“The Supreme Court on Monday appeared poised to make it easier for President Trump to fire independent government officials despite laws meant to insulate them from political pressure in what would be a major expansion of presidential power,” the New York Times reports.
Associated Press: The Supreme Court seems likely to back Trump’s power to fire independent agency board members.
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Heather Cox Richardson argues that the Trump administration’s vision behind the National Security Strategy is to achieve a “white supremacist country” and, to this end, they reject immigration and call for the U.S. to “help Europe correct its current trajectory” by “restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”
She notes observers referred to the document as National Security Council Report 88 and noted that it could have been written in just 14 words. White supremacists use 88 to refer to Adolf Hitler and “fourteen words” to refer to a popular white supremacist slogan.
President Trump lashed out at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) after she appeared on “60 Minutes” to discuss her rift with him, NewsNation reports.
Said Trump: “The only reason Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown (Green turns Brown under stress!) went BAD is that she was JILTED by the President of the United States (Certainly not the first time she has been jilted!).”
He added: “Marjorie is not AMERICA FIRST or MAGA, because nobody could have changed her views so fast, and her new views are those of a very dumb person.”
“President Trump said in a social media post Monday that he will issue an executive order this week to curb state laws on artificial intelligence, the latest win for a tech industry lobbying for deregulation,” the New York Times reports.
“After a year mired in reflection and recrimination over the future of their party, Democratic governors are suddenly showing some swagger,” the New York Times reports.
“As they gathered this weekend for the annual holiday meeting of the Democratic Governors Association, the group’s new chair, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, predicted that Democrats would expand on their 23 governorships and reclaim a majority of the nation’s top state jobs for the first time in 16 years.”
“For six months, Apple distributed an app called ICEBlock that allowed users to alert people when they saw Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. But after the Trump administration complained that the app endangered officers, Apple removed it,” the New York Times reports.
“On Monday, the app’s developer, Joshua Aaron, sued top Trump administration officials, accusing them of pressuring Apple to stifle his free speech and his right to create, distribute and promote ICEBlock.”
Just in time for the holidays — and for next year’s midterm elections — the Blue Wave T-Shirt is back.
President Trump pardoned sports executive Tim Leiweke – who was convicted by Trump’s own Justice Department – after a round of golf with former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who was one of Leiweke’s lawyers, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Mother Jones: “Over the last six months, the Justice Department has demanded full, unredacted voter rolls from dozens of states in an effort to create the federal government’s first-ever national database of registered voters, accompanied by their private information: party affiliation, voting history, Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, even physical characteristics.”
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the U.S. military on Sept. 2 to kill all 11 people on a suspected drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea because they were on an internal list of narco-terrorists who U.S. intelligence and military officials determined could be lethally targeted, the commander overseeing the operation told lawmakers in briefings this past week,” NBC News reports.
The New York Times reports that last year, before she became attorney general, Pam Bondi wrote a Supreme Court brief in which she argued: “Military officers are required not to carry out unlawful orders.”
She elaborated: “The military would not carry out a patently unlawful order from the president to kill nonmilitary targets. Indeed, service members are required not to do so.”
“The conservative legal movement has for decades insisted that an originalist understanding of the Constitution — that is, an interpretation that looks to how the document was understood at the time of the nation’s founding — demands letting the president remove executive branch officials as he sees fit,” the New York Times reports.
“That follows, the argument goes, from the ‘unitary executive theory,’ which says the president should have complete control of the executive branch and that congressional efforts to shield the leaders of independent agencies from politics should be forbidden.”
“In September, though, a leading originalist law professor, Caleb Nelson, challenged that conventional wisdom in an article that attracted attention in legal circles and beyond. He wrote that the text of the Constitution and the historical evidence surrounding it in fact grant Congress broad authority to shape the executive branch, including by putting limits on the president’s power to fire people.”
Erick Erickson: “The elites and the experts deserve a lot of blame for people distrusting them, disregarding them, and discrediting them. But we’ve traded experts trained in a field of study for experts who learned everything they know from Twitter. We’ve gone from the elite of Harvard Yard to repeat residents of a Holiday Inn Express.”
“And it is starting to show, less than a year into the Trump Administration.”
Recently published: The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s by Paul Elie.
The Los Angeles Times says it’s one of the best books of the year: “Today’s culture wars didn’t start in the ‘80s, but Elie’s rich cultural history shows how the decade ushered them into the mainstream.”
“In Honduras, impatience is growing as Honduran electoral officials have failed to provide an update on the results of the Nov. 30 national elections for nearly 48 hours, with the presidential race still far too close to call,” Reuters reports.
“Anti-Trump former Republicans think Democrats are squandering their chance to flip the House — and they have a $100 million plan to save them,” Politico reports.
“On the heels of overperformances up and down the ballot this year, the Save America Movement, co-founded by former Lincoln Project founder Steve Schmidt, wants to pour up to $100 million into as many as 60 GOP-controlled House seats ahead of the midterms.”
“Affinity Partners, the private equity firm led by Jared Kushner, is part of Paramount’s hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros Discovery,” Axios reports.
“Paramount is telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix, and Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.