The Hilarious Reason Elon Musk May Regret Going to War With Sweden

Tesla sued the Swedish Transport Agency on Monday, accusing the government office of discriminating against the electric carmaker and gumming up the firm’s ability to provide its customers with new cars. How did the automaker run afoul of the Swedish Transport Agency? Well, first the firm ran afoul of its workers—and then the government agency joined in the conflict, in accordance with a specific labor tradition that’s popular in the Nordic states.

Tesla’s Sweden-based workers have been on strike for five weeks in an effort to win collective bargaining rights. The strike, organized by the union IF Metall, has sparked what are known as sympathy strikes across multiple Swedish industries (and one in Norway). In a sympathy strike, other unions in related or adjacent industries act in solidarity with their fellow laborers, lending their organizing heft to the cause.

One such sympathy strike was launched by the Transport Agency, which is refusing to deliver license plates to new Tesla owners. Naturally, the firm takes a dim view of this: “This confiscation of license plates constitutes a discriminatory attack without any support in law directed at Tesla,” its lawsuit alleged.

There’s one problem: Sympathy strikes are legal in Sweden, so Tesla’s lawsuit doesn’t have much standing there. A district court ruled that Tesla can pick up the plates itself from the manufacturer and then privately distribute them to new Tesla owners while the lawsuit plays out. The Transport Agency has seven days to agree to these terms or be fined one million kroner ($96,000).

“We at the Swedish transport agency now need to analyze the announcement and assess what consequences this has for us and what measures might need to be taken to implement the decision,” Anna Berggrund, director of the Transport Agency’s vehicle information department, told The Guardian. “It is currently too early to say exactly what that would mean.”

Meanwhile, Tesla’s Swedish workforce has been the beneficiary of other sympathy strikes on their behalf, including Swedish dockworkers refusing to unload Tesla shipments, electricians declining to repair charging stations, and cleaning companies withholding their labor, leaving Tesla’s facilities to fend for themselves in terms of cleaning. And the workers’ Norwegian neighbors have gotten into the act as well: Norway’s largest private sector union has said it will block the delivery of Swedish Teslas.

Last week, the Swedish postal union said it will no longer deliver Tesla’s mail, a move that carmaker Elon Musk called “insane.” Tesla’s Swedish subsidiary, TM Sweden, is now suing the postal union over the group’s decision.

“We note that Tesla has chosen to take the long route, starting legal proceedings,” a senior IF Metall official, Veli-Pekka Säikkälä, told The Guardian. “There is a simple and quick way to solve this situation, and that is to sign a collective agreement. As soon as Tesla does that, the conflict ends.”

Even Representative George Santos expects that this may be his last week in Congress, and he’s celebrating by going scorched-earth on some of his Republican colleagues, who he’s spent the last few days referring to as “pussies” and adulterers.

The New York Republican’s time is close to running out after nearly a year of high drama, indelible lies, occasional baby-holding, and constant fraud—capped by a scathing, 56-page report by the House Ethics Committee that found that Santos had lied about his finances and appropriated campaign funds for things such as Botox treatments, luxury clothes, and purchases on the adult content platform OnlyFans.

“I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” Santos said during an expletive-laden X Space live session on the Friday after Thanksgiving. “I’ve done the math over and over, and it doesn’t look really good.”

But before he’s out, the fabulist congressman has one more lie to weave following months of assertions that he’s not going anywhere: Apparently, he doesn’t care if he’s forced out by his peers.

“I don’t care. You want to expel me? I’ll wear it like a badge of honor,” Santos said. “I’ll be the sixth expelled member of Congress in the history of Congress. And guess what? I’ll be the only one expelled without a conviction.”

So, he’s not mad; do not report that he’s mad.

Santos faces 23 charges related to wire fraud, identity theft, and credit card fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to the first 13 charges announced in May, and has since denied another 10 charges announced in a superseding indictment in October. His trial is set to begin in September 2024.

“At nearly every opportunity, he placed his desire for private gain above his duty to uphold the Constitution, federal law, and ethical principles,” the House Ethics report read. “Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.”

