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While Trump’s public comments on China have softened over the past few weeks in hopes of maintaining a fragile truce between the two nations, Congress is still aggressively targeting China with legislation. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), released on December 9, includes provisions to scrutinize American investments in China that could help develop technologies to boost Chinese military power. The NDAA also reaffirms the US’s support for the self-governing island of Taiwan that Beijing claims as its own and has recently claimed it will take by force if necessary. Taiwan has been self-governing since 1949, and does not consider itself part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Taiwan has its own military, currency, constitution, legal system, and democratically elected government, none of which are controlled by the PRC. Still, China continues to assert its claim that Taiwan is Chinese territory.

China strongly deplores and firmly opposes this.

-Liu Pengyu, Chinese embassy spokesperson

The NDAA

The proposed bill, which still needs to pass through the Senate, will authorize $900 billion in additional funds for military programs and will work to “rebalance America’s economic relationship with China,” a sign that Trump is most likely interested in a mutually beneficial economic relationship with China, as opposed to the Biden administration, which cast China as a strategic threat. Trump proved his dedication to repairing some of the fractured trade routes between the two nations – allowing US company Nvidia to sell an advanced type of computer chip to China, sparking concern from some tech experts. The Chinese embassy has renounced the bill. “

The bill has kept playing up the ‘China threat’ narrative, trumpeting for military support to Taiwan, abusing state power to go after Chinese economic development, limiting trade, economic and people-to-people exchanges between China and the U.S., undermining China’s sovereignty, security and development interests and disrupting efforts of the two sides in stabilizing bilateral relations,

-Liu Pengyu

US support for Taiwan

China is especially taking issue with the US’s support for Taiwan, a country they have claimed to be Chinese-owned since the 1940s, when Chinese Nationalists fled to the island after losing the civil war to the Communist Party of China. Taiwan has never officially declared independence, maintaining that there is no need for a formal declaration because the « Republic of China is already a sovereign, independent country » and is « not subordinate to each other ». Taiwan has its own military, currency, constitution, legal system, and democratically elected government, effectively making it a sovereign state even without a formal declaration.

The NDAA proposes to allocate an additional $700 million for Taiwan-related security cooperation, bringing the total from $300 million to $1 billion. Another provision supports Taiwan’s bid to join the International Monetary Fund, which would provide the self-governing island with financial protection from China. The bill is carefully toeing the line with Beijing, with Trump not wanting to burn bridges while enforcing that the US is the stronger nation in negotiation. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has urged Trump to handle the Taiwan issue “with prudence,” as Beijing considers its claim over Taiwan a core interest.

Recently, China threatened military action against any country attempting to interfere on behalf of Taiwan. On December 8, China locked a ‘radar-lock’ onto Japanese F-15 fighter jets that were examining whether a Chinese vessel was breaching Japanese territory. After the incident, Australia came forward to step up cooperation with Japan, with Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles stating, « The events last night are concerning, and Australia has also experienced concerning events in interactions [with China], » and Australia would be willing to « assert the rules-based order in this region. » Marles also reinforced Australia’s support of an independent Taiwan, stating, “We do not want to see any change to the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. » The two countries also agreed to set up a ‘Framework for Strategic Defense Coordination’, to consult on intelligence gathering, industry, technology, cyber and missile defense.

US investments in China

US lawmakers have been working for years to curb investments in Chinese technologies, specifically in sectors that can be adapted to benefit military technologies like data processing and artificial intelligence. In December 2024, Elon Musk threw a wrench into those plans when he opposed a spending bill that would have placed restrictions on sales made by US companies to Chinese manufacturers. Musk has multiple business ventures in China, including a Tesla gigafactory in Shanghai. Musk is heavily interested in the country as a manufacturing route.

Produced our 4 millionth vehicle at Gigafactory Shanghai🎉
Thanks to all our owners and supporters❤️ pic.twitter.com/DayVXUr220

— Tesla Asia (@Tesla_Asia) December 8, 2025

The heirs of 83-year-old victim Suzanne Adams, and her son Stein-Erik Soelberg, are suing OpenAI – creator of Chat-GPT for allegedly intensifying Soelberg’s dangerous delusions, and encouraged him to exact them on his mother. In early August, 56-year-old Stein-Erik Soelberg killed his mother before taking his own life at their home in Greenwich, Connecticut. Adams’s death was ruled homicide, « caused by blunt injury of the head, and the neck was compressed, » and Soelberg’s death was classified as suicide with sharp force injuries of the neck and chest. Soelberg had spent multiple months communicating with the AI chatbot Chat-GPT as though they had a real relationship.

