• Some Democrats are dismissing the forthcoming DOGE push to cut wasteful government spending.
• Others in the party aren't totally writing off what Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are selling.
• Several key progressives believe they can work with the DOGE regarding the defense budget.

President-elect Donald Trump has grand plans to reduce the size of government, and he wants to use the forthcoming Department of Government Efficiency as a vehicle to make his intentions a reality.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, the incoming co-leads of the commission, have said they want to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget by July 4, 2026.

While many Republicans are fully onboard with the prospect of axing federal departments, a large number of Democratic lawmakers will likely be opposed to such efforts.

With Democrats still smarting from Vice President Kamala Harris' election loss and keenly aware of the extent of Musk's financial support of Trump in the 2024 race, rank-and-file members may not be inclined to aid the DOGE.

However, several Democrats, including Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Jared Moskowitz of Florida, have already signaled that they want to be a part of the conversation regarding any proposals.

Here are the congressional Democrats who could potentially give DOGE's recommendations a bipartisan boost:

• Every year, my dad would pick out the family Christmas tree at a nearby farm.
• After he had strokes, we figured out a way to continue to include him in the tradition.
• We kept up this new version of our ritual for over a decade.

We want holiday traditions to be static, each year repeating the last. In reality, kids grow, parents age, divorces happen, and jobs change, forcing us to adjust to suit new circumstances. We learned this when my father had strokes, and we fought to keep him involved in our annual tree fetch — a ritual that he'd started.

Decorating for Christmas was a task my dad adored, and finding the perfect tree was a contemplative task. At Nick's, the sheep farm with a few trees we went to every year, he studied spruce, fir, and balsam. When he found a promising one, he shook the snow off a branch, picturing how the lights would drape. Most trees were too fat, too full, and after what seemed like forever, my dad finally made his decision.

Our family repeated the tree-fetching ritual year after year

The older I got, the less I minded my father's measured pace. I didn't grow less impatient, just more appreciative. We kept coming to Nick's, and the trip unfolded sweetly and predictably. When my father asked our opinions, I knew that voting for a fuller Christmas tree was useless. The request for input was an opportunity for us to agree with his vision. Once he cut the tree down with his rusty handsaw, we dragged it to a clearing for a snapshot. The three of us beamed beside our scrawny tree, a scarf of impossibly soft hills behind us.

Dad took pictures using modest Kodaks and flimsy disposables, tracking time, and the expansion of our family. First, we added Jack, my husband-to-be, and then our first son. I valued the moment, a spot in the year that always happened.

So, when Dad had strokes, going from a spry and goofy 70-year-old to a stunned and humbled fellow, we had to keep him connected. The first year, we couldn't bring him because he was just regaining his strength. But when we brought the tree to my parents' house, we drank hot cocoa at the kitchen table and told him Nick said hello.

After my dad's strokes, we were determined to include him again

The next year, my husband was determined to get my dad back to Nick's. The idea terrified me. How could we get a wheelchair up the stony field? My mother wouldn't let it happen! Luckily, Jack ignored my resistance and made a plan with Nick to use a hay wagon, with a four-wheeler as backup, to get my father up to the trees.

When Jack proposed this, my parents said yes. They trusted him. He is a dancer and a tree surgeon, and when my dad was still able, he sometimes helped Jack at work. Wearing a hard hat, he dragged branches and helped lower limbs to the ground. Jack's use of trigonometry to get the branches away from a house really impressed him. "He's a wonder," my dad said. Yes, he was, but this was the first time he'd be assisting anyone in a wheelchair up a half-frozen field.

My mom sent us off to the farm. We were a caravan of minivans, holding my sister and her daughters, my brother, my family, and my dad. My sister and I helped our kids out of their car seats and fit their mittens into place. We helped Dad transfer from the car to his wheelchair and pulled on his gloves.

The event went without a hitch. Most of us climbed onto the hay wagon, but it was too high to hoist my dad. Jack and my brother helped him on the four-wheeler, and my brother sat in front of him and drove. I was in awe that Jack had imagined this day into a new shape.

