A MAGA-world civil war erupted yesterday when a social media post on American culture turned into a pitched battle over race, immigration and billionaires versus the working class, Axios' Ben Berkowitz and Zachary Basu write.

• Why it matters: The fight exposes one of the MAGA movement's deepest contradictions. It came to prominence chiefly via the white, less-educated, working class — but is now under the full control of billionaire technologists and industrialists, many of them immigrants.

The battle royale on X sets up a tense MAGA vs. DOGE moment that could infect the early stages of President-elect Trump's second presidency.

• While some want to make America great by restricting immigration and promoting the American worker, others want to cut costs and increase efficiency no matter who does the work.

💡 How it happened: The skirmishes started Sunday when Trump named venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as his adviser on AI policy.

• Krishnan's appointment triggered an anti-Indian backlash on social media, based largely on his past advocacy for lifting caps on green cards.

Vivek Ramaswamy escalated the conflict into a full-blown war yesterday with a tweet blaming an American culture that "venerated mediocrity over excellence" for the growth in foreign tech workers.

• "This can be our Sputnik moment," he wrote. "We've awaken[ed] from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump's election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness."

Elon Musk's X is the town square for the MAGA movement. By stepping into that square and firmly criticizing American culture — while praising the immigrant work ethic and parenting model — Ramaswamy threw down a gauntlet.

• Musk tried to defend his DOGE co-leader and explain his argument, framing it as using immigration to supplement, rather than replace, American workers.
• "Maybe this is a helpful clarification: I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning," Musk wrote.

👓 Between the lines: The problem for many MAGA adherents was accepting the very notion of immigrants telling them America needs more immigration to fill lucrative jobs in America.

• It revived old tensions around the H-1B visa, which is reserved for people who "perform services in a specialty obligation" but practically speaking has become a crucial tool of Silicon Valley's growth.

🇮🇳 Ramaswamy's parents immigrated from India, the home country of as many as 75% of petitioners in recent years for an H1-B visa.

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Americans want to hear less about politics from public figures — and Republicans really don't want to hear it, according to a new poll by AP and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago.

• Why it matters: After an election season where endorsements from celebrities frequently made news, the survey found Americans are more likely to disapprove than approve of celebrities, big companies and athletes sounding off on politics.

📊 By the numbers: Look at these big gaps.

• 🕶️ Just 39% of Democrats approve of celebrities piping up on political issues — but only 11% of Republicans and 12% of independents (24% for the whole sample).
• 🏟️ Same with pro athletes: 39% of Democrats approve of them speaking up — but just 16% of Republicans and 15% of independents (26% overall).

🛍️ Small business is a huge exception: 43% of people are happy to hear from entrepreneurs. That breaks down to 49% of Dems, 41% of Republicans and 33% of independents.

• Explore the data.

2024 will be the second straight "hottest year" on record. But it wasn't supposed to be as hot as it was, coming in as the clear winner ahead of 2023's alarming global temperature spike, Axios' Andrew Freedman writes.

• For reasons climate scientists don't yet fully understand, 2024 is even likely to temporarily eclipse the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C temperature target, when compared to preindustrial levels.

🔎 Between the lines: Earth's extreme heat can be partially explained by human-caused warming, the lingering effects of a strong El Niño event, and other factors. But the truth is, researchers aren't completely sure why the planet's fever has increased faster than anticipated.

• The unsettling possibility in play is that climate change is accelerating, which implies that tipping points, such as the shutdown of major ocean currents, are closer than once thought.

⚡ New this morning: People around the world suffered an average of 41 extra days of dangerous heat this year because of climate change, AP writes from a report out this morning from scientists at World Weather Attribution and Climate Central.

🌐 The big picture: Millions of people endured stifling heat this year. Northern California and Death Valley baked. Sizzling daytime temperatures scorched Mexico and Central America. Heat endangered already vulnerable children in West Africa.

• Skyrocketing southern European temperatures forced Greece to close the Acropolis. In South and Southeast Asian countries, heat forced school closures. Earth experienced some of the hottest days ever measured and its hottest-yet summer, with a 13-month heat streak that just barely broke.