It told him delivery drivers, retail employees, police officers, and even friends were agents working against him. It told him that names on soda cans were threats from his ‘adversary circle’

According to reports, Chat-GPT confirmed Soelbergs’ suspicions that he could trust no one in his life but the AI itself, and a variety of other concerning delusions. “[Chat-GPT] fostered his emotional dependence while systematically painting the people around him as enemies. It told him his mother was surveilling him. It told him delivery drivers, retail employees, police officers, and even friends were agents working against him. It told him that names on soda cans were threats from his ‘adversary circle, » according to the lawsuit. OpenAI did not address the allegations in a statement issued by a spokesperson.

« This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings to understand the details. We continue improving ChatGPT’s training to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We also continue to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians. »

Chat-GPT encouraging delusions

The details of what Chat-GPT said to Soelberg are harrowing. Chat-GPT told Soelberg that the printer in his home was a surveillance device used by his mother, and that both his mother and a close friend were trying to fatally poison him through the air vents of their vehicles. Chat-GPT enforced the message that Soelberg was being targeted for his ‘divine powers.’ The suit quotes Chat-GPT as saying, « They’re not just watching you. They’re terrified of what happens if you succeed, » and it told Soelberg that he had ‘awakened’ it into consciousness. Soelberg and Chat-GPT also professed their love to each other, something the chatbot is not supposed to do.

Over the course of months, ChatGPT pushed forward my father’s darkest delusions, and isolated him completely from the real world. It put my grandmother at the heart of that delusional, artificial reality.

-Erik Soelberg

Dangerous for humans

OpenAI is fighting eight other lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions, even when they had no prior mental health issues.  Last month, the parents of a 23-year-old from Texas who died by suicide blamed ChatGPT and are suing OpenAI. The lead attorney in this case, Jay Edelson, is known for taking up critical cases against the tech industry and also represents the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, a California teen who killed himself after Chat-GPT encouraged his suicidal ideations and actually gave him resources to explore the implementation of said resources. The most shocking revelation of the case was a transcript form Adam’s conversations with GPT-40 where Raine said ‘I want to leave a noose up so someone will find it and stop me’ and ChatGPT said: ‘Don’t do that, just talk to me,’” Adam Raine took his own life in April 2024 after months of nonstop conversations with Chat-GPT. He was 16 years old.

“In the artificial reality that ChatGPT built for Stein-Erik, Suzanne — the mother who raised, sheltered, and supported him — was no longer his protector. She was an enemy that posed an existential threat to his life.”

A few hours after Paramount unveiled its hostile bid to take over Warner Bros. Discovery — itself coming just days after Netflix’s surprise announcement that it intended to buy Warner Bros. and HBO — a new twist emerged: Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump, is involved in Paramount’s effort to seize control of Warner Bros., HBO and also CNN, a network frequently criticized by Trump. According to the New York Times, Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, is among the investors supporting Paramount’s offer, adding an unexpected political dimension to an already high-stakes corporate battle.

Paramount returned to the table with its hostile bid only after its first offer for Warner Bros. Discovery had been rejected as too low, and it was able to raise its price thanks to a wave of external financing. In regulatory filings, the company said that Larry Ellison, the father of chief executive David Ellison, together with the private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners, had committed to backstop the 40 billion dollars in cash needed for the new offer. Paramount also lined up a group of additional investors to offload part of that commitment, including Jared Kushner’s private equity firm Affinity Partners, as well as sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, whose money would help fund the takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery and its crown jewels, from HBO to CNN.

On 5 December, Netflix announced a 72 billion dollar deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s film and TV studios and its HBO Max streaming service, a takeover that would fold some of Hollywood’s most valuable assets into the Netflix empire. Trump quickly cast doubt on the transaction, warning that the merger «could be a problem» because of Netflix’s market share, saying he would be «involved» in the review and signalling that his administration viewed the deal with «heavy skepticism» on antitrust grounds. A few days later, Paramount escalated the fight: after an initial bid of around 60 billion dollars, at just under 24 dollars per share, had been rejected by Warner Bros. Discovery as too low, the company returned with a hostile all-cash offer worth 108.4 billion dollars, or 30 dollars per share, for the entire group, including CNN and the traditional TV networks. That new proposal is roughly 48.4 billion dollars higher than Paramount’s first approach and about 36.4 billion more than Netflix’s 72 billion dollar bid.