At the top, Jack and my brother transferred Dad back to his wheelchair and took turns pushing him through the patch of trees. The rolling was rough, so he didn't survey every possible one, but he got a good sample. When he found what he wanted, Jack got him in place so he could saw it down himself.

Pictures of this day show a gray sky and patchy snow, all of us smiling. We were just a family fetching our Christmas trees, a normal and joyful thing. Did we lament that the day was different? We couldn't, because the tradition was still repeating, just altered.

We continued the tradition in this new way until my dad died

For the next dozen years, we kept going to Nick's. Instead of using the four-wheeler, Jack — and later, our eldest son — towed my father uphill. They looked like beasts of burden, pulling the patriarch. Jack tied a length of rope to the chair, and stepped into the loop, pulling it up to his chest. We made our selections — ours was always sculptural, a twist of pine regrown from a stump. The one for my parents' house went on the deck, so it could be 15 or 20 feet tall. We arranged ourselves at the outdoor photo studio and posed.

The year my father died, I don't remember what happened.

We still get our tree at Nick's. A young family now shares the tradition, and this makes me miss my father a little less. The trees are so tall that they've lost most of their lower limbs, and made a bed of needles. When the little boys run through the small forest, they kick up a terrific perfume of pine.

Their father is a tree surgeon, too, and this year climbed 15 feet up to cut down the top of a tree, which was still 20 feet of pine, to use at a community square. My family chose a 20-footer too, and have it on the deck that my youngest, a 21-year-old, built this summer. All of this rhymes with the traditions Dad began.

Family rituals don't work because we repeat them by rote. They work because we thread a feeling through a moment, sewing up time. We work like tailors, making adjustments to keep everyone, living and remembered, inside.

Parker has been overseeing pretrial hearings for Mangione, who is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

WalletHub's ranking of the cities with the highest levels of "excesses and vices" may land those areas on Santa's Naughty List this Christmas.

Blake Lively has accused Baldoni of sexual harassment, misconduct and conducting a smear campaign against her but he has denied all the allegations.

Victoria was watching the new Christmas action movie when her husband, Chris, spotted something that had her "cackling."

One of the world's most active volcanoes, Kilauea, erupted in Hawaii.

• Microsoft is diversifying the AI models for 365 Copilot to reduce reliance on OpenAI, per Reuters.
• The move aims to cut costs and improve speed for Microsoft's enterprise clients.
• Big Tech firms have invested heavily in AI startups to develop advanced models.

Microsoft is diversifying the artificial intelligence models it uses to power its flagship AI assistant, 365 Copilot, in a bid to reduce its dependence on OpenAI, Reuters first reported.

The Big Tech giant is moving toward adding internal and third-party AI models to help run its 365 Copilot to cut costs and address concerns about speed for its enterprise clients, per the report.

As one of OpenAI's main backers and corporate partners, Microsoft will continue working with the AI startup to develop frontier models.

"We incorporate various models from OpenAI and Microsoft depending on the product and experience," Microsoft said in a statement to Reuters.

Microsoft can customize OpenAI's model, per its original licensing agreement with the company. While Microsoft is currently training its own model, Phi-4, the software juggernaut is looking at modifying other third-party models to reduce the cost of running 365 Copilot.

Microsoft's lackluster debut of Copilot raised concerns about the software giant's ability to deliver on its AI ambitions, BI previously reported. Some customers appear to be dissatisfied with the product, spurring complaints that it is ineffective, expensive, and not secure.

In the race to develop powerful frontier models, Big Tech giants have scrambled to bulk up their arsenal of AI investments — and pumped billions of dollars into startups to help them achieve this goal.

Amazon has invested $8 billion into AI juggernaut Anthropic and used the startup's technology to power its digital assistant. This year, Google signed a deal with Character.AI, a startup that develops anthropomorphic chatbots, which allowed it to hire its founder and license its technology — a deal described as an "acquihire."