The disgraced lawmaker is, in these final hours, taking the opportunity to drag some of his Republican colleagues, including calling the chairman of the Ethics Committee, Representative Michael Guest, a “pussy.” He has broadly accused other GOP members of drinking to excess and cheating on their wives instead of focusing on their jobs.

“I have colleagues who are more worried about getting drunk every night with the next lobbyist that they’re gonna screw and pretend like none of us know what’s going on, and sell off the American people, not show up to vote because they’re too hungover or whatever the reason is, or not show up to vote at all and just give their card out like fucking candy for someone else to vote for them,” Santos said, adding that “This shit happens every single week.”

In his latest, greatest achievement, Elon Musk has managed to do something offensive in three different countries in less than 24 hours.

The X (formerly Twitter) owner has come under fire recently for how much hate speech, antisemitism, and extremist content has flourished on the social network—including from Musk’s personal account. Rather than address a problem that has advertisers rankled anew, he spent the weekend exacerbating these problems.

On Sunday night, Musk weighed in on a new law proposed in Ireland, meant to curtail online hate speech. Irish lawmakers announced they plan to enact a law to crack down on racist hate speech online, a move that would make certain extremist memes and other online content illegal, in response to anti-immigration riots that roiled Dublin last week.

In one particularly harrowing incident, a man attacked five people outside an elementary school on Thursday, injuring at least three children and one woman. Police did not reveal the man’s identity to the public, but rumors began to spread that he was an Algerian national, sparking violent protests in central Dublin.

Naturally, Musk was averse to the efforts to combat hate speech and violent rhetoric. “Language being proposed as law in Ireland means this could literally happen to you for having a meme on your phone,” Musk tweeted, setting off a firestorm of far-right conspiracies in his comments.

This isn’t the first time Musk has felt the need to butt into Irish politics. In September, he opposed the country’s first anti–hate speech law, arguing that it infringed on freedom of speech. But Musk has made clear that his idea of free speech is simply the right to say whatever you want with no repercussions. That is, provided that you aren’t using your free speech to criticize him.

It may be that Musk doesn’t want limits placed on his own social media activity, which in recent weeks has included repeatedly sharing antisemitic content on X. And yet, on Monday, he flew to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other leaders. While there, Musk toured several areas that had been attacked by Hamas.

His warm welcome is shocking considering that just two weeks ago, Musk endorsed a violently antisemitic conspiracy theory that argued Jewish communities hate white people. Meanwhile, multiple major advertisers have yanked their business from X following a report that the platform has been placing brand ads next to posts that promote Hitler and Nazi beliefs.

All of Musk’s antics are not going over so well in France, however. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced Monday that she has quit X because it is a “gigantic global sewer” that is “destroying our democracies.”

In the little more than a year that Musk has owned X, he has decimated the platform’s value. Meanwhile, hate speech has flourished during his reign. This change occurred nearly immediately: The social media research group National Contagion Research Institute found that in the 12 hours after Musk bought X, the use of the n-word increased almost 500 percent.

Musk is often a major source of this hate speech and disinformation. In addition to promulgating aggressively antisemitic posts, Musk has been highly solicitous to neo-Nazi posters on X, habitually shared transphobic content, and repeatedly spread conspiracy theories.

In her recently released memoir, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene suggests she has a bit more on her mind than representing the people of Georgia’s 14th congressional district.

The dedicated MAGA legislator, who has flamboyantly supported Donald Trump’s stances on rejecting the legitimate results of the 2020 election results, as well as his embrace of January 6 insurrectionists as “prisoners of war,” is seemingly gunning to become Trump’s right hand should he retake the White House in 2024.

The new book, simply titled MTG, includes a telling foreword by Trump, praising the conspiracy-mongering lawmaker as “one of the most fierce warriors in Congress for America First and all it stands for.” Over the course of the ensuing 275 pages, Greene makes her (dubious) case for being a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Greene has floated the prospect of being Trump’s number two before. In August, she told The Guardian that the topic is “talked about frequently” and that she knows her “name is on a list.” “But, of course, that’s up to [Trump]. But I would be honored and consider it.… I’ll help him do whatever in any way I can,” she told the outlet.

