Sanders Calls Trump's Bluff

Trump made a progressive-ish campaign promise and Sanders says he's now making good on it

Dec. 31: Sanders bill to cap credit-card fees … Tesla fired U.S. workers as it sought immigrant replacements … Wall Street ends year on a downer … Texas mysteriously finding tons more abandoned babies for no reason anyone can quite put their undifferentiated finger on …

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Today is what news folks call a slow news day. As a TV news writer/producer, I always found the term revealing — it told me they didn’t have a ton of stories they were dying to tell. They were meat grinders who showed up in the morning, ground up events chosen by others into bite-size chunks, slung it on the air, and called it a night.

And, of course, one was never to acknowledge a day’s slow-news-day-ness. All events were earth-shaking, every day’s top story just as top as every other day’s top story.

To some extent, it’s formally unavoidable. Every day’s news program has to have some story that goes first. Every newsletter has to have some story that gets the picture and the main headline. But treating and digesting them all as equally important can drain all parties involved.

And if one purpose of news is to have a salutary effect on people’s ability to participate productively in their democracy, then constant out-freaking is antithetical to that.

One of TFN’s goals is to not out-freak. To in-freak, if you will. To render even the largest of big news comprehensible and brain-fit-in-able.

And out-freaking is not the only way to engage people in the news and the fucking thereof. One of the other ways is pulling back the curtains on dirty little secrets like “slow” news days.

I’ve worked with a handful of anchors eager or at least willing to pull back those curtains and break a few rules, to innovate or excel in ways that served the day’s news, the audience, and TV news itself. One of those anchors was Aaron Brown, who died on Sunday at the age of 76.

I wrote for him only a handful of times, but our orbits intersected and he got me my job at CNN a quarter-century ago. His willingness to innovate and subvert was one of the rare examples of excellence I had in the field.

He’s most remembered for anchoring CNN’s coverage of 9/11 from its New York City rooftop. I was one of the producers in the building supporting Aaron that day, so I don’t have the memories most folks have of watching Aaron’s work.

And it’s a shame more people didn’t know Aaron for the thousands of other days he was on the air. More people might understand that TV news doesn’t have to be what it so often is. Aaron showed that the news could be delivered every day with a sense of proportion even about the top stories. Even on slow news days like the one on which his death was announced, giving folks like me the opportunity to share a few thoughts about him, unburdened by the demands of some big, urgent story.

You can get a tiny taste of what made Aaron unique in this obituary package from ABC, where his work and style on the overnight news program World News Now provided a signature and inspiration for those who followed, myself included.

It’s perhaps unsurprising that Aaron’s career in national TV wasn’t longer or more prominent: His excellence was a constant, unmissable rebuke to the mediocrity of the vast majority of it.

He was proof that news could be delivered with inventiveness and play, with intelligence and grace, and a way with words that undoes and shames all the excuses made for the shortcomings of topical news as history’s first rough draft.

Because Aaron Brown wrote final drafts.

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Bernie Calls Trump’s Bluff

TFN hopes everyone knows this is eight kinds of fake.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said yesterday that he’s going to introduce legislation in the next Congress to fulfill one of RePresident-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promises.

We pause now for a routine reminder that not everything Trump says is bad. Thank you. We now return you to your regularly scheduled newsfucking.

Sanders said he was referring to Trump’s promise to cap your credit-card interest rates at 10%:

This is an especially pertinent issue at the moment, as Americans burdened by predatory Wall Street debt are defaulting on their credit-card debts at rates unseen since the last economic crisis.

The Financial Times reports that Wall Street credit-card companies wrote off $46 billion in unpaid debts during the first nine months of this year. That’s up 50% from the same period in 2023.

(It’s worth noting that any industry capable of writing off $46 billion needs to be regulated into a prison cell.)

As Raw Story reports, there’s understandable skepticism about Trump’s sincerity on the issue of saving consumers from Wall Street by capping their interest rates. But, of course, that’s no reason to drop it!

If Trump’s promise was genuine, do it. If it’s not genuine, why let him get away with breaking it? Let him kill the thing he promised.

But Sanders is doing something other than just rolling the dice for a win on policy or politics. Because he left something out from what Trump actually said on the campaign trail. And it’s really important!

And I only found it because your transcript-checking TFN actually checked the transcript. Here’s what Trump said in full, emphasis added for gotcha-ness:

“While working Americans catch up [from inflation], we’re going to put a temporary cap on credit card interest rates at 10%. It’s too much. They’re paying 25%, 28%. It’s too much.”

Got that? Sanders left out Trump’s caveat that it’s temporary. Once working families have recovered from the inflation Trump won’t fix, then Trump will reattach them to the feeding tubes so Wall Street can resume extracting their precious bodily fluids forever.

