The Ugly Truth About Spotify is Finally Revealed

 

In early 2022, I started noticing something strange in Spotify’s jazz playlists.

I listen to jazz every day, and pay close attention to new releases. But these Spotify playlists were filled with artists I’d never heard of before.

Who were they? Where did they come from? Did they even exist?

In April 2022, I finally felt justified in sharing my concerns with readers. So I published an article here called “The Fake Artists Problem Is Much Worse Than You Realize.”

I was careful not to make accusations I couldn’t prove. But I pointed out some puzzling facts.

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Many of these artists live in Sweden—where Spotify has its headquarters. According to one source, a huge amount of streaming music originates from just 20 people, who operate under 500 different names.

Some of them were generating supersized numbers. An obscure Swedish jazz musician got more plays than most of the tracks on Jon Batiste’s We Are—which had just won the Grammy for Album of the Year (not just the best jazz album, but the best album in any genre).

How was that even possible?

I continued to make inquiries, and brooded over this strange situation. But something even stranger happened a few months later.

A listener noticed that he kept hearing the same track over and over on Spotify. But when he checked the name of the song, it was always different. Even worse, these almost identical tracks were attributed to different artists and composers.

He created a playlist, and soon had 49 different versions of this song under various names. The titles sounded as if they had come out of a random text generator—almost as if the goal was to make them hard to remember.

• Trumpet Bumblefig

• Bumble Mistywill

• Whomping Clover

• Qeazpoor

• Swiftspark

• Vattio Bud

I reported on this odd situation. Others joined in the hunt, and found more versions of the track under still different names.

The track itself was boring and non-descript, but it was showing up everywhere on the platform.

Around this same time, I started hearing jazz piano playlists on Spotify that disturbed me. Every track sounded like it was played on the same instrument with the exact same touch and tone. Yet the names of the artists were all different.

Were these AI generated? Was Spotify doing this to avoid paying royalties to human musicians?

Spotify issued a statement in the face of these controversies. But I couldn’t find any denial that they were playing games with playlists in order to boost profits.

By total coincidence, Spotify’s profitability started to improve markedly around this time.

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A few months ago, I spoke with an editor at one of the largest newspapers in the world. I begged him to put together a team of investigative journalists to get to the bottom of this.

“You need to send people to Sweden. You need to find sources. You need to find out what’s really going on.”

He wasn’t interested in any of that. He just wanted a spicy opinon piece. I declined his invitation to write it.

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We now finally have the ugly truth on these fake artists—but no thanks to Spotify. Or to that prestigious newspaper whose editor I petitioned.

Instead journalist Liz Pelly has conducted an in-depth investigation, and published her findings in Harper’s—they are part of her forthcoming book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.

Mood Machine will show up in bookstores in January and may finally wake up the music industry to the dangers it faces.

Pelly started by knocking on the doors of these mysterious viral artists in Sweden.

Guess what? Nobody wanted to talk. At least not at first.

But Pelly kept pursuing this story for a year. She convinced former employees to reveal what they knew. She got her hands on internal documents. She read Slack messages from the company. And she slowly put the pieces together.

Now she writes:

What I uncovered was an elaborate internal program. Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with “music we benefited from financially,” but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform. In doing so, they are effectively working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform.

In other words, Spotify has gone to war against musicians and record labels.

At Spotify they call this the “Perfect Fit Content” (PFC) program. Musicians who provide PFC tracks “must often give up control of certain royalty rights that, if a track becomes popular, could be highly lucrative.”

Spotify apparently targeted genres where they could promote passive consumption. They identified situations in which listeners use playlists for background music. That’s why I noticed the fake artists problem first in my jazz listening.

According to Pelly, the focal points of PFC were “ambient, classical, electronic, jazz, and lo-fi beats.”

When some employees expressed concerns about this, Spotify managers replied (according to Pelly’s sources) that “listeners wouldn’t know the difference.”

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They called it payola in the 1950s. The public learned that radio deejays picked songs for airplay based on cash kickbacks, not musical merit.

