2024-12-21 23:45:00
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Editor’s note, December 21 10:20 am ET: Shortly after midnight on Saturday, the Senate passed legislation that would fund the government and avert a shutdown. The bill did not include the suspension or elimination of the debt ceiling that Donald Trump had demanded.
This week’s installment of the long-running saga, “House Republicans cannot govern,” will soon be forgotten. Elon Musk’s decision to blow up a bipartisan agreement to keep the government funded through the sheer power of posting (and the latent threat posed by his immense wealth), Donald Trump suddenly calling for the abolition of the debt limit, House Republican Chip Roy telling his colleagues that they lack “an ounce of self-respect” — all these dramas will surely give way to even more ridiculous ones in the new year.
But this week’s government funding fight also revealed something that could have profound implications for the next four years of governance: Trump’s power over the congressional GOP is quite limited.
This did not appear to be the case just days ago. On Wednesday, Trump joined Elon Musk in calling on House Republicans to scrap a bipartisan spending deal that would have kept the government funded through March, increased disaster relief, and funded pediatric cancer research, among many other things. Despite the fact that the GOP needs buy-in from the Senate’s Democratic majority in order to pass any legislation — and failure to pass a spending bill by Saturday would mean a government shutdown — House Republicans heeded Trump’s call to nix the carefully negotiated compromise.
If Trump had little difficulty persuading his co-partisans to block one spending bill, however, he proved less adept at getting them to support a different one.
On Thursday, in coordination with Trump, the House GOP unveiled a new funding bill, one shorn of all Democratic priorities. Over social media, the president-elect instructed his party to “vote ‘YES’ for this Bill, TONIGHT!” Then, 38 House Republicans voted against the legislation, which was more than enough to sink it amid nearly unified Democratic opposition.
House conservatives’ defiance of Trump is partly attributable to ideological differences. The president-elect’s objections to Wednesday’s bipartisan agreement were distinct from those of his donor Elon Musk or the House GOP’s hardliners. The latter disdained the spending bill’s page count and fiscal cost. Trump, by contrast, appeared more preoccupied with the legislation’s failure to increase — or eliminate — the debt limit.
Which is understandable. The debt limit may be the most irrational of all the US government’s institutions. It does not prevent Congress from authorizing spending far in excess of federal revenue. Rather, it authorizes the government to finance the spending that Congress has already ordered through borrowing. The alternative to raising the debt limit is for the government to default on its obligations to American citizens, or to its lenders, or both. In practice, breaching the debt limit could trigger global financial tumult, as the world’s most widely trusted “safe” asset — US treasury debt — suddenly becomes a risky investment.
Although refusing to raise the debt limit would be economically disastrous, many lawmakers are inclined to do so anyway. After all, increasing the limit on how much debt the government can accrue — when the federal debt already sits at $36 trillion — can sound bad to voters when highlighted out of context in a campaign ad. And some conservatives see threatening to sabotage the global financial system as a potential means of forcing through unpopular spending cuts.
So getting Congress to raise the debt limit is inevitably a bit of a headache. And Trump does not want that high-stakes formality getting in the way of his plans to enact large tax cuts that — if history is any guide — will substantially increase the debt and deficit.
Trump therefore implored House Republicans to suspend the debt limit for at least two years — or else, eliminate it entirely — so it wouldn’t interfere with his honeymoon period (as is, Congress will likely need to raise the debt ceiling at some point next year, after narrowly averting a crisis in 2023). House Speaker Mike Johnson honored this request, adding a two-year debt limit hike to Thursday’s bill.
For dozens of House conservatives, the idea of voting for a spending bill devoid of any major funding cuts that also suspended the debt limit was more odious than the prospect of defying Trump.
It is not surprising that some House Republicans would prize conservative purity above fealty to Trump. That nearly 40 of them would harbor such priorities is a revelation, however. During the 2024 campaign, Trump demonstrated a remarkable capacity to dictate ideological terms to his party, officially forswearing a national abortion ban without provoking any sustained attacks from his right. Combined with his apparent success in revising conservative orthodoxy on trade, entitlement spending, and US-Russia policy, Trump’s pivot on abortion raised the possibility that the modern right was a personality cult first and an ideological movement second.
It’s now clear that for a substantial portion of House Republicans, this is not the case. And that is going to raise serious challenges to Trump’s agenda next year.
Republicans will control both chambers of Congress in 2025, but their majority in the House will be razor-thin: They will have at most a five-vote majority by year’s end, assuming they sweep all impending special elections in deep-red districts. The party will need to reach something approaching unanimity in order to advance legislation without Democratic help. This might not seem like such a difficult feat when it comes to passing the cornerstone of Trump’s legislative agenda, an extension and expansion of his 2017 tax cuts: If Republicans agree on anything, after all, it is that taxes should be lower.