Microsoft and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment, sent outside standard working hours.

• Elon Musk's xAI raised $6 billion in its Series C fundraising, the startup announced on Monday.
• The round's participants included Sequoia Capital, and Nvidia and AMD were strategic investors.
• The AI startup plans to use the cash to ship new products and build out its infrastructure.

Elon Musk's xAI has completed its Series C funding round, raising a total of $6 billion, it revealed in a Monday blog post.

Musk's artificial intelligence company said the participants included a16z, Sequoia Capital, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, Fidelity, Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holdings, Oman and Qatar's sovereign wealth funds, California-based Lightspeed Venture Partners, Chicago-based Valor Equity Partners, Dubai-based Vy Capital, and UAE-based tech investor MGX.

xAI added that chipmakers Nvidia and AMD took part as strategic investors and "continue to support xAI in rapidly scaling our infrastructure."

Musk shared the news on his X platform, writing, "A lot of compute is needed." He also tagged xAI in a meme generated by xAI's Grok chatbot that riffed on a famous line from the movie "Jaws."

Musk was likely underscoring the vast amount of processing power needed to train and run AI models, which has fueled enormous demand for microchips and underpinned a roughly eightfold rise in Nvidia stock since the start of 2023.

xAI, founded in March last year, raised $6 billion at a post-money valuation of $24 billion in its Series B round in May. The Wall Street Journal reported in late November that it had raised a further $5 billion at a $50 billion valuation. It appears xAI ultimately raised a bigger round of $6 billion, but the valuation wasn't disclosed.

The startup highlighted its progress since May in its blog post, including its launch of Colossus — the world's largest AI supercomputer powered by 100,000 Nvidia Hopper GPUs, which xAI plans to double in size to 200,000 chips soon.

xAI also released version two of Grok, an application programming interface (API) for developers to build on its platform, its Aurora image generation model for Grok, and Grok on X.

The company said it's training Grok 3 and "focused on launching innovative new consumer and enterprise products that will leverage the power of Grok, Colossus, and X to transform the way we live, work, and play."

Musk's fledgling business said it would use the Series C funds to accelerate its infrastructure growth, ship new products, and speed up its research and development of tech that will enable its "mission to understand the true nature of the universe."

A high-speed rail project in California is running out of time to get funding approval before Donald Trump returns to the White House.

The Russian cargo ship was thought to be heading to Syria to transport military equipment out of the Tartus naval base.

Lawyer who represented Johnny Depp and other celebrities has urged A-listers not to get drawn into the Jay-Z controversy.

The Paris landmark has been closed on Christmas Eve amid reports of a fire.

Mail services will largely be unavailable on Christmas Day, including the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx and UPS.

A festive auroral display may be put on for a lucky few when coronal mass ejections hit Earth on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Videos shared on social media appeared to show a huge explosion in Turkey, with at least 12 people reportedly killed in the blast.

More North Pole mail is being answered, according to U.S. Postal Service data shared with Axios.

Why it matters: Children's letters to Santa shouldn't go unnoticed.

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USPS Operation Santa, which started in 1912, authorizes Santa's helpers to read and respond to North Pole letters. In the past several years, the program has seen record participation, according to data shared with Axios.

• By mid-January, USPS will share the total number of adopted letters for this season.

How it works: People visit the Operation Santa website to create an account and read letters from children of all ages across the country. Verified users "adopt" letters and send requested gifts by a deadline to ensure children receive packages by Christmas Day.

💭 Ashley's thought bubble: It took me about two minutes to create an account through the site and filter letters by state, but a lot longer to read the letters full of wishes for everything from toys to school supplies to groceries — and even a little Christmas magic.

If you're dreaming of a white Christmas, be jealous of those in the Mountain West, upper Midwest and northern New England.

• Those are the regions that most often had at least an inch of snow on the ground or actively falling on Christmas Day between 2003 and 2022, per historic satellite data.

