💪 Dems Finally Flex Their Muscles
Liberal lawmakers begin to plan their return to power, Pete Hegseth fumbles the military’s AI rollout, and Tucker Carlson makes a decent point... for once.
💰 On this day in 2008, disgraced financier Bernie Madoff was arrested by the FBI at his Manhattan penthouse apartment for orchestrating the largest Ponzi scheme in history. He defrauded investors out of some $65 billion, a sum roughly equivalent to the GDP of Guatemala. If he were still alive, Trump would probably pardon him.
Good morning! Peter here, scrounging together a final few holiday presents for friends and family. What’s hot this year? LEGO? Labubus? I can’t keep track anymore. I do have a gift for you, though! Because this edition of ‘First Draft’ is sponsored by Ground News, there is no paywall! Enjoy, my friends!
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ House Democrats start to throw their weight around, Donald Trump inches ever closer to war with Venezuela, more movement in the Epstein files saga, Secretary of War Crimes Pete Hague-seth screws up yet again, and Tucker Carlson returns to reality for a brief moment…
Congressional Democrats Plot Their Political Comeback
The libs are out of the wilderness, and they want every institution that’s bowed before Trump to know they’ll soon be out for blood.
In Tuesday’s edition of ‘First Draft,’ I detailed how MAGA-friendly billionaire oligarchs are intent upon warping American reality by any means necessary.
The latest plot, hatched by father-and-son duo Larry and David Ellison, involves a mass consolidation of US media. In mere months, the Oracle co-founder and his Silicon Valley scion have seized control of Paramount and its library of subsidiaries, including Showtime, MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and CBS News. They’ve managed to wrap their tentacles around TikTok, and now they’re trying to gobble up Warner Bros. Discovery – thereby planting a flag in HBO, CNN, and a host of other properties.
It seems Democrats on Capitol Hill (or perhaps a handful of their staffers) are fans of ‘First Draft.’
Yesterday, Semafor’s Max Tani first reported Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to the WBD board and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, warning them in no uncertain terms that when (not “if’!) Democrats return to power, they may very well go nuclear.
“Future Congresses… will review many of the decisions of the current Administration, and may recommend that regulators push for divestitures, which would undermine the strategic logic of this merger,” Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Sam Liccardo of California vowed, “We urge the Board to weigh… regulatory liabilities in evaluating a transaction burdened by uncertain but potentially extensive mitigation obligations, foreign influence risks, or adverse regulatory action.”
The pair went further, explicitly laying out their concerns about the Ellisons getting into bed with Gulf state actors like the Saudis and Qataris in order to launch a hostile bid for WBD.
“These [foreign] investors, by virtue of their financial position or contractual rights, could obtain Influence — direct or indirect — over business decisions that bear upon editorial independence, content moderation, distribution priorities, or the stewardship of Americans’ private data.”
Pressley and Liccardo, both members of the House Financial Services Committee, warned that any pushback on the part of either WBD or the administration in allowing the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment to review any Paramount bid would constitute “a serious lapse in fiduciary judgment and could expose the company to significant regulatory… harm.”
Is the day finally upon us? Have Democrats, at long last, summoned the resolve to stop bringing a butter knife to a bazooka fight?
Pressley and Liccardo’s letter is a good sign. It’s, dare I say, a great sign. But we need so much more from the party of Hakeem Jeffries. We need a clear plan. We need a true and proper Project 2027 that lays out all the many, many ways in which congressional Democrats will make MAGA’s life a living Hell after the midterms. And, no, I don’t mean merely impeaching Donald Trump. Perhaps this is a hot take for another time, but, personally, I worry about giving Republicans a rally around the flag opportunity. The GOP is rapidly becoming a circular firing squad; why give them what could turn out to be a political gift?
No, believe it or not… and I can’t believe I’m saying this… I now want strongly worded letters. I want clear, explicit communications sent to all the major institutions and corporations that bent the knee to the Bad Orange Man, warning them that they better lawyer up.
Get ready to be subpoenaed out of the wazoo.
You bet on a permanent fascist autocracy – and you bet wrong.
