A preview of US politics for the next few years

THE threat of a Christmastime government shutdown sparked by America’s chief Scrooges, Elon Musk, Donald Trump and JD Vance, has been narrowly averted. Nonetheless, it is worth reviewing what happened, because the episode perfectly foreshadows the dysfunctional governance that awaits the United States (and the world) when Trump takes office in January.

On the eve of the Dec 20 deadline for passing a bill to keep the federal government funded, the US House and Senate leadership arrived at a compromise that would buy them another three months. Neither party was particularly happy with the deal, but all could live with it. They had the votes to pass it, and President Joe Biden’s staff was willing to put it in front of him for his signature.

But then Musk went berserk, fuelling a “backlash” to the stopgap bill with “false and misleading claims”, as Politico put it, and stirring “Republicans into a frenzy with 100-plus posts on X”. Among his inaccuracies was that the bill would fund the development of biological weapons, when in fact it would fund labs where any future plague could be contained and studied. (We should not forget that Covid-19 was not nearly as infectious or deadly as, say, Ebola; we cannot count on being so lucky next time.)