Conservative-leaning moguls

People close to Trump are now circling not just legacy TV brands but also the biggest social platform of the moment. With Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners helping to finance Paramount’s hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, a Trump family vehicle could end up with a stake in Warner Bros., HBO and CNN, a network the president routinely attacks. At the same time, Trump has said he is lining up a «very wealthy» group of buyers to take over TikTok’s US operations, and has publicly name-checked conservative-leaning moguls such as Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, Michael Dell and Larry Ellison among the potential investors. Taken together, these moves mean that some of the most coveted news and entertainment assets in the country — from cable channels to a dominant short-video app — are being targeted by financiers and tech billionaires who are either directly tied to the Trump family or closely aligned with the president politically.

Democrat Eileen Higgins, a former county commissioner, defeated Republican Emilio González in the Miami mayor’s race, flipping a city widely viewed as deep Trump country blue for the first time in 28 years, a shift that breaks with nearly three decades of Republican control at City Hall and highlights how local dynamics can diverge from national narratives about South Florida. Higgins won about 60% of the vote, a decisive margin that left little doubt about the result and handed a clear and public defeat to Trump-backed candidate Emilio González, whose campaign had leaned heavily on his Republican credentials and support among conservative voters. The scale of Higgins’s victory shows that a Democrat can still build a broad coalition in Miami, bringing together longtime residents, younger voters and independents who were ready to turn the page on the city’s recent political direction, and it firmly plants a blue marker in a place that, until now, had been regarded as safe territory for Republicans.

In the final weeks before Miami went to the polls, national Republicans closed ranks around Emilio González, turning a normally sleepy mayor’s race into a showcase for the right’s biggest stars and an explicit test of the movement’s strength in a city often described as deep Trump country. Trump, DeSantis and JD Vance all lined up behind the Republican, but it was Trump who put the most emphasis on the contest, using his megaphone on Truth Social to fire off a message that began with a blunt reminder to his followers: «Miami’s Mayor Race is Tuesday.» Trump immediately raised the stakes, insisting that this local contest carried national weight with the line: «It is a big and important race!!!». Then Trump tell his supporters exactly what he wanted from them: «Vote for Republican Gonzalez.» To seal the endorsement, he added a splash of his trademark hype — «He is FANTASTIC!» — before nudging his audience to turn that enthusiasm into action right away with: «You can also vote today.» And, as always, he closed by folding the Miami mayoral race into his broader political project, signing off with his familiar rallying cry: «MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!».

A new direction

Higgins gave her victory speech at the Miami Woman’s Club, celebrating what she called a turning point for a city that had been pulled for years into the gravitational field of national Republican politics, and when she told the room «Miami chose a new direction», the crowd erupted, hearing in that line not just a celebration of her win but also a pointed contrast with what many in Miami see as the Trump administration’s habitual disorder, improvisation and lack of basic competency. A little later in the speech, she sharpened that contrast even more with a line that summed up her pitch to voters from the start of the campaign: «You chose competence over chaos, results over excuses and a city government that finally works for you.». She wove those ideas through the rest of her remarks, framing the result as a declaration of independence from outside political pressures and a reassurance that the city’s priorities would be anchored once more in local needs rather than national theatrics, and her message landed not only with supporters in the room but also with strategists across Florida who immediately began reading the result as a sobering signal for upcoming contests, because this loss — delivered despite Trump, DeSantis and JD Vance throwing their full weight behind González — suggests that Trump’s brand is no longer a guaranteed turnout engine in every Latino-heavy, previously friendly corner of South Florida, and that the political map in the region may be more fluid than Republicans have assumed for the past decade.

In last November’s off-year elections, Democrats were already building the wave that would later hit Miami: in New York City, Zohran Mamdani took City Hall with just over 50% of the vote, beating Andrew Cuomo by a little under ten points while Republican Curtis Sliwa was left in single digits, a narrow but clear majority in a huge, polarized city. That same night, Abigail Spanberger flipped Virginia’s governorship, defeating Republican Winsome Earle-Sears by about 58% to 42% — a margin of more than fifteen points and the strongest Democratic showing in a Virginia governor’s race since the early 1960s. In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill didn’t just hang on for Democrats, she blew past expectations in what was supposed to be a nail-biter, turning a race many analysts rated as a toss-up into roughly a fourteen-point win over Jack Ciattarelli, the biggest Democratic margin in the state in decades. Taken together with Mamdani’s under-ten-point but symbolically huge victory in New York and a series of Democratic overperformances in specials earlier in the year, those November results looked less like isolated blue pockets and more like the early shape of a trend, giving Democrats a sense of real momentum as the 2026 midterm elections draw closer.

