Comment on Cheers and Jeers: Wednesday

Homelessness in America reached the highest level on record last year, according to new data released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development—and it will likely only get worse, in light of both a Supreme Court decision issued in June and President-elect Donald Trump’s forthcoming presidency. The annual report—which estimates the number of people staying in shelters, temporary housing, and on the streets on a single night—found more than 770,000 people experiencing homelessness on a single night this past January, up 18 percent from a night in January 2023.

A news clip making the rounds Sunday morning had CNN’s Dana Bash talking with Chris Sununu, New Hampshire’s Republican governor, about Elon Musk’s potential conflicts of interest. Here, after all, we have a hecto-billionaire with massive federal contracts via SpaceX—and whose carmaker, Tesla, likely wouldn’t have survived without generous state and federal subsidies—serving as an advisor to an incoming president on how the government should be spending its money, or not. Sununu told Bash he liked that Musk is an “outsider”—an interesting choice of words—who is “not looking for anything.” When she challenged that notion, he responded, “The guy is worth $450 billion” and therefore is “so rich he’s removed from the potential financial influence.” “I don’t think he’s doing it for the money,” Sununu said.

Elon Musk is nothing if not shameless. He proved that again this weekend, when he published an op-ed in one of Germany’s biggest newspapers, Die Welt, doubling down on his earlier support for the racist, far-right political party Alternative for Germany (AfD). In the op-ed—reportedly published online Saturday and in print Sunday—Musk writes that the AfD is “the last spark of hope for this country” and, essentially, that his vast wealth makes his politics a matter of public interest.

Today’s news provides two perfect examples.

The name of this bill is about as accurate as that of the Inflation Reduction Act.

The lawsuit’s premise is that they have been targeted and abused in a way unprecedented in the history of modern federal criminal justice.