Elon Musk hijacked British politics this week with a stream of at least 60 X posts since Tuesday attacking Prime Minister Keir Starmer, defending an anti-Islam campaigner and endorsing the far-right Reform Party.

Why it matters: The right-hand man to America's next president has gone after the leaders of several of its closest allies in recent months. But his fight with the British government is turning into the nastiest yet.

• While Musk's X microphone was enough to send Westminster into a frenzy, there's been intense speculation he'll also open his checkbook for Reform and its Trump-aligned leader, Nigel Farage.
• Musk told Axios' Mike Allen he had yet to donate and wasn't sure whether that would be legal. "But I have voiced my opinion that the status quo parties are not the right move," Musk added.

That's an understatement.

• In the most recent of several attacks on Starmer, Musk labeled him "Keir Starmtrooper," and shared a meme claiming the PM was more concerned about policing social media posts than rape.
• That was part of a barrage of tweets attacking British political and legal establishment for failing to adequately investigate alleged child sex abuse rings — most infamously one in the town of Rochdale, in which dozens of young girls were raped between 2004 to 2013.
• Some on the right have argued the abuse was swept under the rug because the perpetrators were predominantly of Pakistani origin.

What he's saying: Musk claimed another Labour minister, Jess Phillips, belonged "in prison" for rejecting the idea of a national probe of historic child sexual abuse. She argued it should be handled at the local level.

• Seizing on Musk's momentum, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said Thursday that a national investigation was "long overdue." Her own party was in power from 2010 until Starmer's landslide victory in July.
• Musk tweeted that the election should be re-run, and that "only Reform can save Britain."

Zoom in: Musk also called for the release of anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, a figure so controversial in Britain that even Farage has distanced himself from him.

• Robinson, best known for organizing anti-immigration demonstrations, was jailed for 18 months in October for contempt of court, for breaching a court order by repeating defamatory claims about a teenage Syrian refugee.
• Musk shared more than a dozen tweets praising Robinson.

Flashback: Robinson was accused of helping spark far-right riots over the summer by falsely suggesting the perpetrator of a stabbing attack was Muslim and encouraging his followers to "hit the streets."

• After the riots, Musk tweeted: "Civil war is inevitable."

Zoom out: Musk also kicked up a furor in Germany last week by endorsing the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) ahead of snap elections next month.

• Chancellor Olaf Scholz rebuked him in a New Year's address, saying the election must be decided by Germany's citizens, not "owners of social media channels."
• Musk also labeled Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau an "insufferable tool." On Thursday, he shared a "great interview" with Trudeau's conservative rival, Pierre Poilievre.

What to watch: Farage told The Telegraph of London, after he and Musk met last month, that he expected the world's richest man to donate "a reasonable amount" to his party.

• As a foreigner, Musk can't donate directly — though he could through a U.K. business, such as the British arm of X. The U.K.'s elections watchdog is now calling on the government to cap donations, with Musk in mind.
• Musk told Axios he's unsure of the legality of any potential donations.

Go deeper: Berlin accuses Elon Musk of seeking to influence Germany's election

Just 19% of Americans believe the country is heading in the right direction as 2024 comes to a close, per Gallup's latest monthly survey.

Why it matters: Gallup's monthly data reveals a deep-seated pessimism among Americans about their country. You'd have to go back two decades to find a time when half of Americans felt the U.S. was on the right track.

• The last time even 30% of Americans felt the U.S. was heading in the right direction was summer 2021.

By the numbers: December's finding was down from 26% in October, largely because satisfaction among Democrats has fallen from 47% to 30% since the election.

• Only 9% of Republicans think the country is on the right track. That number jumped from 5% in October to 16% in November before sliding back down.
• 19% is the lowest result since July. The 2024 peak was 26% in October.
• President Biden's approval rose to 39% from 37% in November.

Flashback: Gallup's highest-ever finding (71%) came in Feb. 1999, while the lowest (7%) came in Oct. 2008, during the financial crisis.

Between the lines: The pessimism about the direction of the country comes despite a fairly positive economic trajectory.

• The percentage of Americans who view the economy as the main problem with the U.S. has fallen steadily in recent months, per Gallup.
• Democrats tend to cite President-elect Trump as a top concern, Republicans are more worried about immigration, and respondents from both parties still have concerns about inflation.

Zoom out: Americans are sending mixed messages across the economic spectrum.

• Consumer confidence surged in November as Republicans cheered Trump's victory, but then pulled back in December.
• Retail sales over the holiday look better than the National Retail Federation forecast, but not great for brick-and-mortar stores.

President-elect Trump's inauguration is drawing donations from an array of blue-chip companies, and it's likely to exceed all past ceremonies in terms of fundraising.

Why it matters: This is a chance to earn goodwill from Trump, including for companies that distanced themselves from him in the past.

Driving the news: Toyota announced a $1 million donation on Tuesday, matching the amounts pledged by Ford and General Motors. Both U.S. carmakers also will provide vehicles for the ceremony.

