A Meteorologist Torched Elon Musk’s Salute. Now She’s Out of a Job.

A Milwaukee weatherwoman who criticized Elon Musk’s inauguration salute has since been stripped of her professional responsibilities.

Sam Kuffel, 31, made two posts to her personal Instagram story in the wake of the inauguration, torching Musk for making a gesture that millions of people around the world recognized as a Nazi salute.

“Dude Nazi saluted twice. TWICE. During the inauguration,” read one of Kuffel’s posts. “You fuck with this and this man, I don’t fuck with you. Full stop.” In the second post, Kuffel shared a meme from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, in which one of the show’s characters is subtitled as saying, “Screw that old bitch. He’s a Nazi.”

But that was, apparently, too far for the meteorologist’s station, WDJT-TV (Channel 58), which notified staffers by email on Wednesday that the popular weather forecaster would no longer be employed by the network.

“Meteorologist Sam Kuffel is no longer employed at CBS58,” news director Jessie Garcia wrote in a staff memo obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “A search for a replacement is underway.”

The Anti-Defamation League, a hate-speech watchdog that considers pro-Palestinian activism to be antisemitic, sided with Musk amid the backlash, claiming that the Trump adviser had simply made an “awkward gesture.”

“This is a delicate moment. It’s a new day and yet so many are on edge. Our politics are inflamed, and social media only adds to the anxiety,” the ADL wrote in a statement on X Monday. “This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead.”

But not everyone agreed with that analysis of Musk’s double salute—least of all the Germans, who quickly pointed out that making such a gesture on the continent is plainly illegal.

“Whoever on a political stage, making a political speech in front of a partly far-right audience, elongates his arm diagonally in the air both forcefully and repeatedly, is making a Hitler salute,” journalist Lenz Jacobsen wrote for the German paper Die Zeit, in a piece titled “A Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute.” “There’s no ‘probably’ or ‘similar to’ or ‘controversial’ about it. The gesture speaks for itself.”

Others argued that Musk’s increasingly far-right politics were a better target for the Nazi label, claiming that the rhetoric around the salute had gone too far. Musk, meanwhile, fanned the flames of the controversy by refusing to deny the allegations over dozens of posts as to whether he intended the gesture to resemble Hitler’s Sieg Heil salute.

The moment was only cluttered by Musk’s family history, which descends from Nazi sympathizers—at least according to his father, Errol Musk, who told the Podcast and Chill Network in November that the billionaire’s maternal grandparents supported Adolf Hitler and were members of the German Nazi Party in Canada before moving to South Africa in support of apartheid.

Donald Trump said that he’s considering scrapping the Federal Emergency Management Agency because he’d “rather see states take care of their own problems.”

During an interview Wednesday night with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Trump claimed that his thinking about FEMA had recently shifted, not the least bit because it sometimes helps people in liberal states and cities. 

 “Los Angeles has changed everything. Because a lot of money is gonna be necessary for Los Angeles, and a lot of people on the other side want that to happen,” Trump said, admitting that he didn’t want to give disaster aid for the sole purpose that Democrats wanted it.

Hannity gently reminded the president that North Carolina also required funding from FEMA.

“Well, they don’t care about North Carolina; the Democrats don’t care about North Carolina,” Trump said. “What they’ve done with FEMA is so bad. FEMA is a whole ’nother discussion because all it does is complicate everything. FEMA has not done their job for the last four years.

“You know, I had FEMA working really well, we had hurricanes in Florida, we had Alabama tornadoes, we had—but unless you have certain types of leadership, it’s really, it gets in the way,” Trump bragged. 

It’s unclear what leadership he’s referring to here, whether it be the Biden administration or the liberal governments of states like California. 

“And FEMA is going to be a whole big discussion very shortly because I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems,” Trump said. 

“If they have a tornado someplace, let that state—Oklahoma is very competent,” Trump said. “I love Oklahoma. Seventy-seven out of 77 districts; that’s never been done before.”

Trump’s fantasy that Oklahoma is somehow totally self-sufficient because it swung fully for him in the 2024 elections clearly defies all logic and reason. Between 2015 and 2024, Oklahoma received more than $48 million in FEMA funding. 

In that same period, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana have received the lion’s share of federal disaster aid, according to Axios. It seems that if Trump does in fact scrap FEMA altogether, he will be taking money away from a range of Republican-led states that all supported him in the last election.  

It’s also possible that Trump is simply setting up a rhetorical worst-case scenario, a kind of kill-switch to get states to back off demands for disaster relief he doesn’t want to give. Keep asking, and no one will get it. 

Trump has been claiming that California needs to reform its environmental regulations since long before the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, and FEMA funding has offered him a lever to try to enforce it. Republicans have followed suit, saying that they want to put conditions on aid for what House Speaker Mike Johnson desperately tried to repackage as a “man-made disaster.”

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed the Senate’s version of the Laken Riley Act, which allows for the deportation and detention of any undocumented immigrant merely suspected of a nonviolent crime, with 46 Democrats joining every Republican in approving the bill.

With the House’s passage, the bill now heads to Donald Trump’s desk, where he will likely sign it into law and claim his first victory. Law enforcement will soon be able to detain undocumented immigrants merely accused of a crime, without being convicted or even formally charged, and begin deportation proceedings. The bill does not include protections for children or DACA recipients. On Monday, 12 Democrats joined every Republican in the Senate to pass the bill.

