Political State: Freshmen Power

“Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has apologized for the fact that an Azerbaijan Airlines flight crashed after entering Russian airspace in Grozny, Chechnya on Wednesday, but did not say that Russia was responsible,” CNN reports.

Washington Post: “A quarter century ago, prompted by a spate of abandoned babies in Houston, this state became the first in the country to pass a safe haven law allowing parents to relinquish newborns at designated places — without questions or risk of prosecution. Yet ‘Baby Moses’ surrenders remain rare in Texas, and another series of abandoned infants since spring in the Houston area has prompted much soul-searching.”

“Elon Musk pledged Friday night to go to ‘war’ to defend the H-1B visa program for foreign tech workers, branding some Republican opponents as ‘hateful, unrepentant racists,’” Axios reports. Said Musk, on X: “Those contemptible fools must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem.” “The MAGA-DOGE civil war that erupted over the last 48 hours has now come to a tipping point, with President-elect Trump’s new techno-libertarian coalition of billionaires taking full aim at his traditional base.” “Trump, who has remained silent thus far on the schism, faces a quickly deepening conflict between his richest and most powerful advisors on one hand, and the people who swept him to office on the other.” Politico: Republican brawl on immigration erupts as MAGA and tech world clash.

Wall Street Journal: “This past year showed that the progressive politics that dominated most industrialized countries over the past two decades or more is shifting to the right, fueled by working-class anxieties over the economy and immigration, and growing fatigue with issues from climate change to identity politics.” “The return of Donald Trump to the White House is the most dramatic and important example—but it is far from the only one.” “Across Europe, where economic growth has largely stalled, conservatives and populist right-wing parties are making unprecedented gains.

“Sen. John Thune (R-SD) had a little more than three hours to bask in his big victory before Donald Trump dropped an anvil on his head,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “At midday on Nov. 13, Thune’s Republican Senate colleagues elected him majority leader, the triumphant capstone to his decades in public life.

“Western officials have long been concerned about Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet, an assemblage of aged tankers created to covertly carry Russian crude oil around the world. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the worry primarily concerned the use of such off-the-books ships to circumvent Western sanctions and generate revenue to fuel the Kremlin’s war machine,” the New York Times reports. “But Russia’s shadow fleet may now present a more pressing danger to the West.” “This week, Finnish commandos boarded an oil tanker that officials suspect had cut through vital underwater cables in the Baltic Sea, including one that carries electricity between Finland and Estonia.