Good morning! At a dinner meeting last week, Comedian-in-Chief Donald Trump suggested to Canadian Governor Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Canada join the Union as the 51st state. Thankfully, the Canadians are still under the impression this was a joke. They’ll find out the truth soon enough…

WORLD

📜 U.S. puts Chinese companies on naughty list

The tech war between the United States and China continues to ramp up. On Monday, the U.S. Department of Commerce added 140 Chinese chipmaking companies to its naughty list. Getting added to the dreaded Entity List makes receiving exports from U.S. companies much more difficult. That in turn impedes China’s development of advanced tech like AI.

Why? Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said the move boosts national security. It's meant to prevent China from using advanced American tech against us. Newly listed companies include "key semiconductor fabrication facilities, equipment manufacturers, and investment companies."

• China’s less than thrilled. The Chinese Commerce Ministry called the policy a “malicious suppression of China’s technological progress” and an “abuse of export control measures.”

In response, China on Tuesday banned exports to the United States of key chemical elements — including gallium, antimony, and germanium — used in high-tech and military manufacturing.

• The U.S. uses tons of this stuff. And much of it comes from China. But new stateside mining projects are in the works to change that.

• A Chinese business association also labeled U.S.-made computer chips (like those from Intel, AMD, and Nvidia) as "no longer safe" to buy.

In other China news, security officials in the U.S., Australia, North Minnesota Canada, and New Zealand warned on Tuesday of a "major global telecommunications" attack by the Chinese government-linked hacking group Salt Typhoon (which has an unfortunately sick name).

GOVERNMENT

⚖️ The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — that's one of the 13 courts just below the Supreme Court — sided with Texas on a border dispute with the federal government. Texas has been installing huge razor wire barriers on the border to boost what it views as insufficient security by the feds. The feds removed the barriers, saying they impeded Border Agent movement. Texas put 'em back up. The feds cut 'em down again. Texas won this round, but the legal fight isn't over.

📚️ Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R) has big plans for 2025. Due to quirky Senate rules (called "reconciliation"), two or three very specific bills each year are immune to filibusters and can be passed with simple majorities. Thune is pitching two biggies. The first, set for early next year, would cover immigration, defense, and energy. The second would come later and would cover the tax code. Also on deck? Passing a budget on time for the first time since 1997.

🐕️ Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is building support in Congress as it seeks to rebuild the federal government. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) jumped on board the House’s DOGE-supporting group, officially making this a bipartisan effort. On the policy side, Moskowitz wants to reorganize the Department of Homeland Security by removing the Secret Service and FEMA from its purview.

TRANSITION

⛪ Trump gets a jump start, plans foreign trip

Well, that was fast. Three days later, Florida sheriff Chad Chronister has withdrawn his name from consideration as Trump's pick to lead the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Chronister gave no reason for bailing, but many conservatives were unhappy with his pandemic-era actions.

• Trump’s nominees, including EPA pick Lee Zeldin and Treasury hopeful Scott Bessent, are meeting with senators this week ahead of likely confirmation votes in January.

Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth has also been making the rounds. But mean emails from his mom allegations (which Hegseth and others deny) of sexual misconduct, drinking, and financial problems are proving tough to overcome. Some Republican senators are getting wishy-washy on Hegseth’s chances. And the Wall Street Journal claims Trump is considering dumping the guy in favor of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Trump will make his first foreign trip as president-elect this weekend. He’ll join dozens of other heads of state in Paris for Notre Dame Cathedral’s reopening celebration.

• Also attending is First Lady Jill Biden, as part of her six-day jaunt through Europe and the Middle East. That won’t be awkward at all.

Billionaire investor Warren A. Stephens will serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom. Formally, that’s the ambassador to the “Court of St. James” (royalty, right?). The job is lowkey. But it comes with a behemoth of a house.

• Winfield House sits on 12 acres in central London and has the largest private garden in the area outside of Buckingham Palace.

In other transition news, Trump’s team signed an agreement allowing the Department of Justice (read: the FBI) to complete background checks on his nominees. The move should help ease their access to classified information before taking office so they can hit the ground running post-inauguration.

POLITICS

🏛️ Last remaining House race finally decided

Never change, California. Exactly four weeks after Election Day, we have a winner in California’s 13th congressional district. Democrat Adam Gray has defeated incumbent Republican John Duarte by 187 votes out of over 210,000 cast. Technically they’re not done counting yet, but Duarte saw the writing on the wall last night and conceded.

• At the state level, California swore in its new state legislature… even though votes are still being counted in one race. Here’s hoping the person they swore in actually wins.

Over in Minnesota, control of the state House is tied with both parties controlling 67 seats. That might not last, though. The Democratic candidate in one race won by just 14 votes as election officials admitted to casually losing 21 ballots. An investigation determined that election workers accidentally threw them away. How? Nobody knows. But with the lost ballots outnumbering the winner’s margin, Republicans have filed a lawsuit seeking a new election.

President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter for any and all federal crimes he may or may not have committed for the past 11 years was, in a word, controversial. At least five Senate Democrats have come out against it, calling it everything from “bad precedent” to an “improper use of power” that implies special treatment for the well-connected.

TRIVIA

It only took 170 years, but Henry David Thoreau’s term “brain rot” got its big break this year as the Oxford University Press's word of the year. Our man Henry coined the term back in 1854 to — gasp — rag on the dumbs. What was Oxford’s 2023 word of the year?

Hint: This one’s more of a compliment.

BRIEFS

● A Delaware state judge again rejected a $50 billion payday for Tesla CEO Elon Musk. In a shareholder-approved deal, he was owed a huge new pile of stock after the company hit growth benchmarks. One unhappy shareholder sued, however, and won.

● South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law (military rule). Six hours later, he lifted the order after the national legislature voted unanimously to demand he end it. Yoon is now facing calls for his arrest and is likely to be impeached.

● President Biden visited Angola in southwestern Africa as the country seeks closer ties with the United States. He touted more than $40 billion in government investment in Africa and announced $1 billion in humanitarian assistance.

● The Republican-led House committee on COVID-19 dropped its final report. It concluded that the virus originated in a lab and criticized former NIH director Dr. Anthony Fauci. The panel’s Democrats slammed the main report and released their own.

● Iowa sued the feds on Tuesday. The state is demanding access to citizenship information for 2,000 people who told the state they weren’t citizens but later registered to vote.

QUOTE

ANSWER

A common occurrence these days among everyone but us, “brain rot” took the crown from the thing we all pretend we have. Oxford’s 2023 word of the year? Rizz.