Music fans got angry and demanded action. In 1959, both the US Senate and House launched investigations. Famous deejay Alan Freed got fired from WABC after refusing to sign a statement claiming that he had never taken bribes.

They called it Payola, and people got fired

Transactions nowadays are handled more delicately—and seemingly in full compliance with the laws. Nobody gives Spotify execs an envelope filled with cash.

But this is better than payola:

• On February 7, Spotify’s CEO sold 250K shares for $57.5 million.

• On April 24, Spotify’s CEO sold 400K shares for $118.8 million.

• On November 15, Spotify’s CEO sold 75K shares for $35.8 million.

• On November 20, Spotify’s CEO sold 75K shares for $34.8 million.

• On November 26, Spotify’s CEO sold 75K shares for $36.1 million.

• On December 4, Spotify’s CEO sold 75K shares for $37 million.

• On December 11, Spotify’s CEO sold 60K shares for $28.3 million.

Deejay Alan Freed couldn’t dream of such riches. In fact, nobody in the history of music has made more money than the CEO of Spotify.

Taylor Swift doesn’t earn that much. Even after fifty years of concertizing, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger can’t match this kind of wealth.

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At this point, I need to complain about the stupid major record labels who have empowered and supported Spotify during its long history. At some junctures, they have even been shareholders.

I’ve warned repeatedly that this is a huge mistake. Spotify is their adversary, not their partner. The longer they avoid admitting this to themselves, the worse things will get.

The music media isn’t much better—these new revelations came from a freelancer publishing in Harper’s, not from Rolling Stone or Billboard or Variety.

And I could say the same for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.

Why didn’t they investigate this? Why don’t they care?

But I am grateful for independent journalism, which is now my main hope for the future.

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Let’s turn to the bigger question: What do we do about this?

By all means, let’s name and shame the perpetrators. But we need more than that.

Congress should investigate ethical violations at music streaming businesses—just like they did with payola. Laws must be passed requiring full transparency. Even better, let’s prevent huge streaming platforms from promoting songs based on financial incentives.

I don’t do that as a critic. People sometimes try to offer me money for coverage, and I tell them off. It happened again this week, and I got upset. No honest person could take those payoffs.

Streaming platforms ought to have similar standards. And if they won’t do it voluntarily, legislators and courts should force their hand.

And let me express a futile wish that the major record labels will find a spine. They need to create an alternative—even if it requires an antitrust exemption from Congress (much like major league sports).

Our single best hope is a cooperative streaming platform owned by labels and musicians. Let’s reclaim music from the technocrats. They have not proven themselves worthy of our trust.

If the music industry ‘leaders’ haven’t figure that out by now—especially after the latest revelations—we are in bad shape indeed. 

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Brasil está oficialmente na corrida pelo Oscar 2025

 

“Ainda Estou Aqui”, como previsto, entrou na lista de pré-selecionados para disputar o Oscar 2025 de Melhor Filme Internacional.

Isso não acontecia desde 2008, quando “O Ano que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias” entrou na “shortlist”, mas não foi indicado -essa honra ainda está sob a responsabilidade de “Central do Brasil”, em 1999, também de Walter Salles.

O novo filme de Salles protagonizado por Fernanda Torres e Selton Mello vai tentar uma das cinco vagas na categoria com outros 14 concorrentes:

“Linguagem Universal” (Canadá)
“Waves” (República Tcheca)
“A Garota da Agulha” (Dinamarca)
“Emilia Pérez” (França)
“A Semente do Fruto Sagrado” (Alemanha)
“Touch” (Islândia)
“Kneecap” (Irlanda)
“Vermiglio” (Itália)
“Flow” (Letônia)
“Armand” (Noruega)
“From Ground Zero” (Palestina)
“Dahomey” (Senegal)
“Como Ganhar Dinheiro Antes que a Avó Morra” (Tailândia)
“Santosh” (Reino Unido)

Quase todos os filmes listados estavam no burburinho do Oscar, com exceção, possivelmente, de “Como Ganhar Dinheiro Antes que a Avó Morra”, sucesso tailandês que já rendeu mais de US$ 50 milhões na Ásia e estreia nesta quinta (19) no Brasil.