Yet some conservatives evince genuine concern about deficits and insist on paying for the tax cuts by slashing spending. Others hail from swing districts and may be nervous about signing off on unpopular cuts to social welfare programs. At least a few Republicans are even reluctant to roll back all of the Inflation Reduction Act’s pro-clean energy tax credits, which have disproportionately benefited Republican areas. Appeasing all relevant constituencies will be difficult.
Theoretically, Trump could make this task easier by cowing intransigent Republicans with charges of disloyalty and threats of primary challenges. But after Thursday, it appears less certain that the president-elect actually boasts such power over the House GOP’s backbenchers.
It is worth recalling that Trump is a 78-year-old lame duck. If you are an up-and-coming conservative House member with aspirations to run for higher office a decade from now, a reputation for conservative ideological purity might eventually prove more useful than a record of perfect fealty to an elderly man whose interest in the Republican Party is liable to evaporate the moment he forfeits the presidency.
Whatever happens, Trump is poised to wield a disconcerting amount of personal power over the executive branch come next year. But he may find that his capacity to dictate terms to Congress is as frustratingly limited as our government’s authority to issue new debt.
2024-12-21 20:30:00
On the Money is a monthly advice column. If you want advice on spending, saving, or investing — or any of the complicated emotions that may come up as you prepare to make big financial decisions — you can submit your question on this form. Here, we answer a question asked by Vox readers, which have been edited and condensed.
Why is money so hard?
Dear Letter Writer,
You asked this question at the beginning of the year; now that we are coming to its end, I may have an appropriate framework through which to answer it.
The literal answer is that money is difficult because it is a representation of value. Unfortunately, we are often unable to earn and spend our money according to what we actually value. Various industries are motivated to pinpoint the exact minimum amount of money we’re willing to accept for various jobs and the exact maximum amount of money we are willing to pay for particular items, trusting that we’ll give them exactly what they ask for. Much of what is left over goes toward experiences we don’t actually value and expenses we can’t necessarily control.
The metaphorical answer is a little more complicated:
It is the holiday season for many of us, a time when we demonstrate our values to one another. The person who values frugality shops the sales, the person who values extravagance shops full price, the person who values their own skills handcrafts ornaments or puts calligraphed labels on jars of jam — but no matter what you choose, you generally end up spending an unusual amount of time or an unusual amount of money.
Most of us pick the money route, and even the people who choose the DIY route have to purchase the Mason jars and calligraphy pens. So we set budgets — some of us, anyway — and divide our holiday shopping lists into affordable allotments. This much money for gifts, this much money for clothing, this much money for travel, and so on.
At this point, if we’re thinking practically, we book the travel first. Somehow it costs more than we were expecting, even if we set aside more money than we did last year. This is because the airlines, rental car companies, and hotels understand that reaching a particular destination for the holidays is a top-level value in nearly everybody’s minds — a value that is taught and reinforced by much of the media associated with the holiday season, as well as societal expectations — and these companies can charge precisely what the market will bear.
So we end up booking the flights or the rental cars or the hotel rooms, or we look at the cost of gas and estimate how much it might cost us to drive, and whether it would be possible to pack a cooler instead of stopping to eat along the way, and then we tell ourselves that we can always make our budget balance by spending a little less on the presents.
Except we don’t want to spend less on the presents. We want to let the people we love know how much we love them, and the amount we love them hasn’t changed since we booked our flights, so why should the amount we spend on their gifts have to decrease? We don’t want our families to have to bear the burden of an inadequate budget. We don’t want to face disappointed children or disapproving relatives.
And so — because we value the people we love, and because we very much value the idea of ourselves as generous and holiday-spirited — we spend more than we can afford.
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Sometimes this overspending comes from what might be considered a necessity. This is the year to give your child a bike, for example, because next year might be too late. However, many of us quickly get into the kind of overspending that is less useful. This would be the “well, we’re giving Nana three gifts, so I had better make sure Pop-Pop has three gifts too” thing, the kind of financial imprudence that leads to comically unnecessary novelty purchases or the dregs of drugstore sales bins.
Nobody wants these gifts, and yet we feel as though they ought to be given, and so we exchange money we cannot afford or have not yet earned.
