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Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

Move over, Trump Derangement Syndrome! It is time to make room for the latest pathology: Musk Derangement Syndrome.

The hysteria has been building for some time.

It wasn’t so long ago that Elon Musk enjoyed enviable street cred among the brotherhood of snotty, self-congratulating elites. A green energy guru, he made the hearts of the Sierra Club Sultans go pit-a-pat with his talk of “sustainable transport” and solar roofs.

Then Musk made several missteps. The first was buying Twitter and restoring open discourse to a platform that was started to encourage, well, open discourse but had become a headquarters of government surveillance and censorship during the first Trump administration. Musk never recovered his progressive credentials after he came out as a supporter of free speech.

But the atmosphere of left-wing disapproval that was swaddling Musk since his purchase of Twitter turned toxic and hysterical this past summer when, following the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, he announced that, gasp, he was supporting Trump’s reelection bid. Could you believe it? Supporting Trump’s reelection—especially actively, ostentatiously, effectively supporting Trump’s reelection bid—was like the sin against the Holy Ghost: unforgivable.

And then Musk compounded the perfidy by joining forces with Vivek Ramaswamy to form DoGE: the “department” of government efficiency, a time-limited initiative to help bring government spending and regulation under control. They have set an expiration date of July 6, 2026, by which date they hope to have been able to give America a 250th birthday gift of fiscal solvency and rational regulation.

Many people have wondered what DoGe would be able to accomplish since it would just be making recommendations with no real power to enforce them.

We have just been vouchsafed a glimpse of its possible potency.

For several years now, the approach of Christmas has brought not just visions of sugar plums and Santa sightings but also the annual Congressional budget snit known as CR, short for “Continuing Resolution.”

The exercise now seems almost venerable. In fact, though, it is an admission of failure, begotten in legislative irresponsibility, bred in malodorous sluices of pork-laden, politically correct greed.

Every year, Congress is supposed to deliver a budget before it breaks for Christmas. America’s last real budget was passed in 1996. The usual expedient is the stopgap measure of a “continuing resolution” in which Congress says it will just continue funding things at more or less the same level as it had been, kicking the can down the road and into the next fiscal year. (For an excellent explanation of the process, I recommend this brief but gimlet-eyed presentation: some college government department should hire this chap.)

Contemplating the embarrassing sideshow that was this year’s CR squabble, a friend reminded me of the old quip. If “con” is the opposite of “pro,” what is the opposite of “Congress?” This year, as has become the usual practice, Congress waited until the last possible moment to plop the text of the Continuing Resolution on the desks of our Conscript Fathers. What had started as a twenty-page document had lizzoed into a 1547-page behemoth. This was no “continuing resolution” but a porker full of self-serving giveaways to Congress as well as numerous woke initiatives designed to stymie the incoming Trump administration.

Among many noxious items were a provision to scuttle any serious inquiry into the activities of Liz Cheney’s January 6 investigation and another provision to continue funding the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. This innocuous-sounding initiative (we’re all in favor of “global engagement,” right?) funds the Britain-based Global Disinformation Index, which encourages advertisers to flee media outlets of which the guardians of the Narrative disapprove. This includes the Washington Examiner, RealClearPolitics, Reason, the New York Post, Blaze Media, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the American Conservative, Newsmax—and American Greatness. It is, as Vivek Ramaswamy observed, a “key node of the censorship industrial complex.”

This monstrosity was stopped, but how? Critics of Musk blame him. “He tweeted about our beloved monstrosity,” they skirled. “He killed the bill.”

But this is wrong. Musk did indeed post, with Olympic assiduity, about the egregious piece of self-serving lard.

But what scotched the original bill was the public outcry.

Musk may have been the catalyst, the tocsin in the night.

The fire brigade was manned by ordinary citizens.

As one social media poster put it, “All Elon did was read a bill, post on a public platform that the reckless spending in it was unacceptable, ask others to contact their representatives if they agreed, and made clear that he will help primary Ds + Rs who support it.”

This is exactly right.

But to listen to the Dems, you would think the world was coming to an end.

On December 18, Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), knickers twisted tight, asked angrily, “Can you imagine what the next two years are going to be like if every time that Congress works its will and then there’s a tweet? Or from an individual who has no official portfolio, who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary? And they succumb?” Yes, just imagine, Dick, if it is the people themselves, and not your little club of coddled thumb suckers, who shed light on the activities of Congress as it pretends to go about the people’s business?

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) sounded a similar note. “We had a deal to avert a shutdown,” this pathetic tool skirled. “Musk et al. blew it up because it didn’t help billionaires enough.”

Right.

Then came the sweaty lie.

“They wrote a new bill to cut cancer treatment for kids and grease a new tax cut for the rich.”