Now, yes, the House is coming to collect.
🗞️ What You Need to Know
Epstein update: A New York federal judge ruled to unseal grand jury records in Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case at the request of the Justice Department. The move comes a day after another federal judge ordered the release of grand jury material in the sex trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell.
Mad about Maduro: US forces seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. The Venezuelan government called the move “a blatant theft and an act of international piracy.”
So much for free speech: All foreign tourists must provide their social media histories from the last five years to enter the United States, according to a new notice from Customs and Border Protection. Tourism numbers are already plummeting, and the World Cup is just months away.
Zeteo late-night scoop: The Trump administration is in talks to revoke the visas of two European green card holders – former European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton and Imran Ahmed, CEO and founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate – who are prominent critics of Elon Musk’s Twitter, Zeteo scooped. If implemented, the move would mark one of the administration’s first attempts to revoke the visas of those they deem to be engaging in the “censorship” of Americans.
Judge slams LA deployment: A federal judge in San Francisco ordered the Trump administration to end its National Guard deployment to Los Angeles in the latest blow to the MAGA militarization agenda. Judge Charles Breyer wrote that the administration’s “argument for a president to hold unchecked power to control state troops would wholly upend the federalism that is at the heart of our system of government.”
NDAA passes the House: The House passed the National Defense Authorization Act, thereby approving a $900 billion budget for the Pentagon and enacting several provisions, including increased pay for service members and reduced diversity efforts.
When it comes to Congress voting on the National Defense Authorization Act, the same old game plays out. One outlet focuses on the bill’s record-breaking $901 billion price tag, while another frames it as backing the troops. The details that actually matter, such as the 4% enlisted pay raise, $400 million for Ukraine, border deployment language, and DEI rollbacks, all get ignored in favor of virality.
That’s where Ground News can help. Instead of accepting one narrative, you can compare how the same story is covered across the political spectrum. Ground News pulls from 50,000+ sources worldwide and uses its Blindspot feature to highlight angles that aren’t in your usual news diet. Combined with the factuality feature, Ground News provides the tools you need to understand the real story.
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(This portion of the post was sponsored content.)
🧠 Pop Quiz!
What do Marcel Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’ and the latest National Defense Authorization Act have in common?
Keep your eyes out for the answer below!
⏰ A Broken Clock…
Former Fox firebrand Tucker Carlson made headlines yesterday for a searing polemic against several of the most controversial personalities of 2025.
While on Theo Von’s popular manosphere podcast, Carlson first took aim at billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, saying, “Bill Ackman’s worth like $8 billion or something. It’s fine. I don’t care if Bill Ackman, whatever Bill Ackman does, but I know Bill Ackman. He’s kind of dumb. He’s not ever created anything. He’s totally non-creative. How do these people wind up running our biggest institutions?”
Then came the real heat. Carlson, whose father once served as the president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, next directed his ire at the new grand poobah of CBS News, fuming, “If you pay close enough attention and you realize that the people running everything are stupid, then you think, ‘Well, actually, the system is truly rigged on behalf of people who do not deserve these positions at all.’ It’s not just that I disagree with Bari Weiss or she’s calling me names or I’ll call her names or whatever. In no meritocracy would Bari Weiss rise above secretary. And I mean that. I’ve been in this business my whole life.”
Carlson went on to mock Weiss for an infamous 2017 appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, where the media executive struggled to define the word “toady” after using it to attack current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Tucker closed out the tirade with some barbs for FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino. “I just don’t have a ton of confidence in the FBI and the men who run it, and I’m not saying that out of ignorance,” he sneered, “And this dumb Twitter shit? Leaders of the FBI are on Twitter? What?”
The whole thing had Mehdi and me laughing about this oldie but goodie from The Onion:
🚨 Don’t Miss It!
Join Zeteo’s John Harwood in a live conversation with Judd Legum of Popular Information TODAY at 2 pm ET (11 am PT / 7 pm GMT)! They’ll discuss how independent journalists can hold Trump accountable in ways Big Media won’t.