There’s another level of overspending that occurs when someone else tasks you with a holiday responsibility you weren’t expecting. This year, your team is doing Secret Santa. This year, you got invited to a themed party that requires you to buy an ugly sweater or a silly hat. This year, Nana and Pop-Pop want everyone to send in family photos so they can make a calendar. This year, your neighbor gave you a gift, and so you had better give them something too.
And so we spend, and spend, and spend, and tell ourselves we’ll sort it out later, maybe we’ll get a raise or pick up a side hustle or apply for a 0 percent intro APR balance transfer credit card — because that’s what we’re supposed to do at this time of year. Everything in us and around us tells us to book the travel and buy the presents and attend the parties and take the pictures, and if we don’t enjoy all of this as much as we ought to, or can’t afford to spend as much as we want to, we’ve failed.
That is why money is hard, dear Letter Writer: Because the way we spend the holidays is the way we spend our lives.
Fortunately, New Year’s resolutions are just around the corner. This year, consider resolving to understand both what you value and what value you have to offer. From there, you may be able to improve the rate at which you exchange your value for money and exchange your money for what you value. It’s the only way through this mess of personal finance, and it isn’t easy — but I’ve done it, and other people I know have done it, so I hope you can too.
2024-12-21 06:50:00
Delivery workers continued to picket Amazon facilities in New York City, Illinois, California, and Atlanta after launching a strike on Thursday, following the company’s refusal to engage in bargaining for a labor contract.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has been organizing the workers, though Amazon does not recognize those efforts and claims that the workers are not Amazon employees. (A stance federal labor watchdog the National Labor Review Board, or NLRB, disagrees with.)
The striking workers, who are primarily delivery drivers, are agitating for a contract that offers better pay and working conditions. The Teamsters gave Amazon until December 15 to start contract negotiations. Those did not transpire, leading to a strike timed for the week before Christmas as part of a push to bring the company to the bargaining table. It’s one of the biggest strikes in Amazon’s history, and it’s not clear how long it will last. And it’s already having legal consequences; an Amazon delivery driver and a Teamsters organizer were arrested at a Queens facility Thursday allegedly for disrupting traffic.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed,” Teamsters president Sean O’Brien said in a Thursday statement. “We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it.”
The delivery workers’ strike is part of a larger effort to unionize the workers, including delivery drivers and warehouse employees, who perform Amazon’s shipping and fulfillment services. The unionization battle has been ongoing for years. In 2022, labor organizers had their first major victory, when an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island voted to unionize and formed the Amazon Labor Union. Since then, the Amazon Labor Union joined the Teamsters, which bills itself as the largest labor union in North America and represents workers from a variety of industries, including transportation and health care. The Teamsters say the union represents 10,000 Amazon workers.
There is little indication this week’s strike will result in the type of win the Staten Island workers saw in 2022; Amazon has argued the strike won’t hurt its operations, and dismissed its validity. And while workers trying to organize at Amazon have notched some victories in cases before the NLRB, that body is expected to undergo major, pro-business changes in the incoming Donald Trump administration. All that puts the success of the striking workers, and how the federal government will treat labor in the years to come, in doubt.
It’s not clear how many workers are striking, but they represent only a fraction of the approximately 800,000 people who make up Amazon’s delivery workforce.
Amazon warehouse workers’ poor working conditions, including injuries and insufficient access to medical care, have been well-documented, including in a new Senate report. That’s what inspired the first unionization effort at the Staten Island warehouse.
Drivers and delivery workers say they struggle, too.
“The pay needs to be better. The health insurance needs to be better,” Thomas Hickman, a Georgia-based delivery worker, told CNN. “We need better working conditions. If we do have 400-plus packages, we need someone to be a helper with us, to ride with us.”
This strike isn’t focused on working conditions or pay and benefits exactly, although that’s part of it; it is what’s called an unfair labor practices strike, because Amazon refused to bargain with the workers by the deadline the Teamsters gave Amazon management. The workers are striking to get the company to negotiate a labor contract that sets out acceptable working conditions, pay, benefits, and more. The workers hope to get their rights and benefits enshrined so they can’t be arbitrarily removed by the company.
The Teamsters maintain that the company is violating labor law by refusing to negotiate a contract.
“In some ways, this isn’t so unique,” Eric Blanc, professor of labor relations at Rutgers University’s school of management and labor relations, told Vox. “In many cases, employers will ignore labor laws and refuse to bargain. Sometimes, striking is the way to get them to the table.”
Amazon, however, maintains that the striking workers aren’t even Amazon employees.