• Silicon Valley is also pitching in: Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI each promised $1 million, while Uber is donating $2 million. Some of those donations are coming from their CEOs rather than from the companies themselves.
• Wall Street donors include Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.
• Crypto exchanges Kraken and Coinbase are getting in on the action too.
• Also cutting seven-figure checks, per the WSJ: AT&T, Charter Communications, Stanley Black & Decker, Intuit, Charter Communications, Pratt Industries and The PhRMA trade group.

Flashback: Several of the companies suspended political donations after Jan. 6 or released statements saying they would reconsider their approaches, WSJ reports.

• Four years later, some companies that denounced the insurrection are giving more to Trump's inauguration than they ever have for previous ceremonies.
• "People just really want to move forward and move on. The election results were very clear," a rep for one of the companies told WSJ, which adds that some statements condemning Jan. 6 have disappeared from company webpages.

What to watch: Trump's inauguration also is on pace to raise considerably more money than President Biden's in 2021.

• That's a possible sign that companies see Trump as a more transactional figure, and they hope donating to his inauguration will improve their standing heading into the new term.

Go deeper: Dems' plan inauguration boycott

President-elect Trump has big plans to make America greater, in terms of square mileage.

Why it matters: Trump has been in a strikingly imperial mood since his election victory. He has floated acquiring Greenland, reclaiming the Panama Canal, annexing Canada, and potentially invading Mexico — to the intense consternation of their leaders.

• In each case, Trump is blending trolling, negotiation and intimidation.
• He pitched statehood for Canada at least in part to needle "Governor" Justin Trudeau.
• But he has doubled down in the last 48 hours (including via memes) on taking over Greenland and claiming the Panama Canal. It's unclear how exactly either would be accomplished short of an invasion.

Between the lines: This is Trump's foreign policy playbook, or lack thereof. He says wild stuff, sometimes acts on it, and often doesn't.

• Prepare for whiplash after four years of President Biden extolling alliances and institutions.
• Trump has little regard for the "global order," and thinks throwing foreign partners off balance — or, when possible, steamrolling them — better serves American interests.
• Even if his proposals aren't always entirely serious, they can't be ignored.

State of play: Greenland's prime minister, Múte Egede, hit back at Trump on Monday: "Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom."

• A day earlier, Trump had labeled taking "ownership" of the world's largest island "an absolute necessity."
• People involved in Trump's transition have been discussing how an acquisition or custodianship of Greenland would work, according to Reuters.
• The island's attractions include its natural resources and its location, as the U.S., Russia and other powers scramble for footholds in the Arctic.

Flashback: It was widely treated as a joke when Trump first floated buying Greenland in 2019.

• Then Trump canceled a trip to Denmark, which controls Greenland as an overseas territory, after Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen rebuffed him.

Meanwhile, Trump pronounced Saturday that the U.S. would "demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us" if fees for U.S. ships to transit the waterway — which the U.S. returned to Panamanian control beginning in 1977 — were not reduced.

• Panama President José Raúl Mulino declared in an on-camera address Sunday that Panama would not hand over a single square meter of the canal, to which Trump replied on Truth Social: "We'll see about that!"
• Trump followed up with a picture of an American flag flying over the canal, captioned: "Welcome to the United States Canal!"
• Trump also cited "China," which increasingly dominates trade throughout the Americas, as a reason to take control of the canal.

Zoom out: That's the second time this month that Trump proposed a land grab in the context of trying to renegotiate trade terms.

• Trump previously told Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that his country could avoid tariffs if it became America's 51st state — a message he has repeatedly re-upped through memes and jokes.

But it's not all fun and games. Trump's allies have also been discussing a potential "soft invasion" of Mexico, as one adviser phrased it to Rolling Stone. That could involve targeting cartels through cross-border special forces operations or drone strikes.

• Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called that idea "entirely a movie" and said: "of course we do not agree with an invasion or the presence of this type in our country."
• But Trump's picks to run the State Department, Pentagon, National Security Council and border policy have all endorsed some form of U.S. military operation against the cartels.

The bottom line: America First is colliding with American imperialism. No one, including Trump, really knows how it will all play out.

Fearing political retribution and strained by new business challenges, media companies that once covered President-elect Trump with skepticism — and in many cases, disdain — are reconsidering their approach.

Why it matters: Trump's decisive victory in November has forced media executives to put their business interests ahead of their personal politics.

Case-in-point: Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, a longtime Democrat whose wife served as the ambassador to the Bahamas during the Obama administration, met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago this past week.

• "Morning Joe" co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who railed against Trump for years, met with Trump in an hour-plus meeting at Mar-a-Lago last month, infuriating their loyal audience. Scarborough said the reaction showed "a massive disconnect ... between social media and the real world."

State of play: Amid a record media trust deficit, outlets once critical of Trump are now making overtures to the former and future president, and the majority of American voters who voted for him.

• TIME magazine not only named Trump "Person of the Year," but the magazine's CEO, Jessica Sibley, chanted "USA! USA!" alongside the president-elect as he rang the New York Stock Exchange opening bell.
• A week after Trump's victory, two executives from TelevisaUnivision, the parent of the largest U.S.-based Spanish-language broadcaster, flew to Mar-a-Lago so the president-elect could personally thank them for election support, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• L.A. Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong vowed (on Fox News, no less) to balance out his editorial board with conservative voices. He also has discussed plans to add a digital "bias meter" for editorials and opinion columns.
• Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos (who, like Soon-Shiong, overruled his staff to kill a Harris endorsement) said at The New York Times' DealBook Summit earlier this month that he's "actually very optimistic" about Trump's second term.