🍨 The Scoop
Trump’s Pentagon Can’t Even Roll Out Its New Military AI Without Fucking Up
Now over to my brother from another mother, y’all know and love him, it’s Zeteo’s Swin Suebsaeng with all the deets.
On Tuesday, Trump’s Pentagon internally rolled out its new artificial intelligence platform, powered by Google’s Gemini, for soldiers and Defense Department civilian staff to use in research and other tasks. According to Axios, this “rollout appears to be one of the first mass deployments of a commercially created generative AI tool across the entire Pentagon.”
This is just the latest notch in the second Trump administration’s broad project to inflate the AI bubble, often in hilariously corrupt ways. It also fits in the Trump administration’s broader pattern of constantly screwing up, oftentimes in perversely shambolic ways.
Two sources familiar with the matter tell me that various offices throughout the US military and department were initially confused by the rollout on internal systems, unaware that it was coming. Many couldn’t tell if it was legitimate, and wondered if this was a prank or something more nefarious. Several asked their superiors, who were also unsure about it for hours. Others flagged it to colleagues for possible phishing or hacking. Some noted that the US military already uses other AI platforms, so staffers were at first suspicious of what this could be.
It wasn’t until hours later that an email from Trump’s so-called “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth landed in their inboxes, explaining what this rollout was, the sources say. “This is worthless,” a Department of Defense staffer tells me. “I don’t want to use this for any of my work.”
Still, the Pentagon chief and former Fox News host boasted on X: “We will continue to aggressively field the world’s best technology to make our fighting force more lethal than ever before.”
Sadly for Hegseth and Trump, it appears “GenAI” thinks the administration committed murder in its double-tap strike in the Caribbean Sea. When prompted to weigh in on the exact scenario, the chatbot declared that an “order to kill the two survivors is an unambiguously illegal order that a service member would be required to disobey.”
Thanks, brother! For more on Team Trump’s multi-pronged efforts on AI, read Zeteo’s senior politics editor, Andrew Perez, on how: “Trump Wants to Shield His Big Tech Donors From State AI Laws.”
🌏 Anywhere But America
🇵🇸 Don’t Forget Gaza: An 8-month-old girl died from exposure to severe cold in the tent her family was sheltering in, Palestinian officials said, as a winter storm brings heavy rains, cold temperatures, and gusty winds to the Strip. At the same time, AP reported that the number of aid trucks Israel has allowed into Gaza falls short of the amount it agreed to under the so-called “ceasefire.”
🇮🇱 UEFA under fire: Swiss members of Parliament are pushing to revoke the tax-exempt status of the European Football Association (UEFA). UEFA originally received the exemption for “promoting peace” – which officials argue is no longer the case as UEFA takes no action against the Israeli Football Association. Zeteo’s Prem Thakker has been told that at least 45 members of the 200-member Swiss parliament have already signed on.
🇷🇼🇨🇩 Rebel group seizes Congolese city: Rwanda-backed rebel group M23 said it took control of the eastern Congolese city of Uvira. The news comes less than a week after the two countries’ presidents signed a US-mediated “peace” agreement.
🇧🇴 Ex-president arrested: Former Bolivian President Luis Arce – who left office last month – was arrested, according to a former member of his cabinet. Local media reports claim Arce was arrested in connection with an alleged embezzlement scheme that occurred while he served as the economy minister under former President Evo Morales.
🇧🇬 Thousands protest against government: Thousands of Bulgarians protested on Wednesday against the minority government’s latest budget and overall failure to tackle corruption. Bulgaria’s parliament is set to hold its sixth no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov today.
🤦 WTF?!
The latest victim of DEI? The font Calibri.
RIP.
🧠 Trivia answer: They’re both over 3,000 pages!
ICYMI From Zeteo
Zeteo’s Melanie Riehl, Akshay Gokul, and Minnah Arshad contributed to this newsletter.
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The Democratic Party must start planning now to begin investigations and prosecutions of Trump's regime. No more Merit Garland shilly-shallying. They must begin immediately.
Apparently, hell froze over. Who knew that in this mad, mad, mad, mad world Zeteo could actually agree with TC!