“There are a lot of nuances here but I want to be clear, the Teamsters don’t represent any Amazon employees despite their claims to the contrary,” Kelly Nantel, a spokesperson for Amazon, told CNN. “This entire narrative is a PR play and the Teamsters’ conduct this past year, and this week is illegal.” Vox reached out to Nantel to clarify which actions Amazon believes to be illegal but did not receive a response by publication time.
According to Amazon, these drivers and delivery workers work for a third-party contractor — what they call a delivery service partner (DSP). But Amazon doesn’t name the DSPs and advertises for those delivery jobs on Amazon websites. Delivery workers drive Amazon-branded vans and wear Amazon uniforms; they deliver Amazon packages, and Amazon “completely dictates the way the third-party company operates,” Rebecca Givan, professor of labor relations at Rutgers University’s school of management and labor relations, told Vox. “Amazon sets the terms.”
The Teamsters filed unfair labor practice charges against Amazon and one of its California DSPs, Battle Tested Strategies, in 2023, saying that Amazon and the DSP are joint employers of dozens of delivery workers the Teamsters had organized there. In August of this year, the NLRB ruled that Amazon and Battle Tested Strategies were joint employers, and in September, an NLRB regional director lodged a formal complaint against Amazon.
Amazon has “made it very clear that they have no intention of bargaining” with the workers, Seth Harris, senior fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change and former top labor policy advisor to the Biden administration, told Vox.
First of all, Amazon’s business model depends on low-cost labor and that is easily replaced during periods of high turnover, according to all of the labor experts Vox spoke to. Putting a contract in place that guarantees workers certain levels of pay, benefits, and workplace safety contradicts that model.
Amazon hasn’t recognized the original Amazon Labor Union, even though it is recognized by the NLRB. And they have also spent “tens of millions” of dollars over the years on illegal union-busting activities, Blanc said, including threatening employees’ wages and benefits if they unionized, removing information about union efforts from a digital message board, and firing workers for unionizing.
There are federal laws governing how companies are meant to interact with unions and collective action efforts. But there’s no real penalty for failing to negotiate with workers, Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told Vox.
The NLRB is tasked with adjudicating labor disputes, but Amazon (as well as Elon Musk’s SpaceX) have filed lawsuits claiming the NLRB and the current dispute resolution system is unconstitutional. If courts rule in favor of Amazon and SpaceX, that could significantly alter how the federal government handles labor disputes.
Therefore, Amazon can just “delay, delay, delay” negotiating a contract with the striking workers, Wheaton said, hoping that they win their case, or that they will soon have a Trump administration that is much more antagonistic to labor, and an NLRB that is much more friendly to corporations. President-elect Donald Trump will get to fill at least two seats on the NRLB, and is expected to select pro-business candidates; his labor secretary pick, however, is viewed as more pro-labor than expected.
Regardless of what stance the incoming administration takes, the unionization push at Amazon, which has only grown over a relatively short period of time, is likely to continue.
“This strike is a way of making it clear to the company — and the public — that [the push to unionize and negotiate a contract] is not going away,” Blanc said.
2024-12-21 02:00:00
Editor’s note, December 21 10:20 am ET: Shortly after midnight on Saturday, the Senate passed legislation that would fund the government and avert a shutdown. The bill did not include the suspension or elimination of the debt ceiling that Donald Trump had demanded.
This week, we’re getting a potent reminder of what legislating looked like under President Donald Trump — and the turmoil we can soon expect in his new term.
Trump, along with his ally, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, upended a bipartisan spending deal on Wednesday, just days before government funding is set to expire. That agreement would have kept the government open until March 14, bundling $100 billion in disaster aid with $10 billion to assist farmers, and a slew of other measures. Following grumbling from Musk about the size of the legislation, Trump called for Republicans to negotiate a new agreement that both addresses the debt ceiling and strips the deal of so-called “Democrat giveaways.”
House GOP leaders tried to do so, presenting a new bill Thursday. Unsurprisingly, that version of the bill hasn’t been able to garner the votes that it needs to pass — leaving lawmakers once again scrambling with a shutdown deadline looming Friday night.
Trump’s 11th-hour decision to get involved in negotiations, weighing in via social media (and seemingly without coordinating with congressional allies), is reminiscent of his first-term approach to Capitol Hill, when he regularly blew up funding talks and directly caused the longest government shutdown in US history. As such, this week’s chaos is both a callback and preview of the tumult that’s yet to come.
During Trump’s first term, he repeatedly called for Republicans to shut the government down in order to put pressure on Democrats to back his priorities, and also proved to be a mercurial negotiator.
In his first year as president, Trump began urging a shutdown as early as August, attacking members of his own party and emphasizing his willingness to endure a stoppage if it meant securing funding for a border wall. He went out of his way, too, to needle Democrats on Twitter ahead of a funding negotiation meeting that November, prompting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to not attend.
