Top Items:
Washington Post:
Trump's dinner with antisemites provides test of GOP response to extremism — Republicans are showing increasing boldness in criticizing Trump over his meeting with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West who has issued anti-Jewish diatribes
Discussion:
Vox, Raw Story, Michael-In-Norfolk and Vanity Fair
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A.B. Stoddard / The Bulwark:
Yes, He Will Burn It All Down — Nearly two years ago a prediction was published here, a warning to Republicans that “Donald Trump is going to destroy their party. Not because he wants to or even because he's trying to. But because the destruction of the GOP will be required in order to fill his psychological needs.”
Discussion:
Morning Shots and Raw Story
Politico:
Biden world once ignored Marjorie Taylor Greene. Now it's making her the face of the GOP. — With a fractured Republican party readying to take the reins in the House of Representatives, the White House is doing something it resisted early in office: taking on the more extreme members of the opposition party.
Amanda Carpenter / The Bulwark:
Stuck With Ronna — How does such a loser become the longest-serving RNC chair in modern history? — If you want to know how bad things are for the Republican party, consider this: The person most likely to be selected next month to chair the Republican National Committee has already overseen …
Newt Gingrich / Gingrich 360:
Quit Underestimating President Biden — If Republicans are going to successfully work through the next two years in Congress - and win the presidency in 2024 - we need to look much more deeply at what worked and what did not work in 2020 and 2022. — Republicans must learn to quit underestimating President Joe Biden.
Discussion:
Wide World of News
Kyle Kondik / Sabato's Crystal Ball:
The New Crossover Members of the House
The New Crossover Members of the House
Discussion:
Polity Research Insights
Roger Sollenberger / The Daily Beast:
Herschel Walker Ex Comes Forward: He Attacked Me in a Rage — Cheryl Parsa says she endured cheating, lying, violence, and multiple personalities during her romance with the gridiron great. … A former longtime girlfriend of Republican senatorial candidate Herschel Walker has come forward …
Discussion:
The Guardian, Forbes and Raw Story
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Camille Mumford / Emerson Polling:
Georgia 2022: Warnock Holds Slight Edge Over Walker — Home Polls Georgia 2022: Warnock Holds Slight Edge Over Walker — The Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey of Georgia voters ahead of the December 6 Senate runoff election finds Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock with 49% support …
Discussion:
Inside Elections, HotAir, New York Daily News, The Hill, Washington Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Joseph Zeballos-Roig / Semafor:
'It's all bullshit': Democrats unload on the crypto industry while hearings loom — Sign up for Semafor Principals: An insider's guide to power in D.C. — Your Email addressSign Up — At a moment when Congress is finally debating whether and how to seriously regulate the cryptocurrency industry …
Discussion:
CoinDesk
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New York Times:
‘Look, I Screwed Up’: Sam Bankman-Fried Is Challenged on the Collapse of FTX — FTX, the crypto exchange Mr. Bankman-Fried founded, declared bankruptcy this month in a failure that wiped out billions of investor dollars. He said his lawyers did not want him to talk, but he answered questions at the DealBook Summit.
Discussion:
HuffPost, Mediaite, CNBC, The Daily Caller, Wall Street Journal, CoinDesk, Summit News, The Information, Twitchy, The Daily Wire, Slate, Rolling Stone, Just The News, Vanity Fair, Fortune and NPR, more at Techmeme »
Politico:
House, Senate negotiators agree to add $45B to Biden's defense budget — An emerging compromise on annual defense policy legislation will endorse a $45 billion increase to President Joe Biden's defense spending plans, according to four people familiar with the negotiations.
Discussion:
GovExec.com, The Capitolist, The Hill and Washington Examiner
Isaac Chotiner / New Yorker:
A Right-Wing Zionist Digests Trump's Anti-Semite Dinner Party — Can the former President be the “best friend Israel ever had in the White House” while also legitimatizing “Jew-haters”? — Three weeks ago, the Zionist Organization of America gave what it called its highest honor to former President Donald Trump.
Evan Halper / Washington Post:
U.S. gas prices plunge toward $3 a gallon as demand drops worldwide — The average price of gas is back to where it was before Russia invaded Ukraine. It is putting real money back in Americans' wallets. — The cost of gasoline is falling so fast that it is beginning to put real money …
Discussion:
The Hill
Politico:
Friends to the left of him, critics to the right: McCarthy's stuck in the chase — House Republicans are playing high-stakes tug of war with Kevin McCarthy's speakership dreams. And now both sides are digging in their heels. — On the GOP leader's right, conservatives are meeting …
Discussion:
Breitbart, RedState, The Dispatch, Talking Points Memo, Washington Examiner and Axios
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Washington Post:
Rise in Iranian assassination, kidnapping plots alarms Western officials — In the summer of 2021, officers from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service showed up at the Vancouver home of Ramin Seyed Emami, an Iranian Canadian musician and performer who hosts a popular Persian-language podcast.