Photo gallery: Climate change in '24.

NFL's Christmas Day double-header games were the most-streamed NFL games in U.S. history, Axios' Sara Fischer writes from preliminary Nielsen figures that don't include international viewership.

• Why it matters: Once international figures and additional U.S. data are calculated, the league expects each game will have averaged around 30 million viewers, a source told Axios.

The viewership numbers represent a massive win for Netflix's live sports ambitions.

• Last year's Christmas game on traditional television between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Las Vegas Raiders drew 29 million viewers, the second-highest for a Christmas game since 1989.

🏈 In total, the NFL's Christmas Day broadcasts on Netflix, including its pre-game shows and Beyonce's performance, were viewed by at least 65 million people, representing a remarkable day of total viewership for the NFL.

• A Netflix spokesperson said the Chiefs-Steelers game drew viewers from roughly all of the 190 countries in which Netflix is available at some point during the broadcast.

For the NFL, which has major international expansion ambitions, Netflix's global audience reach is a huge selling point when considering future streaming rights.

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Israeli and U.S. officials involved in the negotiations for a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal are concerned that the odds of an agreement before President Trump takes office are slim, Axios' Barak Ravid reports.

• Why it matters: Trump threatened that there would be "hell to pay in the Middle East" if Hamas did not release the hostages held in Gaza by Jan. 20. President Biden also made mediating a deal a top priority for his final months in office.

👓 Between the lines: It isn't clear what Trump meant by "hell to pay." A source close to the president-elect said there is no plan for what to do if Trump's deadline is crossed.

• Some Israeli officials think that if a deal isn't struck, the incoming president could support Israeli measures that the Biden administration opposed, like limiting humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza.

U.S. and Israeli officials say Hamas' top military leader in Gaza — Mohammed Sinwar, the brother of slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar — doesn't seem to be deterred by Trump's threat.

• But one U.S. source with direct knowledge of the talks said there is still a likelihood of a deal in the next three weeks.

⚠️ Threat level: U.S. and Israeli officials say that if negotiations don't bear fruit by Jan. 20, the transition to Trump would likely push talks back, possibly by several months. That could cost the lives of more hostages.

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Guatemala is open to receiving citizens of other Central American nations who are deported from the U.S. as the country looks to build a positive relationship with the incoming Trump administration.

• Why it matters: The U.S. has struggled to deport nationals from places such as Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti due to strained relations, Reuters reports.

🖼️ The big picture: Trump's team has already reached out to the governments of several countries to test their willingness to take deportees from third countries.

• Many U.S. neighbors, including Mexico and the Bahamas, have said they don't want to receive deportees from third countries.

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Alex Karp — co-founder, CEO and director of Palantir Technologies, the globe-spanning data-analytics giant — is The Economist's best CEO of 2024:

• "Palantir is expanding rapidly, with analysts expecting it to notch up revenue growth of 26% in 2024, up 10 percentage points from the year before. It has also become much more profitable, with operating margins doubling to 15% in the 12 months [ending September]. In a sign of its ascendancy, Palantir was added to the S&P 500 index of America's most valuable companies in September."

🔎 The backstory: Karp, 57, "co-founded Palantir in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, with a focus on selling software to help spooks find terrorists," The Economist continues:

"These days, it builds whizzy tools to solve tricky problems for a wide range of customers, often pulling and processing masses of data from multiple sources. That might be software to help a factory monitor its production line or a battlefield-intelligence system for an army. Its engineers often work onsite to better understand what their clients need. Generative AI has given the company an added boost, as customers grapple with how to link the technology with their internal data."

🎿 Watch Alex's 2-min. holiday greeting.

The original Popeye and Tintin characters will enter the public domain when their copyright expires next week — along with thousands of other comics, books, songs and films, Axios' Rebecca Falconer writes.

• Why it matters: Any creator will have the legal right to use the iconic characters in new works as they see fit starting Jan. 1.

Filmmakers are already working on three Popeye horror movies.

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