And as a shutdown loomed in January 2018, Trump further helped to scuttle a potential spending deal by throwing in extraneous border security demands. That month, Trump and Schumer famously met for cheeseburgers and appeared to reach an agreement, according to the Democratic lawmaker.
That agreement would have included Democratic backing for increased military spending and potential funding for a wall, in exchange for legislation that created a path to legal status for DACA recipients (a category of undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children). After the meeting, however, Trump reportedly pushed for more hardline immigration measures — including policies to enforce illegal immigration across the country — ultimately killing the deal.
In the week that followed, Democrats withheld their votes on a funding bill in an attempt to force the inclusion of DACA protections, leading to a brief shutdown. That didn’t wind up working, however. The shutdown ended when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised Democrats a vote on an immigration bill, which later failed to pass.
Perhaps most notably, Trump went on to cause a 35-day government shutdown from December 2018 to January 2019, after he panned a bipartisan funding deal that lawmakers had already agreed to. His statements prompted House Republicans to pass a different version of the spending bill that included more than $5 billion in funding for construction of a border wall, which Democrats balked at supporting. Because the House and Senate couldn’t find a version of the bill they could both pass, the funding deadline came and went, and the government entered a shutdown.
After more than a month, Trump caved on his demands when it was apparent that he and his Republicans allies didn’t have the votes for the border wall funding and the effects of the shutdown on government services were becoming untenable (his approval rating also suffered noticeably as the shutdown wore on). He ended up signing a short-term funding bill that reopened the government but did not include his requested border wall funds, though he later declared a national emergency in a second, more successful, attempt to secure wall funding.
Even after leaving the White House in January 2021, Trump has continued to meddle with funding bills. Just this past fall, he again called for Republicans to reject funding legislation and shut down the government if Congress didn’t pass a bill to curb noncitizen voting, which is already illegal.
This week’s developments are yet another indication that Trump’s disruptive style hasn’t changed — particularly with the vocal backing of new allies like Musk.
Trump and Musk’s shared approach to governance by tweet (or Truth Social post) could well amp up the chaos and pressure that Republicans lawmakers will face in the president-elect’s second term.
Neither has been shy about making threats in order to bully people into acquiescing. Musk, for example, has said he’ll financially back primary challengers against senators who don’t support Trump’s Cabinet picks. And Trump has his own history of pushing for primaries against lawmakers who don’t do his bidding, a tactic he reprised this week.
While Republicans will again control both chambers of Congress next year, as they did during the first two years of Trump’s first term, they will hold narrow majorities that pose their own challenges. House Speaker Mike Johnson will need to keep a fractious coalition fully unified — or rely on Democrats — to get anything done. Already this year, Johnson has had to rely on Democrats to help pass multiple funding bills, a dynamic that’s garnered ire from his right flank and could fuel challenges of his leadership in the new term.
Even after lawmakers resolve this funding fight, Johnson won’t have long to rest; the likely next deadline, in mid-March, will be an early test for the return of unified Republican governance. If this week is any measure, GOP leaders will have their work cut out for them — and it’s likely Trump and Musk will throw a few more grenades into the process along the way.
2024-12-21 01:05:00
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Editor’s note, December 21, 10:20 am ET: Shortly after midnight on Saturday, the Senate passed legislation that would fund the government and avert a shutdown. The bill did not include the suspension or elimination of the debt ceiling that Donald Trump had demanded.
President-elect Donald Trump didn’t even wait to start his second term before throwing Congress into chaos, sinking a bipartisan spending deal and making his own demands as a government shutdown looms at midnight.
In one sense, this is just the latest installment of a very familiar story involving House Republican dysfunction over spending battles, and Trump’s willingness to embrace chaos and throw things into disarray.
The surprising aspect to the current showdown, though, is just what, exactly, Trump has chosen to pick this fight over: He wants to suspend, or even eliminate, the debt ceiling.
“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling,” Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social early Friday morning. “Without this, we should never make a deal.”
The debt ceiling is the limit — set in law — of how much new debt the US government can issue. If it is not raised or suspended in time, the country would default on its debt; it is widely believed economic turmoil would then ensue. Republicans have used the threat of a debt default to try to force Democratic presidents into policy concessions, and Trump fears Democrats will try something similar against him in 2025. So he wants the debt ceiling suspended right now — or even abolished entirely.
This was an unexpected turn of events because the initial bipartisan deal just didn’t address the debt ceiling at all: It merely funded the government for three more months, as well as included several other provisions that had won bipartisan backing.
