Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, tech reporter David Ingram digs into the sharp rightward pivot Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made ahead of Donald Trump taking office. Plus, chief political analyst Chuck Todd examines how long the new political status quo can last.

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Mark Zuckerberg’s shift to the right was months in the making

By David Ingram

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he is ending professional fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram has reverberated across the political and tech worlds. 

While Tuesday’s news marked Zuckerberg’s biggest splash, it was the latest in a series of moves in recent months to position himself and the social media giant for the incoming Trump administration.

Zuckerberg was once a supporter of a handful of progressive causes — he had co-founded an immigration reform group that fought against mass deportations — and repeatedly met with Barack Obama during his presidency. 

But he began dropping hints last summer that he was preparing to politically lean in on supporting Donald Trump. The first came in July, when Zuckerberg said that Trump raising his fist after an assassination attempt was “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.” Zuckerberg at the time tempered the praise, though, saying he would not endorse a presidential candidate. 

Also that month, Meta removed special restrictions it imposed on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — essentially giving Trump a fresh start on the platforms after it had suspended and then reinstated him. 

In August, Zuckerberg attacked the Biden administration’s response to Covid-19 misinformation, alleging that the government had pressured the company to “censor” content. Later in the month, after Trump released a book of photographs in which he said Zuckerberg “will spend the rest of his life in prison” if he does “anything illegal” to influence the presidential election, Meta declined to comment. 

After the election, Zuckerberg posted well-wishes to Trump. Last month, Meta said it had donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. And last week, Zuckerberg elevated a longtime Republican insider, Joel Kaplan, to be Meta’s head of global policy, replacing Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister whose record was less conservative than Kaplan’s. 

On Monday, Meta announced new members of its board of directors, including Dana White, the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a longtime friend of Trump’s. 

Zuckerberg is hardly alone in corporate America in shifting policy to match political winds, but his pivot is unique because of the dominant position of Meta in how Americans communicate online.

Read more from David →

Which party cracks up first in 2025?

By Chuck Todd

If there is one certainty in politics these days, it’s that the status quo rarely holds.

And history tells us that when one party has control of the so-called trifecta of governing power — the White House, the House and the Senate — the new status quo has a shelf life of closer to two years than four. The GOP already feels time pressure to make use of its majorities under President-elect Donald Trump, while Democrats face the pressure of how to rebound from their loss. A big question animating 2025 will be which is greater: the pressure of losing or the pressure of governing?

The periods of one-party control of the trifecta since President Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 tell us as much. Just before Reagan, Jimmy Carter had the trifecta for four years — but saw his party fragment by year three. It’s the last time the Democrats had an uninterrupted four-year hold on both houses of Congress and the White House. Reagan and George H.W. Bush never got a trifecta during their presidencies, though Reagan’s party did have the Senate for six of his eight years. Bill Clinton and the Democrats got it for all of two years (his first two).  

When George W. Bush was elected, he had it for less than six months before a party switch tipped the 50-50 Senate to the Democrats by one seat. Bush would end up getting the trifecta back after the 2002 midterms and holding it until the Democratic wave in 2006 — the first time the GOP had had the trifecta since 1955! 

Democrats then nabbed the trifecta for two years after Barack Obama’s 2008 election, before the GOP’s House takeover of 2010. Republicans would get it again for the first two years of Trump’s first term, only for the House to go Democratic in the 2018 midterms. And Joe Biden and the Democrats got the trifecta back after 2020 but, like Obama, Trump and Clinton, lost the trifecta in the first midterm.  

That brings us to the current GOP trifecta, which will start when Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20. It’s Trump’s second time with a Republican-controlled Congress, and this time, he won’t be at war with his own party, like he was that first year in office. In fact, judging by their rhetoric and actions, Republicans are under no illusion they will hold this trifecta for any longer than two years, and they are trying to get all of their promises in legislative form before the 2026 midterms. 

They realize they are simply renting their hold on power until the landlord (the American electorate) decides otherwise. 

Read more from Chuck →

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Ben Kamisar.

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