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Yes, but: Past performance is no guarantee of future results — especially as climate change shrinks the length of snow seasons in parts of the country, changing the odds of a white Christmas over time.

The latest: As of Dec. 16, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center is calling for heavy snow in parts of the Northwestern U.S. on and around Christmas.

• The best, timeliest forecasts for your area will come by way of your local National Weather Service office.

The once-fringe idea of Democrats appearing on conservative-leaning media is suddenly going mainstream in the wake of the party's 2024 election losses.

Why it matters: Nearly a dozen House Democrats tell Axios that party members need to increase their appearances on conservative-leaning and non-traditional platforms, or risk irrelevance.

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• They say they no longer can look past the huge audiences offered by Fox News and conservative podcasts, whose messaging power became evident when Republicans swept the White House and both chambers of Congress in last month's election.
• "If half the country is watching and we gotta win 50% plus one, how can you reach anybody when you're not talking where they go?" Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) told Axios.

Driving the news: Most Democrats still prefer to stick to friendly outlets such as MSNBC or the more neutral CNN, where they can typically avoid confrontations and adversarial interviews.

• "I think one of the lessons learned from the 2024 election is that we have all but ceded alternative media to the conservative movement," said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).
• "If we have confidence in our message, we should be prepared to take our message to every corner of the ecosystem — including in politically hostile environments."

Zoom in: Some Democrats — inside and outside of Congress — have expressed post-election jealousy over how President-elect Trump used a hyper-focused media strategy to connect with specific voter demographics, particularly young men, by appearing on podcasts and YouTube shows with massive followings.

• Democrats say many of their own campaigns — from Vice President Harris' on down — focused too much on friendly outlets with declining audiences that already agreed with them.

Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) — who was re-elected in a district where Trump defeated Harris by nearly 10 percentage points — outlined a more local approach to this strategy.

• Golden told Axios that he goes on local conservative radio shows in Maine: "You've got to contest every corner ... Otherwise all they hear is what's said about you by the other side."

Zoom out: Adversarial media appearances by Democrats were rare during Trump's first presidency until several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates — including Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg — appeared in Fox News town halls.

• As transportation secretary, Buttigieg has gone further, using Fox as a venue to clinically defend Democrats' positions while skewering Republicans in front of many of their own voters.
• But only now — in the wake of 2024's election disappointments and amid calls for a Democratic rebrand— is Buttigieg's approach being widely embraced.

Between the lines: As cable news networks face declining viewership numbers across the board, Fox News Channel is still maintaining its relevance. It ended 2024 as the most-watched network during the election cycle — and saw increasing viewership among Democrats and independents.

• Fox News was the most-watched news network across the seven swing states last month's election.

Even progressives are beginning to embrace the idea of expanding Democrats' media reach: "My view is, as much engagement as possible is good," Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told Axios.

• Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), another progressive, told Axios that "as a gay woman, I have a particular view on the world and I actually think that it could be really helpful in this moment."

Several Democrats told Axios that revamping their party's media strategy should involve much more than simply going on conservative-leaning media.

• Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), co-chair of House Democrats' political messaging arm, underscored that appearing on conservative media is important, but it's not "where the jackpot is."
• "We need to speak to people who don't consume news as a hobby.... That's not just going on Fox News ... it's going on places of culture, sports, different things like that," he said.

The other side: Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) is among the Democrats who are more skeptical about engaging with conservative media.

• People that watch Fox News have their minds made up about the type of rhetoric that they want to listen to," Crockett said.
• "God bless those that go on there, but I don't think that we're really changing the minds of the people that have decided that they want to watch that bullsh*t," she added.

The bottom line: Beyond simply going on alternative media himself, Moskowitz said he has actively been trying to persuade colleagues to follow his lead.

• Asked whether he thinks he's changed some minds, he told Axios: "I think I have, because I think you're seeing the number of people increasing that are doing that."

Go deeper: Fetterman on an island as he reaches out to MAGA

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.

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• 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.