America witnessed tectonic shifts in politics and society in 2024 that will reshape elections, business, culture and the nation for years to come, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column.

• X displaced Fox News as the most powerful platform for Republicans.
• Elon Musk and tech billionaires emerged as lasting, public forces in U.S. politics.
• Traditional media power waned and fragmented profoundly.
• Immigration and energy debates shifted in a decidedly conservative direction.
• A loose bipartisan consensus on China and domestic industrial policy hardened.
• Unfathomably high deficits are largely irrelevant to both parties.
• Hispanic voters are the most potent, fastest-growing swing group in U.S. politics.

Why it matters: The future of politics and information will never be the same.

• It'll play out on new platforms — featuring new, powerful billionaires and info stars, fighting over a reordered political landscape in which misinformation thrives.
• Republicans will be as focused on the working class as Democrats. Democrats will be as focused on big business and the wealthy as Republicans.

🔭 The big picture: Neither party seems likely now, or anytime soon, to stake a dominant claim to a clear majority. So this era of volatility and razor-close elections will only raise emotions — and the stakes.

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It's easy to be fatigued by the nastiness, name-calling and numbing smallness of day-to-day politics, Jim and Mike write.

• But don't lose sight of the durable changes that will reorder how you get informed, how you do business, where new jobs will be created, and how America will secure itself:

1. The new right. The information ecosystem — especially, but not exclusively, on the right — looks nothing like it did when the 2024 campaign began. Gone are the days of Fox dominance. Instead, Musk's X and personality-dominated podcasts, led by Joe Rogan, will be the new power centers. All of this is unfolding on X, where the stars of the right-wing constellation congregate. Dems are bemoaning the lack of a liberal equivalent.
2. The tech power surge. Not long ago, billionaire tech entrepreneurs wanted nothing to do with politics — and especially with Republicans. This changed radically and durably as Musk, David Sacks, Joe Lonsdale, Marc Andreessen and many others went full Trump. They calculated that politics is downstream from information, and inserted themselves aggressively into the new media ecosystem. Mark Cuban and Reid Hoffman did the same for Vice President Harris. But Silicon Valley is notoriously liberal, so that was less revolutionary.
3. Shards of glass. How you get news and information shattered into scores of pieces based on your age, politics, income and information dependency. This will make a common reality increasingly elusive — and change how consumers get informed, candidates campaign, and businesses grow or decline. The net result: Traditional media grows weaker and less relevant by the month.
4. Conservative shift. It was hard to distinguish the substantive difference between Trump and Harris on future immigration and energy policy.  (Harris, of course, didn't go as far as Trump's plans for a massive deportation push and ending birthright citizenship.) Harris and many Democrats shifted with the country's mood and needs. They now want to lock down borders, tighten asylum rules, and get tougher on illegal immigration. And many now understand that with rising energy needs — and lingering concerns about inflation — America will need more oil, gas, sun and probably nuclear power.
5. A shared enemy. Everyone seems to agree China represents our biggest threat, militarily and economically. A broad consensus formed to crank up export controls, outbound investment restrictions, technology transfer limits and tariffs, covering more sectors over time.
6. America first. Both parties also see domestic industrial policy as vital to combating China and winning the race for AI and energy dominance. Gone are conservative concerns about government picking winners and losers, or messing with markets. Watch for more U.S. spending to increase energy production, chips and AI-adjacent technologies, and any supply-chain weaknesses.
7. Deficits be damned. This might be the biggest sleeper risk both parties knowingly completely ignore. Soak this in: The U.S. spends more on defense than the next nine countries combined. This year, for the first time in history, interest payments on the federal debt, $870 billion, exceeded our $822 billion in military spending. The overall federal debt has more than doubled in the past 10 years, to nearly $36 trillion. Few in elected office care.
8. Hispanic surge. Hispanic people represent 46% of New Mexico's oil and gas workforce at a time when progressives are pushing a transition to renewables. Third-plus-generation Mexican Americans are getting more independent as the college-oriented Democratic message fails to resonate. Consider: Close to one-third of workers in construction are Latino, and only 20% of Latino men ages 25-29 have college degrees. Republicans are gaining ground by default. But Trump tariffs and mass deportations could hurt U.S.-born Latinos and create a backlash.

The bottom line: The past campaign often felt small on the surface. But make no mistake: The shifts underneath it were seismic.

• Axios' Russell Contreras contributed reporting.

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Inside Mar-a-Lago, tension has erupted between Elon Musk and a longtime Trump adviser, who have clashed over Cabinet appointments, Axios' Sophia Cai reports.

• Why it matters: The friction between Musk and Boris Epshteyn — a powerful adviser who has pushed Cabinet picks that include Matt Gaetz for attorney general — surfaced in public last week.

Musk has questioned whether Epshteyn has had too much sway in Trump's selections, especially his top Justice Department picks and the White House counsel, three people familiar with the conversations told Axios.

