🌊 Elon's Liberal X-Odus

A 55 MPH speed limit?

Today is a day that lives in infamy for Dodge Charger drivers: 51 years ago, the country instituted a 55 MPH national speed limit as an energy-saving measure. It was particularly cruel that Nixon signed it into law in 1973 because it’s the same year that “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd came out. Imagine having to drive 55 MPH while listening to that guitar solo. How did our Founding Fathers let this happen?

–Max and Max

KEY STORY

The Microblog Wars

Amid a liberal exodus from X, Bluesky’s popularity is soaring

• Per data from Similarweb, Bluesky – an X-esque social platform – has gained 3.5M daily users and seen its traffic rise more than 500% since November 5th. Before the election, Meta's Threads had five times as many daily users as Bluesky; now it has just 1.5 times as many. X is around 10x bigger

• Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey incubated Bluesky at Twitter in 2019. Dorsey left the company’s board this year saying it was “repeating the same mistakes” that pre-Musk Twitter made with content moderation

• Barbara Streisand, Jaime Lee Curtis, Mark Hamill, Stephen King, and The Guardian have all defected from X in favor of Bluesky

Dig Deeper

• In an article announcing its departure from X, The Guardian wrote, "The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: That X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse"

• Still, Bluesky’s 22M daily active users have a long way to go to catch up with Twitter's 250M

KEY STORY

Judicial Rush

Senate Democrats are rushing to confirm judicial nominees before the Republicans take power

• As of last week, the Senate had confirmed only 216 of Biden’s judicial nominees, versus 234 during Trump’s term, and 43 of 890 federal judicial positions remain vacant. Democrats want to fill as many of these positions as possible before Trump takes office

• The appointment process requires Biden to nominate a judge, a Senate committee to discuss the nomination and vote on it, the full Senate to hold a vote, and the judge to be sworn in

• Democrats are rushing as many judges through this process as possible, while Republicans do what they can to obstruct it

Dig Deeper

• Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-MA) has called on the Senate to “use every minute of the end-of-the year legislative session to confirm federal judges and key regulators,” while Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-NY) has said that Democratic Senators “will keep working to confirm as many of President Biden’s judicial nominees as we can before the end of the year”

• The effort may require senators to work overtime, including through their holiday recesses

KEY STORY

Trump’s Appointment Rush

Donald Trump announced a slew of appointments

• He tapped hedge fund manager Scott Bessent to serve as treasury secretary, one of the cabinet’s most-watched positions. Bessent – a Wall Street veteran who helped George Soros make his fortune – is known for his keen understanding of financial markets. He’s expressed major concern about the federal debt

• Trump then appointed Oregon Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer to serve as labor secretary. Chavez-DeRemer is among the most pro-union Republicans and the nomination earned praise from the heads of the Teamsters and national teachers union. Many conservatives blasted it

• Trump also nominated a trio of doctors to be his surgeon general and lead the CDC and FDA

• His CDC pick is Dave Weldon, an internist and former GOP rep who has questioned vaccine safety, once saying, “Federal agencies charged with overseeing vaccine safety research have failed”

• His FDA pick is Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary, who has decried “an epidemic of inappropriate care” and “over-treatment,” while he tapped Janette Nesheiwat – director of a prominent NYC-area urgent care network and Fox News contributor – to serve as surgeon general

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KEY STORY

Europe’s Top Startup Fails

Northvolt, Europe’s top-funded startup, filed for bankruptcy

• Founded by Peter Carlsson in 2015, Northvolt had raised over $15B from investors and governments to build lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles

• Carlsson blamed inconsistent policy messaging from governments around green regulation, declines in electric car demand, and his own managerial mistakes for the company’s demise

• Northvolt – which is ~$6B in debt – will look for new investors to save it from bankruptcy. Carlsson resigned over the weekend

Dig Deeper

• One prominent Northvolt investor told reporters, “This ought to be the proper fuel for crisis meetings at the European level… The comparison with the deeply long thought out and united policy that the Chinese are showing on this score is even more concerning”

• Christian Ehler, a German parliament member, added, “Northvolt’s Chapter 11 filing, albeit partly caused by questionable entrepreneurial decisions, is symptomatic of the problems that European clean tech companies face”

• But several analysts criticized Carlsson’s management of the company, arguing he tried to grow too quickly without properly managing cash: “The founders had no experience of building a process industry and they didn’t want to start with a small scale,” one senior researcher said

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🇺🇸 Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) joined Cameo after saying he will not return to Congress in January

🤫 A New York City judge indefinitely delayed Donald Trump’s sentencing in his “hush money” case

🇰🇵 North Korean media reported that Kim Jong Un is not interested in holding talks with Trump. During his first term, Trump met Kim three times, a break from longstanding American policy

🖥️ Amazon doubled its investment in Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s foremost rivals and owner of the Claude AI program, from $4B to $8B

💸 Consulting powerhouse McKinsey is nearing a $600M settlement with the US government over the company’s role in the opioid epidemic

COMMUNITY

🧠 Today’s question: What’s the most addicting, bingeworthy TV show you’ve ever watched?