Os favoritos estão todos lá: “A Semente do Fruto Sagrado”, “Emilia Pérez”, “Ainda Estou Aqui” e “Flow”.

Acompanhando o Oscar daqui de Hollywood, diria que há apenas uma vaga em disputa para “Kneecap”, “Linguagem Universal”, “Vermiglio”, “Dahomey” e “Touch”.

Mas sempre há um título inesperado na categoria. É bom lembrar que os quase 10 mil votantes da Academia podem votar no Melhor Filme Internacional. Mas eles precisam ter assistido a todos os indicados para isso, então nem sempre todos os membros indicam seus favoritos.

Em outubro passado, escrevi um texto cravando “Ainda Estou Aqui” no Oscar. Continuo com a mesma opinião. E, mesmo com “Emilia Pérez” reinando na lista de pré-indicados, acredito que o longa brasileiro ganhou mais força nas últimas semanas ao ponto de se tornar um adversário temido pela estatueta -assim como “A Semente do Fruto Sagrado”.

Aproveitando a ocasião, recordo abaixo as minhas cinco razões para acreditar em “Ainda Estou Aqui” na lista final, que será anunciada em 17 de janeiro.

1. Pedigree de festivais

   “Ainda Estou Aqui” foi selecionado pelo Festival de Veneza para a competição principal e chegou a ser cogitado para o Leão de Ouro. Não venceu, mas faturou o prêmio de Melhor Roteiro para a dupla Murilo Hauser e Heitor Lorega. Depois desta honraria, o longa partiu para diversos festivais, como Toronto, Vancouver e Nova York. Pousa em Los Angeles primeiramente no festival do American Film Institute e, depois, em festival de cinema brasileiro anual. Ajuda muito ter Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello e Walter Salles presentes em quase todos os eventos relevantes de Hollywood. Pode parecer bobagem, mas ter essa bagagem importa bastante numa campanha para o Oscar. Sugiro que vocês comparem vencedores recentes com destaques de festivais.

2. Tema em voga

   Baseado nas memórias do escritor Marcelo Rubens Paiva, o filme conta a história real do desaparecimento do seu pai, o ex-deputado Rubens Paiva (Mello), levado por militares durante a ditadura sanguinária e opressora no Brasil durante 1964 e 1985, e de como sua mãe, Eunice Paiva (Torres), lutou para manter a família intacta e nunca desistiu de procurar pelo marido, mesmo quando a morte dele foi descoberta. O combate a um sistema de poder repressor e autoritário continua sendo um tema importante no cinema e ganha força com o momento político mundial. Basta lembrar que “Argentina, 1985” foi um dos finalistas do último Oscar. Acho que é vital colocar o escritor/personagem fortemente na campanha. Ele traz a personificação da história, uma lembrança viva do que aconteceu para os votantes sentirem o peso da história.

3. Repercussão na imprensa norte-americana

   Apesar de toda a crise que assombra o jornalismo cinematográfico desde a pandemia, ganhar manchetes e boas críticas continua sendo um bom caminho para qualquer filme com aspirações a prêmios nos EUA. Explico: a grande maioria das premiações (não o Oscar, apesar de existir um informal) convoca comitês para organizar uma pré-seleção dos longas internacionais. Esses comitês nem sempre estão presentes nos festivais e precisam de uma certa “ajudinha” para a filtrar finalistas entre mais de uma centena de produções. Estar nas páginas das principais publicações é uma maneira de entrar nas mentes dos responsáveis por estes grupos de pré-votação. E “Ainda Estou Aqui” conseguiu boa repercussão em revistas como “Variety” (“Estes personagens são tão vívidos que não queremos abandoná-los”), “The Wrap” (“Fernanda Torres está absolutamente fantástica no drama de Walter Salles”) e “The Hollywood Reporter” (“Um dos melhores filmes de Salles”).

