The newly elected 118th Congress convened for the first time yesterday. Unlike the rest of us, though, lawmakers have the added benefit of getting to vote for who their boss will be.

This time around, the process is going—well—historically bad.

GOP leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy failed to win his bid to become the speaker of the House yesterday, falling short of the 218 votes needed to secure the position in three voting rounds. While multiple voting rounds for House speaker might sound somewhat ordinary, it’s actually an extremely rare event—it’s only happened 14 times in US history, with the most recent time (before now) being 100 years ago and the 13 other instances occurring before the Civil War.

Why it matters

With a narrow majority in the House, the GOP needs to capitalize on these early days by organizing and setting the stage for their agenda leading up to the 2024 general election. But, since the speaker administers the oath of office to House representatives-elect, no business can be done until the position is filled.

Also on hold: appointing chairs and members to key committees (delaying the preparation of bills and hearings), adopting new House rules, and voting on legislation (such as raising the nation’s debt ceiling to keep the government funded).

Coming up…once the dust settles, which hopefully happens faster than it took the 34th Congress to choose a leader in 1856 (133 rounds of voting over a roughly two-month span), the new GOP majority has some plans. Republicans say they want to take on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and probe vaccine mandates and the origins of Covid. They’ve also pledged to change pandemic-induced rules about proxy voting in the House and scale back the IRS expansion included in the Inflation Reduction Act.—MK

🕹 Union achievement unlocked. Around 300 video game testers at Microsoft’s ZeniMax Studios, which counts Fallout among its games, have voted to form a union. Microsoft has formally recognized the union, after having promised labor neutrality over the summer in hopes of getting regulators on board with its bid to purchase Activision. The union is the first ever at Microsoft and the biggest in the video game industry to date.

SBF pleads not guilty. After repeatedly telling news outlets that he had screwed up royally at FTX but never committed fraud, Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty yesterday in a New York federal court to the eight charges against him stemming from the crypto exchange’s collapse. A judge set a trial date of Oct. 2 and said he would grant SBF’s request that the names of the additional guarantors on his $250 million bail stay private, pending motions by the press or others asking that they be released.

🏘 No mortgages for the Canadian-ish. A new law has taken effect in Canada banning foreign buyers from hoovering up homes in the country for the next two years. Politicians who supported the law are hoping the pause on nonresidents purchasing condos will help cool a housing market that at one point last year hit an average home price of $800k (CAD). The Canadian Real Estate Association isn’t pleased—it claims the measure could force other countries to retaliate and bar Canadians from buying second homes outside of the country.

Good news for anyone who was busy shorting Tesla instead of making New Year’s Eve plans: Tesla’s stock plummeted more than 12% yesterday for its worst trading session in more than two years. The proximate cause: Though the EV manufacturer sent out a record 405,278 vehicles in the last quarter of 2022, it missed analyst expectations and its own growth goal for the year.

Tesla’s brutal selloff was the continuation of a dramatic downward trend: The most valuable automaker in the world lost 65% of its value in 2022.

And while it may be easy to pin the blame on CEO Elon Musk’s fascination with his shiny new toy, Twitter, the problems go beyond a distracted boss:

• Production has slowed down due to Covid shutdowns in China.
• Demand has cooled for its vehicles due to lower gas prices, interest rate hikes, and increased competition.
• It has suffered from logistical issues that were at least partially to blame for its inability to deliver all of the vehicles that it produced.

Tesla has taken steps to boost business, to apparently little effect so far. It recently tried luring lovers of clean-tech luxury with a $7,500 discount in the US. It’s also offered price cuts to customers in China.—SK

Turns out a toddler can’t tell a Snickerdoodle Haze rice crispy treat from a regular one. Reports of children under the age of six accidentally consuming edibles with marijuana in them have jumped 1,375% between 2017 and 2021, according to a new study in the academic journal Pediatrics.

The details: In 2017 there were 207 such cases reported to poison control centers in the US. But by 2021 that jumped to 3,054, bringing the number of incidents over the five-year period to 7,043. Over half of those reports involved toddlers aged two or three. But before you retweet the “pot smokers are giving my kids edibles for Halloween!” stories, know that 91% of the cases stemmed from kids getting the edibles in their own home.

Why the spike? Medical professionals say the numbers likely soared as legalization proliferated (37 states + Washington, DC, allow medical marijuana use, and 21 allow recreational use). Plus, some edibles packaging mimics that of non-THC candy or desserts and isn’t childproof.

Big picture: Cannabis ingestion is still just a sliver of the total 850,000 annual poisonings in the under-six age group, but the rapid growth has doctors worried, especially since THC can cause serious complications for kids. Researchers tracked 5,000 specific cases and found that 8% of the affected kids were put in critical care units at hospitals.—MM

This Monday, the Brew kicks off our one-week virtual course Difficult Conversations at Work. We cover the ins and outs of handling tricky office scenarios: performance reviews, asking your boss for a raise, encouraging a direct report to speak up in meetings, and much more. You’ll walk away with the tools, templates, and hands-on practice you need to tackle your next tricky convo with confidence.

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Stat: Ford may have faced major supply chain snarls last year, including running out of its signature blue nameplates, but one problem it didn’t have: moving its F-Series pickup trucks. According to sales figures released by the automaker yesterday, the truck was the top-selling vehicle in the US for the 41st year in a row (and the top-selling truck for the 46th). At least one of the trucks sold every 49 seconds in 2022, Ford said.

Quote: “We are deeply moved by the prayers, kind words, and donations from fans around the country.”

The family of Damar Hamlin, who remained in critical condition yesterday after going into cardiac arrest on the field during Monday Night Football, expressed their “sincere gratitude for the love and support” shown to the Buffalo Bills player. The NFL said the Bills–Bengals game that was halted after Hamlin collapsed will not resume this week, and no decision has been made yet about whether it will restart later. The league also said it has not yet made any changes to its Week 18 schedule.

Read: How China is building its own alternate AI universe. (Tech Crunch)

Kelp, mocktails, and exotic fruits: Here’s what’s on the menu for food trends this year.

Get your thumbs ready: Check out every video game release slated for 2023.

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Word Search: We go far from the shallow in today’s movie musicals Word Search. Play it here.

Trivia trivia

To celebrate National Trivia Day today, let’s do a meta trivia game on game shows. We’ll give you the host of a TV game show (doesn’t have to be the current one), and you have to name the show.

1. Art Fleming
2. Anne Robinson
3. Ben Bailey
4. Monty Hall
5. Meredith Vieira

After ringing in the New Year, we’re taking a look back on the innovations that shaped the last one. Here are the three technologies that hit an inflection point in 2022.

Alex Lieberman, Jesse Pujji, and Sophia Amoruso know what it’s like to be a founder. On The Crazy Ones, they offer unfiltered opinions on how to build a business.

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1. Jeopardy!

2. Weakest Link

3. Cash Cab

4. Let’s Make a Deal

5. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire