Video streaming site Rumble has filed a lawsuit against the state of California in response to legislation forcing social media platforms to censor political speech.
Rumble is being represented by The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which filed suit against AB 2655, aka the “Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024,” in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, Sacramento Division.
The legislation is Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom’s response to a deepfake satire video of Kamala Harris that was shared on X by Elon Musk among others.
JUST IN: Elon Musk tells CA Governor Gavin Newsom to “Suggon Deeznutz” after Newsom threatened to change the law to make AI “ad” voices illegal.
Newsom was upset over a parody video (below) that Musk shared on X.
ADF stated in a press release that the law “deputizes” Rumble to restrict its user’s free speech, while another law, AB 2839, “Protecting Democracy Against Election Disinformation and Deepfakes,” uses vague standards to punish individuals posting political content about elections.
“California’s war against political speech is censorship, plain and simple. We can’t trust the government to decide what is true in our online political debates,” said ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler.
“Rumble is one of the few online voices stepping up against this trend of censorship while other platforms and sites cave to totalitarian regimes censoring Americans,” Sechler further urged.
He added that “Rumble is standing for free speech even when it is hard. Other online platforms and media companies must see these laws for what they are — a threat to their existence.”
Chris Pavlovski, Chairman and CEO of Rumble, further urged that “The very thought of the government judging the content of political speech, and then deciding whether it should be permitted, censored, or eliminated altogether is about the most chilling thing you could imagine.”
“Rumble will always celebrate freedom and support creative independence, so we’re delighted to work with ADF to help protect lawful online expression,” Pavlovski asserted.
The Democratic Party is pushing hard to enact laws that force censorship.
As both Hillary and Bill Clinton have noted, its a response to them losing ‘total control’ over the free flow of information.
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NFL, NBA Issue “Security Alert” After Migrant Gangs Target Players’ Mansions
America’s top professional sports leagues have warned players about the growing threat of illegal alien criminal gangs targeting their mansions. This comes after a string of break-ins of athletes’ homes, including Kansas City Chiefs stars Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce.
NFL Network’s Tom Pelisseropublished a note about how the sports league issued a “security alert” to teams after “organized and skilled criminals” targeted players’ homes.
Pelissero continued:
Sources say the FBI is investigating the crime wave as international organized crime. The league, the NFL Players Association and team security forces also have been monitoring the crime spree, which is believed to be tied to a South American crime syndicate. At least one other current NFL player’s home was burglarized in the past week.
“It’s legit,” said one source familiar with the situation. “It’s a transnational crime ring, and over the last three weeks, they’ve focused on NBA and NFL players, and it’s all over the country.”
…
The homes of Mahomes and Kelce were burglarized on consecutive days last month in the Kansas City area. The Minnesota home of former Vikings defensive tackle Linval Joseph, who now plays for the Dallas Cowboys, was part of a series of burglaries last weekend, according to police.
Multiple people with knowledge of the crimes said the perpetrators are nonconfrontational and do not burglarize homes while residents are inside. Instead, they use public records to find players’ addresses and conduct extensive surveillance. Then, by tracking team schedules and the social media accounts of players and their families, they wait until homes are empty — often during games — and gain access and quickly steal items such as cash, jewelry, watches and handbags, focusing mainly on master bedrooms and closets.
The alert issued on Wednesday by NFL Security confirmed the modus operandi and offered a number of recommendations, including not posting in real time on social media, installing security systems and keeping valuables out of plain sight.
Separately, NBC News confirmed a memo sent by the NBA to teams, citing FBI intelligence, about crimes linked to “transnational South American Theft Groups” that target “professional athletes and other high-net-worth individuals.”
South American gangs are now robbing NFL player’s mansions…
They’re targeting the homes during games when no one is there.
An alarming trend of illegal alien crimes has spread nationwide to major cities because of the Biden-Harris administration’s nation-killing open southern border invasion (championed by globalists) that rolled out the red carpet to ten-plus million unvetted migrants.
One of the worst transnational South American gangs is Tren de Aragua, spreading across the nation like stage four cancer, setting up operations in major cities.
Just months ago, investigative reporter James O’Keefe published a US Army North Division memo that warned an estimated 5,000 TdA gangsters were in the US. We suspect that number is a lot higher.
