Policy

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo tells Politico she’s driving her team “hard.” She wants to commit the remaining money from the $50 billion bill meant to enhance the domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry before Trump — who’s criticized the bill — takes over. Once that happens, Raimondo says, “I don’t worry terribly about any of the chips money being rolled back.”

The launch is happening in Boca Chica, Texas and is scheduled for 5PM ET. SpaceX’s stream for the launch is live now.

Rumble, the YouTube rival popular with the right for its anti-”cancel culture” approach, is “very interested in acquiring Google Chrome,” CEO Chris Pavlovski says. He was responding to a Bloomberg report that the government is planning to ask a court to require Google to sell the browser as part of the antitrust case against its search business. Rumble notably brought its own antitrust suit against Google years ago.

The former congressman selected as Trump’s attorney general has come up in connection to a defamation lawsuit filed by one of his friends, as the New York Times reports a hacker has obtained evidence shared among lawyers on the case:

The file of 24 exhibits is said to include sworn testimony by a woman who said that she had sex with Mr. Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17, as well as corroborating testimony by a second woman who said that she witnessed the encounter.

The NYT’s The Daily topped the list of the most popular shows, followed by Crime Junkie and The Joe Rogan Experience. These three shows also made Apple’s top episodes list, with Joe Rogan’s interview with Donald Trump coming in at number two.

Ken White of Popehat is a longtime proponent of anti-SLAPP laws, which shift legal costs off people who get hit with bogus, speech-suppressing lawsuits. With anti-speech suits by billionaires in the news lately, he’s restarting a long-running series on them — building up to why we need one at the federal level now.

Pew Research Center released a report on news influencers who people are increasingly getting their information from.

The report couldn’t have come at a better time, following an election where the role of influencers and podcasters was especially notable. Of today’s news influencers:

- 77 percent have no background with news orgs

- 65 percent are men

- More identify as Republican or conservative than Democratic or liberal

- Far more have a presence on X than on any other platform

A new tidbit about the prediction markets startup from last week’s issue of Command Line:

Coplan recently raised, but has yet to announce, a $30 million round of funding at a $350 million valuation. And in recent conversations with investors (a surprising number of whom passed on the round, which was less than Coplan hoped to raise), I’m told he was noncommittal about whether the company would work to get the Commodity Futures Trading Commission license it needs to operate in the US.

And apparently, it’s not hurting them too much, reports The Cut:

As someone who has proven, time and again, to be impervious to traditional shaming tactics, Trump has ultimately given legions of his supporters license to finally go public about their support for him, one prominent New York–based communications consultant told me. And though there has been some backlash to posts like Javed’s in the form of angry comments or Reddit threads documenting influencers who are also Trump supporters, the outcry has been relatively minimal.

The Elon Musk-run social media company is trying to stop a California law that would require platforms to block “materially deceptive” election content during set periods before and after voting, Bloomberg reports. X is arguing the law violates the First Amendment, pointing to “a long history” of Constitutional protections for critiques of government “that includes tolerance for potentially false speech made in the context of such criticisms.”

In the waning months of Democratic control, the Federal Trade Commission is getting ready to probe Microsoft for alleged anticompetitive behavior, The Financial Times reports.

It plans to demand documents from Microsoft related to allegations that it makes it unduly difficult for customers to move from the Azure cloud by imposing sharp exit fees and other tactics. The FTC declined to comment.

The announcement secures the preliminary agreement that was made in April to help construct a new semiconductor factory in Phoenix, Arizona by 2030. President-elect Donald Trump has criticized the CHIPS Act, which now faces an uncertain future when he retakes the White House.

The statement from President Joe Biden says:

Today’s announcement is among the most critical milestones yet in the implementation of the bipartisan CHIPS & Science Act, and demonstrates how we are ensuring that the progress made to date will continue to unfold in the coming years, benefitting communities all across the country.

The President-elect chose his former political opponent and anti-vaccine activist to lead HHS, a department that oversees the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Kennedy has embraced policies widely rejected by the scientific community, like halting the addition of fluoride to drinking water — a mineral that helps prevent tooth decay.

Unsurprisingly, President-elect Donald Trump plans to end the federal incentive, which encouraged Americans to buy EVs like Teslas for years. Now, Reuters is reporting Tesla is for it:

representatives of Tesla - by far the nation’s largest EV seller - have told a Trump-transition committee they support ending the subsidy

Meanwhile, Trump has tasked Tesla CEO Elon Musk with cutting “wasteful expenditures” in the new administration.

Our colleagues at New York break down the gleefully corrupt dealmaking already taking place at Trump’s club, with this tremendous detail:

The billionaire X and Tesla owner is around so much he’s even got his own intro music. “I don’t know if you know this, but Trump DJs Mar-a-Lago from his iPad,” says Melissa Rein Lively, another frequent presence at the club these days. “So he has a walk-on song for Elon Musk, which is ‘Space Oddity.’”

David Bowie would hate this, but he’d hate the reality of what’s happening down there even more:

“It’s a dinner club, and you only go when Trump is there. You probably go once a week for four months in a season. You do that for four years, do the math — you’re spending $18,000 a meal to just get in there. It’s the most expensive meal you’re going to have, but is it worth it if your company gets a $2 billion deal from the federal government? It’s the best money you ever spent.”

It’s going to be a long four years.