4. Walter Salles

   Pelo tópico acima, você compreende a importância de ter um diretor do nível de Walter Salles no comando do filme. O brasileiro tem um peso quando o assunto é cinema e Oscar. Mesmo tendo experiências opostas no mercado americano com “Água Negra” (2002) e “Na Estrada” (2012), Salles é respeitado, sempre passa por grandes festivais com destaque e foi ao Oscar com “Central do Brasil”, em 1999, última vez que o Brasil foi selecionado para a categoria de Filme Internacional, e, em menor grau, “Diários de Motocicleta” (2004).

5. Qualidade do filme

   Nada do que escrevi acima faria grande diferença se “Ainda Estou Aqui” fosse ruim. Ou, digamos, incompatível com a sensibilidade cultural dos votantes de (ainda) maioria norte-americana. Não é o caso. O longa é um belo drama que se utiliza da certa frieza involuntária de Salles como grande trunfo para não virar um espetáculo movido a lágrimas. Quem se dá bem com esse equilíbrio é Fernanda Torres, que captura com uma perfeição (ou contenção) emocional a força, o equilíbrio e a dureza de Eunice Paiva. Gostaria de me empolgar mais com suas chances na categoria de Melhor Atriz, mas sei como funciona estas votações. Prefiro esperar. Seria uma bela “vingança” em relação à participação da sua mãe, Fernanda Montenegro, em 1999. Selton Mello recebe uma missão complicada no papel de Rubens Paiva, que funciona como a força-motriz de uma felicidade que sabemos que será interrompida. Extrair esse carisma e paixão sem parecer forçado ou adocicado demais é algo que o ator faz com maestria, mas é uma categoria disputadíssima e sem muitas chances para o brasileiro. Com uma trilha sonora marcante por Warren Ellis, parceiro de Nick Cave com vasta experiência no cinema, e a fotografia de Adrian Teijido que respira e prende o fôlego junto da narrativa, Walter Salles está em pleno domínio do assunto tão próximo ao seu cinema (ausência da figura paterna, combate ao poder opressor, personagens femininas fortes), assim como do tom dos personagens. O diretor fez uma pequena pérola, um drama contido que faltava em sua filmografia. Há muitos anos que o Brasil não indicava um filme tão forte para abocanhar uma vaga no Oscar. Vou cravar sem o menor patriotismo: mesmo com seu final um pouco alongado um pouco além do necessário, “Ainda Estou Aqui” estará entre os cinco finalistas estrangeiros.

   Ganhar de “Emília Perez” ou “O Segredo do Fruto Sagrado” é outra conversa.

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Se você quiser ler sobre alguns dos concorrentes de “Ainda Estou Aqui”, assine a newsletter para ter acesso total aos textos:

“A Semente do Fruto Sagrado”

“Flow”

“Emilia Pérez”

“Kneecap”

“Armand”

Até a data do anúncio, publico a crítica de mais adversários do Brasil pelo Oscar.

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Livros sobre Chico Science e Mundo Livre S/A ajudam a entender a revolução do mangue bit

 

 

 

Biografias do líder da Nação Zumbi e de Fred Zero Quatro mostram como nasceu em Recife o movimento que deu última chacoalhada importante na música brasileira, borrando fronteiras entre o que era MPB, pop e rock

Por

Silvio Essinger

 

 

Francisco de Assis França (13-3-1966) e Fred Rodrigues Montenegro (26-5-1962) nasceram em uma Recife que desfrutava do status de terceira mais importante capital do Brasil e que, no espaço de tempo até eles chegarem à idade adulta, passou ao posto de uma das cidades com lamentáveis índices de desenvolvimento humano. “A quarta pior cidade do mundo”, como cantava Francisco em “Antene-se”, faixa de “Da lama ao caos”, álbum de estreia do grupo Chico Science & Nação Zumbi, eleito em 2022, por 25 especialistas ouvidos pelo GLOBO, como o melhor disco da MPB dos últimos 40 anos.