The big picture: Compare that to the resistance media era that started in 2016, with outlets like The Washington Post garnering tough-on-Trump reputations (and thousands of subscriptions).

• This time around, national outlets — struggling to regain viewers and subscribers — are trying to signal they're no longer out for blood.

Between the lines: Another business consideration for news outlets reversing course is the legal risks associated with getting on Trump's bad side.

• ABC's $15 million defamation settlement with Trump shocked some legal experts who say ABC could've easily won the case. ABC has declined to say why it settled. But media onlookers see the settlement as a possible effort to avoid further scrutiny and legal attacks from the president-elect.
• The settlement comes amid a barrage of major lawsuits being lobbed at media companies by Trump. Those costly lawsuits sap outlets of time, legal resources and morale.

What we're watching: Tech titans facing historic regulatory scrutiny are also scrambling to be inside Trump's tent this time around.

• Meta, Amazon and Open AI have each donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Bezos have all met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago since the election.
• TikTok faces a potential ban in the U.S., barring a Supreme Court intervention. Meta faces a historic government antitrust trial next year that seeks to unwind its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram.
• Google has been found guilty of one major antitrust investigation around its search business and is facing another antitrust case around its ads business. Both cases threaten to break up the company.

President-elect Trump told NBC News he supports abolishing the debt ceiling and is prepared to "lead the charge" to make it happen.

Why it matters: Republicans, including some of Trump's strongest supporters in Congress, have historically opposed raising the debt ceiling, at least when a Democrat is in office. Now Trump says he'll push them to scrap it entirely.

• That pronouncement comes a day after Trump came out against a spending deal, negotiated by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), to keep the government running through March.
• His opposition effectively killed the bill and could lead to a government shutdown at midnight on Saturday.

Between the lines: Raising the debt ceiling and funding the government are two separate cliffs Congress repeatedly bumps up against, and Trump is now linking them together.

• The debt ceiling is a particularly sticky issue for Republicans, as many campaign against running up debts. Conservative members tend to push back on raising the ceiling, particularly when a Democrat is in the White House.
• Thus, Republicans would likely oppose abolishing the debt ceiling in principle — but few want to pick a public fight with Trump. The president-elect also floated the idea of scrapping the debt ceiling when he was last in office, but nothing came of it.
• Trump pointed out Thursday that some Democrats have already backed abolishing the ceiling. "If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge," he told NBC.

State of play: Congress suspended the debt ceiling through Jan. 1, 2025, meaning it will come back into force in just two weeks.

• However, the Treasury Department can use extraordinary measures to push back the date it will be breached, likely into the spring.
• The more urgent issue for leaders on the Hill is funding the government. Trump wants a "clean" continuing resolution — with many of the meticulously negotiated provisions pulled out, but some Republican priorities staying in.
• Democrats are already blaming him for the potential shutdown.

President-elect Trump on Wednesday came out against the 3-month spending stopgap introduced by House Speaker Mike Johnson to avoid a government shutdown.

Why it matters: Trump's opposition could torpedo the bill just two days before the deadline to keep the government running. He further complicated matters for GOP leadership on the Hill with a surprise demand that they raise the debt ceiling.

State of play: The continuing resolution brokered by Johnson would require a 2/3 majority to pass under a suspension of House rules.

• House Republicans spent much of Wednesday threatening to vote against the legislation, with Elon Musk leading the charge on X.
• Conservative lawmakers argue the 1,500-page bill is too bloated and are pushing for a "clean" short-term spending measure that will allow Trump to try to pass his own appropriations legislation in January.
• With Trump now publicly opposed, Johnson will likely move in that direction, a House Republican close to the speaker told Axios' Andrew Solender.

What he's saying: Trump and Vice President-elect Vance lodged a series of objections to the bill in a joint statement, including that it would give members of Congress a raise.

• They also claimed it would give "sweetheart provisions for government censors and for Liz Cheney," without specifying what those were.
• Trump also tried to shift blame for any potential shutdown onto the Democrats, despite the fact that his intervention could very well cause it. "If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF."

The other side: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries countered that Republicans had now been "ordered to shut down the government," adding: "you break the bipartisan agreement, you own the consequences that follow."

• "We have a deal with Republicans and we're sticking with it," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told senators on Wednesday.
• "Triggering a damaging government shutdown would hurt families who are gathering to meet with their loved ones and endanger the basic services Americans from veterans to Social Security recipients rely on," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement Wednesday.

The intrigue: The Trump-Vance statement included a twist: they also want Congress to raise the debt ceiling, an entirely separate process from funding the government.

• "Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we'd rather do it on Biden's watch," they said.

What's next: If Congress can't pass a continuing resolution in time, the government will shut down at midnight on Friday.

The Biden administration is readying dramatic last-minute steps to preserve a crucial advantage in its AI arms race with China: supply of the world's most advanced chips.

Why it matters: The chips needed to develop cutting-edge AI are the most valuable pieces of hardware on Earth, and the best chips Chinese firms can produce lag about five years behind the top end of the market.