The American people have given President-elect Donald Trump and incoming Border Czar Tom Homan a mandate to fix this illegal alien invasion crisis. It’s time to hold accountable those who rolled out the red carpet for dangerous illegal aliens.
Ever since Election Day, much talk has focused on President-elect Donald Trump’s appointments – in record time – of his Cabinet, advisors, and agency directors. This new administration is a diverse mix, but they all have one thing in common: The returning president sees them as loyal to him and his outsized agenda.
But what about all the other, more entrenched denizens of DC?
Enter Schedule F – Trump’s bold plan to “drain the Swamp.”
Washington is abuzz with the extraordinary diversity of beliefs among the new designees. This is far from typical for incoming presidents, who ordinarily populate their administrations with political veterans in lockstep with their ideology. But after assembling a largely forgettable team upon his arrival in DC as a novice in 2017, the road-tested 47th president has broken the mold, as is his wont, by selecting Republicans and Democrats, hawks and doves, neoconservatives and populists, corporatists and unionists, insiders and outsiders.
Trump’s most famously ambitious objective, however, is to drain and ultimately empty the DC swamp of its unelected, unaccountable, and obstructionist bureaucrats who can thwart the will of the president, as they did so often during his first administration. The arrogance of these supercilious apparatchiks is due to the iron-clad protections they enjoy as civil servants. They cannot be fired no matter their behavior, except in the rarest of circumstances. Presidents come and go, they tell themselves, but we will outlast them all and can act accordingly.
Trump and the “All of Government” Edict
You may recall the so-called “all-of-government” approach to the DEI agenda during the current administration, where the goal of equity must be embraced and adopted not only in social planning and policies but across all agencies and cabinet departments. Well, the incoming president will employ that same broad, sweeping approach to weeding out the most unproductive and recalcitrant employees among the federal government’s 2.2 million-strong civilian workforce. And while DOGE – the newly formed non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency to be headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy – has been the talk of Washington, it faces severe limits in its attempts to affect systemic reform. No less than 60% of the government’s $6.8 trillion budget is “non-discretionary” and largely untouchable because it is devoted to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the exploding national debt, now more than $36 trillion. Another 13% is devoted to defense, which Trump has pledged to increase. Thus, Musk’s stated goal of cutting $2 trillion in unnecessary federal spending will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.
However, taking an axe to the bloated budget ultimately figures to have less permanent impact than Trump’s audacious plans to alter the federal government’s modus operandi and its entrenched culture. The linchpin for his game-changing reforms is reinstating the innocuous-sounding Schedule F, instituted by Trump in the waning days of his first term but immediately reversed by Joe Biden upon taking office. It will empower massive changes in the bureaucracy, re-classifying thousands of careerists as political appointees. It refers to a section of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, exempting some federal employees from civil service protections, specifically those “whose position has been determined to be of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating character.” Under Trump’s plan, the number of such employees would jump from roughly 4,000 to about 50,000, signaling a sea change in the way Washington does business.
The outgoing Biden administration, deeply fearful of Trump’s bold plans to upend the DC establishment, is working overtime to “Trump-proof” (as much as possible) the federal government, hoping to minimize the damage to its familiar and comfortable way of life.
The Downside of Schedule F
The danger inherent in Schedule F is the likelihood that the next Democratic president could use the same expanded executive control over the bureaucracy to reverse course from Trump and bring in committed progressives who could do even more damage than the present embedded bureaucrats. So, to make these plans stick beyond Trump’s next term, his administration might attempt to move one or more executive agencies out of Washington. This would wrench thousands of civil servants out of their comfort zone, likely leading to a significant number of resignations by those accustomed to life inside the DC beltway.
Despite setting a risky precedent that could backfire on Republicans in the years ahead, Trump is focused on the here and now, believing the addition of Schedule F will force permanent structural change on what has effectively become a fourth branch of government, namely, the administrative state. Everyday Americans have complained about federal bureaucratic hegemony for as long as we can remember, but now they will finally have a president in place with specific plans to do something about it.
The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.
Commercial real estate continues to suffer despite the Federal Reserve’s attempt at ameliorating the capital markets with a 50-basis point rate cut in September.
The pain is especially apparent in the so-called “CRE-CLO” bond market. CRE-CLO bonds are packaged commercial real estate mortgages comprising short-term floating rate loans. These bridge loans were recently, and most notably, used to facilitate the biggest apartment investment bubble in history, but were also used in financing other commercial real estate sectors including office, retail, hotel, industrial, and self-storage.