Trump’s vision for America is that we — debtors — be given just enough breathing room to “catch up.” Then it’s back onto the fucking treadmill, serf boys and girls.

Leaving that out — as most media have — is terrific judo. When Trump acknowledges a shitty element of our system with a half-assed proposal to mitigate it, Democrats should run with it and extend it. Tough for Trump to reject a full-ass fix when he’s already on record acknowledging the problem.

This way, Sanders potentially boxes Trump in either to permanently cap rates or to make the politically disastrous argument that, yep, Wall Street should be allowed to charge people 25%, 28% in perpetuity. Once people “catch up.”

And it should be popular on the right! Because Jesus hates interest rates, Trump’s massive Christian base will be all in to cap them, right? Right?!?

South African Immigrant Used H-1B Visas to Replace U.S. Workers He Laid Off

Daily Newsfuckers may recall our mention yesterday of recent Big Tech layoffs, layoffs that would seem to fly in the face of claims that Big Tech can’t find enough workers here. Well, it turns out that Tesla, the company run by H-1B fan Elon Musk, is guilty guilty guilty.

The context for this, of course, is the erupting battle between the vile xenophobia of Trump’s anti-immigrant base that wants less immigration and the worker-exploitation instincts of Trump’s oligarchic-donor base that wantt more.

Well, it turns out that in April 2024, Tesla laid off about 15,000 U.S. staff, mostly in California and Texas. And now, according to a report by Electrotek, we’re learning that Tesla was ramping up its H-1B hires literally at the same time it was doing its layoffs. From Electrotek:

“...several current and former Tesla workers reached out to Electrek to reveal that Tesla ramped up its use of H-1B visas to replace US workers it let go during a wave of layoffs earlier this year. …many of the laid-off US workers were replaced by foreign workers using H-1B visas…

“Tesla workers said that many employees let go were more senior engineers with higher compensation and they have been replaced with junior engineers from foreign countries at a lower pay.”

Federal data show that Tesla sought 2,405 H-1B visas at the exact same time it was engaged in Musk’s layoff rampage.

And Electrotek makes a really good point about the bigger dynamics at play here. Because Tesla sponsored their visas, it was easier to get immigrant engineers to work 60 or even 80 hours a week, the way Musk does not work because he’s too busy cosplaying governmenting.

Once upon a time, Tesla workers were eager to work that many hours per week. How come? They believed they were doing good.

“...the main motivator has been the belief in Tesla’s mission to accelerate the advent of electric transport in order to curb climate change.”

But in recent years Musk has shifted Tesla’s emphasis to self-driving technology, with little (good) impact on climate change. And his goal for Tesla is now to make it the world’s most valuable company, not to save the world in which Tesla’s the most valuable company.

Not to mention, as Electrotek mentions, Musk’s efforts this year to elect climate-deniers and climate-deniers-in-chief.

All of that Muskery has drained the sense of mission that once used to self-drive Musk’s employees. But, as Electrotek says, Musk “has found another effective way to motivate workers to work harder and for longer hours: hold a visa over their head.”

With Trump Taking Control, Everything Now Shitty

Partisan politics requires us to think everything’s shitty once the opposing party’s in charge. It’s true. Sorry. TFN doesn’t make the rules.

This dynamic used to be a much more Republican phenomenon — witness the non-existent crime wave under Pres. Joe Biden and the way the crisis of tons of unprocessed immigrants magically became a crisis of crime and job-stealing. But these days opposite-party-shittiness is a more bipartisan phenomenon.

That said, Democrats do still have higher empirical standards, so they’ll want at least something vaguely cherry-ish for cherry-picking proof of how bad things are under RePresident Donald Trump. Well, good news, Newsfuckers! Some of those cherries are starting to bloom early, even before Trump’s represidency.

For one thing, the U.S. government will hit its statutorily defined debt ceiling tomorrow. Happy New Year! Pay up!

Back in 2023, Republicans agreed to suspend the legal cap on U.S. government borrowing — which is needed to pay off its debts — until Jan. 1, 2025. Which is tomorrow, crazily enough.

The government won’t run out of money tomorrow, it’ll just move some shit around, delaying the inevitable. Trump, of course, wants the debt limit removed entirely — which is so weird because TFN was told he will lower spending.

If the debt ceiling remains in place, there’s a non-trivial chance that the GOP rift over spending will create an impasse that leads to default on debt repayment — an economically catastrophic scenario in which the world’s top-rated debtor becomes a deadbeat, shaking global confidence in all that’s good and holy about filthy fucking money.

Trump on Sunday pre-blamed Democrats for the hypothetical Depression he’s pre-creating, saying they would “prefer 'Depression' as long as it hurt the Republican Party.”

