Trump, 79, Muses About Absolute Power While Covering His Bruised Hand

President Donald Trump still can’t seem to wrap his head around the fact that the United States is a democracy. 

While signing an executive order aimed at preventing states from regulating artificial intelligence, Trump whined that states needed to be “unified” on his approach to AI, in order for the country to win global dominance over China. 

“We have to be unified. China is unified because they have one vote, that’s President Xi [Jinping]. He says ‘do it,’ and that’s the end of that. You know, we have a different system,” Trump said. “But we have a system that’s good—but we only have a system that’s good if it’s smart.”

As the president spoke, sitting behind his desk, he covered his right hand, where a massive, mysterious bruise has formed. 

Meanwhile, the folks watching at home weren’t impressed by Trump’s longing for a unitary government and his dismissal of his own country’s so-called “different system.”  

“Yes, it’s called DEMOCRACY,” wrote California Governor Gavin Newsom on X. 

This isn’t the first time Trump has longed for another form of government. After visiting China earlier this year, the president said he wished his Cabinet secretaries would greet him with stoic compliance (even though their meetings are already a well-documented spectacle of sycophancy).

With just six legislative days left before she plans to resign, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is reportedly working on one last long-shot bid to remove House Speaker Mike Johnson.

The recent MAGA defector has been quietly taking the temperature on a motion to vacate the chair, three sources familiar with her efforts told MS NOW, formerly MSNBC. 

In order to remove Johnson, Greene would need the support of eight other Republicans. “Marjorie is approaching members to get to nine who will oust the speaker,” one of the sources told MS NOW. “And if we don’t get to work on codifying Trump’s agenda, anything can happen.”

But Greene, who has spent the last few weeks publicly criticizing Johnson, denied the reporting. The Georgia Republican told MS Now that it was “not true” and that she was “not interested in participating in” their story. 

While a bid to unseat Johnson would likely fail, these reports come amid mounting complaints about his leadership.   

Last week, Representative Elise Stefanik, who is running for governor of New York, told The Wall Street Journal that Johnson wouldn’t have the votes if there was a roll call vote. “I believe that the majority of Republicans would vote for new leadership,” Stefanik said. “It’s that widespread.” Representative Nancy Mace also shared in Greene’s frustration, and Representative Anna Paulina Luna recently sidestepped the speaker to force a vote on a bill to ban members of Congress from stock trading.

On Tuesday, Greene told CNN that Republican women specifically were starting to lash out at Johnson because “he sidelines us and doesn’t take us seriously.”

Greene has stated that she’ll resign from her seat on January 5, giving her limited time to find support for her measure. She had previously attempted to remove Johnson last May, but that attempt failed after a majority of Democrats stepped in to save the speaker. 

After enduring months of bullying by the president to pass his gerrymandering plan, Indiana Republicans overwhelmingly voted to kill the effort on Thursday. Their rationale for doing so, however, was shockingly personal.

Anxious about the 2026 midterms, Trump issued directives to several red states, including Indiana, to redraw their congressional maps in order to bolster Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House. In Indiana’s case, that unprecedented, longshot effort would win the GOP two more seats in the U.S. House.

There were plenty of reasons to put the kibosh on the initiative. For one, doing so in the middle of the decade would be extraordinary. While political gerrymandering is technically legal, it typically aligns with the release of census data at the beginning of a new decade.

Initial reports speculated that just a handful of Republican state senators would reject the bid to draw new congressional maps. Instead, 21 Republican state senators voted against it—more than half the GOP caucus in Indiana’s upper chamber—citing reasons from personal disgust with the president’s language to the personal, violent threats they endured for considering voting against the effort, according to CNN.

“Hoosiers are a hardy lot, and they don’t like to be threatened. They don’t like to be intimidated. They don’t like to be bullied in any fashion. And I think a lot of them responded with, ‘That isn’t going to work,’” state Senator Sue Glick told CNN. “And it didn’t.”

State Senator Michael Bohacek—a longtime disability advocate whose daughter has Down syndrome—pulled his support for the new maps after Trump called Minnesota Governor Tim Walz “seriously retarded.”

“This is not the first time our president has used these insulting and derogatory references and his choices of words have consequences,” Bohacek said in a statement. “I will be voting NO on redistricting, perhaps he can use the next 10 months to convince voters that his policies and behavior deserve a congressional majority.”

State Senator Greg Walker said he voted no after he felt targeted by several swatting attempts. Voting yes, he told CNN, would have only encouraged the dangerous harassment.

In the end, the White House’s pressure campaign was costing Republicans support in their own districts. State Senator Jean Leising told the network that, after speaking at her grandson’s middle school this past fall, practically every member of his basketball team had fielded text messages about her—”and they were all bad.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt lost it Thursday when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins quoted President Trump’s own statements on the economy and Christmas.

“If the economy is as strong as the president has said it is, then why is he telling parents two weeks before Christmas that they should only buy two or three dolls for their children?” Collins asked, referring to Trump’s comments at a rally in Pennsylvania Tuesday, in which the president told a Mount Pocono crowd, “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice. You don’t need 37 dolls.”

Leavitt tried to deflect, saying that Trump actually meant that he wants products made in America by American small businesses, even if they cost more, because Americans would get a better-quality product and would be supporting their fellow Americans.

“Again, with respect to affordability, every economic metric, Kaitlan, and I wish you would report more on it, does in fact show that the economy is getting better and brighter than where it was under the previous administration,” Leavitt added, specifically pointing to inflation, real wages, and gas prices.

Collins pressed further, pointing out that grocery prices have been up, but Leavitt kept repeating that inflation was down and that the press didn’t report on the high levels of inflation under President Biden.

“My predecessor stood up at this podium and she said inflation doesn’t exist. She said the border was secure, and people like you just took her at her word, and those were two utter lies. Everything I’m telling you is the truth backed by real factual data, and you just don’t want to report on it because you want to push untrue narratives about the president,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt’s replies did nothing to explain why Trump would tell people to settle for less this holiday season. At his Pennsylvania rally, the president was repeating comments he made in the spring to try and explain away the impact his tariffs were having on consumer goods. But back then, as well as this week, his comments only raised more questions about the economic health of the U.S., and no amount of bluster by his staff can shut those questions down.

Want to visit the United States? Customs and Border Patrol will make you submit your social media history—and your family history and DNA too.

In an 11-page notice published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, CBP outlined several proposed changes to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA, which screens and approves applicants traveling into the United States through the Visa Waiver Program.

Under the new rules, social media would become a “mandatory data element” for ESTA applications, and all applicants would be required to submit a social media history going back five years. But that’s not all.

The notice also said that it would add several “high value data fields” to the ESTA application, including “biometrics.” Examples listed were face, fingerprint, iris, and even DNA.

The Department of Homeland Security announced in November that it would begin uniformly collecting facial biometrics from all noncitizens upon entry and exit to the United States, removing prior exemptions for some travelers. In the new rules, CBP states that applicants, including third parties applying on an individual’s behalf, would be required to provide a “selfie” of the applicant’s face in addition to their passport photo.

Other “high value data fields” include information about applicants’ family members, their names, phone numbers, and addresses, as well as when and where they were born.

Travelers would also be prompted to submit their personal and business telephone numbers used in the last five years, and email addresses used in the last 10 years.