Most of the current batch of bridge loans originated in the 2020-2022 period—when benchmark rates were near zero and commercial real estate prices were peaking—and carried maturities of three to five years. Benchmark rates are now much higher, prices much lower, and property performance far worse than anticipated. Thus, a wall of maturities is staring borrowers, lenders, and bondholders in the face, all while underlying property performance disappoints.
Despite attempts by lenders to extend and pretend—kicking the can down the road in the short term to avoid defaults until the Federal Reserve lowers rates enough to bail them out—their delusions of reprieve may be fading fast.
Apartment Investors Play Checkers Instead of Chess
At the end of Q3, the distress rate for CRE-CLO loans across all commercial real estate sectors reached 13.1 percent, an all-time high. Distress in this instance is defined as any loan reported 30 days or more delinquent, past the maturity date, in special servicing (typically due to a drop in occupancy or a failure to meet certain performance criteria), or any combination thereof.
Figure 1
While roughly one in seven loans meets these criteria, the weakness is concentrated in two or three sectors.
Unsurprisingly, office properties have the highest rate of distress, with nearly one in five CRE-CLO office loans experiencing current distress. This is to be expected after the covid panic of 2020, subsequent to which various “work-from-home” directives essentially made the office market obsolete.
For similar reasons, distress is also high in the retail segment, as all but the most well-heeled retailers were forced under by the maniacal and criminal government edicts of the time.
However, the real story here is in the apartment, or multifamily, sector. Seen in Figure 1, the distress rate for apartments touched 16.4 percent in August. An astonishing number, indicating that one in six apartment bridge loans were distressed. The improvement to 13.7 percent shown for September is seasonal, as renters settle in at the start of the school year.
While this picture is bad enough, the reality under the surface is far worse. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, using Q2 data from MSCI, the batch of currently distressed apartment bridge loans comprise roughly $14 billion in total loans, but there exists an additional $81 billion in potentially distressed loans. MSCI categorizes loans as “potentially distressed” if they have seen delinquent payments, forbearance (when the lender lets interest payments accrue rather than taking a default action), or where key performance metrics like occupancy and net operating income are dangerously low.
Figure 2
The arithmetically-aware will note that if the $14 billion of currently distressed apartment bridge loans comprise a roughly 14 percent distress rate at the end of Q2 (as shown in Figure 1) and there are an additional $81 billion in potentially distressed loans not yet categorized as “currently distressed” (as shown in Figure 2), then MSCI data implies that 95 percent of all apartment bridge loans are either currently distressed or in imminent danger of distress.
While astounding, this level of distress will come as no surprise to veterans of the apartment market. In the 2020-22 period, bridge loans of this variety were ubiquitous above a certain minimum loan size. And, because of the extreme and reckless nature of money printing undertaken by the Federal Reserve during this time—when interest rates were effectively zero—lenders underwrote property acquisitions with a 1.0x debt service coverage ratio (“DSCR”), meaning the initial net operating income of the property was projected to just cover interest payments, with nothing left over.
Bridge loan interest rates floated at a spread (typically around 350 basis points, or 3.5 percent) to the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (“SOFR”), which was essentially 0 percent until mid-2022. Because of the 1.0x DSCR standard, a property acquired during this period that had net operating income of $1 million would have also had interest payments of $1 million at the then-prevailing interest rate of 3.5 percent.
SOFR is now 4.9 percent, indicating a total interest rate of 8.4 percent (SOFR + 3.5 percent spread). This same property now has interest payments of $2.4 million while net operating income is unlikely to have increased to any significant extent, if at all. Insurance and property tax increases in particular have damaged apartment profitability while rent increases have been difficult to execute in the face of stagnating real wages. By the same token, absurdly optimistic renovation plans have been impossible in the face of cash flows increasingly shunted towards paying interest.
The Amazing Disappearing Rate Cut
The high amount of potential distress in CRE-CLO bonds, and the loans that underlie them, indicate an expectation on the part of lenders that help is coming in the form of lower interest rates. After all, capital markets have become used to being bailed out by the Federal Reserve, all but demanding that the taxpayer—not they—be held responsible for their poor decisions. Nevertheless, the Fed’s recent rate cut is proving not to be the magic bullet on which lenders relied.