And that’s not the only cherry blooming on Trump’s White House lawn. To wit:

• We’re seeing a big surge in cases of the norovirus stomach bug. Ninety-one outbreaks were reported in the first week of December, up from 69 the week before, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is about to be run by a guy who doesn’t believe viruses evolve.

• Wall Street is losing its joie de cupidité. Both the Dow Jones and Nasdaq averages slid yesterday, with the year poised to end on a blah note and 2025 not looking so hot, either.

• And, of course, let us never forget that our rulers have essentially forgotten about climate change. There’s no sign Trump is wavering from his climate-denying fellation of Big Oil, but climate change is getting worse and there are still things we can do so maybe all we need is one Category 8 hurricane relocating Mar-a-Lago to the Mariana Trench and Trump will see the atmospherically unfiltered light.

Texas Delivers Pro-Life Legacy with Dead Babies

Y’know how Texas is a Christian theo-state now with morals and goodness and Jesus and shit?

Well, they’ve got a law in Texas that lets you abandon babies at pre-designated spots so the babies will, like, live. (Which, okay, I guess … but maybe look at underlying issues, too?)

Anyhoo, now that Texas is an official United State of Jesus™, they’re receiving the blessing of a bounty of baby abandonments at non-designated areas. Like, wherever’s handy.

And Texas, Official Home of Jesus™, is finding more babies these days of both kinds: Alive and, uh, the other kind (you know…permanently with Jesus).

It’s what one sheriff’s official called “a little bit of an epidemic” this year. Ten years ago, the number of abandoned babies was seven. This year, it’s 18.

The most recent came just about Christmas Eve, when a mysterious star appeared, guiding the staff of a San Antonio Whattaburger to the locked bathroom stall where the state’s Biblical principles had led a non-virgin mother to take shelter for the night and try to stuff her infant down the toilet.

How has Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) achieved this whatever-the-opposite-of-miracle-is? Being Christiany, adoy:

Banning abortion. Telling hospitals to check patient immigration status before admitting them to the manger. Ranking penultimate to last in the country for women’s health and reproductive care. And being the least among you when it comes to the rate of women with health insurance.

If you’re wondering why at least 18 people dumped babies in the wilderness and/or Whattaburgerness, Republican lawmakers have actually blocked funding to let people know where they can deposit babies in order for them not to die.

Jesus.

There’s No Such Thing as Karma But I Get Why Shit Like This Makes People Think There Is

After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, in which police were beaten and after which some died, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) blamed not then-Pres. Donald Trump but then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), lying to do it. Cramer also made excuses for those who criminally entered the Capitol without using violence.

Cramer has also been a longtime persecutor of history’s greatest monster, Hunter Biden, alleging (unproven/refuted) corruption and pushing for investigations. Which bring us to the karma portion of our programming.

Yesterday, Cramer’s son was sentenced to 28 years in prison. Because during a drug-fueled car chase he killed a police officer who, yes, was about to retire¹.

This happened on Jan. 6, 2023.

See how slow a news day it is, Newsfuckers? We had time for karma!

CORRECTION: As an astute Newsfucker (is there any other kind?) pointed out, I fucked up. The fatal crash was Dec. 6, 2023, not Jan. 6, 2023. (I could say I was destined to screw up, invoking karma like that, if I believed in destiny or karma!)

TCB

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I have no idea what time I’m gonna post tomorrow, let alone what it’ll be. Exciting!

SUPPORTING TFN A final 2024 thank you to every Newsfucker who’s supported my work (and my life and my family’s life!) with a donation or paid subscription this year.

I’m hoping to write a little tomorrow about TFN’s growth over the year, just to share how we’re positioned for 2025. But for now let me just say that while other news media are struggling, TFN is growing. I hear all the time from Newsfuckers to whom TFN means something. Which means everything to me.

If TFN is of value to you, today is the last day you can add your support to our 2024 numbers. Now, unlike all those solicitations about made-up “funding deadlines,” TFN wants to assure you that all that deadline talk is bullshit. No one should ever impoverish themselves supporting TFN or any other media, but especially not to meet a made-up, bullshit, trust-violating “deadline.” You should only support TFN if you can … and if it means something to you.

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MERCH The TFN Store is looking to expand in 2025 with, um, more crap that Team TFN is working on! In the meantime, you can always treat yourself to TFN merch such as this lovely cap, which my lovely wife gave me for Christmas, so I can say honestly that, yeah, it looks pretty cool in person, too!

Have a great, safe, joyous (and/or expectation-free) New Year’s Eve, Newsfuckers.

We’ll see you in 2025!

1. Fine, Hollywood, we apologize for all the times we rolled our eyes at the cliche.