Driving the news: A pending executive order could cap sales of AI chips to countries all over the world, not just China, per the WSJ — with a particular focus on Southeast Asia and the Gulf.

• Biden has already imposed limitations on the advanced chips that companies like Nvidia can export to China, but there are concerns that Chinese firms are able to buy or access them in other countries or from smugglers. There's a thriving black market for Nvidia chips in China.
• The new order would attempt to close that back door. It could also further divide the world along technological lines, with some countries likely getting unfettered access to U.S. tech and others facing limitations.
• Details of the rule, which is pending regulatory review, according to OMB's website, haven't been made public. But U.S. chipmakers and tech firms have been waging an intense behind-the-scenes campaign to prevent more restrictions.

State of the race

The fact that Chinese firms would "opt into a supply chain that involved putting chips in suitcases and smuggling them" is a clear sign of the Western edge in chipmaking, says Chris Miller, a professor at Tufts and author of "Chip War."

• The CEO of one of China's leading AI firms, DeepSeek, said this month that his primary constraint was not the vast sums needed for AI development, but access to high-end chips, Miller notes.

Breaking it down: The chips used to power AI development are mostly designed in the U.S. and fabricated in Taiwan, with chipmaking tools built in the U.S., Japan and the Netherlands.

• Beijing has declared its determination to leapfrog the West in every facet of the semiconductor supply chain. For now, it's locked out.
• The most advanced chips made by SMIC, the largest Chinese chip manufacturer, are on par with the top-end chips Taiwan's TSMC produced five years ago, Miller says.
• The Western advantage in chipmaking tools (such as the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines built by Dutch firm ASML) is so vast that China has little chance of narrowing it over the next five years, says Miller.
• "Everything depends on what type of equipment the West is going to be willing to sell to China. If the restrictions are tight and get tighter, I have high confidence that the West retains its chipmaking lead," Miller contends.

Yes, but: Other experts argue that cutting off access will hamper Chinese firms in the short term, but give them an extra incentive to out-innovate Western competitors in the longer term.

• Beijing is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into that objective.

The Trump factor

The chip wars have been heating up during the Biden-Trump transition.

• China fired a warning shot earlier this month after Biden's latest export controls were announced by opening an antitrust investigation into Nvidia, causing the $3.3 trillion behemoth's stock to wobble.
• That came a week after China announced it was banning exports to the U.S. of key minerals used in chipmaking.
• The tit-for-tat could continue to accelerate in Trump's second term, given that Biden has been tightening export controls that began during Trump's first term.

The intrigue: While Trump's administration-in-waiting is packed with China hawks, some incoming officials (including Trump himself) have indicated they also want to cut deals with Beijing. One piece of leverage in any such negotiations could be access to chips.

• Meanwhile, Trump's former national security adviser Robert O'Brien argued Tuesday that Biden's looming executive order would "cede the AI market to China" and "drive a wedge between the U.S. and our partners."
• A Trump transition spokesperson did not say whether Trump agrees with O'Brien. The White House referred Axios' questions about the pending executive order to the Commerce Department, which declined to comment.

Beijing's toolbox

For now, China has three main points of leverage:

1. Its massive market:

• U.S. chipmakers like Nvidia and Intel have designed chips for sale to China that fall just within the current regulations, a sign of their intent to continue to fight for market share in China.
• But in addition to the new Nvidia probe, China has announced an investigation into Intel and unveiled a partial ban last year on Micron, the Idaho-based memory chip giant.

2. Its concentration of some of the elementary inputs for chips:

• China cutting off supply of those minerals would have drastic implications for the global economy — but could be hard to execute without hurting China itself, give the global nature of semiconductor supply chains.

3. Its proximity to Taiwan:

• The world's most advanced chips are made almost exclusively on an island around 100 miles off the Chinese mainland, which Beijing has vowed to bring under its control — potentially by military force.
• Taiwan's TSMC claims to make 99% of the world's AI accelerator chips.

What to watch: TSMC is building a fabrication facility in Phoenix and has two more planned in the U.S. as part of a Biden push to onshore semiconductor production.

• For now, though, "all AI progress depends on TSMC production in Taiwan remaining online," Miller says.

Some of America's closest allies are melting down politically and sputtering economically, even before President-elect Trump takes office promising tariffs and unpredictability.

The big picture: South Korea's president impeached, warnings of economic crisis in Germany, an unprecedented government collapse in France — and that was just last week.

• Most of the world's leading democracies are struggling with significantly slower economic growth and persistently higher inflation than the U.S.
• Those economic struggles are reverberating politically. Remarkably, the German and French governments crumbled within a single month. Ruling parties also got walloped in parliamentary elections this year in the U.K., Japan and South Korea.

Breaking it down: President Biden's 37% approval rating looks stratospheric compared to some of his peers, many of whom are unlikely to last much longer.

• South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached Saturday after his strange and shocking declaration of martial law.
• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is unlikely to survive snap elections in February.
• Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government is running on fumes ahead of elections next year.

Enter, Trump.

• After years of hand-wringing around the world about his potential return — the lack of commitment to NATO and Ukraine, sweeping tariff threats — he's now hardly the biggest challenge some key allies face.

