Tesla shares just reached a new all-time high following Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, propelling the company to a massive $1.5 trillion valuation as of December 18, 2024.
Tesla accounts for nearly half of the market capitalization among global carmakers. Its valuation surpasses the combined value of the next 29 automakers.
Trailing far behind Tesla, the four other top automakers on the list are Toyota ($231 billion), BYD ($107 billion), Xiaomi ($98 billion), and Ferrari ($81 billion).
Musk’s Trump Connection
Investors believe Elon Musk’s close relationship with Trump, along with Musk’s growing role in government, will serve as a powerful catalyst for Tesla. Additionally, some of the stock’s recent gains hinge on expectations that Trump’s planned corporate tax cuts will benefit U.S. manufacturers, including Tesla.
Tesla’s stock has also regained popularity due to investor expectations that its Robotaxi and Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology will drive a new phase of growth. Year-to-date, Tesla’s stock is up 57%.
However, Tesla’s massive market cap is not reflected in its production numbers. In 2023, Tesla sold 1.8 million vehicles, while Toyota sold 11.2 million vehicles during the same period.
Tesla’s success has further extended Elon Musk’s lead as the richest person on Earth. In December 2024, Musk’s net worth reached $462 billion, far ahead of Jeff Bezos in second place at $243 billion.
This graphic shows where Tesla and BYD make their cars.
The pretext is to jointly contain Russian and Iranian influence in the broader region amidst their recent setbacks in the Levant...
Bloomberg published a detailed piece on Wednesday about how “Russian Guns, Iranian Drones Are Fueling Sudan’s Brutal Civil War”. The content is self-explanatory and presents the Sudanese Armed Forces’ (SAF) change of fortune in the nearly two-year-long civil war as the result of those two’s backing. Russia provides fuel, arms, and jet components while Iran supplies arms and drones in exchange for privileged access to Sudan’s mineral wealth (particularly gold) and the promise of Red Sea naval bases.
The Russian modus operandi builds upon the model explained here in early 2023 whereby Moscow provides military support to its Global South partners to defend them from externally connected threats to their national models of democracy in exchange for resource and other rights.
Iran’s approach is similar but more ideologically driven given the SAF’s closeness with political Islam since former leader Omar al-Bashir’s rise to power in 1989. Both want to make up for recent setbacks in the Levant.
Egypt and Turkiye are also allegedly backing the SAF while the UAE and its Libyan ally Haftar are accused of supporting their Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rivals. Even so, Emirati mineral companies are still active in the SAF-controlled Port Sudan that serves as the country’s temporary capital, thus highlighting the complexity of this conflict.
Such a threat still remains though as suggested by Bloomberg’s latest piece, which is clearly aimed at manufacturing consent for more Western meddling there on the basis of jointly containing Russia and Iran.
Trump 2.0 is expected to be tough on Iran, and while he himself wants to improve ties with Russia, he might be pressured by the hawkish forces around him into ramping up the US’ involvement in Sudan so as to kill two birds with one stone by weakening their influence in the broader region. Both are on the backfoot as was earlier explained so the temptation to do so might be too enticing. This could take the form of more sanctions, clandestine arms shipments to the RSF, and intelligence support to that group.
Anything more significant isn’t expected since the continued Houthi threat makes a naval blockade unfeasible for now while a no-fly zone would require a sustained air campaign that none of the US’ regional partners, first and foremost among them Egypt, supports. Cairo could also complicate whatever Washington wants to do since it has a land border with Sudan and considers the SAF “too big to fail” due to their shared interests vis-Ã -vis Ethiopia with whom both are feuding over its Grand Renaissance Dam.
In any case, Bloomberg’s article is meant to facilitate whatever more robust policy Trump 2.0 might promulgate towards Sudan, though it’s of course also possible that he won’t allow the US to get dragged deeper in what could turn into the next “forever war”.
From the perspective of the US’ grand strategic interests as his MAGA worldview interprets them, it’s best for the US to stay out of this imbroglio and focus instead on brokering peace in Ukraine in order to then “Pivot (back) to Asia” for containing China.
Democrats are fist-pumping this week asJoe Bidenlooks poised to beatDonald Trump’s first-term record for judicial appointments. If only that number were the Biden judicial legacy to prove most lasting.