When, on Wednesday, billionaire Elon Musk started publicly attacking the deal, he complained about the bill’s “overspending” and also made sometimes-inaccurate claims about those add-on provisions. But he said nothing about the debt ceiling — which would, if suspended, allow Trump and Republicans to spend more freely.
Then, in a Wednesday afternoon statement denouncing the deal, Trump suddenly put the debt ceiling on the agenda. “Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch,” he posted on Truth Social, calling Republicans “foolish and inept” for not dealing with this issue earlier and complaining that “the Debt Ceiling guillotine was coming up in June.”
On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson scrapped the bipartisan deal, dropping several of the add-on provisions and, in accordance with Trump’s wishes, adding a debt ceiling increase. Some conservatives who had cheered on Musk’s criticism of the initial deal’s big spending are now horrified at this turn of events, believing the debt ceiling is a crucial tool to help restrain spending. More than three dozen House Republicans broke with Trump to vote against the new bill Thursday evening, and since nearly every House Democrat also opposed it, it failed.
But Democrats are still weighing how they should handle this unexpected turn of events. Democratic wonks have long hated the debt ceiling, believing irresponsible Republicans used it to take the economy “hostage” to extort Presidents Obama and Biden, and many would happily see it abolished. However, the party’s congressional leaders may hope to preserve it as leverage against Trump and are ill-inclined to give in to Trumpian demands issued from on high — if there’s a deal, they want to be part of that deal.
This situation is still in flux and we don’t yet know how it will end. But already there are a few telling aspects to what’s happened.
First: Though some claim Musk killed the initial bipartisan deal and Trump and Republicans are simply puppets dancing on the strings of the world’s richest man, that does not seem like what is actually happening.
It is not clear why exactly Musk went so hard against the bill, or whether he was freelancing or working in coordination with Trump.
In addition to making complaints about too much government spending, Musk made various false claims about what was in the bill, including that the bill included a 40 percent pay increase for members of Congress (it was a 4 percent increase), and that it included $3 billion for a Washington, DC, NFL stadium (not at all true).
Some have pointed out that the bill also included restrictions on tech investments in China, where Musk has business interests, wondering whether that was his true motive in coming out against it. (That provision was then dropped from Johnson’s revised bill.)
Whatever Musk wanted, once Trump got involved, he turned out to want something entirely different: a debt ceiling increase. And Musk fell behind his strategy.
Second: Congressional Republicans are not in lockstep behind Trump on matters of policy, and the internal tensions that have made the party dysfunctional on spending issues still exist.
Trump praised Johnson’s revised bill as “a very good Deal,” but 38 House Republicans then voted against it. Trump angrily threatened to support a primary challenger to one such Republican, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), but Roy was unmoved.
Roy is part of a group of several dozen House Republicans that has long been hostile to any bipartisan spending deal with Democrats and that has long made absurdly unrealistic demands for spending cuts. Their unwillingness to back Republican leadership’s proposals means that, in practice, GOP leaders have to rely on Democratic votes to pass government funding bills. Trump has not yet figured out a way around this dynamic.
Third: Trump’s willingness to defy conservative dogma presents opportunity and peril for Democrats.
Democratic wonks believe abolishing the debt ceiling would be a great thing for the country and would ultimately benefit future Democratic presidents by removing this tool for GOP hostage-taking. However, the party is wary that doing Trump a favor like this will make it easier for him to enact an agenda they fear and oppose.
The path of political least resistance would be for Democrats to simply oppose everything Republicans do and maximize the squirming in the fractious GOP coalition. However, it is also possible that, if they negotiate effectively and think about the long term, there’s an opportunity for serious policy wins.
Imagine a world with no more debt ceiling — no more phony crises, no more risk of default, no more hostage-taking. It would be nice! Can they make it a reality?
2024-12-21 00:08:47
It’s winter, which means it’s humidifier season. If you struggle with dry skin, allergies, or you’re currently dealing with a cold, you might be leaving yours on all the time — or you’re scrolling through yet another humidifier review roundup to choose a model to purchase. Should you buy an ultrasonic or evaporative? Warm mist or cool? Should it be a top-fill design? Are all the parts dishwasher safe? How big of a tank should you look for?
In a marketplace full of new-fangled, hyperspecific home gadgets, the humidifier is a classic appliance with modern(ish) incarnations available since the 1960s. Over 20 million were sold in the US in 2019, according to Statista, but they’ve only grown more popular and sleeker in the last few years, as people have become more concerned with the quality of the air in their homes. According to Amazon, over 100,000 units of this popular humidifier were purchased in the past month.
