technocrat pest Elon Musk shared a video of Marseglia on X, claiming, “They are openly trying to count illegal ballots in Pennsylvania!”

McCormick and his GOP allies went to court on Thursday to challenge the decisions of county commissioners in Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery, and Centre counties to include undated mail ballots in their tallies.

Republicans don’t have much hope for ex-Representative Matt Gaetz’s odds of getting into the presidential Cabinet.

The remarkably unpopular Florida politico was nominated by Donald Trump to become the country’s attorney general on Wednesday, a decision that would effectively hand the keys to the Justice Department to a man facing sex trafficking allegations. But before that happens, Gaetz has to be confirmed by the Senate—and that seems increasingly unlikely, according to members of the upper chamber.

Assuming that all Democrats will vote against Trump’s nominees, the president-elect can only afford to lose three Republican votes to squeeze his candidates into the executive branch. But Gaetz faces immense opposition from inside the party, reported The Wall Street Journal, with far more than three votes planning to oppose the MAGA bro’s nomination. Estimates predict that those against Gaetz range from 12 Republican “no” votes to upward of 30.

“It won’t even be close,” one source told the Journal.

Few conservatives were willing to point out the underlying reasons behind Gaetz’s unlikely candidacy, but they appeared to understand the 42-year-old wouldn’t hold up during the grueling confirmation process.

“It’s simply that Matt Gaetz has a very long, steep hill to get across the finish line,” North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer told the Journal. “And it will require the spending of a lot of capital, and you just have to ask: if you could get him across the finish line, was it worth the cost?”

Another unidentified source familiar with the conversations happening among Republicans over the process told the publication that “people are pissed.”

Trump ally Senator Markwayne Mullin acknowledged that actually getting Gaetz—who up until this week was being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for alleged sexual misconduct with a minor—into the Cabinet would be “very difficult,” suggesting to the Journal that the vigorous vetting process might force Gaetz into a situation where he has to withdraw.

“Every nominee will have to acquit themselves well during the confirmation process by answering difficult questions and having their actions scrutinized,” Senator Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, told the Journal.

Meanwhile, the soon-to-be upper chamber majority appears unwilling to concede any of its power to the executive branch, pushing back on Trump’s demand that the body expedite the nomination process via recess appointments.

Elon Musk is starting to seriously annoy some in Donald Trump’s inner circle.

Musk has been hanging around Mar-a-Lago ever since his million-dollar gamble to help Trump win the presidential election paid off last week. The billionaire technocrat seems to have no intention of taking a back seat in Trump’s presidency, and it’s starting to piss off those in the president’s ranks, according to two people familiar with the Trump team’s transition who spoke with NBC News earlier this week.

“He’s behaving as if he’s a co-president and making sure everyone knows it,” one of the two people told NBC.

“And he’s sure taking lots of credit for the president’s victory. Bragging about America PAC and X to anyone who will listen. He’s trying to make President Trump feel indebted to him. And the president is indebted to no one,” they added.

The second person said that Musk had been overstepping his bounds, and that Musk has an “opinion on and about everything.”

“He wants to be seen as having say in everything (even if he doesn’t),” the source told NBC.

Musk has been pretty busy since hitching his space-age wagon to the MAGA movement. Musk met with Iran’s U.N. ambassador on Monday, reportedly hoping to broker some kind of peace negotiation on behalf of the United States. Last week, Musk hopped on Trump’s calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “Co-presidents” doesn’t sound too far off.

The second person suggested that Musk was hurting his chances of sticking around by not keeping a low profile, as the former president hates sharing the spotlight. Earlier this week, Trump cracked a joke at Musk’s expense during a meeting with Republican lawmakers, a reminder to everyone that Musk serves at his leisure, not the other way around.

The second person also speculated that Musk might not be as committed to Trump’s agenda as he presents.

This week, Trump tapped Musk to head the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a nongovernmental body that will push substantial cuts in regulations, spending, and personnel. While Trump has suggested that Musk’s role will be merely advisory, the high-level appointment has signaled that Trump’s White House is open for business to anyone who helps him politically and financially—after all, Musk transformed an essential information environment into a propaganda machine, with the sole purpose of having Trump reelected.

U.S. ambassador to Japan and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is floating the idea of running for chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Axios reports that Emanuel, who also served in Congress from 2003 to 2009 and worked in the Obama and Clinton administrations, is considering the move after the Democrats’ losses in the 2024 election. The party lost control of the Senate as well as the presidency—and Republicans maintained a narrow majority in the House—leaving open questions about its future direction.

Democratic strategist David Axelrod, a friend of Emanuel’s, said on his podcast Hacks On Tap earlier this week that he would support the ambassador if he ran for the post.

“If they said, ‘Well, what should we do? Who should lead the party?’ I would take Ambassador Rahm Emanuel, and I would bring him back from Japan and I would appoint him chairman of the Democratic National Committee,” Axelrod said.

Since then, other Democrats have told Emanuel he should run, according to Axios. But Emanuel is likely to face opposition from progressives, especially due to his actions as mayor of Chicago. Emanuel’s handling of police violence as well as his record with the city’s public schools earned him a lot of criticism, and the Chicago Teachers Union is still mad at him. ​​

While serving as White House chief of staff under President Obama, Emanuel also clashed with then–DNC chair Howard Dean, who was arguably the most successful party chair in the twenty-first century, with his “50 State Strategy.” Dean said in 2014 that he and Emanuel “obviously have a difference of opinion about how you get people elected.”

This would seem to indicate that Emanuel would be taking a different approach than Dean at a time when Democrats need a plan to take back Congress as well as recover at the state level. Emanuel also has a reputation for angrily going on profanity-laden tirades, which won’t win him friends in a position where one has to be on good terms with Democrats across the country. The fact that Emanuel has been disconnected from local and state politics for years also seems unlikely to help. Democrats are currently expected to tap someone with expertise at the grassroots level and an understanding of how Democrats are winning elections now—two things Emanuel sorely lacks.