By Drew Goins Assistant editor

Missed yesterday’s edition? You can view previous newsletters or see the latest from the Opinions section. 

In today’s edition:

• Trump’s donors shouldn’t get too close (Elon, sweetie, too late)
• The nonsensical shutdown fight rings in another chaotic epoch
• Democrats embarrass themselves trying to revive the ERA
• Our lives depend on space. Time to act like it.

Paying up and shutting down

President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk attend a UFC event at Madison Square Garden in New York on Nov. 16. (Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images)

Caveat donor! Gene Robinson has witnessed more than a few bigwigs marshaling contributions to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, either from their own pockets or their companies’, and he wants to make sure they know: “In Trump’s worldview, loyalty flows in one direction: toward him.”

Gene does not impute venal motives; he knows many company chiefs can’t let their firms appear anti-Trump, and some might even be trying to steer Trump toward sanity. But all “reasonable people who try to work with Trump eventually reach a point where they feel they have to part ways with him,” Gene says. “And when those reasonable people tell the world why, Trump lashes out at them.”

In Alexandra Petri’s satirical telling of the situation, Trump is desperate for more and bigger donations from new faces just so he can stop hanging out with his most steadfast (and most annoying) backer: Elon Musk.

“I just want to be able to go a day without hearing anyone say ‘DOGE’ and snort with laughter,” Alex’s Trump complains. “When I see a Cybertruck, I want to be able to roll my eyes instead of having to say, ‘Ooh, majestic.’ I know what a truck should look like; I have posed in trucks. This is not that.”

Alas, Musk is very much around, winning such nicknames as “co-president” and “first buddy.” In fact, he’s about to be co-responsible for the co-llapse of government funding.

Musk tweeted himself and his presidential beneficiary into a corner, from which the two kind of had to scuttle the bipartisan bill meant to keep the government open into March. A shutdown for your own inauguration?! Wha— wait, why?

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“This sequence of events makes complete sense if you’ve read Trump’s best-selling memoir, ‘The Art of the Deal,’” writes Catherine Rampell. “His favorite negotiating tactic is blowing up an (ostensibly) settled deal at the 11th hour. He thinks that’s how he gains the ‘leverage’ he needs to force a counterparty to make some painful, valuable concession.”

Because she has eyes, Catherine spies three enormous problems with this tactic’s use here, beginning with the hilarious observation that Trump’s “counterparty in this scenario is his own party.”

Dana Milbank says this bungled shutdown situation is just the start of another four years of utter chaos to be rained down on the country by ruling Republicans. As Dana puts it, “They’re baaaack.”

To wit: Did you even notice Trump’s proposing again this week that the United States should annex Canada?

Crazy, eh? Everybody better buckle up.

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Chaser: Heather Long writes that in the middle of this mess, Trump floated the enticing idea of abolishing the debt limit. Democrats should jump at the chance to make that happen.

From George Will’s column about 46 Democratic senators’ push to get the national archivist to (rather belatedly) sign the ERA into the Constitution — proof, he writes, that “there are more forms of norm-shredding shabbiness than appear in Trump’s repertoire.”

The senators say that the ratification deadline was unconstitutional to begin with (notwithstanding its attachment to every amendment over a century) and that now the requisite number have ratified the amendment (notwithstanding several states’ rescissions of their ratifications). Oh, and President Joe Biden reportedly loves the idea!

“Perhaps,” George writes. “But although love is a many-splendored thing, his does not refute any of the many arguments establishing that the ERA is dead.” Meanwhile, Democrats’ arguments that the ERA yet lives, George says, demonstrate the party’s “merely intermittent and selective devotion to constitutional and democratic proprieties.”

Chaser: Will-ian vocab alert in this piece! ukase (n.) — an order of absolute, arbitrary authority, as in czarist Russia.

Less politics

A composite photo of satellites’ paths. (Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group/Getty Images) 

Over this past solar orbit, the Editorial Board has taken on space, reporting on space weather, space junk, light pollution and even planetary defense.

Today, it pulls all its writing on the subject into a single philosophy: We humans obviously influence space, we depend on it, and we need to start thinking that way. Dangers abound if we don’t, ranging from disrupted sleep to disrupted electrical grids to disrupted, er, continued existence of terrestrial life.

The board anticipates the “understandable reaction to all these cosmic concerns: Humanity has a hard enough time taking care of its terrestrial environment; you’re telling me there’s another one to worry about?”

Alas, no secret absolution awaits on the dark side of the moon. The board answers itself: “Unfortunately, yes.”

Smartest, fastest

• Biden’s international achievements include many weakened adversaries, Fareed Zakaria writes. He says Trump shouldn’t miss the opportunity to keep chipping away at them. Specifically, Max Boot writes that the moment might be ripe for a modest U.S.-Iran deal.
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine half-truths tell a great, dangerous lie, Megan McArdle writes. Kathleen Parker says Congress would be crazy to confirm him as health secretary.
• The Editorial Board has started making “WWMRD?” bead bracelets to inspire members of the next Congress with a question: What would Mitt Romney do?

And in lieu of a Bye-Ku, let me end today with an actual, awful goodbye. This is the last newsletter to be edited by the inestimable Amanda Katz, who has guided lo, these many editions with panache and aplomb.

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I, meanwhile, will see you briefly next week. Have a great weekend, and wish Amanda a spectacular next chapter!