Reply to this email to let us know what you think!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🚗 Jaguar: Bold or Dumb?: Jaguar’s boss defended the company’s decision to rebrand away from its iconic “leaper” big cat logo, alleging that criticism was the result of “a blaze of intolerance”

🍔 First-Class Fast Food: Delta Airlines announced it would begin serving Shake Shack burgers on some first-class flights

🚌 Don’t Make Me Stop this Bus!: A Colorado school bus driver was terminated after apparently abandoning 40 elementary school-aged students on the side of the road

👮 Badge of Dishonor: An Indianapolis police officer of 25 years, Shane Decker, faces felony charges after being caught secretly recording explicit encounters with massage parlor workers he was supposed to be investigating for human trafficking

🇳🇱 Just Say “Gnome”: Dutch police reported finding a two-kilogram garden gnome made entirely of MDMA

ROCA WRAP

Elon Musk: Corrupt or Not?

We are back with another edition of Roca Votes, where we present a contentious topic and solicit your thoughts on it. Today, the question is: Should we be worried that the world’s richest man is now perhaps the closest advisor and confidante to the president of the United States?

Elon Musk wasn’t always a Republican.

In fact, he says he voted for Barack Obama twice, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020. Yet due to what he calls the “Woke mind virus,” he’s drifted from the Democratic Party in recent years. Musk attributes his changing politics to when his son transitioned: "I lost my son, essentially. They call it 'deadnaming' for a reason. The reason they call it ‘deadnaming’ is because your son is dead."

"I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that," Musk said. "And we’re making some progress."

This summer, Musk endorsed Trump for president. He proceeded to put an estimated $200M into Trump’s campaign, in addition to using X to promote Trump and his agenda, speaking at Trump rallies, giving millions of dollars to right-leaning registered voters, and holding town halls around Pennsylvania. Trump, in turn, devoted nearly 17% of his victory speech to Musk, calling him a “super-genius.”

“I love you, Elon,” he said at one point.

Since then, a rise in Tesla stock has helped Elon Musk’s net worth gain $60B+, significantly outpacing the overall stock market. Reports also suggest the value of SpaceX – a private company – has increased significantly. Meanwhile, Musk has been hanging out at Mar-a-Lago, watched a rocket launch with the president-elect, joined a call between Trump and President Zelensky, and lobbied for his preferred cabinet appointees on X.

Many have taken issue with Musk’s “buddy-in-chief” role, given the impact government regulations have on his businesses. President Trump has the ability to modify electric vehicle subsidies, for example. If he eliminates them, it could devastate Tesla’s competitors who can’t produce EVs as cheaply.

SpaceX, meanwhile, depends on government contracts, while X, The Boring Co., and Neuralink are vulnerable to various types of regulation. Musk’s companies are also the subject of federal investigations, while Musk could benefit tremendously if the government adopts Starlink as the technology for its rural internet program.

Perhaps nothing has done more to spark conflict of interest claims than Musk being put in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). DOGE has been structured as an advisory council to the government, rather than part of the government, meaning Musk doesn’t need to divest his business ownership to run it. DOGE’s purpose is to cut spending and regulations, with clear implications for Musk’s own companies.

Yet many also view Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration as a boon for America.

To this crowd, Musk is a visionary, one of the greatest businesspeople in history, and a master at efficiency. His successes with Tesla and SpaceX weren’t a matter of making good investments, but of building transformative companies that many thought impossible. And who better to trim the government’s fat than the man who eliminated 80% of Twitter’s staff and kept it running?

Musk’s supporters also describe him as a true American patriot, committed to the US and its principles. They give as evidence Musk’s overpaying for Twitter to allegedly protect free speech and public discourse, both of which Musk and many others believe the old Twitter curtailed. Others believe that Musk – the world’s richest man with a $360B net worth – doesn’t care about making money. After all, if he were corrupt and bent on pulling government strings, why start donating big bucks to candidates only now?

And lastly, it’s no secret that big business and billionaires have a lot of sway in Washington. Some would say that Musk is just making it public.

So what do you think? Does Musk’s involvement in the government concern you? Is he more in it for the country or for himself? Will he reduce or increase corruption in DC? 

Let us know by replying to this email!

Roca Video
The Insane Rise and Fall of Matt Gaetz

A week ago, Matt Gaetz seemed poised to become the next Attorney General. Now he's selling Cameos for $250. How did this happen? What even is Matt Gaetz's story? This story details the meteoric rise and fall of Matt Gaetz, one of America's most controversial politicians.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

Friday newsletter correction: The official animal of Scotland is the unicorn — not the sheep. Several of you wrote in to point out our mistake, and we apologize for it. We bolded the wrong word.

With that said — and it was a typo on our end — why the **** is Scotland’s national animal a unicorn when the Loch Ness monster exists? An absolute disgrace!

–Max and Max