The Senate was preparing on Thursday to confirm two final judges, votes that would result in Mr. Biden tallying 235 judicial picks—one more than the 234 confirmed in the first Trump term. Democrats are raving about the number and the diversity of those judges, as well as Mr. Biden’s success in flipping the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals back to a liberal majority. Republicans are consoling themselves that Mr. Biden was unable to change the ideological direction of the Supreme Court or of two other circuits that Mr. Trump remade with majorities of Republican-appointed judges.
But it isn’t the numbers or the faces that will define the Biden years. His most lasting mark on the judiciary will be the contempt he exhibited toward the judicial branch, and his active role in undermining public faith in it. No other modern president has shown more hostility or disregard for the judiciary and its unique role in government.
Past presidents have at times demonstrated a lack of decorum and restraint when it comes to the bench. George W. Bush criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling about prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama infamously scolded the Supreme Court in front of the nation during his 2010 State of the Union address. Mr. Trump has lambasted a litany of judges over opinions he disagreed with.
Mr. Biden’s condemnation has been of a more insidious kind. He hasn’t restrained himself to taking issue with legal reasoning. Rather, he willingly joined the progressive campaign to use opinions the left dislikes to smear the Supreme Court as unethical, fanatical and partisan. Following the court’s Dobbs decision, which returned abortion to the states, he singled out “Trump” judges who would “upend the scales of justice” in a “realization of an extreme ideology.” After this summer’s ruling on presidential immunity, Mr. Biden assailed “the court’s attack” on “long-established legal principles,” including “today’s decision that undermines the rule of law.” He suggested the justices had gone this route for no other reason than to kowtow to Mr. Trump.
This criticism is more risible considering it was Biden forces that spent four years busting precedents and placing the court in no-win situations. The White House’s lawfare campaign against Mr. Trump—special counselJack Smith, the raid on Mar-a-Lago, the criminal indictments—forced the Supreme Court to take up the question of immunity. Democrats’ investigations into Trump tax returns and Jan. 6 forced the court to rule on subpoenas and documents. An activist lawsuit claiming Mr. Trump was disqualified for “insurrection” forced the high court to overturn a Colorado ruling barring the former president from the primary ballot.
While the justices had no choice but to settle these manufactured disputes, the cases’ partisan nature guaranteed that half the country would hate any final ruling. Mr. Biden as president had a duty to condemn this political abuse of the legal system, but instead he stoked it, exhibiting a reckless disregard for the consequences for the court.
His lack of respect extended to his snubs of court rulings—for instance, ignoring the justices’ repeated findings that his student-debt forgiveness was illegal and fomenting dozens of rules with little or no basis in law. His pardon of his son—who was found guilty by a jury in one case and pleaded guilty in another—was an insult to the rule of law. His mass clemency of 1,500 people (in which the White House admitted it didn’t consider any of the individual cases’ details), showed casual disregard for every judge, clerk, lawyer and juror who sacrificed hours considering evidence and working to uphold the legal system. Mr. Biden is threatening to veto an urgent bipartisan bill to create 63 new federal judgeships over the next decade—something requested by the judiciary—in part out of petty gripes that the Senate didn’t confirm even more of his appointees.
What makes it worse is that the president, as an old Washington hand, knows better. And it’s notable that when he campaigned in 2020, he refused to join most of his progressive primary rivals in calling for legislation to pack the Supreme Court. As in all things, Mr. Biden ultimately bowed to the partisan zealots who remain furious that the Supreme Court is no longer a Democratic plaything, and whose only goal is to wrest back control by any means.
He doubled down on that position in July—days after his party gave him the boot—in a bid to rally the base for Kamala Harris. In a Washington Post op-ed, the president skewered the Supreme Court as “not normal,” “mired in a crisis of ethics,” in need of “bold reforms to restore trust and accountability.” He insisted this was necessary to “restore the public’s faith” in the court. A faith he did more than any other modern president to undermine and destroy. That’s his record.
Kimberley Strassel is a member of the editorial board for The Wall Street Journal.