The Trump loyalist does have some competition, however. Kari Lake, a 2024 GOP Senate candidate for Arizona, is also vying for the position. But Greene—who has touted QAnon conspiracy theories and blamed Jewish space lasers for the California wildfires—has insisted that Lake is too unserious to be a legitimate vice presidential pick, snubbing her opponent as a “grifter” who is “riding Trump’s coattails,” according to Rolling Stone.*

In the two short years since she assumed office, Greene has spawned a wild frenzy of headlines over her continually outrageous remarks and her penchant for violent rhetoric. In 2019, Greene was stripped of her committee assignments after it came to light that she had liked a Facebook post calling for Nancy Pelosi to receive “a bullet to the head.” She also posted a campaign poster on social media depicting her aiming an AR-15 toward Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, touting herself as the “squad’s worst nightmare.”

In recent months, Greene has been at the epicenter of other House spectacles after she grouped Confederate General Robert E. Lee into an argument defending monuments to the Founding Fathers. She’s also gone full throttle against some of her fellow conservatives, even throwing some middle-school trash talk into the mix by calling Representative Lauren Boebert a “whore.”

* This article has been corrected to note the nature of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Jewish space lasers conspiracy.

Donald Trump, who has bragged about being the “most pro-life president in history,” now believes that he can convince voters that he’s actually a moderate on abortion rights.

Trump and his team are planning to run the former president as some kind of sensible centrist on the issue during the general election against President Joe Biden, Rolling Stone reported Sunday. The magazine cited multiple anonymous sources close to the Trump campaign, attesting to a plan he’d previously weighed pursuing as a middle path that might appease both Republicans and Democrats.

It would be something of a rapid—and perhaps ridiculous—change in direction, seeing as how Trump had previously touted his anti-abortion commitments. The decision to course-correct comes a little late in the game as well: Trump is currently running ads in Iowa that brand him with his self-bestowed label as “THE MOST Pro-Life President in history.”

It isn’t every day that Trump’s claims match the truth, but he legitimately argues that his anti-abortion bona fides set him apart from previous Republican presidents. One of Trump’s first acts in office was to reinstate and expand the global gag rule, which blocks foreign organizations that receive U.S. health assistance from providing information, referrals, or services for abortion access. He also stripped Planned Parenthood of Title X funding, which makes up roughly half of the organization’s finances.

Naturally, his most celebrated acts against abortion rights were his nominations of three staunchly anti-abortion Supreme Court justices. Their appointments swung the high court firmly to the right and enabled the justices to eliminate the protections abortion seekers previously enjoyed under the court’s landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.

Trump remarked on Roe’s gutting in May, when he claimed personal responsibility for getting rid of the nationwide right to abortion. “I’m the one that got rid of Roe v. Wade,” he bragged on Newsmax.

He doubled down on that boast on Truth Social the following day, writing, “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone, and for the first time put the Pro Life movement in a strong negotiating position.”

Unlike some of the other Republican candidates, Trump has yet to say whether he would back a national abortion ban. The former president has not been compelled to offer what he plans to do next in the reproductive rights arena. According to Rolling Stone, he has privately insinuated that major anti-abortion groups have no “leverage” to force him to adopt a stance on the issue until he is ready. It seems likely that Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee, as he currently enjoys a massive lead in the primary polls, even without the backing of anti-abortion organizations.

Just because Trump hasn’t announced that he has set his sights on an abortion ban doesn’t mean he thinks there shouldn’t be one. His actions in this regard speak louder than words, and throughout Trump’s career, he has taken positions out of the belief that they might confer an electoral advantage—only to renege on his promises when it counts.

As his current campaign is shaping up to be less about a vision of the future and more about meting out revenge on those Trump feels have wronged him, it would not be prudent to trust his coy promises about finding a moderate path on abortion rights.