The following 46 Democrats in the House voted to enact the Laken Riley Act:

1. Sanford Bishop—Georgia
2. Brendan Boyle—Pennsylvania
3. Nikki Budzinski—Illinois
4. Janelle Bynum—Oregon
5. Jim Costa—California
6. Joe Courtney—Connecticut
7. Angie Craig—Minnesota
8. Henry Cuellar—Texas
9. Sharice Davids—Kansas
10. Don Davis—North Carolina
11. Shomari Figures—Alabama
12. Laura Gillen—New York
13. Jared Golden—Maine
14. Vicente Gonzalez—Texas
15. Maggie Goodlander—New Hampshire
16. Josh Gottheimer—New Jersey
17. Adam Gray—California
18. Josh Harder—California
19. Jahana Hayes—Connecticut
20. Steven Horsford—Nevada
21. Marcy Kaptur—Ohio
22. Greg Landsman—Ohio
23. Susie Lee—Nevada
24. Mike Levin—California
25. Stephen F. Lynch—Massachusetts
26. John Mannion—New York
27. Lucy McBath—Georgia
28. April McClain-Delaney—Maryland
29. Kristen McDonald Rivet—Michigan
30. Dave Min—California
31. Joseph Morelle—New York
32. Jared Moskowitz—Florida
33. Chris Pappas—New Hampshire
34. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez—Washington
35. Hillary J. Scholten—Michigan
36. Kim Schrier—Washington
37. Terri A. Sewell—Alabama
38. Eric Sorensen—Illinois
39. Greg Stanton—Arizona
40. Suhas Subramanyam—Virginia
41. Tom Suozzi—New York
42. Emilia Sykes—Ohio
43. Dina Titus—Nevada
44. Ritchie Torres—New York
45. Derek Tran—California
46. Eugene Vindman—Virginia

Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, appeared before the Senate Wednesday and was grilled over what he considers a target in his anti-”woke” chopping block.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine went after Vought during his confirmation hearing for what he wrote as president of the Center for Renewing America, specifically a budget proposal titled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government.” In that proposal, Kaine said, Vought proposed deep cuts to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, also known as food stamps.

“Is providing nutrition assistance to low-income kids ‘woke and weaponized’? Kaine asked Vought, who refused to answer, replying that he “wasn’t here to talk about the budget that center put out.”

Kaine pressed further, but Vought claimed he was only there on behalf of the president. The Virginia senator then pointed out that in the same document, Vought proposed deep cuts to Medicaid for low-income families, tenant-based rental assistance, and low-income housing energy assistance.

“This was all in your document about ending woke and weaponized government. OK, let’s see, we want to traumatize federal employees and then we want to take all of these programs that help everyday people who are struggling and cut them because they’re ‘woke and weaponized.’ Those are your words, not mine,” Kaine concluded. “From the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks.”

Vought clearly did not want to address or defend his old recommendations in a Senate hearing, and it’s clear why, as the cuts he proposed would be unpopular with most Americans. In front of what he thought was a more friendly audience in August, though, Vought bragged to two undercover journalists about his love of “Christian nation-ism.” He also touted his organization’s efforts to draft executive orders and policy memos for Trump to use on day one of his presidency.

Vought also co-authored the conservative manifesto Project 2025. But in his hearing Wednesday, he refused to answer questions from senators about his role in drafting Trump’s new executive orders, just as he did last week over whether he would uphold the law if confirmed.

Kaine’s questioning of Vought exposed what the right-wing ideologue’s plans will be in the new Trump administration, and they seem to be straight from the Project 2025 and Christian nationalism playbook. Thanks to Republican control of the Senate, those plans won’t hurt his likely confirmation one bit.

House Republicans announced Wednesday that they will form a subcommittee to reinvestigate the January 6 insurrection, following Donald Trump’s sweeping pardons for the rioters.

The new select subcommittee will basically just be a way to continue to undermine the legitimate findings of the previous investigation into January 6, which Trump and MAGA Republicans have continued to claim are fraudulent.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said he hoped the committee would expose “false narratives peddled by the politically motivated January 6 committee.”

The select subcommittee will be chaired by Representative Barry Loudermilk, who also leads the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight and last month released a 128-page “interim report” by House Republicans on the January 6 committee.

In his report, Loudermilk demonstrated that House Republicans are in lockstep with Trump over investigating the president’s political enemies, and called for Liz Cheney, the former January 6 committee vice chair, to be criminally investigated. Loudermilk accused her of witness tampering and colluding with former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified about Trump’s erratic behavior on the day of the deadly riot.

Just hours before Wednesday’s announcement, Senate Majority Leader John Thune had been downplaying Trump’s decision to pardon some 1,500 January 6 riots, insisting that people should not think about the insurrection anymore.

“We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward,” he said, according to CNN’s Manu Raju. Thune said that the pardons were given on a case-by-case basis, and that former President Joe Biden had “opened the door” because he had engaged in the “most massive use of the pardon power that we’ve ever seen in history.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson did the same. “The president’s made his decision; I don’t second-guess those,” Johnson said. “We move forward; there are better days ahead of us, that’s what we’re excited about. We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forwards.”

But of course, rushing them all through on his first day was anything but case-by-case, and Republicans aren’t the slightest bit interested in looking forward.

As Loudermilk told reporters Wednesday: “You’ve got to look backwards to look forward.”