Musk and Ramaswamy Get Woke, Attack American Workers
Defending immigrants, the two woke billionaires slag America's people and culture
Dec. 27: Trump’s billionaires defend Indian American official and his immigration dreams … Americans fear big price hikes coming … Williamson enters race for DNC chair … Data-mining “health” company accused of fraud, agrees to settlement …
You can listen to the TFN podcast here.
After years of demonization of immigrants, billionaire CEOs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have had it.
RePresident-elect Donald Trump for almost a decade now has kept our political dialogue tethered to the subject of immigration, unleashing on the nation (from his imagination) a horde of ravening, slavering, job-stealing, lawn-trimming, crop-picking immigrants.
Trump’s re-election last month has brought a wave of plans and proposals for mass deportations, family detention, and child separation. That’s even though immigrants — regardless of their legal status — not only commit fewer crimes than Americans do but also helped keep the U.S. economy afloat during the pandemic when other countries struggled to keep supply chains intact.
And now, those squishy liberals Musk and Ramaswamy are actually defending immigrants. Well, some immigrants. Okay, the immigrants they need for tech jobs.
And that’s pissing off their MAGA fans who are just bothering to figure this shit out.
The sturm und drang began after Trump named his top advisor on AI policy: Indian American tech executive and investor Sriram Krishnan, general partner at the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm. Bad enough Krishnan wasn’t American American, because then MAGA found stuff he had written.
And it turns out that Krishnan wants to end country-specific caps for green cards — so the total number of green-card immigrants would stay the same, but more could come from specific countries. Like, say, India!
And MAGA is not happy about Krishnan’s appointment, posting, “Did any of yall vote for this Indian to run America?” (Spoiler: All of yall did.)
Far-right, far-racist activist Laura Loomer piled on, accusing Krishnan of wanting to let furriners “come to the US and take jobs that should be given to American STEM students.”
Yesterday, Musk responded, “Loomer is trolling for attention. Ignore.” Musk’s views on this are taken seriously as he’s the world’s foremost expert on trolling for attention. But the world failed to heed its lordship’s command, and proceeded to not ignore Loomer. In fact, they joined in.
Nativist, racist, probably-other-stuff-ist Ann Coulter, a professional thing-sayer, pointed out1 a key difference between American and immigrant engineers: That immigrants can’t quit without losing immigration status. Meaning their most unique skill is pliability and abusability.
But Musk and Ramaswamy insist there are other differences: Immigrants do work that Americans can’t. Because America not as good as other places!
Their America-hatred was already revealed by their opposition to government funds that help Americans and make America function, like, good. But over the Christmas holiday they added to their America-hating by insulting American workers.
“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Ramaswamy said, shitting on American motivation and/or super motivation.
Musk agreed: “[T]here is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.”
(Ironically, Musk is an immigrant who doesn’t appear to be motivated to do his jobs, either, apparently preferring to play government with Trump.)
And Ramaswamy doubled down, blaming American culture, which he hates. “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer),” Ramaswamy said, not bothering to look it up because mediocrity. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”
Huh. Interesting theory!
And, uh, JUST HOW MIGHT THAT APPLY TO PRESIDENTS, YOU MEDIOCRITY-FELLATING MOTHERFUCKER?!?
The distinction, of course, is that Musk and Ramaswamy only want more immigrants for high-skilled jobs. Because apparently it takes no skill to build homes or scape land.
And, of course, this entire debate is missing Trump’s central thesis2 that immigrants are criminals.
And yet now Trump and Musk and Ramaswamy want to bring in these criminal gangs with their skills and their diplomas! The accusation may be comedically convenient, it also happens to be true. These H-1B monsters are raping, uh, the system!
In fact, the whole H-1B system is — according to the right — a scheme to create Democratic voters Republican slaves.
The right-wing site Breitbart argued that the Theranos debacle happened at least in part because the company brought in H-1B immigrants who would cheerlead and abet whatever the bosses did, which included crime.
Hell, just last month prosecutors won convictions in a case involving systemic H-1B visa fraud.
Wait til MAGA find out that Trump wants to hand every immigrant college student a green card as soon as they graduate!
New Bird Flu Human Mutation Takes Wing
Remember literally just yesterday your too-prescient TFN was talking about the ease with which bird-flu mutations will cross the teeny-tiny genetic bridge from birds to cows to humans?
Just hours later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC but not P for some reason) announced the first severe human case in the U.S. with the virus showing mutations not found in samples taken last week from birds in the patient’s backyard.
The patient, in Louisiana, is over 65 and suffering from severe respiratory illness. The CDC says, however, that the case has not changed its overall risk assessment for the rest of the country, which remains low as long as the nation’s public-health regimen continues to be overseen by responsible professionals.
:::Gulp:::
MAGA Enroll in Continuing-Education Trumponomics Course
On Christmas Eve, your Christmas Eve-working TFN alerted all you diligent Newsfuckers to mounting signs of awareness in MAGA-land of what tariffs actually are and/or do.
Turns out, The Education of MAGA is an ongoing project.
The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell writes3 about a new study showing that after Trump got elected, the economy got a boost — from consumers racing to buy shit before the prices go up.
Here’s the graph, from the University of Michigan study, showing consumer expectations about what prices are gonna do in the future. See if you can find Trump’s election win (spoiler: the Washington Post labeled it).
As Rampell notes, there’s a whole stew of possible reasons Americans now expect price hikes. Yes, Trump’s tariffs are a big one. But also, if Trump starts rounding up — or even just scaring off — immigrants4 then our supply chains are gonna seize up and prices are gonna spike up.