Still, his return could exacerbate the existing crises.

• If Trump follows through on his promise to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, it could push all three North American trading partners close to — or even into — recession, a new analysis from Oxford Economics found.
• The European Union would also struggle to absorb additional tariffs, given the already sluggish growth in its economic powerhouses, France and Germany.

Zoom in: Europe may also have to figure out how to bear the primary burden for arming Ukraine — and how to ensure its own security — if Trump equivocates on NATO's mutual defense pledge.

• Ditto for South Korea and Japan. In his first term, Trump pushed both East Asian allies to pony up more cash if they want U.S. troops to remain on their territory.
• America's intelligence partners won't necessarily find picks like Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence particularly reassuring.

The flip side: If you've lost a prime minister (like France) or have ousted your your president (like South Korea), you have less time to worry about who will be leading the Pentagon.

The bottom line: The U.S. is moving from "America is back" to "America first." But for the many crisis-stricken U.S. allies, America isn't the problem or the solution.

Go deeper:

• The U.S. economy comes out on top, IMF forecasts
• Trump's shadow presidency clouds Biden's final weeks
• Trump inherits a Middle East in flux

President-elect Trump told Time magazine he will ensure the FDA will not block access to abortion pills on his watch, the first time he has made such a commitment.

Why it matters: Medication abortions account for nearly two-thirds of all abortions nationwide. Anti-abortion groups and some Trump allies see limiting access to abortion pill mifepristone as a top priority in the new term — but, for now at least, Trump does not.

What he's saying: In the interview accompanying his Person of the Year designation, Trump said he had been "against stopping" the abortion pill during his campaign and that it was "very unlikely" he would do anything to restrict access.

• However, Trump initially declined to take a firm stand, saying that while it was "100% unlikely" he would do anything to limit access, he knew people felt "really strongly both ways" and would look into the issue at a later date.
• However, pressed on whether he would ensure the FDA does not strip access, Trump finally said: "That would be my commitment."

Context: The Supreme Court in June turned away a challenge to the FDA's guidelines for accessing the commonly used abortion pill mifepristone, saying a group of doctors who oppose abortion and brought the case couldn't show they were directly injured.

• While that ruling preserved access to the pills, several conservative-led states are continuing to challenge FDA rules that expanded access to the pill.
• Anti-abortion advocates have urged the next administration to broadly interpret the 1873 Comstock Act, which banned the interstate mailing of "obscene" material like pornography, as well as abortion drugs and contraception.
• The Biden Justice Department issued a legal memo saying Comstock didn't prohibit the lawful mailing of abortion drugs, but the memo could be rescinded.

More from the interview:

• Trump open to detaining immigrants in camps
• Trump insists Elon Musk will put country before his companies
• Trump says his daughter-in-law and children could carry on political dynasty

Bashar al-Assad fled Syria more than 13 years after an uprising against him began during the Arab Spring.

The big picture: Of the six countries that saw the most sustained protest movements in 2011, when fury at the ruling elites bubbled across the Arab world, Assad is the fifth leader to be ousted — more than a decade after the previous four.

Flashback: The Arab Spring began in Tunisia, and Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was the first to be toppled, in Jan. 2011.

• Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak fell the following month.
• Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi was killed in Oct. 2011, while Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down in Feb. 2012.

Breaking it down: Tunisia was the only country to build a sustained democracy after the Arab Spring, but it has deteriorated under the strain of an economic crisis and the authoritarian leadership of President Kais Saied.

• Egypt held democratic elections in 2012, but Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power in a coup the following year.
• Libya and Yemen have both suffered through more than a decade of war and instability since their respective regimes fell.

The flipside: Bahrain's monarchy managed to survive the 2011 protests and Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa remains on the throne.

Zoom out: Other Arab countries such as Morocco and Sudan saw significant protests in 2011, but not on the scale of the six mentioned above.

• A "second Arab Spring" hit the region in 2018, capped by the toppling of another strongman leader, Sudan's Omar al-Bashir. Sudan is now mired in a brutal civil war.

The world's two richest men and biggest space entrepreneurs both believe humanity's survival depends on life beyond Earth — for very different reasons.

• Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos explained this week that his vision is to move all polluting industries into space to preserve Earth.
• His rival Elon Musk envisions inhabiting space as a way for humanity to live on beyond Earth, if a cataclysm strikes our planet.

Why it matters: Both are pouring tens of billions of dollars into space travel with those endgames in mind.

• "These are visions of potential futures, and there is a long gap between achievement and vision," John Logsdon, founder of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, tells Axios.

Bezos' vision is for Blue Origin to lay the groundwork such that "the next generation, or the generation after that, will be able to move polluting industry off Earth, and then this planet will be maintained as it should be," he said Wednesday at the NYT's DealBook conference.

• In Bezos' view, human civilization needs to continually use more and more energy in order to advance, but Earth's resources are finite and must also support many forms of life beyond humans. That means tapping natural resources beyond Earth.
• "There is no plan B. We have to save Earth. We've sent robotic probes to all of the planet solar system. This is the good one, and we must save it," Bezos said.
• Bezos has also previously spoken about his dream of building enormous space stations (known as O'Neill cylinders) in relative proximity to Earth's orbit, to allow people to travel back and forth.