You get widely varied perspective on targeted cancer therapeutics depending on where you get your information from. Cancer therapy centers in the US like to advertise as if they can zero right in on a particular patient's particular sort of cancer and then reach up on the shelves to pick out which of the thousands of alternatives will be most efficacious. Now it's true that we can do more of that than we used to, but the real-world situation is messier: there are indeed targeted cancer therapies out there, but they don't cover very broad swaths of the cancer landscape. It's hard to feel fortunate with a cancer diagnosis, but if you end up with one that lands squarely on one of the targeted drugs, then fortunate is the only way to describe it.
Meanwhile, inside the industry narrowly targeted therapies are (and long have been) a real balancing act. Market size versus efficacy will do that, because outright cures are worth a great deal, but are extremely rare, and the scale slides down from there. If there are only a small number of patients who will ever be taking the drug, it's going to be expensive (and it means that those few had better be pretty well served by it). But if there's a huge population of patients, you can be sure that some of them will respond better to it than others, generally due to factors beyond anyone's control (if they're understood at all). Mechanistically, there are some tumor types that really do seem to be driven by a particular pathway, and if you hammer that pathway then patients have a very strong chance of benefiting from the treatment. The BCR-Abl therapies directed towards acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) are an example of this. But other tumor types are unfortunately more versatile (and often contain a wider variety of mutated cells), and these are the very-bad-prognosis ones like glioblastoma and pancreatic cancer. It is highly unlikely that you'll find a single pathway to target for those.
This new paper illustrates some of the details. It's looking at a particular kinase inhibitor (dasatinib, Sprycel) that is very effective indeed against Philadelphia-chromosome-positive CML and is also included in ALL therapies, both because of its Abl kinase inhibitor activity. (Nice note about its generic name here!) Dasatinib was considered a second-generation drug after imatinib (Gleevec), a prototype in this area, and has been particularly useful in some imatinib-resistant cases. It also is a strong inhibitor of Src kinase, and this led to a whole string of clinical trials against solid tumors where Src is known to be important. But in contrast to the Ph+ leukemia trials, these have been pretty unrewarding (Ph- blood cancers likewise). Table 2 of the paper has the grim statistics - failure after failure in trials against various sorts of lung and breast cancer and several others.
But as the paper argues, no one had shown that Src activity was a primary driver of any particular tumor type (against, as opposed to the Philadelphia chromosome Abl activity in those leukemia types). Dasatinib is outright cytotoxic to those latter cells, and the resulting elimination of them is a big factor in its clinical success. But shutting down Src doesn't really kill cancer cells - it slows down their growth and cell division, sure, and you'd hope that such cytostatic activity would be worth something, but the clinical results say otherwise. (I'm reminded once again about the similarities between oncology treatments and antibacterials, where there has been a longrunning debate about the usefulness of bacteriostatic agents as opposed to the bacteriocidal ones).
The authors stress that the preclinical cell and animal model tests of dasatinib really did predict its activity in the clinic, although at the time many people talked about a disconnect. The problem was that slowing solid tumor growth was considered enough of a reason to be optimistic, and it really wasn't. That means, they say, that oncology research teams really should value selective cytotoxicity and prioritize targets and compounds that show evidence of it, rather than chasing after cytostatic agents that might never show enough power on their own. But that "on their own" is there for a reason, because something like dasatinib can be a valuable thing to throw into a cocktail that features other cytotoxic agents (and indeed, there are several examples of this). You'd rather work on something that can be a frontline therapy, other things being equal, but we have a number of these compounds out there and they can still be put to use.
In our last exciting installment, the BioSecure Act (which would prevent Federal agencies from doing business with a number of Chinese biopharma service companies) had passed in the House of Representatives and moved on to the Senate. And there it has run into some dead ends. The latest news is that the bill's language was not included in a big must-pass defense omnibus bill (the US National Defense Authorization Act), which is the route that many thought it could take to becoming law. And this is after reports that attempts at compromise language to get it through had been going on. It had definitely been diluted along the way even to get to this point, with longer timelines, possible waivers, and a statement that Medicare reimbursement would not qualify as doing business with a Chinese firm for the purposes of the law. Shares of WuXi and other companies jumped sharply on the news, and analysts seem to think that the bill is likely not going to make it through at all this year. Probably the only chance is if it makes it in some form into a continuing resolution on spending, and Politico says that the Speaker of the House still wants to get something like this done.