Democrat Eileen Higgins, a former county commissioner, defeated Republican Emilio González in the Miami mayor’s race, flipping a city widely viewed as deep Trump country blue for the first time in 28 years, a shift that breaks with nearly three decades of Republican control at City Hall and highlights how local dynamics can diverge from national narratives about South Florida. Higgins won about 60% of the vote, a decisive margin that left little doubt about the result and handed a clear and public defeat to Trump-backed candidate Emilio González, whose campaign had leaned heavily on his Republican credentials and support among conservative voters. The scale of Higgins’s victory shows that a Democrat can still build a broad coalition in Miami, bringing together longtime residents, younger voters and independents who were ready to turn the page on the city’s recent political direction, and it firmly plants a blue marker in a place that, until now, had been regarded as safe territory for Republicans.

In the final weeks before Miami went to the polls, national Republicans closed ranks around Emilio González, turning a normally sleepy mayor’s race into a showcase for the right’s biggest stars and an explicit test of the movement’s strength in a city often described as deep Trump country. Trump, DeSantis and JD Vance all lined up behind the Republican, but it was Trump who put the most emphasis on the contest, using his megaphone on Truth Social to fire off a message that began with a blunt reminder to his followers: «Miami’s Mayor Race is Tuesday.» Trump immediately raised the stakes, insisting that this local contest carried national weight with the line: «It is a big and important race!!!». Then Trump tell his supporters exactly what he wanted from them: «Vote for Republican Gonzalez.» To seal the endorsement, he added a splash of his trademark hype — «He is FANTASTIC!» — before nudging his audience to turn that enthusiasm into action right away with: «You can also vote today.» And, as always, he closed by folding the Miami mayoral race into his broader political project, signing off with his familiar rallying cry: «MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!».

A new direction

Higgins gave her victory speech at the Miami Woman’s Club, celebrating what she called a turning point for a city that had been pulled for years into the gravitational field of national Republican politics, and when she told the room «Miami chose a new direction», the crowd erupted, hearing in that line not just a celebration of her win but also a pointed contrast with what many in Miami see as the Trump administration’s habitual disorder, improvisation and lack of basic competency. A little later in the speech, she sharpened that contrast even more with a line that summed up her pitch to voters from the start of the campaign: «You chose competence over chaos, results over excuses and a city government that finally works for you.». She wove those ideas through the rest of her remarks, framing the result as a declaration of independence from outside political pressures and a reassurance that the city’s priorities would be anchored once more in local needs rather than national theatrics, and her message landed not only with supporters in the room but also with strategists across Florida who immediately began reading the result as a sobering signal for upcoming contests, because this loss — delivered despite Trump, DeSantis and JD Vance throwing their full weight behind González — suggests that Trump’s brand is no longer a guaranteed turnout engine in every Latino-heavy, previously friendly corner of South Florida, and that the political map in the region may be more fluid than Republicans have assumed for the past decade.

In last November’s off-year elections, Democrats were already building the wave that would later hit Miami: in New York City, Zohran Mamdani took City Hall with just over 50% of the vote, beating Andrew Cuomo by a little under ten points while Republican Curtis Sliwa was left in single digits, a narrow but clear majority in a huge, polarized city. That same night, Abigail Spanberger flipped Virginia’s governorship, defeating Republican Winsome Earle-Sears by about 58% to 42% — a margin of more than fifteen points and the strongest Democratic showing in a Virginia governor’s race since the early 1960s. In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill didn’t just hang on for Democrats, she blew past expectations in what was supposed to be a nail-biter, turning a race many analysts rated as a toss-up into roughly a fourteen-point win over Jack Ciattarelli, the biggest Democratic margin in the state in decades. Taken together with Mamdani’s under-ten-point but symbolically huge victory in New York and a series of Democratic overperformances in specials earlier in the year, those November results looked less like isolated blue pockets and more like the early shape of a trend, giving Democrats a sense of real momentum as the 2026 midterm elections draw closer.