Musk's SpaceX, meanwhile, is actively drawing up plans for what life could look like on Mars, including specialized spacesuits and domed habitats, per the NYT.

• Musk has repeatedly argued that a mass extinction event on Earth, such as an asteroid strike, is inevitable. "Either become a spacefaring civilization or die," he posted on X in September. "Those [are] the two choices."
• Ultimately, he envisions transforming Mars to turn the Red Planet green (one tool he has floated: nuclear detonations).
• He has admitted in the past that developing a martian civilization could take centuries, but reportedly claimed earlier this year that one million people will move to Mars within two decades.

Reality check: Few believe that timeline is anywhere close to realistic. Even in the longer term, "I don't know why a million people would want to go to Mars," Logsdon says. "What would the economics of that be?"

• Other experts have noted that when pondering the survival of the species, preserving human life on Earth is quite a bit simpler than developing it on Mars.
• The obstacles to Bezos' vision of a network of colossal space stations — such as maintaining a supply of food and water in an entirely artificial environment — are hardly less daunting.

Between the lines: Both billionaires could make an astronomical amount of money from their space ventures even if their dreams of building space civilizations don't come to fruition.

• SpaceX is considering selling shares at a whopping $350 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported this week. That's because its Starlink satellite system and Starship mega-rocket — developed to fund and power Musk's Mars ventures — are already so valuable to governments and militaries here on Earth.
• Blue Origin is growing more slowly, but Bezos argued Wednesday that it will ultimately be more profitable than Amazon.

Four top leaders of Vice President Harris' campaign defended their strategy and largely attributed her loss to "headwinds" beyond their control in their first post-election interview on Pod Save America.

Why it matters: Democrats are in soul searching mode, trying to establish why they lost and how to right the ship. The Harris campaign chiefs offered several explanations but none based on mistakes they or their candidate made.

• They defended the overall strategy, from how the campaign spent its billion dollar war chest to the main themes it decided to focus on.

What they're saying: "This political environment sucked. We were dealing with ferocious headwinds, and I think people's instinct was to give the Republicans and even Donald Trump another chance," said Harris campaign senior advisor David Plouffe.

• Plouffe mentioned President Biden's unpopularity, the short campaign timeline, concerns over inflation and the fact that "it's really hard for Democrats to win battleground states" because they need to dominate among moderates to reach 50%.
• "The fact that we got the race to a dead heat was a good thing," Plouffe said, "but we didn't get the breaks we needed on Election Day."
• Campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon pointed out that the battleground states the campaign focused on saw a smaller rightward shift than the rest of the country.
• "We needed it to be better than that, and perhaps if we had more time we could have done that," O'Malley Dillon said.

The big picture: Plouffe rejected the idea that the campaign focused too much on the cons of electing President-elect Trump versus the pros of Harris, arguing the campaign was effective boosting her favorability rating.

• Plouffe also rejected the idea that campaigning with former Rep. Liz Cheney and focusing on winning over disillusioned Republicans in the closing weeks hurt turnout among progressives.
• O'Malley Dillon pushed back on the notion Harris hadn't done enough to distance herself from Biden, arguing the campaign "focused from the get-go on how she was different" from both Biden and Trump.

Zoom in: The Harris chiefs dismissed the idea that Harris' position on trans rights or lack of forceful rebuttal to Trump's attack ads on those issues helped influence the election result.

• Harris principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks noted that trans issues are "at the bottom for voters," ranking below the importance of the economy, immigration, crime and inflation.
• "If there's a belief that, if only we had responded to this trans ad with national and huge battleground state ads we would have won, I don't think that's true," Plouffe said.
• However, Fulks acknowledged that Trump's ad claiming "Kamala is for they/them" had successfully painted Harris as "out of touch."

The intrigue: The campaign leaders acknowledged that Trump was more effective than they were at reaching persuadable young men, both organically through social media chatter and through podcast interviews.

• O'Malley Dillon said Harris had been "ready and willing to go on Joe Rogan" but not to leave the campaign trail for a day to tape in-studio, as Rogan requested.
• The interview would have "broken through," but not ultimately changed the outcome, O'Malley Dillon said.
• The campaign reached out to some left-leaning media figures, and popular shows like "Hot Ones," but they wanted to steer clear of politics, O'Malley Dillon said.
• She also argued that the campaign had to deal with the "bulls--t" narrative that Harris was unwilling to do mainstream media interviews.

Reality check: Harris went five weeks before doing her first interview on the campaign.

Friction point: The campaign chiefs stressed that the uniqueness of Trump as a candidate and his ability to reach voters and the challenges this poses for Democrats.

• Stephanie Cutter, a Harris campaign senior adviser, noted deeper conversations are needed about the appeal of Trump's masculine persona and why Democrats are perceived as "squishy."
• Democrats need to "ensure that people in this country see themselves in what we're selling and that we have solutions that make sense to people," O'Malley Dillon stressed.
• Fulks also pointed out that "Republicans don't make Trump apologize" but that Democrats often "punish" members who "step out of line." Republicans "stay in line" because they understand that disunity in the party weakens their candidate, he added.
• "Democrats are eating our own, to a very high degree. And until that stops we're not going to be able to address a lot of things that just need to be said," he added.