But if that doesn't happen, well, the whole process will have to start again in the next Congress. You can look at that from several perspectives: one might be that the new administration might be interested in the profitable angle of not introducing such provisions at all while not getting the government involved in more regulations. But then you have rhetoric from their own proposed Cabinet appointees that makes it sound like they'd like to hammer the evil drug companies to strike some populist poses as well. And you have the Chinese political angle, too - a revived BioSecure Act could be (or again be) dressed up in red, white, and blue as a national security issue. There's also the way that it's going to be difficult to get a lot of things through the House of Representatives at all for the next two years - it's been lost in all the huge amounts of noise over Trump's re-election, but the Republican majority in the House actually narrowed, and they already had plenty of problems getting anything done before that. It's true that some of the most obstructionist members are no longer there, but the margin of error is very small indeed.
If some last-minute compromise isn't reached in this session, my thinking is that we're probably going to see so much chaotic stuff in the next Congress that the BioSecure Act (or its successor) will be outshouted by all kinds of other concerns. There's always the chance this something like it will catch the fancy of people high up in the new administration and the whole thing will come roaring back to life, so you can't rule anything out. But if I had to bet, I would bet that this is going to evaporate.
The FBI on Dec. 19 arrested a close associate of a local California politician, accusing him of scheming together with a recently sentenced Chinese spy to amplify China’s influence in the U.S. political circle.
Sun Yaoning, also known as Mike Sun, was the campaign manager and close personal confidante to a Southern California city council member that the Chinese authorities supported, according to a newly unsealed complaint.
The 64-year-old has worked closely with Chen Jun, or John Chen, who a New York judge sentenced to 20 months in November for bribing the IRS against Falun Gong, a faith group that the Chinese regime has spent 25 years trying to suppress in China and globally, the document shows.
In conversations with Chinese officials following the politician’s election in November 2022, Chen referred to Sun and the California politician as part of a “basic team dedicated for us,” according to the filing.
“Mr. Sun has been my helping hand in the Chinese community since 1997,” Chen was quoted as telling one Chinese official in January 2023.
The politician, whose name authorities redacted from the complaint, was one of the local U.S. politicians Chen assessed Beijing could influence on issues such as Taiwan, according to the prosecutors.
Sun and the council member co-run a media outlet called U.S. News Center, the complaint noted. In a report Sun allegedly drafted with Chen, they described the politician as a “new political star.”
Campaign finance records suggest that in 2022, Sun was the campaign treasurer for Eileen Wang, a Democrat councilwoman for the Los Angeles-area city of Arcadia. The two also held leadership positions in the American Southwest Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit headquartered in Los Angeles. Wang founded the nonprofit in 2018, according to Chinese language reports. A Chinese consulate official said at its founding ceremony that he hoped Wang could lead the group to promote U.S.–China communications and cross-strait reunification—a reference to Beijing’s ambition to annex democratically-ruled Taiwan.
Wang didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
Sun had previously served in the Chinese military, the FBI agent said in the complaint. Public records show that he is the vice director of the American Chinese Culture Association, one of several U.S.-based pro-Beijing groups where he holds titles. Sun is also the CEO of a U.S.-based media group called N&N Media Group, and has for years organized large-scale events to promote Beijing’s narratives and celebrate key Party anniversaries, according to Chinese media reports.
U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Martin Estrada said Sun’s alleged conduct was “deeply concerning.”
“We cannot permit hostile foreign powers to meddle in the governance of our country,” he said.
Akil Davis, assistant director for the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said the case highlights the breadth of the Chinese regime’s “relentless intelligence and malign influence activities targeting the United States.” He said that the FBI will “continue to use all the tools at its disposal” to identify the Chinese intelligence operations, disrupt Chinese information laundering networks, and “bring to justice those who seek to engage in criminal conspiracies to undermine the integrity of our elected officials.”
Sun appeared at a downtown Los Angeles courthouse for a hearing on Friday. He faces up to 15 years in prison for the charges.
Sun’s attorney declined to answer questions from The Epoch Times upon walking out of the courtroom.