Liza Lin / Wall Street Journal:
How China's Biggest Protests in Decades Unfolded Over Five Days — Created with sketchtool. — 1x — SINGAPORE—China's internet watchdog instructed tech companies to expand censorship of protests and moved to curb access to virtual private networks this week, as a government clampdown succeeds …
Discussion:
Associated Press, more at Techmeme »
Richard Rubin / Wall Street Journal:
IRS Audits That Included Comey, McCabe Were Random Selections, Report Finds — Inspector general's study found no evidence of misconduct by tax agency — WASHINGTON—IRS research audits in 2017 and 2019—the years that FBI leaders James Comey and Andrew McCabe were selected for those intensive exams …
John Nichols / The Nation:
Senate Democrats Need to Fight Harder Than Marco Rubio for Rail Workers — Unless federal intervention to avert a rail strike includes a guarantee of paid sick leave for rail workers, it shouldn't be approved. — President Joe Biden wants Congress to block a railroad strike after members …
RELATED:
Politico:
POLITICO Playbook: ‘Dems in disarray’ makes a (brief) comeback — Presented by With help from Eli Okun and Garrett Ross — DRIVING THE DAY — Since Election Day, the drama in the House has been concentrated on the GOP side, as KEVIN McCARTHY tries to overcome a MAGA world mutiny to get the gavel …
Discussion:
The Hill and National Review
Greg Sargent / Washington Post:
The GOP is openly vowing debt limit extortion. Act now, Democrats. — It's clear that the incoming House GOP majority will try to use debt-limit extortion to extract all kinds of concessions from Democrats. This will likely focus on refusing to raise the nation's borrowing limit to try to secure deep spending cuts.
Discussion:
Talking Points Memo, Wall Street Journal, Raw Story, The Hill and Bloomberg
Lilah Burke / New York Focus:
The Private Equity ‘Black Box’ Pours New York Pensions Touting Divestment Into Fossil Fuels … In Cheshire, Ohio, the General James M. Gavin Power Plant dumps toxic coal ash into unlined “storage ponds” that sit above the area's groundwater. Thick blue plumes of sulfuric acid rise …
Anders Hagstrom / Fox News:
FBI denies purging conservative employees in letter to Jim Jordan — Jordan may escalate his FBI probe once taking control of the House Judiciary Committee — Fox News Flash top headlines for December 1 — The FBI denied accusations from Republicans on Capitoll Hill …
Discussion:
CNN and Frontpage Mag
Brad Miller / American Prospect:
The Corruption of the Legal Profession — A new book shows how corporate law firms bear great responsibility for the degradation of the rule of law. — The Washington, D.C., offices of Jones Day … Jones Day, one of the world's largest and most powerful law firms, disgraced itself in its work for Donald Trump.
Saqib Rahim / NBC News:
This California city asked where its recycling went. The answer wasn't pretty. — Four years ago, city officials in Palo Alto, California, posed what they thought was a straightforward question: Where did their recycling go? — Concerned citizens had seen dire headlines about plastic dumping …
Discussion:
Irish Examiner, MIT Technology Review, Politico and Al Jazeera
Reuters:
U.S. Inflation Reduction Act ‘super aggressive,’ Macron tells lawmakers — French President Emmanuel Macron addressed U.S. lawmakers from both political parties on Wednesday and pushed back over new American subsidies that are riling European leaders, according to a participant in a closed-door meeting.
CNN:
Georgia GOP chairman singled out by judge for central role in fake elector plot — A state judge singled out Georgia Republican Party chairman David Shafer, one of the fake electors for Donald Trump, for the unique role he played in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the Peach State as part of a ruling on Wednesday.
Discussion:
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Hill and Political Wire
Ashlee Vance / Bloomberg:
Musk's Neuralink Hopes to Implant Computer in Human Brain in Six Months — Elon Musk's Neuralink Corp. aims to start putting its coin-sized computing brain implant into human patients within six months, the company announced at an event at its Fremont, Calif. headquarters on Wednesday evening.
David Batty / The Guardian:
Banks failing to comply with anti-corruption rules and sanctions lists — Officials named on Magnitsky lists as well as criminals can easily access global finance systems, study finds — Criminals including terrorists and tax evaders, as well as government officials subject to sanctions …
Sarah Ellison / Washington Post:
The Washington Post will end its Sunday magazine, eliminate positions — Executive editor Sally Buzbee said the magazine would end ‘in its current form’ after printing its final issue on Dec. 25. — The Washington Post will stop publishing its stand-alone print magazine …
Discussion:
DCist, The Hill and Washingtonian, more at Mediagazer »
David Pan / Bloomberg:
Crypto Lenders' Woes Worsen as Bitcoin Miners Struggle to Repay Debt — Beleaguered crypto lenders are being dealt another blow from Bitcoin miners as they weather the aftermath of the FTX collapse. — Miners, who raised as much as $4 billion from mining-equipment financing when profit margins …
Discussion:
New York Daily News
Ann E. Marimow / Washington Post:
Here's how federal judges think about diversity in hiring law clerks — Most say they consider race as a factor when hiring but still struggle to build diverse chambers, a new article says — As the Supreme Court considered ending the use of race as a factor in college admissions last month …
Discussion:
SSRN
Fred Lucas / The Daily Signal:
EXCLUSIVE: Documents Reveal Senate Democrat Pressured IRS, DOJ to Target Conservative Groups — Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., called for revoking a tax exemption for a conservative group for not masking up and socially distancing during the pandemic, insisted on a slew of investigations …