By Michael Woyton
In the wake of the government being funded again, here are a few items in the news that you might have missed.
A former private security guard responded to her LGBTQ community when members of it reached out after Election Day looking for gun training. They were reacting to promises from the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist to further restrict the rights of transgender people. Read more here from NPR.
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Included in the bipartisan funding bill the Republicans and Democrats hammered out to keep the government from running out money was a package of health care policies, including $200 million in funding for childhood cancer research. That bill never made it to a vote because of tweets by President not-elect Elon Musk and Vice President-elect Donald Trump. Musk decided that kids with cancer have no place in his government and it was dropped in the second version of the bill which ended up failing. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, was able to get the Senate to pass a standalone bill after the third version of the funding bill was passed Friday night. Read more about the pediatric cancer bill that Musk was so against at Stat News.
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This is how serious the GOP is about governing. They really don’t seem to have their tiny little hearts in it.
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The failure of Musk and Trump to get — at the extreme last minute — what they wanted from the congressional funding package has made the mainstream media sit up and take notice. It is dawning on some that maybe Trump’s 1.7 percent lead in the popular vote isn’t the mandate he thinks it is. Read more about this in the Washington Post here.
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President-not-elect Musk is much in the news recently. Besides being seen as the person pulling the strings in the upcoming Trump administration, Musk has publicly endorsed a far-right political party in Germany that has been accused of using Nazi-era ideology and slogans, according to CNN. He re-posted a video Friday from a far-right political activist and wrote, “Only the AfD can save Germany,” meaning the Alternative for Germany party. Read more at CNN here.
And more than 700,000 Tesla vehicles were the subject of a recall over their tire pressure monitoring system, according to a report by Forbes. That makes 15 recalls so far for Musk’s company in 2024, affecting more than 2.7 million vehicles. Most of the issues were resolved with over-the-air software updates, but the problems could have compromised the safety of the driver. Read more at Forbes here.
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There’s a really good read by journalist Steven Beschloss about Elon Musk. Check out his “What Do You Think of Elon Musk?” column on Substack.
Lead art by Michael Woyton
On Second Thought 