There are no “tax cuts for the rich.” And although “cutting cancer treatment for kids” got massive circulation for fifteen minutes, Murphy neglected to mention that the funding for pediatric cancer treatment was passed by the GOP-controlled House last March and was awaiting passage by the Democrat-controlled Senate.

It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, however, and I am grateful to this latest nocturnal emission of Democrat ire for my introduction to Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). Some unkind people have said that she is an escapee from the set of an Addams Family movie. That is grossly unfair—to the Addams family. I am not sure whether it was DeLauro who first referred to Musk as “President Musk.” She certainly helped circulate the epithet, which is part of a flaccid, already failing effort to drive a wedge between Musk and Donald Trump. De Lauro, understand, is not just another of the 538 members of Congress. She was chair of the House Appropriations Committee for the first two years of the Biden administration and has, since the GOP takeover in 2022, been its ranking member. She is the perfect face for the Democrat Party circa 2024. Savor her here as she casts her imprecations, like one of the weird sisters in Macbeth, against Elon Musk.

In the event, the final bill, called the American Relief Act, 2025, passed in the opening minutes of Saturday, December 21. It was the third version of the CR. At some 120 pages, it is less than a tenth as long as the original Brobdingnagian version. Who applied the Ozempic? Notwithstanding the wailing of the Dems, it wasn’t Elon Musk. It was the duly elected representatives of the people who, caught with their hands in the cookie jar, withdrew almost all the pork and politically noxious provisions of the original. It was a big win for Trump.

What tipped the scale? I suspect that a widely circulated picture of the original bill side by side with its slimmed-down cousin had people aghast and searching for their congressman’s telephone number. Donald Trump had wanted them to raise the debt ceiling now, presumably so he wouldn’t have to do it on his watch, but they denied him that concession. It was about the only one they did deny him.

Everywhere one turned, there were shouts and whispers that we’d just missed a major tragedy. “Government Shutdown Averted!” the headlines rang out. But what difference would a government shutdown have made? As John Stossel noted on X, past shutdowns show that such contingencies are largely theatrical events. “Life went on,” he observed. At the end of the day, “government demonstrated how needless most of it is.”

There are two main lessons to be drawn from this episode.

• One is that timely, forceful, and rapidly repeated exposure of government malfeasance can prompt the public to intervene and end it. Musk is accounted a villain by the left because he repeatedly shone a klieg light on the worst aspects of the adipose abomination that was the original bill. Somehow, no one had been so effective a town crier before.

• The second lesson has to do with the utterly irresponsible, but by now habitual, process that Musk helped to expose. The insidious practice of turning to “continuing resolutions” as a substitute for timely legislation is an invitation to corruption. The Dems have eagerly accepted the invitation, injecting all manner of tendentious (and, it may go without saying, expensive) desiderata into the annual CR fest, convinced that the public won’t notice.

The remedy is twofold:

1. Insist that proposed legislation be published well in advance of its deadline and

2. disaggregate the pieces of any proposed legislation so that each bill covers only a single subject. No more sneaking woke expedients into general spending legislation at the last minute.

Mentions of “spending” bring me to the existential pressure that first prompted Musk and Ramaswamy to embark on their quest for “government efficiency”: out-of-control, potentially paralyzing government spending. Together with the regulatory nightmare that the bureaucratic state has saddled us with, incontinent spending (the federal debt is currently north of $36 trillion) threatens to impoverish the United States and, hence, the world. Milton Friedman was right to advise us to keep our “eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending because that’s the true tax. . . . If you’re not paying for it in the form of explicit taxes, you’re paying for it indirectly in the form of inflation or in the form of borrowing.”

Musk has said that he hopes to trim government spending by $2 trillion per annum. If he and Vivek can manage a quarter of that, they will be national heroes. In fact, they already are.

Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times,

Seven Chinese nationals were arrested recently for illegally entering Guam around the time of a recent U.S. missile interception test on Dec. 10 and 11, according to Guam authorities.

The Guam Customs and Quarantine Agency said at least four of the seven were found “in the vicinity of a military installation” and that the investigation is ongoing.

The Chinese nationals had arrived on a boat from Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, according to authorities.

Guam is home to several U.S. military installations, including the Andersen Air Force Base, where the U.S. military conducted a live ballistic missile interception test using a new radar on Dec. 10.

A military aircraft dropped a ballistic missile about 930 miles from Guam, and the interceptor tracked and destroyed it mid-flight at 600 kilometers (373 miles) above sea level before it reached the island.

The first-ever missile interception test on Guam occurred as part of efforts to strengthen defenses in and engage threats aimed at the island or the broader Indo-Pacific region.

“This is a tremendous group effort and provides a glimpse of how organizations within the Department of Defense have come together to defend our homeland Guam now and in the future,” stated U.S. Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Heath Collins.