The bottom line: "We're losing the culture war and… we are not aligned on where we can be within that," Fulks said. "At the end of the day, we're all Democrats."

Go deeper: Democrats start clawing each other's eyes out

Vice President Harris' 2024 vote total has now surpassed President-elect Trump's total in 2020 for third-highest of all time.

Why it matters: The Trump-Harris popular vote margin is the narrowest since Bush vs. Gore in 2000, despite Trump's decisive electoral college victory.

Reality check: Harris won 7 million fewer voters than President Biden's 81.3 million in 2020, easily the highest total ever.

• Harris won far fewer voters than Biden in New York City, Chicago and L.A., and ran behind Biden in blue areas generally, a New York Times analysis shows.

Between the lines: The high vote totals for Trump, Biden and Harris relative to previous cycles are due in large part to population growth. But both were also unusually high-turnout elections.

• Overall turnout in 2024 as a proportion of eligible voters was 63.7%, per a University of Florida tracker — lower than 2020 (65.8%) but higher than any other election in decades.

Go deeper: America chose Trump with eyes wide open

The House GOP's decision to bar Congress' first-ever transgender member from women's bathrooms spotlights a national trend: Republicans see targeting trans rights as a sure-fire political winner.

Why it matters: Republicans are treating their victory as a mandate to further restrict trans people from accessing bathrooms, youth sports and gender-affirming care, citing President-elect Trump's closing message: "Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you."

• Democrats, paralyzed by post-election finger-pointing, have been blindsided by the apparent potency of Republicans' anti-trans fear-mongering.
• Meanwhile, the trans community — already a historically marginalized population — has been left wondering who exactly is standing with them.

Driving the news: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced Wednesday that transgender people are henceforth banned from bathrooms on the House side of the Capitol complex that correspond to their gender identity.

• Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) had introduced a bill to that effect and made clear she was targeting her soon-to-be House colleague. "Sarah McBride doesn't get a say in this," Mace said. "If you're a biological man, you shouldn't be in women's restrooms."
• Even moderate Republicans told Axios' Andrew Solender they were unlikely to oppose Mace's bill. "I mean — a presidential election may have been decided on this issue," one said.

Zoom out: This goes far beyond Washington. There was a huge spike in anti-trans legislation at the state and federal level last year, and a record 665 such bills have been introduced this year, per the Trans Legislation Tracker.

• The bills target a range of things from youth sports participation to bathrooms to pronouns in classrooms.
• Republicans introduced 32 anti-trans bills just on the first day of the pre-filing period ahead of Texas' 2025 legislative sessions, journalist Erin Reed reports.
• Ohio's legislature passed a statewide bathroom ban on college campuses on its first day back in session after the election last week.

The other side: While Democrats were appalled by Mace's bill — "This is not just bigotry, this is just plain bullying," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told Solender — they're divided over how to handle the broader issue.

• In a closed-door meeting last week, Democratic senators lamented that they'd felt ambushed by relentless anti-trans campaign ads, Axios' Stephen Neukam reported.
• One ad targeting defeated Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said he voted for "allowing trans biological men in girls' locker rooms" and "sex change surgery for kids." Brown released an ad of his own asking voters to "reject the lies."
• Vice President Harris mostly ignored Trump's anti-trans ads, which aired on repeat in swing states in the closing weeks and hardly mentioned the word "trans" during the campaign.
• Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), meanwhile, faced calls to resign from within his own party after telling the New York Times after the election: "I have two little girls, I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I'm supposed to be afraid to say that."

Reality check: Republicans have bet on the anti-trans agenda as a winning strategy, even when the issues on the table affect a tiny share of Americans — and the population targeted by the bills is among the likeliest to suffer from anxiety and depression.

• "It's amazing how strongly people feel about this," Trump said during a 2023 event in North Carolina. "I talk about transgender, everyone goes crazy, who would have thought five years ago you didn't know what the hell it was."
• In 2021, AP reached out to lawmakers in 20 states who had proposed youth sports bans and found that almost none of them could cite any examples of transgender athletes' participation posing problems in their own states.

State of play: McBride privately counseled her Democratic colleagues to cast the fight over bathroom access as a distraction from real issues their constituents are facing, as NOTUS first reported, and said she would follow the rules Johnson laid out "even if I disagree with them."

• "It is a sad day when pointless culture wars, including gatekeeping the toilets of Capitol Hill, are more important for politicians than doing their actual jobs for the taxpayers who hired them," GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis told Axios in a statement.
• Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat, scolded Republicans: "This is your priority?"

Friction point: Some in the trans community have criticized McBride, and Democratic leaders, for ceding the issue to Republicans and not pushing back harder.

• The new rules on Capitol Hill were announced on Transgender Day of Remembrance, which commemorates people who have been killed or attacked because they were trans.

Go deeper: LGBTQ+ Americans bracing for Trump's takeover

President-elect Trump has picked doctor and TV personality Mehmet Oz to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), he announced on Tuesday.

Why it matters: Oz is a household name and became a Trump world ally during a failed 2022 Senate run. But he has no experience running a large government bureaucracy like CMS, which administers Medicare and Medicaid and conducts other services like inspecting nursing homes.