The pro-Beijing California politician Sun helped to reelect maintains a close relationship with Chen, conversations cited in the court suggest.
On Nov. 9, 2022, the election day in California, the individual contacted Chen, writing: “Old Sun is contacting you. Please call him back. He is with me.”
“Got it, congratulations,” Chen replied from China, adding that they would talk in person in six days.
The two had held two phone calls for around half an hour and one hour each during the weeks following. In January 2023, the politician wrote a thank you letter to Chen, thanking him for attending her Chinese New Year event.
“You are doing a good job, I hope you can continue the good work, make Chinese people proud,” Chen said in reply.
Chen also tasked Sun to brief Chinese officials regarding the politician’s election outcome in late November 2022, saying “the related department is paying a lot of attention to it,” according to the court filing.
A biography Sun allegedly wrote describing the politician stated she was born in the late 1970s in China’s Chengdu City, capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan.
Three Chinese officials reacted positively to her election victory when separately alerted by Chen, sending a salute emoji, smiley faces, and thumbs up in response.
Days after that, on Dec. 8, 2022, they formed the “U.S.-China Friendship Promotion Association,” with Sun as the vice president and the politician, who they described as a “Chinese elected official,” as a member, the filing shows.
A Chinese official who heads a municipal government office in Tianjin, a northeastern Chinese megacity and Chen’s hometown, congratulated Chen for the work.
“This is the basic team dedicated for us,” Chen wrote, to which the official wrote: “Understood, can’t wait.”
‘Struggles’ Against the Regime’s Targets
In pre-trial detention, Chen, a U.S. citizen, reportedly told his cellmate that he was a Chinese spy working for the 610 Office, the Chinese extralegal agency established expressly to persecute Falun Gong, according to the complaint. The document said Chen described the agency as “a ‘spy agency’ that was 100 times better than the FBI.” Chen seemed astonished that he was caught, the FBI agent said, professing disbelief that the 610 Office “didn’t do a better job watching him.” He also allegedly said the 610 Office paid him $250,000 to move to the United States decades ago and has since paid him $52,000 per month.
A major topic among Sun and Chen’s conversations cited in the court file was about how to promote Beijing’s agenda in the United States and then report their work to their handlers in China.
Ahead of a planned trip to China in January 2023, Chen hurried Sun to write a report about the politician’s election win, saying he would present it to the “United Front,” the overseas Chinese influence network.
Chen allegedly instructed Sun to highlight the “current strategy” with Falun Gong, their “past experience with struggles” against the regime’s targets, and of “you and me cultivating and assisting [the politician]’s success.”
In a draft that Sun shared with Chen on Feb. 1, 2023, Sun took credit for leading U.S. dignitaries and cultural workers to China “on many occasions” to further promote U.S.–China ties, prosecutors alleged. Sun, according to the court filing, further cast himself as one who “persist[s] in resisting any hostile forces that undermine the friendship of U.S.-China relations, and Chinese secessionist forces.”
Sun wrote “most proudly of all” of how he orchestrated a team to “win the election for city council member candidate,” the court document stated.
Prosecutors alleged Chen asked Sun to add context about their “past struggle fighting Taiwanese independence forces” and Falun Gong in a California city. They also allegedly discussed how to protest a Congress member’s proposed visit to Taiwan.
The two in February 2023 took issue with the presence of Taiwan flags and Falun Gong practitioners in major U.S. parades, according to the complaint. To counter it, they allegedly proposed to Chinese officials a project: they would mobilize the “Los Angeles organization’s professional core team” to organize a float with a 100-person drum band. The budget was $80,000, the complaint said.
On April 4, 2023, weeks before Chen’s arrest over the IRS bribery scheme against Falun Gong, Chen asked Sun whether Falun Gong practitioners “have locations” in a California city and activities there, according to the file.
“Can you create some obstacles for them? If you can eliminate one or several locations, or create some obstacles, there will be rewards.”
He allegedly asked Sun about three weeks later to arrange a meeting with the Chinese consul general in Los Angeles, telling him “there is a major project to report.”
“National level,” Chen added, sharing an article titled “How the U.S. Neighbors of Falungong See Them” that disparages the belief.