But while most of the sleek gizmos we love to buy during Black Friday sales exist to, in theory, optimize our lives, the humidifier adds a bunch of hassle — taking care of it becomes another irritating chore in the never-ending wrangling of your household, requiring a thorough scouring every few days to ensure no mold or bacteria is growing. There’s no shortage of humidifier models on the market, but you might be hard-pressed to find one you genuinely love rather than merely tolerate. Those looking for buying advice online often qualify their query: How do I not only wade through the options to find a humidifier that works well for my space, but also one that isn’t a complete pain to clean?
The short answer is that there isn’t a magical way to avoid humidifier maintenance. A humidifier is supposed to be full of liquid, and where there’s moisture, mold and bacteria will grow.
What’s more, there are real dangers to misusing a humidifier. More research is needed on the long-term health impacts of using them, which is a little disturbing considering how commonplace it is as a household object. The worst mishap that might occur with a robot vacuum is that it runs over an unpleasant surprise your dog left on the floor. With humidifiers, you could be breathing in particulate matter that causes more serious health issues than the device purports to solve. Yet for how risky and frustrating they are, consumers remain obsessed with looking for, testing out, and debating what the least worst humidifiers on the market.
The humidifier, in its basic form, is extremely simple — you can increase humidity simply by setting out a bowl of water near a radiator. (Whether this will make a meaningful difference is another matter.) Dry air can worsen any congestion you’re dealing with, sap moisture from your skin, exacerbate your asthma, and even hurt your house plants. Humidity falls in the winter because the colder the air, the less water vapor it can hold. But it’s not just the frigid conditions outside that contribute to unbearably dry air in the winter. “It’s the heat that you’re using in your domicile that ends up often reducing the humidity,” says Allen St. John, senior tech editor at Consumer Reports, noting that he sometimes turns down the heat to bump up the humidity rather than using a separate machine to do so. (If you don’t control your own heat, this may not be an option.)
Older humidifiers often looked like terrifying contraptions and were used mostly in hospital settings to help people with respiratory conditions. In the latter half of the 20th century, they started being advertised as consumer-grade products to use at home. Today there are three types available: the ultrasonic, which uses vibrations to turn water into mist; evaporative, which uses a fan to help evaporate water into the air; and the warm mist humidifier, which boils water to produce steam.
“Most of the stuff that’s on the market tends to be ultrasonic at this point,” St. John says. They’re generally easier to use, and typically quieter.
But all kinds of humidifiers come with trade-offs. Ultrasonics appear to emit a lot more particulate matter than evaporatives do (more on that later); evaporatives can not only be louder, but might also require you to buy and replace a filter or wick. With warm mist models, you run the risk of scalding yourself (or a pet or child in the house) if you knock over the humidifier. None are particularly easy to maintain: The Environmental Protection Agency advises cleaning a humidifier every three days, which requires taking it apart and getting into every little crevice to remove grime, and emptying the tank daily to reduce the growth of microorganisms.
“You don’t want to leave a humidifier around that’s just kind of wet,” St. John says. The area around the machine should be wiped down if there’s moisture around it. It’s also important, though, to be careful about what cleaning agents you use and how well you rinse the humidifier before turning it on again — you don’t want to inhale any harmful chemicals. In South Korea, humidifier disinfectants that were widely available until 2011 have been linked to the deaths of over 1,800 people.
Given how frustrating they can be to own, people often have impassioned opinions on humidifiers, according to Thom Dunn, who writes Wirecutter’s humidifier guide. “It’s a perennial thing — I’m always hearing reader feedback about it,” he tells Vox.
A few years ago, there was a considerable amount of reader complaints and discourse around the fact that Wirecutter had named the Honeywell HCM-350 humidifier, currently $67.99 on Amazon at time of publication, their top pick for several years. The humidifier guide is “easily one of the most volatile reader comment sections,” Dunn says. The team eventually removed the HCM-350 from their recommendations. The top pick now is the $109.99 Levoit LV600S. Unsurprisingly, several recent comments disagree with the choice. One of the latest comment reads: “I think it’s crazy the Honeywell HCM 350 is no longer the top pick.” (McSweeney’s even lampooned how even the most recommended humidifier will inevitably disappoint.)
This constant debate about the least-annoying humidifier may also be fueled by the fact that it’s a product some replace every few years. Many models are relatively inexpensive, and “it’s easy to get to the point of, ‘I didn’t really clean it, now this thing looks like a science experiment,’” St. John says.