“Collectively, we will use this to build upon and validate joint tracking architecture and integrated air and missile defense capabilities for Guam.”

Guam, a Micronesia island, is strategically important for the United States in the Indo-Pacific as the Chinese communist regime aggravates military tensions in the area with U.S. allies while strengthening its own influence over island nations.

Its strategic location also makes it a potential target for U.S. adversaries, according to the Pentagon. Former congressman Mike Gallagher last year sounded the alarm that Guam is “highly vulnerable” to an attack by the Chinese military because of gaps in missile defense.

U.S. officials and lawmakers have also raised concern about Chinese espionage on U.S. military bases.

Recently, a Chinese national was arrested for flying a drone over a military base in California during a Space Force launch.

In October, five Chinese nationals were charged with covering up their visit to Camp Grayling in Michigan, the largest Army National Guard training facility in the United States, during last summer’s annual Northern Strike training event.

In July, a Chinese student pleaded guilty to espionage misdemeanors for for using a drone to take photos of naval shipyards in Virginia.

Lawmakers have urged law enforcement to shore up detection of this type of “non-traditional” intelligence collection, such as the Chinese regime utilizing civilians including tourists and foreign exchange students.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Disney has decided to abandon plans to have a transgender storyline in its upcoming animated series Win or Lose.

The show, which centres around characters on a co-ed middle school softball team, was originally scheduled to feature a transgender character.

However, The Hollywood Reporter notes that while the character will remain in the show, all references to its transgender identity have been removed.

A Disney spokesperson told the outlet “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”

The report notes that the decision was made several months ago, but the company has not provided any further details.

The decision comes following backlash directed at several recent Disney productions that have pushed similar themes and flopped.

The tide must definitely be turning on transgenderism if Disney ditched a whole character’s storyline from their new series. They’re finally getting the message: if you want people to pay to watch your movies and TV shows, quit pandering to the demands of a tiny minority. https://t.co/qbKfk91COi

— Sal Robins 💜🤍💚 (@Sal_Robins) December 18, 2024

if this is a show aimed at kids, This is perfectly fair.

if it was a show aimed at an older audience that includes relationships then it’s a different story.

— Devski (@DevskiTweets) December 17, 2024

why was there a transgender storyline in the first place

— Sepzeno⚡️ (@SepzenoOfficial) December 17, 2024

They finally learning

— Sniper (@sniperdagoat12) December 17, 2024

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Significant progress has been made in the fight against malaria over the last two decades.

According to a new report by the World Health Organization, there were 83 countries in which the disease was still endemic in 2023, down from a total of 108 endemic countries in the year 2000. Between 2022 and 2023, the number of malaria endemic countries decreased from 85 to 83 as a result of Timor-Leste and Saudi Arabia maintaining zero indigenous cases for three consecutive years.

The number of deaths have fallen too since the turn of the century, with the WHO estimating the toll at 597,000 last year compared to 897,000 in 2000.

But, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, there is still a significant amount of work to be done.

Cases were up again last year, rising from 249 million in 2022 to 263 million in 2023.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Of these, the highest numbers occurred in Nigeria (68,136,000) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (33,141,000).

According to the report, the WHO African Region continues to carry the heaviest burden of mortality, accounting for 95 percent of estimated global malaria deaths.

The WHO South-East Asia Region had eight malaria endemic countries in 2023.

India reported more than two million cases last year, accounting for half of all cases in the region. It was followed by Indonesia, which had nearly 1.1 million cases.

Malaria deaths fell from about 35,000 in 2000 to 6,000 in the South-East Region in 2023 – a drop of 82.9 percent.

In the early morning hours of Sunday (local), two US Navy pilots were shot down over the Red Sea in an apparent friendly fire incident. This comes after more than a year of war against Yemeni Houthi rebels, who have targeted international transit in regional waters.

The incident is highly unusual given that US and Western allied coalition ships have come under repeat drone and missile from from the Houthis, but have thus far suffered no disclosed losses. The Western coalition has reported no damage or casualties from this long-running battle, and yet it appears the first shootdown of an American fighter jet in the conflict has come by way of US aircraft carrier fire.

The two pilots ejected after their F/A-18 fighter was hit and have been safely rescued in Red Sea waters, with one of the pilots suffering injuries.

The Associated Press and ABC News are reporting the following details after official CENTCOM confirmation:

Two U.S. Navy pilots ejected safely over the Red Sea after their F/A-18 fighter aircraft was mistakenly shot down early Sunday in what military officials are calling “an apparent case of friendly fire.”

One of the pilots has minor injuries, according to a news release from U.S. Central Command.

The guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, which is part of the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the aircraft, that was flying off the USS Harry S. Truman, according to the news release.

