The Rose Bowl: Our game is rooted in tradition, prestige, and history.
Pop-Tart Bowl: Watch this pastry take its clothes off. It yearns to be consumed.
BEYER: Isn't this embarrassing?
BESSENT: You seem not to have seen the economic data. GDP growth has been quite substantial
BEYER: GDP growth is half what it was last year, sir
BESSENT: Job growth is solid
BEYER: Job growth is a third what it was last year, sir
Seven facts about Operation “Spiderweb” — a Ukrainian strike that will go down in history as one of the most successful special operations ever conducted.
1. Ukrainian special forces spent 1.5 years preparing and planning the attack.
1/n
MURRAY: It was due last week. By law.
PATEL: I understand.
MURRAY: You're not gonna follow the law? ... And you have no timeline?
PATEL: No
MURRAY: Hmm. We're not having a budget hearing without a budget request. So where is it?
SICKENING—Trump’s DHS just deported a surgeon from Brown University Medical School—who is here legally on an H1B visa that doesn’t expire until 2027, and has committed no crimes. Trained in the U.S. at Ohio State, University of Washington, and Yale as a **transplant surgeon** (one of the most difficult surgical fields in all of medicine!!!), she is a highly trained doctor on kidney transplants, which cannot be easily replaced. Her phone was seized at the border. A federal judge handed down an injunction against her deportation—but she was already deported on a plane en route to Paris. Brown’s kidney transplant clinic is now strained by her deportation.
This is exactly the problem. You can't take the "move fast and break things" mentality of Silicon Valley into the federal government, a place where if you break things, people die, or have their rights violated, or can't access essential services.
AOC: Why isn’t this moving? Republicans support it. Democrats support it. So what happened?
On December 15th at 415am, Elon Musk began firing off a barrage of social media posts opposing pharmacy benefit manager reform. All of a sudden, something that had almost unanimous support fell apart. We had nearly 435 members on board with it—he tweets, and it kills drug pricing reform that would save people money on their insulin, asthma inhalers, and everything they need.
And to top it off, five days after he kills pharmacy benefit manager reform, we get this tweet from Elon Musk: What is a pharmacy benefit manager?
The problem here isn’t a substance issue or a process issue—it’s an oligarchy issue, a power issue. And this room is where the power of the people resides. Everyone here was elected to be accountable to the people—not to be governed by tweets, but to be governed by their duly elected representatives.
So we can get this done; there are more of us than there are of him.
Keilar: There are military members of the guard and reserve. They are protected by law from being fired from their day job while they're deployed. I have learned that at one agency, an employee who is actually currently deployed with the military has been notified they’ve been fired.
Miller: I'm sorry, I'm confused by your question. Is your question does the president have the authority to fire a member of the U.S. Military…. I don't know what laws you're referring to. I would love for you to be more specific.
Keilar: The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act
I don’t want to connect my coffee machine to the wifi network. I don’t want to share the file with OneDrive. I don’t want to download an app to check my car’s fluid levels. I don’t want to scan a QR code to view the restaurant menu. I don’t want to let Google know my location before showing me the search results. I don’t want to include a Teams link on the calendar invite. I don’t want to pay 50 different monthly subscription fees for all my software. I don’t want to upgrade to TurboTax platinum plus audit protection. I don’t want to install the Webex plugin to join the meeting. I don’t want to share my car’s braking data with the actuaries at State Farm. I don’t want to text with your AI chatbot. I don’t want to download the Instagram app to look at your picture. I don’t want to type in my email address to view the content on your company’s website. I don’t want text messages with promo codes. I don’t want to leave your company a five-star Google review in exchange for the chance to win a $20 Starbucks gift card. I don’t want to join your exclusive community in the metaverse. I don’t want AI to help me write my comments on LinkedIn. I don’t even want to be on LinkedIn in the first place.
I just want to pay for a product one time (and only one time), know that it’s going to work flawlessly, press 0 to speak to an operator if I need help, and otherwise be left alone and treated with some small measure of human dignity, if that’s not too much to ask anymore.