Good morning and Merry Christmas! As the year winds down, the Elective is taking a two-week holiday breather. We’ll be back in your inbox on Monday, January 6, 2025, with news on the new Congress, TikTok’s ticking clock, and whatever else happens over the break. As always, thank you for reading!

CHRISTMAS

🎄 The Bidens enjoy their Christmas swan song

The Bidens are decking the Cross Hall (and the rest of 1600 Penn.) for the last time. The theme is "A Season of Peace and Light" and the decor is giving go-big-or-go-home energy.

83 Christmas trees, 165,000 lights, and two turtles doves 2,200 peace doves are scattered throughout the White House. More important (and tastier) is the mansion's gingerbread replica designed by presidential pastry chef Susie Morrison... and clocking in at over 170 pounds.

• Other displays include a nativity scene, the White House menorah, and a light-filled carousel — because nothing screams “peace” quite like circus music and spinning horses.

• The showstopper is a floor-to-ceiling Fraser Fir in the Blue Room that would make Clark Griswold proud. The tree is so tall they had to remove the chandelier to squeeze it into place.

Over 300 volunteers worked on the decor this year, including families of the USS Delaware and USS Gabrielle Giffords who crafted the paper chains draped in the State Dining Room. The First Lady also stayed committed to her promise of opening the house wider each year and welcoming the public into the Diplomatic Reception Room — packed with fruits and florals. 

More than 100,000 visitors are expected to tour the White House this holiday season. Want in on the action from afar? The White House Historical Association has swag. If you’d rather judge the decor of years past, the WHHA and HGTV have the goods.

GOVERNMENT

🗳️ Congratulations to Donald Trump for winning last week’s presidential election. The real one. The 538 members of the Electoral College, chosen by voters in November’s election, met in state capitols across the country to do their constitutional duty and pick the next president. As expected, Trump won the vote 312 to 226. Congress will complete the process when it counts those votes on January 6.

💰️ In a Christmas miracle, Congress narrowly averted a government shutdown over the weekend. Congress passed and President Biden signed a new budget to fund the government at current levels through March 14, with an extra $100 billion for disaster aid for good measure. An earlier deal brokered by House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, fell through after Trump (and Elon Musk) rejected it as fiscally irresponsible.

🚢 President-elect Donald Trump is playing hardball with the, uh, Panama Canal. The United States built the canal from 1904 to 1914 and controlled it until a 1977 treaty gave it back to Panama. Trump says ships headed to U.S. ports are being “ripped off” by huge usage fees and partly blames Chinese corporate involvement. If things don’t change, "we will demand" the canal "be returned to us."

POLITICS

🏛️ Republicans accidentally take power in Minnesota

If you can’t beat ‘em… lose anyway and accidentally fail upward into power. Republicans won control of the Minnesota House of Representatives after a judge ruled that a winning Democratic candidate didn’t meet the state’s “live in your district” requirement. Oops!

• Power is power, but the GOP’s 67-66 majority won’t last long. Democrats won this seat by 30 points last month, so they’re all but guaranteed to win the now-vacant seat in a special election next year.

Elsewhere in the political world: Retiring Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) has vanished from D.C., having last voted on July 24. Turns out there’s a good reason for that. Investigators found Granger, 81, living in a Texas retirement facility. She admitted in a statement yesterday to having "health challenges” but denied reports that she was in the memory care wing.

• Ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who was momentarily Trump’s pick for attorney general, could have a bad day today. The House Ethics Committee changed its tune and decided to release its report on Gaetz despite his resignation from Congress.

Down in Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald Trump is fleshing out his new administration. Mark Burnett, creator of “Survivor”, “The Apprentice,” and a host of other reality shows, will take a generic diplomatic role as envoy to the U.K. Stephen Miran will chair the Council of Economic Advisors, which some presidents consider a Cabinet-level role.

• Silicon Valley Investor Guy™ Scott Kupor will be the government’s HR chief as director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Trump says Kupor will "bring much-needed reform to our federal workforce."

• PayPal co-founder Ken Howery will serve as ambassador to Denmark. He repped the U.S. in Norway last time around.