CENTCOM says it is investigating the incident. Again, it is clearly bizarre given the aircraft had just taken off from the same carrier strike group of which the USS Gettysburg is part.

“The F/A-18 shot down had just flown off the deck of the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier,” Central Command indicated. 

The US military was conducting an assault against militants in Yemen at the time of the incident. AP details further, “The U.S. military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the time, though the U.S. military’s Central Command did not elaborate on what their mission was and did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press.”

There appears to have been some ‘fog of war’ confusion given that just prior to the friendly fire shootdown the Houthis had launched drones and a cruise missile at the US battle group. The F-18 may have been mistakenly identified by the Gettysburg warship as an inbound Houthi UAV.

“However, Central Command said that warships and aircraft earlier shot down multiple Houthi drones and an anti-ship cruise missile launched by the rebels. Incoming hostile fire from the Houthis has given sailors just seconds to make decisions in the past,” the AP notes.

Needless to say this is highly embarrassing for the Pentagon, and will be celebrated as a major ‘win’ by the Iran-backed Houthis. The Houthis have clearly been able to put the US warships on the defensive, given the confusion of the battle zone and trigger-happy premature response evident in this fresh incident.

Authored by Bradley Smith via RealClearPolitics,

The reelection of President Donald Trump could serve as a historic turning point for free speech in America. President Trump has said he will investigate censorship practices by the federal government, end the rampant disrespect for First Amendment rights on our college campuses, and take on Big Tech’s Orwellian policing of speech on the Internet. If successful, these efforts would make the First Amendment stronger than ever before.

Yet President Trump’s opponents will not simply stand by and watch as he dismantles their carefully crafted censorship machine. Controlling who gets to speak and what can be said is essential to the left’s dominance over our institutions. They will not give up such an important source of their power without a fight.

To ensure the success of Trump’s free speech agenda, the right must anticipate and prepare for the left’s inevitable attacks. Fortunately, their methods are not hard to predict. In fact, Democrats tipped their hand during the campaign.

Back when the party’s out-of-touch leadership thought Kamala Harris would propel them to victory, they set about making plans to silence opposition to their agenda once in office. At the Democratic National Convention, Sen. Chuck Schumer promised sweeping changes to elections, voting, and campaign finance if Democrats won control of Congress and the White House. All of these efforts would slant the political playing field further in the left’s favor.

Among the bills was legislation that would strip Americans of their privacy when supporting nonprofit groups that speak out on hot button issues like abortion, crime, the border, or extreme gender politics. The importance of this provision should not be underestimated.

The left calls it “transparency” when they publicly expose a private citizen’s personal information, including their name and home address, but Americans know it better as doxxing. They also know the purpose is not good government, but power politics. Exposing donors allows the left to build enemies’ lists and harass anyone who backs the “wrong” cause.

Harris, who co-sponsored the DISCLOSE Act in the Senate, has her own long record of attacking conservative donors and journalists. As California Attorney General, her demand that nonprofits expose their confidential donor lists to her office led to lawsuits and a rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court. The First Amendment protects the right to give privately, as the justices reminded her.

Now that the election is over, Democrats’ designs for regulating speech and exposing conservative donors may form the heart of their resistance strategy to splinter the Trump coalition. We have seen this movie before.

After the fight over Obamacare sparked a massive conservative movement known as the Tea Party, the left painted targets on the backs of the organizations and donors at its heart. IRS bureaucrats began grilling conservative groups about their activities and intentionally slow-walked their applications for nonprofit status. The massive targeting campaign succeeded in suppressing grassroots conservative activism in the run-up to the 2012 elections, where Democrats made gains.

Yet Democrats do not even need to control the White House to target conservative donors. Threats can arise from inside federal agencies like the IRS, or from state legislation or regulatory actions, or even from unscrupulous media aided by leaks and hacking of confidential donor data. President Trump himself saw his tax returns illegally leaked in a politically-motivated scheme.

Organizations that are successful in promoting conservative policies have also seen coordinated campaigns to bully their donors into ending their support. These harassment campaigns are one of the tactics that allowed the left to seize control of corporate America. Today, many companies pay a heavy price for any public association with the right.

America First organizations and citizens are more than familiar with this kind of discrimination. This time, however, they must not merely persist through it but fight back and defeat it. If not, the left’s control over our institutions will soon reemerge, strong as ever, despite our best efforts.

The solution is simple: Ensure every American can freely, safely, and privately support the organizations that represent their values and beliefs. We must end the ability of bureaucrats and political operatives to spy on donors and nonprofits.

If the Trump coalition can do this and protect its own, it can achieve its bold free speech agenda – and more.

Bradley Smith is chairman of the Institute for Free Speech, a former chairman of the FEC, and a professor of law at Capital University.