Wired: “A review has identified a slate of GOP attorney general candidates in more than half a dozen states, including key swing states, who have repeatedly expressed their belief that the 2020 election was stolen.”
“If elected, several have said, they are willing to relitigate 2020 once again—and all will potentially play a key role in the 2028 presidential election.”
“A top ally of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is departing the Trump administration after frustrations with White House delays on Kennedy’s food agenda,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Calley Means, a senior adviser to Kennedy who also worked in the White House to further ‘Make America Healthy Again’ policies, quit his role on Thursday.”
“Means was greatly frustrated by White House delays of some of Kennedy’s most popular policy ideas and blamed others in the administration for allowing food companies and special interests to have too much sway.”
“A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump to sit for a deposition in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC by Dec. 11,” the Associated Press reports.
“I think… we should seriously look at expanding the court while the Democrats are in power. You know, it used to be that you’d have one justice for each circuit. We now have 13 circuits, we should have 13 justices.”
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by MS NOW.
Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre.
“In 1981, KGB Major Vladimir Kuzichkin, codenamed ‘Redwood,’ was the best Soviet officer in Iran, running spies in the wake of the Islamic revolution and working with a hidden network of Iranian communists to undermine the new regime. But Kuzichkin had a problem, a sexual secret that, if revealed, would humiliate him with his colleagues, cost him his job, and send him into exile. Desperate for a solution, he reached out to the only place he believed could help: Britain’s MI6.”
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday night that the Iranian regime must be overthrown once and for all,” the Washington Post reports.
Netanyahu said that Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei “decided to follow in his father’s footsteps” and attempt “once again to develop the bombs of death.”
Said Netanyahu: “Therefore, there is only one way to remove this threat once and for all: overthrow the regime in Iran. And that is my directive to the IDF, the Mossad, and the security branches.”
Harvard Youth Poll: “Among 18-to-29-year-olds, 9% say the nation is generally headed in the right direction, 62% say it is off on the wrong track, and 26% are unsure. Asked how they feel about America’s future, 69% say they are more fearful, compared with 26% who are more hopeful.”
“These concerns extend across party lines, though their intensity varies. Just 5% of young Democrats, 5% of independents, and 24% of Republicans say the country is headed in the right direction.”
“Canadian diplomats working in the U.S. have been directed to stay away from candidates running in the midterm elections, and to keep a low profile to avoid allegations by the Trump administration of political interference,” Bloomberg reports.
“If Democrats retake the House in November, Hakeem Jeffries is all but certain to become speaker in January — the first Black American to hold the post,” the Washington Post reports.
“Yet the question facing the 56-year-old New York lawmaker is not whether he can make history, but how he would lead — specifically, whether the consensus-building style that helped him rise through the ranks to minority leader can hold together what is expected to be an increasingly restive and ideologically diverse Democratic caucus.”
“Jeffries is a highly focused strategist and approachable leader who seeks to persuade through discussion… Colleagues also say he can be cautious and deliberative — to a fault, at times.”
Democrats panicked over President Donald Trump’s preelection attacks on California are preparing for a GOP-led effort to maintain control of Congress by mutiny,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
“Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) said Democrats are closely monitoring Trump allies’ claims of voter fraud in California, including a lawsuit last week over alleged noncitizen voting, as a pretense to invalidate midterm election results in the new Congress.”
“As drones fill the skies over the war zone, the fighting in Ukraine has moved into a network of gas pipelines deep belowground,” The Atlantic reports.
“Last October, President Trump imposed significant sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, complaining that negotiations with President Vladimir V. Putin over ending the war in Ukraine ‘just don’t go anywhere,'” the New York Times reports.
“A red-carpet welcome for the Russian leader in Alaska had done nothing to bring peace. A planned summit in Budapest had fallen apart. Mr. Trump had started to acknowledge that Mr. Putin might just be playing him, with no intention of making peace. Faint Ukrainian hopes glimmered of a Trump-Putin break.”
“But the Russian president was playing a longer game.”
“Now, exactly a year after the oil sanctions, Mr. Putin has never been so close to his goal of normalizing relations with Washington without having to make any compromises on Ukraine.”
Jack Crosbie: “What’s clear now is that in what may be the beginning of the end for Trump’s political reign, the king is focused on the things that matter to him most: ambition, aesthetics, and of course, asses. It’s a curious fixation for a president who should be desperate to resonate with voters who appear enormously dissatisfied with his performance in office.”
“But squint your eyes a little and see the man for who he is. Trump’s homoerotic, horn-dog vibe is both a genuine expression of self and a strategy to drum up support from the only fans he has left — the ones who hang on to his every word and think he is the greatest entertainer on earth.”
“A federal judge on Wednesday restricted the Department of Homeland Security from election-related investigations in nine states, finding that error-prone government lists could sweep U.S. citizens into the effort,” the Washington Post reports.
“With less than two weeks until the 2026 midterm elections, early votes cast so far serve as one more piece of evidence that Democratic enthusiasm is high in some key states,” ABC News reports.
“Registered Democrats and those modeled as likely to vote for Democrats have cast an even higher share of early votes in all states except for Alaska and Michigan, where the share is similar to 2024.”
The New Republic: Florida’s early voting shows just how pissed people are at Republicans.
