This week's epic fight over funding the government captures the power — and flaws — of the new information ecosystem, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column.

• Why it matters: Elon Musk and his followers on X proved they dominate the Republican media industrial complex — using a digital revolt to kill a spending bill, and open the door to a government shutdown. That revolt was powered by some false information, tweeted with total self-certainty.

"We aren't just the media here now. We are also the government," Donald Trump Jr. tweeted yesterday to his 13 million followers.

• MAGA's online army now can assess "information rapidly & pressure our representatives to act in a manner that actually represents what we want," Don Jr. added. "They can't hide and do the bidding of swamp oligarchs anymore."

🖼️ The big picture: This reality highlights the difference between media (what people consume) and reporting (a set of standards for pursuing fact-based information). In the new world order, media and reporting are tossed together with a mix of truth, opinion, and nonsense.

• This helps explain the confusion that engulfs almost every real-time topic, from drones in the New Jersey skies to whether billions were stuffed into a spending bill for a new D.C. football stadium. (The bill banned the use of federal funds for the stadium.)

💡 Truth bomb: This is your present and future, and little can be done to stop it. A fragmented media means fragmented truths and standards.

• The winners are those who control the flow of information to the largest numbers of people — or the right people at the right moment on the right topic. Right now, Musk controls both for the incoming governing party.

This allowed Musk to tweetstorm (150+ posts) the defeat of the federal spending bill, while sharing some demonstrably false information — including the size of a proposed congressional pay raise (now dropped from the bill).

• Musk also reposted a false claim that the bill included $3 billion for a new NFL stadium in D.C. But the provision, also now stricken from the bill, merely transferred the site of the old RFK Stadium from the federal government to the District of Columbia.
• Musk said the original bill funded a bioweapons lab. It didn't.
• Musk reposted a claim the bill contained $60 billion for Ukraine, which it didn't appear to.

So when Musk tells X followers "You are the media," it's true they're part of his media. But that's different than declaring they're all reporters, trying to validate information before sharing it.

• That puts even more pressure on you as a news consumer to discern what and who you can trust for reliable, actionable information. It demands skepticism and patience when hot news hits fast.
• You need to be skeptical of people or sources unless you feel confident they routinely get it right. You need to be patient in not overreacting to — or oversharing — stories that hit your dopamine button.

A similar burden now falls on businesses, where big strategic decisions are shaped by evolving events. Discerning reality will get harder, as will discerning the scale of micro-movements that quickly become macro-movements — or disintegrate instantly.

• Finally, as we've written before, it puts pressure on media companies like Axios to up our games by winning and keeping trust — offering clarity in moments of confusion, and reporting clinically not emotionally.

🛸 Case in point: New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci, a Princeton professor who wrote a book about Twitter and social movements, found a 70-year-old parallel with the New Jersey drone craze. In 1954, an epidemic of car owners in Washington state reported pits in their windshields that they feared could be caused by vandals ... or even H-bomb tests. The Seattle mayor sought presidential intervention.

• The Seattle police crime laboratory determined that the damage reports stemmed from 5% "hoodlum-ism" and 95% "public hysteria."
• "In the Seattle windshield panic," Tufekci wrote, "mainstream media outlets amplified people's panic. In the internet age, ordinary people can perform that service."

🗞️ Context: Newspapers long were the natural home of great investigative reporters. But the pandemic expedited cuts to newsrooms.

• Axios Media Trends author Sara Fischer points out that as news organizations scrambled to survive, investments that would've gone to hiring more reporters went to establishing audiences on TikTok and other new platforms, or making content for streamers.

More local news outlets were forced to pull back or shutter, removing accountability coverage for thousands of U.S. counties.

• Most places around the country that saw their newspapers shutter still haven't gotten replacements. Those communities are relying on TikTok for news. Studies have shown that when a local community loses a legitimate news source, there's a huge spike in wasteful government.

🔮 What we're hearing: Trump insiders tell us this week's X revolt was just the beginning.

• "The problem Congress faces," a Trump transition source says, "is that Elon now has an army of people reviewing every word of every bill — and he's gonna amplify the crazy sh*t in there. So until they come up with a bill without a lot of crazy sh*t, the government will stay shut down."

Share this column ... Sara Fischer and Noah Bressner contributed reporting.

Kara Swisher, the popular podcaster and pioneering tech journalist, is trying to round up a group of rich people to fund a bid for The Washington Post, she told us.

• One big problem: Jeff Bezos, the owner, has shown no interest in selling.

Why it matters: Swisher — who started in The Post mailroom, and became an early tech reporter at the paper (and later one of the first at The Wall Street Journal) — believes the Amazon founder will eventually want to sell, since the paper has become a managerial nightmare.

Like many, Swisher thinks Bezos should sell since he has other financial and personal interests — like space tech — that are more important to him, and can conflict with his Post ownership.

• "The Post can do better," she told us. "It's so maddening to see what's happening. ... Why not me? Why not any of us?"