Mas “Da lama ao caos” não estava sozinho: ainda em 1994, sairia “Samba esquema noise”, estreia do Mundo Livre S/A, grupo liderado por Fred Zero Quatro, a outra ponta do mangue bit (também conhecido como mangue beat): mais do que somente música, um movimento que tentava desobstruir as artérias enfartadas de Recife, reprocessando tradições culturais pernambucanas sob a luz das evoluções tecnológicas que começavam a conectar o mundo. A metáfora política de Chico e Fred era a de uma parabólica enfiada na lama do mangue (ecossistema de enorme fertilidade, mas que a especulação imobiliária de Recife trabalhava para enterrar sob o concreto).

Centrado em seus principais personagens e aproveitando os 30 anos do lançamento dos discos-manifestos do mangue bit, “Criança de domingo” (do pernambucano José Teles) e “Mundo Livre S/A 4.0” (do agitador do underground niteroiense Pedro de Luna) vão a fundo para contar uma bela história: a de como jovens num país em redemocratização, fascinados por cultura pop, sem recursos financeiros mas vivendo num estado de ricas manifestações culturais, lideraram o movimento que deu a última chacoalhada importante sofrida pela música brasileira. Aquela que borrou as fronteiras entre o que era MPB, pop e rock, e deu pé para o desenvolvimento da pujante música periférica dos dias de hoje.

Maracatu, embolada, hip hop, coco, funk, punk, reggae, pop africano, samba, heavy metal... não houve quem não ficasse desorientado (e, sem seguida, maravilhado) ao ouvir pela primeira vez a música tão misturada e tão orgânica de Chico Science & Nação Zumbi. Em seu livro, José Teles traça, em uma narrativa detalhada e de certa forma poética, a trajetória de Chico até a sua grande invenção — que pode não ter atingido as paradas de sucesso do Brasil (tomadas então pelo axé, música da Bahia de comunicação bem mais imediata), mas que rapidamente ganharam o mundo, em tempos de difusão da world music e a poucos minutos da popularização da internet.

Capa do livro "Criança de domingo: uma biografia musical de Chico Science", de José Teles — Foto: Reprodução

“É algo que com um parafuso e outras coisas mais você faz, e ele sai voando por aí”, dizia acerca de sua música Chico, rapaz mestiço, vindo de uma família de classe média baixa de Recife, onde cresceu imerso nas tradições populares de Pernambuco e mais tarde descobriu sua forma de expressão artística nas rimas, batidas e samples do hip hop. Teles se preocupa em botar os pingos nos is no que se refere à criação do som e da estética da Nação Zumbi, mostrando Chico — garoto, que com insistência e carisma, conseguiu ter acesso ao rock e à música eletrônica de ponta — como um visionário, sim, mas que não fez tudo só.

Foi nos corres, quase sempre de ônibus, entre as rodas de hip hop, os blocos afro e os folguedos tradicionais da periferia e as bandas de rock e os discos de música eletrônica da garotada mais abastada, universitária, do Recife que Chico construiu a sua música e a sua persona. De sua relação intuitiva com a tecnologia e da absorção de uma cultura de rua altamente miscigenada é que foi surgindo, de projeto artístico em projeto artístico, a Nação Zumbi: aquela que unia a Zulu Nation do DJ e MC pioneiro de hip hop Afrika Bambaatta, às nações de maracatu e a Zumbi dos Palmares.

“Nossa ideia não é acabar com o folclore e sim resgatar os ritmos regionais, envenená-los coma bagagem pop. Isso pode chamar a atenção das pessoas para os ritmos como eles são e criar interesse pelo folclore”, dizia Chico Science em 1994. Ele morreria num acidente de carro, no carnaval de 1997, tendo em visto parte de sua profecia se realizar: seu trabalho com a Nação Zumbi ajudou a popularizou o esquecido maracatu mais do que qualquer iniciativa oficial ou governamental.