TRIVIA

Earlier this month, former theater kid and current Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made her Broadway debut (yes, really). She appeared in the musical “& Juliet” in a one-night-only role written especially for her. Brown isn’t the first justice to take the stage, however. Which Supreme Court justice made a one-night-only cameo in the Washington National Opera in 2016?

Hint: This justice passed away in 2020.

CONSTITUTION

📜 The Constitution has a new amendment… or does it?

Everybody knows that amending the U.S. Constitution is extremely difficult. That’s why it’s only been done 27 times in our nation’s history. But what if that number was actually 28?

Enter the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Passed by the required two-thirds majority of Congress in 1972, the ERA would ensure that "Equality of rights under the law" cannot be denied "on account of sex." That seems pretty noncontroversial with obvious benefits. But opponents believe the ERA would result in the removal of sex from all sorts of legal issues.

• They claimed women would be drafted into the military, men and women would have to be thrown into the same prisons, and more. The government would no longer be allowed to recognize sex differences.

By 1979, 35 states had approved the amendment. Only three more were needed to seal the deal. Jumping forward a bit, Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia jumped on board in 2017, 2018, and 2020. And yet, 27 amendments remain. So what gives?

• When it was written and passed in 1972, Congress gave the ERA a seven-year deadline. It had to be ratified by 38 states by 1979.

• Complicating things further, six states have rescinded their prior approvals of the ERA over the years.

Pro-ERA activists maintain that Congress’s original 1979 deadline was unconstitutional and that the amendment should rightfully be considered part of the Constitution. They also claim there are no takesies-backsies — once a state ratifies an amendment, the deed is done.

Could Biden push it through? Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand thinks so. She and 45 other Senators want ole Joe to seal his legacy by directing the Archivist of the United States — the person in charge of documenting the amendment process — to call this thing a done deal.

• Biden hasn’t stepped in yet, but Archivist Colleen Shogan preemptively refused, citing “established legal, judicial and procedural decisions.”

• Sen. Gillibrand responded, saying Shogan is “wrongfully inserting herself” into a political situation despite her duty being “purely ministerial.”

Pro-ERA activists seem to have lost this round. But they’ve been pushing the issue for decades, so don’t expect pressure to let up anytime soon.

BRIEFS

● White Canadian Obama — aka Justin Trudeau — has run the show since 2015. Now, as members of his cabinet drop like flies, the third party ally (Jagmeet Singh) keeping Trudeau in power has pulled support. Trudeau could get the boot as soon as January.

● New York Gov. Kathy Hochul might want a do-over on her "safest subway system in America" Instagram victory lap. Hours after her Saturday post, a 35-year-old woman was brutally burned to death on a Brooklyn train and two young men were stabbed on a ride in Queens.

● The U.S. has lifted its $10 million terrorism bounty on the ex-rebel who is now the de facto leader of Syria. Syrians, meanwhile, have identified a mass grave containing the bodies of at least 100,000 people killed by their ousted dictator.

● Five people in Germany are dead and more than 200 are injured after a man plowed his SUV into a Christmas market. The suspect, a Saudi Arabian psychiatrist who moved to Germany in 2006, was known to authorities.

● Tis the season to strike (over failed contract negotiations). Amazon workers affiliated with the Teamsters labor union are striking at major distribution hubs nationwide. And Starbucks employees affiliated with Workers United are striking in 10 major cities.

● Two U.S. Navy sailors are alive after a friendly fire incident forced them to eject over the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest waterways. U.S. Central Command stressed this was not hostile fire — just a casual, $66 million miscommunication.

QUOTE

ANSWER

The Notorious RBG herself — that’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg — appeared as the Duchess of Krakenthorp in a 2016 Washington National Opera performance of “The Daughter of the Regiment.”

Ginsburg, queen of the left, famously bonded with right-wing Justice Antonin Scalia over their shared love of opera. Their friendship even spawned an opera titled, obviously, “Scalia/Ginsburg.” After Scalia’s 2016 death, Ginsburg wrote, “We were best buddies.”