The backstory: Oliver Darcy reported this fall in his newsletter, Status, that Swisher was "interested in assembling a consortium of wealthy investors to make a bid for the paper."

• Since then, a banker who worked with Swisher in the past has been helping her think through how to move the idea forward.
• The storied paper would be run by a board of civic-minded people willing to write a big check to be part of something important. She'd be open to Bezos remaining a partial investor.

👓 In Swisher's recent memoir, "Burn Book," she recalled imploring former Post publisher Don Graham to pay more attention to the coming digital revolution.

• She's busy as a CNN contributor, host of the "Pivot" podcast with Scott Galloway and her solo "On with Kara Swisher," and editor-at-large for New York Magazine.
• But she has ideas for innovative people who could energize the newsroom, and move the business side toward break-even.

The bottom line: Swisher is confident the money is there. But Bezos would have to want to sell. And she notes there would surely be a long line of other suitors, including giant private equity firms and other power-minded billionaires.

• "Hopefully not Elon," Swisher added, "though he seems pretty busy these days being President (Not) Elect."

🔎 Between the lines: The paper's great quest for an executive editor, once Ben Bradlee's job, has ended with a whimper.

• Matt Murray, originally named to the job through the election, yesterday announced the newly formed masthead position of standards editor — to be held by Karen Pensiero, who worked for Murray as a managing editor when he was editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal.

The appointment was intended to signal Murray is there to stay after a high-profile external search.

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House Speaker Mike Johnson is in increasing danger of losing his gavel when the new Congress opens on Jan. 3, after the House rejected a Trump-endorsed Plan B to keep the government funded.

• We're told everything will depend on whether President-elect Trump expresses support for Johnson, whose best hope is that there's no clear replacement.

Why it matters: The federal government is set to shut down just after midnight tonight (12:01 a.m. Saturday) if a spending bill isn't passed, Axios' Andrew Solender writes.

🔎 Zoom in: Johnson's bill failed with 174 House members voting for it and 235 voting against it. 38 Republicans joined all but three Democrats in opposition.

• The bill was a trimmed-down version of the initial 1,547-page bill Johnson unveiled earlier this week after negotiations with Democratic leadership.

🥊 Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), a former Trump interior secretary, said he's "confused" by the 38 Republican votes against the bill — and said he "certainly" thinks Trump may call for some to face primary challenges.

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The looming government shutdown would be the first since a record 35-day closure that began in December 2018, Axios' Dave Lawler and April Rubin write.

• Why it matters: The government has failed to pass a spending bill on time on 21 occasions.

Keep reading.

The value of the stock market is more heavily concentrated than ever in a handful of companies — making its performance as a whole a function of how a few mega-cap tech stocks are faring, Axios' Felix Salmon writes.

• Why it matters: When a few companies dominate the market, that makes passive index investors less diversified — and therefore makes their portfolios riskier.

By one measure (charted above), the record for concentration was shattered in June 2020, as a handful of high-fliers started to dominate the post-pandemic stock market.

• It kept rising over time. The AI boom drove it higher, and the election of Donald Trump boosted it even more.

Go deeper with Axios Markets.

U.S. deportations rose last year to the highest level in a decade, Axios' Sareen Habeshian writes from ICE's annual report.

• The report showed a 90% jump in deportations from 2023, a dramatic increase in President Biden's final full year in office.

🧮 By the numbers: 271,484 people were deported to 192 countries in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

• Of those deported, 88,763 (about 33%) faced charges or convictions for criminal activity, according to ICE.

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A podcast hosted by Kylie Kelce — yes, the wife of Jason Kelce and sister-in-law of Travis — has unseated Joe Rogan's influential show as No. 1 on Apple's podcasting chart since it launched two weeks ago, the N.Y. Times writes.

• Why it matters: Her show's success may "reflect shifting desires among listeners. With the exception of true crime and Alex Cooper, the top spots on the podcasting charts of Spotify and Apple are dominated by comedy, news and talk shows hosted by men."

Kelce's show "Not Gonna Lie" primarily discusses "'mom stuff,' as she puts it, often laced with four-letter words."

• Full interview (gift link — no subscription needed).

The Inn at Little Washington — a three-Michelin-starred restaurant outside D.C. — changed fine dining. Now it's aiming to "revolutionize hydration" with a fancy water menu, Axios D.C.'s Anna Spiegel writes.

• The menu reads like a sommelier's booklet with 13 "rare" global waters, still and sparkling.

The most expensive: $95 iceberg water, hand-harvested in Canada from 15,000-year-old glaciers that give hints of "ancient packed snow and air."

• Each water displays unique flavor notes, origin (e.g. a Texan mineral well, Romanian aquifer), and vintage (hey, you won't find Ice Age wine).

The restaurant's wine director is working on her Water Sommelier Certification (yes, that's a thing), and can make pairing suggestions.

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