Driving the news: "There may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again," Trump said in a statement, referring to a slogan popularized Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

• Kennedy, Trump's pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, would be Oz's boss if both are confirmed by the Senate.
• Kennedy's views on Medicare or other payment policies are pretty unclear, unlike his public health views. That could give Oz wide latitude within the role.

In his statement, Trump said Oz would "cut waste and fraud within our Country's most expensive Government Agency," in a signal that cuts might be coming to entitlement spending.

• He also said Oz would "be a leader in incentivizing Disease Prevention."

The big picture: Oz is a former heart surgeon and professor at Columbia University.

• He came to national prominence as Oprah's go-to health guru, and later hosted his own long-running talk show.
• Oz has repeatedly drawn criticism over the years, including from fellow medical professionals, for espousing scientifically dubious theories and promoting treatments with no documented efficacy.
• Trump endorsed him in his 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race, but he was defeated by Democrat John Fetterman.

Go deeper: What to know about CMS and how Dr. Oz could lead it

Editor's note: This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Tuesday marks 1,000 days since explosions jolted Kyiv awake on Feb. 24, 2022, Russian troops mounted assaults on three axes, and Ukraine went to war, Axios' Dave Lawler writes.

The big picture: Ukraine halted the Russian offensive far short of Kyiv before launching a counteroffensive. Since then, much blood has been shed for much more limited gains. Now it's Russia that's gaining ground.

• While Russia's advances this year account for less than 1% of Ukraine's territory, President-elect Trump's win gives Moscow added confidence that Ukraine won't be able to reverse the tide.
• The U.S. has provided $64 billion in military aid over those 1,000 days — spending Trump has often criticized.

The other side: Ukrainian officials are preparing for the possibility of Trump-led peace talks.

• The land they've taken in Russia's Kursk region (map above) would be a significant bargaining chip.

The latest: President Biden has authorized Ukraine to use long-range missiles to fire against Russian and North Korean forces in Kursk.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed a revised nuclear doctrine declaring a lower threshold for using nuclear weapons.

Go deeper: Trump warns Putin in call not to intensify war in Ukraine

President-elect Trump will be a private citizen for another two months, but his impending presidential arrival is already changing the world in ways big and small.

The big picture: Trump portends more protectionism, less U.S. spending and intervention overseas, and a new pecking order in which ideological alliances between leaders can matter more than treaty alliances between countries. For PMs and CEOs all over the world, there is no time to waste.

Driving the news: Their immediate post-election actions have run the gamut.

• On one end: South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is taking his golf clubs out of storage so he'll be ready if Trump wants to play.
• On the other: Taiwanese officials are considering massive arms deals to show Trump — who has said the self-governing island should "pay us" if it wants protection from China — they're serious about their own defense.

In the private sector, companies are scrambling to shift production out of China, bolster inventory and weigh price increases, Axios' Nathan Bomey reports.

• Fashion company Steve Madden revealed that it plans to slash China-made products by 40% to 45% in a shift toward other countries — though not the U.S. — to avoid coming tariff hikes.
• "I've already started to see some volume from China shifted to Vietnam," one freight industry executive told Axios.

Yes, but: Trump's tariffs threats don't apply only to China, but also to allies.

• European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen has suggested one way to appease him: buying more American natural gas, per Politico.

Leaders in multiple European countries, including Germany, have also spoken about the need to increase defense spending over the past week.

• European defense stocks shot up after Trump's win.
• Arms are on the agenda both because Trump is fixated on NATO's 2% target, and because allies expect the U.S. under Trump to be less committed to European security in general and Ukraine in particular.
• There's a cautious shift underway in Kyiv, where officials are preparing to take part in potential peace talks, Axios' Barak Ravid reports.

Zoom in: It was appropriate that EU leaders gathered in Budapest hours after Trump's victory was declared: Hungary's populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a pariah in Biden's Washington, now has a direct line to the Oval Office.

• Italy's right-wing PM, Giorgia Meloni, is also trying to position herself as a bridge between Trump's Washington and Europe.
• The first foreign leader to get a meeting with the president-elect was Argentina President Javier Milei — a self-declared "anarcho-capitalist" and one of Trump's biggest overseas boosters.

The intrigue: A more surprising meeting reportedly took place between Iranian diplomats and Elon Musk.

• Tehran is attempting a diplomatic hairpin turn from allegedly plotting to kill Trump to floating direct talks with his government.
• Iran has also yet to carry out a retaliatory strike on Israel that U.S. and Israeli officials believed was imminent prior to Election Day.
• "This is the Trump effect. The Iranians put this on hold after he won the election," a senior Israeli official told Axios.

Meanwhile in Israel, Trump's victory — and his selection of Mike Huckabee as ambassador — is spurring a new push for annexations in the occupied West Bank, a step that would generate global outrage but fulfill one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's long-held ambitions.

• Netanyahu would also like to reach a ceasefire with Hezbollah to end the fighting in Lebanon before Trump comes in, Israeli sources tell Axios.

The bottom line: The world that greets Trump on Jan. 20 will already be markedly different than the one that existed prior to Nov. 5.

Go deeper: Trump's "I'm f***ing crazy" foreign policy