Capa do livro "Mundo Livre S/A 4.0: do punk ao mangue", de Pedro de Luna — Foto: Reprodução

Já Pedro de Luna cumpre a contento a missão de biografar Fred Zero Quatro: o companheiro de ideias de Chico Science, o cara que em 1992 redigiu o manifesto do mangue bit e que, desde 1984, toca o Mundo Livre S/A, banda situada entre o lirismo surreal do disco “Tábua de Esmeralda”, de Jorge Ben Jor, e a pulsação sonora, política e multicultural dos ingleses do Clash. “O mangue não era uma batida, nunca foi. Era uma espécie de utopia que a gente queria construir”, dizia Fred, o “pobre star” que se recusou a ser o sucessor de Chico.

Mais do que tudo, o livro de Pedro de Luna dá justa dimensão ao recifense, uma das figuras mais subestimadas da música brasileira, que passou pelos atropelos da indústria fonográfica brasileira com um disco brilhante (“Samba esquema noise”), cometeu um hit (a música “Meu esquema”) e, desde os anos 2000, vem trilhando de forma heroica os caminhos da independência com discos inquietos tanto na música quanto nas letras. Discos que não se esquivaram de fazer a crônica dos tempos politicamente terríveis em que foram produzidos, como “A dança dos não famosos” (2018) e “Walking dead folia” (2022). 

 

GLOBO

 

 

As Musk forces a shutdown, the Trump presidency is already collapsing into chaos

 

Lies, conspiracy theories and middle-of-the-night rants are no way to run a country.

 DANA MILBROOK

They’re baaaack.

Just six weeks ago, voters elected Donald Trump by the slimmest of margins in hopes that he would lower the cost of living. But Trump quickly walked back that promise, saying “it’s very hard” to reduce prices.

Instead, he has already returned the country to the unrelenting chaos, and the government to the ludicrous dysfunction, that dominated his first term. And he hasn’t even taken office yet. This week alone, Trump:

• Announced, in a 3:23 a.m. social media post, his interest in annexing Canada.
• Spread unfounded paranoia about UFOs invading the East Coast. (“The government knows what is happening. … Something strange is going on.”)
• Signaled, in another middle-of-the-night post, his desire to have the FBI probe prominent Trump critic Liz Cheney for violating “numerous federal laws” in the congressional investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
• Declared that he was suing the Des Moines Register — because the Iowa newspaper’s election poll was wrong.
• Suggested, via Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that he would limit access to abortion medication.

And then, the pièce de résistance: Trump, and the man he tapped to police government spending, Elon Musk, killed a painstakingly negotiated, bipartisan spending package at the 11th hour, sending the federal government hurtling toward a Christmas shutdown — which would be the first time the government is forced to turn out the lights since, well, the last time Trump was in charge.

Outside the entrance to Speaker Mike Johnson's office at the Capitol on Wednesday. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

Musk, with an extended tantrum on his social media site X, successfully sabotaged the spending bill, which would have provided aid to farmers and disaster relief for storm-ravaged North Carolina, Florida and other parts of the country. “‘Shutting down’ the government (which doesn’t actually shut down critical functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill,” proclaimed the richest man in the world, who also posted “YES” in response to the sentiment “Just close down the govt. until January 20th. Defund everything.” The man who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help elect Trump also threatened to defeat those Republicans who didn’t do as he commanded.

Trump, who had voiced no previous objection to the legislation, sided with Musk. Congressional Republicans folded and then, over the next 24 hours, rewrote the bill to be satisfy Trump and Musk, their multi-billionaire masters. They kept most of the spending in the bill but, at Trump’s insistence, added a provision to raise the debt ceiling by about $5 trillion — enough for Trump to push through another massive tax cut for corporations and the wealthiest Americans. They removed funds for nutritional assistance and community hospitals. They excised a provision that would have kept down drug prices. Incredibly, they even struck a provision that would have limited American businesses’ investments in China.