• Epshteyn has bristled at Musk's questioning the qualifications of Epshteyn's favored candidates, two of the sources said.

👀 Zoom in: Their rocky relationship came to a head last Wednesday during a heated discussion at a dinner table, in front of other guests at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, three people familiar with the episode told Axios.

• At one point during what the sources described as a "massive blowup," Musk accused Epshteyn of leaking details of Trump's transition, including personnel picks, to the media.
• Epshteyn responded by telling Musk that he didn't know what he was talking about.

🖼️ The big picture: Epshteyn, who coordinated the legal defense in Trump's criminal cases, was a big influence in Trump presidential appointments last week.

• Those included Gaetz as attorney general and Bill McGinley as White House counsel. Trump's criminal lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, were appointed to top Justice Department posts.

Epshteyn referred Axios to Trump's transition team for comment. The transition team did not comment. Musk didn't respond to a request for comment.

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The share of kindergartners with vaccine exemptions has more than doubled in the past decade, from 1.6% to 3.3%, according to the CDC.

• The number of kindergartners attending school without documentation of completing the measles, mumps and rubella series was about 280,000 during the 2023-24 school year.

President-elect Trump, after racing through the first half of his Cabinet picks, is slowing his roll on one of the highest profile jobs — Treasury secretary — to consider more options, transition sources tell Axios.

• Trump will meet at Mar-a-Lago this week with two new candidates: Kevin Warsh, who was the youngest person to become a Federal Reserve Governor, and Marc Rowan, the billionaire CEO and co-founder of Apollo, the private-equity giant.

Why it matters: Trump, who has been decisive about the early wave of picks for his new administration, was dissatisfied with the earlier finalists for Treasury — hedge-fund manager Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick, co-chair of Trump's transition, and CEO of the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald.

• The battle between the two is being called "a knife fight, with Mr. Lutnick as the primary aggressor," according to the N.Y. Times, which first reported the new names.

⚡ State of play: Bessent and Lutnick remain in the hunt. But now they might be in a derby for a runner-up job — director of Trump's National Economic Council, or perhaps Commerce secretary.

• It's not clear Lutnick would take a backup job.

🔎 Behind the scenes: Lutnick has gotten on Trump's nerves lately, with Trump privately expressing frustration that Lutnick "has been hanging around him too much and that he has been manipulating the transition process for his own ends," The Times reports.

Between the lines: Trump cares a lot about pedigrees, and is obsessed with markets. That combination could make Warsh an attractive option.

• Warsh, 53, was a Fed governor from 2006 until 2011. He works with legendary hedge fund billionaire Stan Druckenmiller, who said before the election that the markets were predicting a Trump victory.
• Warsh's long game is still Fed chair. But that could come later in Trump's term.

Rowan is worth at least $9 billion.

• Axios Cabinet tracker.

The union representing workers at the Democratic National Committee blasted the party's leadership following large layoffs over the past several days.

• "The principles we champion on the national stage have been disregarded in our own workplace," the union said in a statement obtained by Axios' Alex Thompson.

Why it matters: Democrats face an internal war after President-elect Trump's decisive defeat of Vice President Harris.

The DNC dismissed hundreds of employees this past week.

• Most of them were only hired to work through the election. But some were considered "permanent" employees who stay on between election cycles.
• Many DNC employees felt blindsided by the extent of the layoffs, and felt their managers hadn't been upfront with them about the possibility, eight current and recently fired DNC aides told Axios.

A DNC spokesperson told Axios: "Every cycle, political organizations scale up to meet the demands, and as the cycle comes to a close, it's a tough reality of our industry that we must part with talented, hardworking staff."

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President Biden approved Ukraine using long-range missiles to fire against Russian and North Korean forces in the Kursk region of Russia's territory.

• Why it matters: It's a major policy change — the first time Biden has authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied long-range missiles to strike inside Russia, Axios' Barak Ravid and Rebecca Falconer write.

A source with knowledge of the issue confirmed these Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS, pronounced "attack-ems") were only authorized for use in the Kursk area, where North Korean troops have been deployed.

👀 Between the lines: The source said Biden's decision was communicated to Ukraine around three days ago.

• He said the motivation behind the decision was to deter North Korea from sending more troops to Russia for the war against Ukraine.

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Smashburgers owned 2024, but thick burgers are making a comeback in 2025.

• That's according to a dining trends forecast, out this morning from The Infatuation, which provided nationwide dining recommendations.

What else is hot: Tiny cocktails in adorable glassware, rip-and-dip bagels and swanky restaurant bathrooms.

• And diners are coming back with refurbished menus that use unexpected ingredients like guajillo chilis and kimchi.

More trends ... Juicy photos: "The 'It' Burgers Across The Country, Ranked From Thinnest To Thickest."