House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy is pivoting to more aggressive tactics to buoy his bid for speaker — beginning with 54 defiant "Kevin Only" statements of unqualified support, provided first to Axios.

• Some of them say they’re a hard "no" on anyone besides McCarthy — and won't vote for anyone else on the first ballot or the 100th ballot.

Why it matters: McCarthy allies are trying to capitalize on growing GOP frustration with five House Republicans holdouts who, if they stuck together, could deny him the gavel.

"Kevin gave them an opportunity to negotiate in good faith," a McCarthy adviser told me.

• "Now there's going to be more of an effort to expose the craziness of what they're doing."

What's happening: The public battle over the speakership has mostly been fought on the terms of the five rebels, Axios' Andrew Solender and Alayna Treene report.

• Now, fears are rising of a chaotic floor battle when the vote for speaker is taken Jan. 3, the first day of the new Congress.
• So McCarthy is trying to flip the script by capitalizing on growing impatience with the five, who have been condemned as "saboteurs" and "boneheads" by conservative radio host Mark Levin.

Zoom in: Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), one of the most conservative members, said in a statement to Axios: "McCarthy has given conservatives a seat at the table, which is why I'm supporting him for Speaker."

• Banks' backing is significant because he's a former chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee. He gained popularity among the right-wing Freedom Caucus during the Trump years.
• Those are members McCarthy needs to win over. Banks is a bridge between leadership (the establishment) and the hard right.

Between the lines: The majority of the conference has long supported — and plans to vote for — McCarthy in January.

• A group of "Only Kevin"s — a mix of loyal conservatives and mainstream Republicans — donned “OK” buttons last week in a sign of solidarity. They're trying to apply as much pressure as they can to be sure McCarthy ekes it out. (See the button.)

Zoom out: The 54 testimonials by members and members-elect (see them all here) are heavy on moderates and establishment types — McCarthy’s natural allies. But the group includes some notable conservatives:

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a right-wing agitator, has morphed into one of McCarthy’s staunchest allies in the Freedom Caucus.
• Rep-elect Max Miller of Ohio, a former Trump aide, was one of the ex-president's first 2022 endorsements.
• Rep-elect Harriet Hageman of Wyoming trounced Rep. Liz Cheney in her August primary.
• Rep-elect Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin was at the Capitol during the attack.

Reality check: A blizzard of allies' proclamations doesn't change the underlying reason this small group casts such a large shadow. As long as they move as a bloc — as they've vowed to do — they can block a speaker.

• See the 54 statements ... Share this story.

⚡ Breaking: Elon Musk lost his poll asking Twitter users if he should "step down as head" of the company — with 57.5% of the roughly 17.5 million respondents voting against him, Axios' Sara Fischer writes.

• Musk pledged to abide by the results and tweeted: "The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive."

🔋 Tesla's stock — which took a massive hit in response to Musk's Twitter takeover — shot up nearly 5% in premarket trading this morning.

• Investors are hoping/assuming he'll quit Twitter.

Between the lines: Musk has long dismissed the value of corporate titles — and recently assured anxious Tesla investors that he planned to step down as Twitter's head eventually.

Twitter faced intense criticism for announcing it would ban accounts used to promote some rival social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon.

• The company's posts about the policy have since vanished.

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On days when former President Trump is getting restless, Molly Michael, an aide who was his assistant in the White House, sometimes asks his friends to call him "to boost his spirits with positive affirmations," The Washington Post reports in a deep dive about his aimless post-presidency.

• A longtime Trump confidant said Trump's effort to recreate White House trappings at Mar-a-Lago is "sad": "It's like a Barbie Dreamhouse."

"At one point in early 2021," The Post reveals, "Trump asked a team of advisers if he could summon a press pool ... for an event at his Florida club. But there was no pool on call because he was no longer president."

• A former aide said: "We had to explain to him that he didn’t have a group standing around waiting for him anymore."

"Trump’s staff tried, unsuccessfully, to get the General Services Administration to pay rent at Mar-a-Lago — potentially for his lifetime — for the office space he has created for himself above the club’s ballroom," The Post adds.

• Six days a week, Trump "plays 18 or sometimes 27 holes of golf ... After lunch, he changes into a suit ... and shows up in the office above the Mar-a-Lago ballroom or, when he is in New Jersey, a similar office in a cottage near the Bedminster club's pool."

Keep reading.

A growing chorus of experts believes the oracular artificial intelligence program, ChatGPT, is too good at passing as human, Axios managing editor Scott Rosenberg writes.

• Why it matters: Critics fear its capacity for generating endless quantities of authentic-seeming text will trigger a trust meltdown.

What's happening: Trained on vast troves of online text, OpenAI's chatbot remixes those words into often-persuasive imitations of human expression and even style.

👀 What we're watching: High school and college instructors have long had to battle plagiarism and ghost-written term papers. Chatbots threaten to make this problem exponentially harder.

• The blast radius includes any pursuit that relies on text — law, entertainment, science, history, media.

🔮 What's next: Venture capitalist Fred Wilson foresees the use of cryptographic signatures to verify a document's origins.

• Keep reading.

Attorney General Merrick Garland — joined by Rabbi Levi Shemtov of the American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) — speaks yesterday during the annual lighting of the National Menorah, on the Ellipse.

374 worker strikes started in 2022 — a 39% increase over 2021, Emily Peck of Axios Markets writes from a database run by Cornell.

• Why it matters: Higher profile organizing efforts at big companies, particularly Starbucks and Amazon, have increased momentum for action more broadly this year.

What's happening: Fueled partly by anger over working conditions in the pandemic and spurred on by other labor wins, all sorts of workers — warehouse employees, teachers, nurses, graduate students, journalists — walked off the job.

• Many others voted to unionize — including 260+ Starbucks stores.

Context: Strikes were on the rise before COVID — hitting a 17-year high in 2019, with 25 major work stoppages, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A hunger crisis is deepening for millions of U.S. households as they face the fallout of recent severe storms — and extreme winter weather that's expected ahead, Axios' Ayurella Horn-Muller writes.

• And that's on top of higher food prices.

What's happening: 33 million Americans lived in food-insecure households last year, according to the USDA's Economic Research Service.

• Melissa Spiesman, COO of the nonprofit Food Rescue US, tells Axios that many agencies that help the hungry closed when the pandemic began, and haven't reopened.

🔮 What's next: The looming cold snap could hurt crops in the winter wheat zone.

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The epic triumph by Lionel Messi and Argentina is being called the greatest World Cup game — not just final — ever.

• The match ended 3-3 and Argentina won 4-2 in a shootout.

Why it matters: The win gives Argentina three World Cup titles, trailing Brazil (5), Germany and Italy (4 each) — and cements Messi as the greatest soccer player to ever live, Axios Sports editor Kendall Baker writes.

The pressure of an entire nation has been on Messi's shoulders ever since he made his World Cup debut in 2006 at age 18.

• 16 years later, he delivered the ultimate prize to his soccer-obsessed nation.

"I wanted to close my career with this," the 35-year-old said. "I can no longer ask for anything else. Thank God, he gave me everything."

Fox commentators called Messi "immortal" and "finally out of the shadow of Diego Maradona": "It's rare in sports and rare in life that things come together the way they have tonight."

The streets of Buenos Aires erupted with millions of Argentinians celebrating the country’s third World Cup title — and first since 1986.

Messi's face is projected on the capital's obelisk.

• Video of every goal, including penalty kicks.