There’s another obvious reason humidifiers cause so much consumer disdain: Many of them are big, clunky, and frankly, ugly. The good news is that the age of marginally more attractive design may be upon us. We’ve already seen the premiumization of kitchen gadgets, from toaster ovens to espresso machines, and a few years back, window air conditioners started getting the minimalist edit too. Now, more brands are giving the humidifier the millennial-sleek update thanks to a broader “air care” wellness trend — which includes not just humidifiers, but candles, diffusers, air purifiers — that’s turning anything that treats your indoor air into a premium product that should also blend into your home decor.
“It does go along with a certain influencer wellness aesthetic.”
Thom Dunn, Wirecutter writer
Some consumers are shelling out a lot of money for these prettier, more expensive models that can cost upward of $150 while not holding as much water or humidifying as well as experts’ recommended picks. “It does go along with a certain influencer wellness aesthetic,” Dunn says.
Consumers with discretionary income are investing more money into creature comforts for the home in general. “One of the things we’ve seen that sort of started with the pandemic — and that I don’t think has completely disappeared — is something we refer to as the introvert economy,” says Amy Eisinger, head of content at the wellness digital publication Well+Good. People are “investing in really making their space feel like a sanctuary.” Some are even installing infrared saunas in their homes, Eisinger notes.
Even if you’re not quite bed rotting, chances are you’re spending more time at home these days than, say, a decade ago — and what we spend money on may be shifting alongside that fact. There’s a whole TikTok genre advertisements featuring a woman coming home from work and embarking on a convoluted ritual using niche smart home gadgets: She sanitizes her clothes with a UV light wand in the foyer, runs her earrings through a jewelry cleaner, washes vegetables for dinner with some kind of ultrasonic device, gives herself a foot bath while watching a show on her phone, and pours herself a glass of something stiff from a rotating decanter. Everything is clean and nothing hurts. Presumably, in such a world of ultra-modern optimization, your indoor air is always the perfect humidity, too.
The real issue with humidifiers isn’t just the annoyance of taking care of them, though, it’s that they can be a serious health hazard.
“What most people don’t know about ultrasonic humidifiers is that they will create a lot of small particulate matter,” says Jonathan Jarry, a science communicator at McGill University’s Office for Science and Society. They “aerosolize minerals that are present in the water,” which means the purity of the water you’re using in a humidifier can drastically impact your home’s air quality.
A few years ago, University of Alberta scientists published research showing that ultrasonic humidifiers using both filtered and unfiltered tap water released high concentrations of particulate matter seen “during extreme air pollution events in major metropolises.” A 2023 paper published in the journal Science of the Total Environment found that safe-to-drink tap water used in ultrasonic humidifiers could spew out dangerous levels of metals that are more harmful inhaled than when ingested, such as manganese. In short, using anything but distilled water in your humidifier means you could be inhaling a lot of stuff you probably don’t want in your lungs. (Evaporative humidifiers can also emit particulate matter, but to a lesser extent.)
The EPA recommends using only distilled water in humidifiers, but acquiring large enough quantities of it cheaply is easier said than done. To be clear, boiling water is not the same as distilling it, and bottled drinking water isn’t usually distilled either. Distillation requires boiling water “into a vapor and leaving behind any impurities, and then taking that vapor and recondensing it back into a liquid,” Jarry says.
How much distilled water you’ll need depends on how dry the air currently is and the size of the room you’re humidifying: A small space under 400 square feet might need a machine with a 1.5 gallon tank, according to CNET, while a bigger space over 1,000 square feet could require a 3-gallon one. Two five-gallon barrels of distilled water sell for $42.99 on Amazon at time of publication; a much cheaper option might be to buy a water distiller for your home, or signing up for a distilled water delivery service, but that still adds another step and expense to using your humidifier.
It’s unclear how much public awareness there is about the harm of particulates released by humidifiers. According to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, many Americans have misperceptions about the purity of tap water. A third of respondents to a survey thought that tap water was sterile, and a quarter said they used it for humidifiers. (An unscientific Reddit poll on r/NewParents a few years ago shows the majority of 228 respondents saying they used tap water in humidifiers as well.)
The big question mark around the safety of these popular products adds yet another hurdle for consumers half-heartedly trawling the market for a humidifier that won’t make them miserable. The perfect all-in-one portable humidifier that distills water for you, cleans itself, and sings a lullaby for you at night does not yet exist. (The Dyson air purifier and humidifier combo does, but its regular price is $999.) If you’re not prepared for the commitment of bringing a humidifier into your home, the healthiest option — for both your lungs and your sanity — might just be to opt out.