Musk and those like him stood to save untold billions in taxes — while securing green lights to move jobs to China. That’s a sizable return on the $277 million Musk spent on Trump’s campaign. MAGA!

Let us at least give Trump credit for transparency. For decades, corporations and billionaires shaped Republican policies from the back rooms of the Capitol. Now, they control the Republican Party right out in the open, for all to see. This kind of naked power grab is straight out of the Gilded Age.

If the government shuts down after midnight Friday, 1.3 million active-duty troops will go without pay, as will hundreds of thousands of civilian workers. National parks will close, air traffic and airports will be snarled over the holidays, food-safety inspection will be curtailed, tax refunds and operations at Social Security offices will be delayed, and millions of poor and working-class people will lose access to other government services. The shutdown will add billions of dollars to the debt. But Musk (net worth: $440 billion) will be just fine — and he is now the one directing the Republican agenda in Congress.

As the world’s wealthiest man killed the spending bill, Republicans marveled at their own dysfunction.

“It’s a total dumpster fire,” Rep. Eric Burlison (Missouri) told reporters.

“It’s a fascinating mess,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) told CNN’s Manu Raju.

“This is ridiculous,” Sen. Josh Hawley (Missouri) told Semafor’s Burgess Everett. “This is how you want your government to run? I mean, these guys can’t manage their way out of a paper bag.”

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (Florida) was so baffled by the happenings that she walked over to the speaker’s office to investigate. “I’m actually over here because no one’s returning my phone calls,” she told reporters. “I was trying to figure out what’s going on.”

She left without an answer — because House GOP leaders had no plan.

Even before the Musk-led meltdown, Rep. Victoria Spartz (Indiana) declared she would no longer “participate in the caucus until I see that Republican leadership in Congress is governing. I do not need to be involved in circuses.”

But this is just the first act of what promises to be a four-year circus. Already, a dozen or so House Republicans, angered by Speaker Mike Johnson’s inept handling of the spending bill, are now making noises about blocking his reelection as speaker Jan. 3 — and the defection of even two or three Republicans could doom him. This, in turn, could delay Congress’s certification of Trump’s election victory and possibly create a constitutional crisis over the transfer of power. Even if Johnson (R-Louisiana) gets out of that mess, a few House Republicans are already lining up in opposition to extending Trump’s tax cuts, a core component of his 2025 agenda.

For those too young to remember the last go-round, this is what governing looks like under Trump. Musk’s destruction of the spending bill was particularly ugly, for it showed that, with Trump in charge, an unelected megabillionaire can bring the U.S. government to a halt by employing MAGA’s trademark mixture of vitriol, threat and disinformation.

The short-term, three-month spending bill had been negotiated at Republicans’ request so that Trump would have the chance to reset spending for the rest of fiscal year 2025, given that Republicans will have unified control of the federal government early in the new year. Johnson didn’t have enough GOP votes to pass the bill (or any spending bill), so he had to negotiate a bipartisan package with Democrats — and, as of early this week, the bill was on its way to passage.

Enter “President Musk” (as Democrats have taken to calling him), who in his social media campaign of destruction on Wednesday called the legislation not just “criminal” but “an insane crime.” He flooded the Twitterverse with disinformation, including claims that the bill included a 40 percent pay increase for Congress (in actuality, a cost-of-living adjustment of no more than 3.8 percent); a $3 billion giveaway for an NFL stadium in D.C. (it included no money for the stadium); an “outrageous” provision blocking a probe of the Jan. 6 investigative committee; and another provision “funding bioweapon labs” (both false).

With one of his children on his shoulders, Elon Musk walks through the Capitol on Dec. 5. (Maansi Srivastava for The Washington Post)

The threat and the lies had the intended effect. By nightfall on Wednesday, the bill was dead.