“Actual operation is strictly classified,” he said, according to the court document. “You will get credit for it.”
It’s unclear whether Chen was referring to the IRS bribery plot. According to the complaint, Chen intended to report to Chinese authorities by May 20. That would be six days after his meeting with a purported IRS official in order to open a probe against Shen Yun Performing Arts, a New York classical Chinese dance and music company founded by Falun Gong practitioners that showcases “China before communism,” as well as segments showing the abuses happening to the faith group in China. Authorities said the complaint he submitted was facially deficient; Chen had promised the IRS official to pay $50,000 in total for the IRS to open the case.
Sun and the city council member later joined on a China trip and returned together in September 2023 from Shanghai to Los Angeles, the FBI agent said. According to the complaint, Chen took part in the trip planning, which initially involved six Chinese cities and a meeting with a Chinese leader likely part of the Chinese intelligence apparatus.
Lin Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, denied knowledge of the matter when asked about Sun’s arrest during a regular press conference on Dec. 20. He said that Beijing “never meddles in other countries’ internal affairs.”
Alice Sun, a local Falun Gong group coordinator, commended the Justice Department for its diligence in countering the Chinese regime’s transnational repression against Falun Gong.
“We are aware that the CCP is intensifying its efforts to target Falun Gong through its spies in the U.S., as well as through YouTubers and even U.S. media outlets. Our government must take stronger measures to curb the CCP’s reach and influence,” she told The Epoch Times.
The Epoch Times recently reported on a 2022 secret meeting where Chinese communist leader Xi Jinping tasked officials to attack Falun Gong via disinformation on social media and media outlets, as well as by subverting legal systems in democratic societies.
Leaked notes from several recent Chinese officials’ meetings indicate they have been following through, including by providing materials to social media influencers to frame Falun Gong—and Shen Yun—in a negative light. The last of the meetings took place after the election.
U.S. authorities’ actions, Sun said, “send a powerful message to the CCP’s agents operating within the United States.” She urged elected officials in the United States to “take a firm stand and publicly condemn the CCP’s efforts to infiltrate and undermine our society.”
A multi-institutional team from China and the U.S. has identified a molecule that may play a role in slowing the aging process in some animals consuming a restricted diet. The team has publishedtwopaperson their work in the journalNature.
David Sinclair with Harvard Medical School has published aNews & Views piecein the same journal issue giving a short history of the search for factors involved in health promotion associated with restricted diets and the work by the team on this new effort.
Prior research has shown that adhering to a low-calorie diet can promote health. Other research has also suggested restricted feeding can extend the lifespan of some animals, such as fruit flies and nematodes. Testing for such an effect in humans has proven to be too difficult, however, due to the long average human lifespan, leading medical researchers to look elsewhere for evidence.
One such avenue of research has been the study of molecules in the gut. For this new study, the team focused their efforts on lithocholic acid (LCA), a bile acid created by bacteria in the gut.
Prior research had suggested that LCA was a toxin, but more recently, researchers have found that in low doses, it can provide health benefits. Mice given LCA in low doses, for example, were found to produce more of a protein called AMPK, which has been linked to slowing muscle atrophy.
The work involved tracking changing levels of metabolites in the mouse gut when the mouse is put on a restricted diet. The researchers found hundreds of them. They then fed mouse cells the metabolites and found that LCA was a main driver of activation. That, the researchers suggest, hints at the possibility that LCA is the acid behind some of the health benefits seen by mice on restricted diets—but not their lifespan. They found no evidence of that in their testing.
That led them to conduct a second study to learn more about how LCA activates AMPK. They found that activation was dependent on signaling from certain members of the enzyme family called sirtuins. But that was as far as they got. The team plans to continue their research, hoping to pin down the benefits of LCA to humans, if there are any, or to find other metabolites that might be involved.
More information: Qi Qu et al, Lithocholic acid binds TULP3 to activate sirtuins and AMPK to slow down ageing, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08348-2
Qi Qu et al, Lithocholic acid phenocopies anti-ageing effects of calorie restriction, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08329-5
David A. Sinclair, A bile acid could explain how calorie restriction slows ageing, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-024-04062-1
