Trump’s Silicon Valley Administration

Happy Friday! We’re officially murder hornet-free in America, the U.S. and Washington Departments of Agriculture announced last week. 

It’s a Christmakkuh miracle. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• An Azerbaijan Airlines flight traveling north from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku to Grozny—in the Russian region of Chechnya—crashed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, killing at least 38 of the 67 people on board. U.S. officials reportedly believe the crash may have been caused by Russian air defense systems. The flight had deviated from its planned course away from an area in southern Russia, where Russian air defenses have frequently engaged to shoot down Ukrainian drones. While attempting to land at a small Kazakh airstrip on the opposite side of the Caspian Sea from Grozny, the flight crashed and burst into flames on impact. Russian state media claims the flight had been diverted due to weather.
• The New York Times reported on Thursday that in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attack, Israeli military leadership issued an order expanding the kinds of targets the Israel Defense Forces was permitted to target with air strikes, reportedly increasing the number of acceptable potential civilian casualties to up to 20 people per strike. The change apparently allowed the IDF to target not just high-ranking Hamas operatives, but also terrorists embedded in the civilian population. In previous conflicts, the Times reported that Israeli forces had approved strikes with potential collateral damage of fewer than five or 10 civilians at most. 
• A Russian cargo vessel sank in international waters between Spain and Algeria on Tuesday, following a series of explosions that the shipping owner—a company linked to the Russian defense ministry—alleges was an “act of terrorism.” No group has claimed responsibility for the incident, which may have been caused by mechanical failures. Meanwhile, Russian authorities on Wednesday declared an emergency after two damaged tankers caused an oil spill impacting Russia’s Black Sea coast. The ships sank on December 15 after encountering a storm.
• Finnish authorities on Thursday boarded a Russian ship—apparently part of the Kremlin’s so-called “shadow fleet” used to help evade Western sanctions—in order to investigate damage to an undersea electricity cable that suffered an outage on Wednesday. A Finnish official revealed authorities were looking at the possibility of “grave sabotage,” saying they believed the ship’s anchor may have been intentionally dragged across the sea floor to damage the electricity cable and several other internet lines. Swedish police are investigating a similar incident from last month. Repairs on the Finnish-Estonian lines are expected to take several months. 
• Russia launched a missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure Wednesday morning, firing some 70 ballistic and cruise missiles and 100 strike drones, according to Ukrainian officials. The Ukrainian military said it shot down or electronically disabled most Russian drones and shot down nearly 60 of the missiles, though the strikes still caused significant damage to Ukrainian energy infrastructure resulting in widespread power outages. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the Christmas Day attack as “inhumane.” 
• Some 1,500 people escaped from a prison in the capital of Mozambique on Wednesday during a riot that left more than 30 people dead, according to the head of the country’s police. The southern African country has faced mounting civil unrest following October elections that resulted in a victory for the ruling party, though opposition groups say the vote was rigged. Mozambique’s high court on Monday affirmed the result in the ruling party’s favor. 
• U.S. consumer confidence fell unexpectedly in December, the Conference Board—a business research group that tracks business trends—reported this week. The group’s consumer confidence index—which economists had expected to rise in December—fell 8.1 points in the last month of the year, from 112.8 points in November to 104.7 in December.  
• President Joe Biden vetoed a bill Monday that would have added 66 federal district judgeships spread over a decade to allow three presidential administrations to appoint them. The Senate unanimously passed the measure in August, and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the bill in November, only after President-elect Donald Trump had secured a second term. Biden said the bill was “hurried” and failed to clarify key details of how the judgeships would be allocated.  

The Tech Bro Takeover

“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” read a tweet from December 18.

During President-elect Donald Trump’s first administration, one might have expected such a declaration from the always-volatile account of the president himself. But in this go-round, the denunciation of the government funding bill—which was replaced by a smaller version that passed just before Christmas—came from a very different source: Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, owner of X, and close confidante of Donald Trump.

Musk’s foray into government funding negotiations revealed a new force in Trump’s orbit …

As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our 1,510-word item on the rise of the tech bros in Washington is available in the members-only version of TMD.

Worth Your Time

• We call it “Handel’s ‘Messiah,’” but in the New York Times, Charles King corrected the record on the iconic anthem. “It was born of one of the least recognized partnerships in music history but one of significant artistry, the Enlightenment-era equivalent of George and Ira Gershwin or Elton John and Bernie Taupin,” King wrote. “Handel wrote the music but the original idea and the libretto—‘the book’ as it would be called on Broadway—belonged wholly to Charles Jennens. ‘Messiah’ has endured for centuries as a monument to the possibility of hope. The biblical texts it draws from tell a story of unity and redemption. Yet it came about only because of two creators who, throughout their adult lives, disagreed on issues from religion to the single thorniest political matter of their day, the legitimacy of the reigning British monarch.” 
• Recent data from the OECD showed that, compared to a decade earlier, literacy is slipping in much of the world, Sarah O’Connor reported for the Financial Times. These trends are not unavoidable or irreversible,” she wrote. “Finland demonstrates the potential for high-quality education and strong social norms to sustain a highly literate population, even in a world where TikTok exists. England shows the difference that improved schooling can make: there, the literacy proficiency of 16-24-year-olds was significantly better than a decade ago. The question of whether AI could alleviate or exacerbate the problem is more tricky. Systems like ChatGPT can perform well on many reading and writing tasks: they can parse reams of information and reduce it to summaries.” And there are risks: “Without solid skills of your own, it is only a few short steps from being supported by the machine, to finding yourself dependent on it, or subject to it.” 

Presented Without Comment

Axios: Elon Musk Dubs Himself ‘Ozempic Santa’ as Weight-loss Drugs Go Mainstream  

Also Presented Without Comment

Financial Times: China Steps Up Campaign for Single People to Date, Marry and Give Birth 

Local governments are cold-calling married women to ask about their plans to have children and are handing out cash to parents to encourage them to have more than one child. Universities have been asked to introduce so-called love courses for single students, and regular articles appear in state media about the benefits of having children.

In the Zeitgeist

Netflix made its football debut on Christmas Day, featuring surprise appearances by Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, and—for a nice hit of nostalgia—a teaser for a forthcoming Happy Gilmore sequel with a … Travis Kelce cameo? 

Toeing the Company Line

• On the site over the holiday: Kevin Williamson reflected on the wise men who visited an infant Jesus and our culture, Jonah Goldberg argued Elon Musk’s favorite phrase, “vox populi, vox dei,” is a dangerous lie, and Jennifer Huddleston explained what would happen if TikTok is banned.
• On the podcasts: Jonah Goldberg was joined by Tevi Troy to discuss the long tail of the Obama years on The Remnant and by Richard Reinsch on a subsequent episode to discuss reforming institutions from the inside out.  
• On the site today: David Drucker explores the limits of Trump’s threats to primary GOP legislators, and Kevin Williamson discusses the embarrassingly low quality of Trump’s ambassador picks.