“THIS CHAOS WOULD NOT BE HAPPENING IF WE HAD A REAL PRESIDENT,” Trump wrote.

So true! But instead, Americans elected Trump — and now we’re doomed to four years of this mayhem.

As Republicans circled the drain toward a shutdown, former speaker Newt Gingrich, the GOP architect of the 1990s shutdowns that started the modern era of dysfunction, celebrated the collapse. “President Trump and Republicans should not be afraid of a government shutdown. The next election is two years away,” he wrote.

“I’m all in,” responded Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia). And, echoing Musk, she added: “The government can shut down all the way until [Jan. 20] as far as I’m concerned.”

But why stop on Jan. 20? Republicans can now cause years of chaos, which is exactly what some of them intend to do. “The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) correctly pointed out on Thursday. “Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk.”

Greene quickly joined the effort, launching an online poll that asked: “Would you support [Elon Musk] for Speaker of the House?”

It’s a reasonable point. This plutocrat already controls congressional Republicans. They might as well make his authority official.

“Do you want to be speaker of the House?" Trump jokingly asked Musk while being interviewed on Thursday by ABC News’s Rachel Scott.

Musk, who was in the room, replied with a laugh: “Should I be?”

The plutocrats’ control of the GOP is no joke, though. Johnson, as his spending bill was collapsing on Wednesday, essentially admitted on Fox News that he answers not to the people, nor even to the people’s representatives, but rather to Musk and fellow rich guy Vivek Ramaswamy, private citizens both. The speaker said he was on “a text chain” and phone calls with the two heads of Trump’s nongovernmental “Department of Government Efficiency,” begging for their support. “Remember, guys, we still have just a razor-thin margin of Republicans, so any bill has to have Democratic votes,” Johnson said he told the pair.

Clearly, they were unimpressed by the speaker’s pleas — and so Musk showed Johnson who was in charge. This is what Trump has already built with the trust placed in him by the “forgotten man and woman”: A government of the billionaires, by the billionaires and for the billionaires.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) takes questions from reporters on Tuesday. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Among Republicans, a few principled fiscal hawks defied Trump and Musk. In Thursday evening’s floor debate, Rep. Chip Roy (Texas), excoriated his GOP colleagues for abandoning their fiscal responsibility and for surrendering on the debt ceiling, which had been one of the key tools conservatives have used in the past to force spending cuts. He called their actions “embarrassing,” “shameful” and “asinine.” Speaking on the Democrats’ time during the debate, Roy said: “I’m absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go forward to the American people and say you think this is fiscally responsible. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Trump spent the afternoon threatening the congressman from Texas for sticking to his principles. “Chip Roy is just another ambitious guy, with no talent,” he posted, calling for challengers “to go after Chip in the Primary.”

The brazen manipulation of Republicans by Musk and Trump fired up a Democratic minority that had been licking its wounds since last month’s election. Democrats chanted “Hell no!” in a caucus meeting before the debate, then went to the floor with a revived populist zeal, decrying an “illegitimate oligarchy” and Republicans bowing to an “unelected contractor reaping billions in government contracts” and working to “subsidize the lifestyles of the rich and shameless.”

“What is before us today is just part of an effort to shut down the government,” said Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), “unless we, as representatives of the American people, bend to the will of just a handful of millionaires and billionaires” for whom “clearly some in this Congress are working.”

In the vote, only two Democrats sided with Musk and Trump: Kathy Castor (Florida) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Washington). And though 172 Republicans buckled under Trump’s pressure, 38 Republicans stuck to their principles — more than enough to send the GOP’s new plan to a lopsided defeat.

With less than 24 hours to go until a shutdown, the House Republican majority, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Elon Musk, couldn’t come up with the votes to keep the government opened. “There is no plan,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina) told the Hill’s Emily Brooks after the vote. “Trump wants the thing to shut down.”

Shutting down the government because of the rants and threats of an erratic billionaire is no way to run a country. But this is where we are. Welcome (back) to the Trump administration.

WASHINGTON POST