On the wonkier side, Trump’s threats to throttle the Federal Reserve could also jack up prices. I’ve seen — but don’t have links for — reporting on how central-bank autonomy correlates goodly with fighting inflation. When national leaders seize the central banks, it typically doesn’t bode well for inflation.
There’s other shit on the horizon, too, like military conflicts well over the horizon that could thwart our insatiable thirst for oil and the consumer crap that uses oil to get to us. Plus, a number of strikes are looming next year. Looming, I tells ya!
As Rampell understatedly understates: “Trump could easily make all of these problems worse.” Especially now that he’s got help from people so stupid they have billions of dollars.
GOP Preps Ways To Make It Harder for You To Vote
House Administration Chair Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI) says Republicans are preparing legislation to pass next year that will make it harder for you to vote. Because yay Big Government!
While the immigration roundups are based on the fictional epidemic of violent immigrants, the voting crackdown will help ease the non-existent plague of voter fraud.
Republican legislation could create new proof-of-citizenship requirements such as voter IDs for, like, you. Such measures, of course, disproportionately disenfranchise Democrats — although given the big voter realignments around education, class, and religion, who the fuck knows anymore.
The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY), suggests Democrats might go along with some of it, possibly even voter IDs if Republicans are willing to make some concessions.
Welp, the DNC Race Just Got Interestinger
Author and activist Marianne Williamson is running for chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Just days after your stuff-flagging TFN flagged a report that Democrats are grumbling about the lack of transformational candidates to run the party, Williamson says she’s running to be just that.
“I feel that I can help transform the party, reinvent the party, because the politics of the past will not be enough to take on the politics of the present and the future,” Williamson said. “Donald Trump is a 21st century political phenomenon and we need to become one, too.”
And while I tend to think of Trump as more of a 19th-century phenomenon — scalliwag and snake-oil salesman except he doesn’t actually own any snake oil, he just licenses the rights to brand snake oil with his name — Williamson may be onto something when it comes to the party’s complacency.
I know there are credible complaints about Williamson, but to be honest she’s never been enough of a real factor for me to do the homework I probably should’ve done anyway. I just don’t like when terms like “grifter” get tossed around and regardless of her “true” intentions, as a fan of democracy I think Democrats will benefit from having more people and ideas in the race for chair.
“Health” Execs Agree to Pay $100 Million, Not Get Mangioned
If denying claims is one way “health” “insurance” companies can make filthy lucre, the other way is inventing claims!
Independent Health [sic] Association (IHA) of New York has agreed to a settlement payment that could reach $98 million after allegedly ripping off the government by submitting claims for medical conditions that had been either cured or prevented. In other words, didn’t exist.
There was the depressed patient whose doctor noted in their files had an “amazingly sunny disposition.”
But it wasn’t just that IHA submitted bogus claims to Medicare. You math-literate Newsfuckers may have noticed that $98 million ≠ $100 million. So what accounts for that missing $2 million?
DxID CEO Betsy Gaffney does! Gaffney also agreed to settle charges against her, getting us up to a nice, round $100 million. And what did Gaffney do? Allegedly?
DxID mines medical records to see if it can create find medical diagnoses that doctors didn’t make up missed. DxID gets a piece of every reimbursement it imagines finds, so it’s incentivized to invent find shit.
That’s how a sunny disposition became depression. Wouldn’t you be depressed if you had the disposition of an 865,000-mile-wide nuclear reaction?
This is the first time a data-mining, illness-inventing company has been charged like this. Eventually, of course, data miners will be able to use artificial intelligence to find other missed diagnoses that “health” “insurance” can submit for reimbursement, such as a rampaging epidemic of sixth-finger syndrome.
TCB
SUPPORTING TFN There’s more end-of-year stuff I wanna share with you as I try to juggle the newsletter and my original reporting with all the holiday traveling and visiting. As we come up on 2025, and the one-year anniversary of the TFN Substack, I want to remind you Newsfuckers just how much newsfucking we’ve all made happen this year. That’s (a) because I’m terrified that the first wave of TFN paid subscribers might not renew, but also (b) I truly, sincerely want to make sure everyone knows just how much your support has made possible.
Oh, and I also want to share some of the data I’m probably not supposed to share, just to make sure everyone sees just how well TFN is growing!
CONNECTING I’m also working on some timely original reporting, so please hang in there with me if I haven’t responded to your lovely or unlovely comment or email or donation.
In the meantime, you can connect with me and TFN on social media — Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon or Spoutible. And, of course, you can stay connected with TFN all day long by becoming the proud owner of subversive TFN merch from The TFN Store.
And remember, even after the holiday season is over, we’re still here for each other.
So go get ‘em, kids.
I lost the link. Sorry.
Ha, ha, Trump has never ever had a thesis.
Gift link! Merry day after Boxing Day!
I’m not gonna say “undocumented immigrants” because Trump’s gonna round up all kinds of immigrants and even citizens because — surprise! — sometimes innocent people get arrested.
I will support Williamson for DNC Chair! I’ve been a fan of hers since she ran for a house seat in California (2014?) when she said the constitution is For the People, by The People, not for the Corporations by The Corporations! She is also anti-war, creating a department of peace instead of training coups, she is for universal healthcare and education. She is not a socialist or communist, she is a FDR democrat that we need a level playing field between the people and the capitalist system. If one side is too heavy it doesn’t work. Which is where we are at right now with the capitalist having the majority of the power. Citizens United needs to be overturned and end PAC money in elections. Corporations are not people and money is not speech.
If the DNC wants to win they will support Marianne’s ideas. We can’t be republican lite, we need FDR New Deal 2.0.
This is such horrific info about the criminality of health insurance. If I didn’t feel sick before, I do now.
Thank you for this super informative newsletter. Terrifying, but essential.