By August of this year, futures markets had fully priced in a 25-50 basis point Fed rate cut in September, and were expecting additional 25 basis point cuts in November and December. This expectation for the Fed Funds Rate carried over into Treasury yields, a key benchmark for the commercial real estate industry. Particularly important in the case of distressed bridge loans since any hopes of refinancing are placed not on more bridge loans—which are now much less pervasive—but on the fixed-rate agency market comprising Fannie- and Freddie-backed apartment loans, which prices loans off a spread to treasuries.
At the beginning of August, as markets priced in 75-100 bps of Fed rate cuts by year-end, 10-year Treasury yields reacted accordingly, dropping from 4.30 percent in late July (they had been 4.70 percent in April) to 3.65 percent in the middle of September. As of early November, most of that move had been erased—with yields back near 4.30 percent—roughly where they were prior to market pricing in this year’s Fed rate cuts.
Fear and Trembling
Undeniably, participants in the commercial real estate market—apartment bridge lenders in particular—are relying on loose monetary policy for their immediate salvation. They may get their wish. While Treasury rates have moved stubbornly higher, market forces only mean so much if the Fed decides to supplement rate cuts with purchases of treasuries, driving yields lower—another round of quantitative easing.
Nevertheless, to the extent they’re allowed to be heard, market signals are unmistakable. A regime that can’t stop spending and continues to appropriate the property of its citizens through inflation will provide upward pressure on Treasury yields, all else equal. In a free market context, the rent-seekers that comprise the commercial real estate market will have to work out their own salvation.
Israel Lifts Restrictions In Northern Israel As Ceasefire Holds; Hezbollah Chief Claims ‘Victory’
The Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire began four days ago, and has held enough to where for the fist time in more than a year tens of thousands of Israelis who’ve remained forcibly evacuated form their homes in the north can return to assess the situation.
The IDF Home Front Command on Saturday announced for the first time in many months that it is easing restrictions in northern Israel, allowing larger gatherings and for schools to finally reopen, in the clearest indicator so far that the ceasefire is holding and both sides are taking it seriously.
“Under the changes, schools in the northern frontier communities and the north Golan Heights will now be able to operate if adequate shelter can be reached in time,” Israeli media writes.
All restrictions previously in place throughout all areas of the country have now been lifted, which was approved by Defense Minister Israel Katz. Some 80,000 Israelis had been displaced by daily Hezbollah rocket and drone fire in the north.
On the other side of the border, tens of thousands of previously displaced Lebanese have been viewing their homes and communities for the first time in months. The opening couple days of the ceasefire, which took effect early on Nov.27, saw reports of some intermittent fire – especially from the Israeli side.
The 60-day US and French-brokered ceasefire has been widely viewed as off to a successful start, ending over 14 months of cross-border fire between Iran-linked Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Despite the assassinations of its upper-tier leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah who died in an Israeli airstrike on September 27, the new head of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, claimed ‘victory’ in the war. Yet Hezbollah’s top command ranks have been devastated, suffering historic losses after over two months of bombs falling on Beirut.
Still, he hailed that the group had achieved a “divine victory” in a Friday speech. “To those that were betting that Hezbollah would be weakened, we are sorry, their bets have failed,” he said.
But he also pledged that the ceasefire deal with Israel will be upheld, and that Hezbollah leadership had agreed to it “with heads held high.” Qassem explained Hezbollah had “approved the deal, with the resistance strong in the battlefield, and our heads held high with our right to defend [ourselves].”
A Reuters report at the end of this week claimed that Hezbollah’s internal numbers are that it lost 4,000 of its fighters, which is a much higher tally than what the Lebanese government lists.
But what is very evident is that the death and destruction surpasses even the 2006 Lebanon war, which up till this year was the deadliest on Lebanese soil in the last several decades.
From a federal government operating far beyond the bounds of the Constitution to law enforcement agencies routinely entering private property without warrants, tyranny takes many forms in the United States. However, few are as shocking to the sensibilities as civil asset forfeiture, the controversial practice that empowers police to seize money, cars, trucks, houses or anything else they merely accuse of having a link to criminal activity — regardless of whether the property owner is charged with a crime.
Civil asset forfeiture is an affront to anyone who’s sincerely committed to the American justice system’s cornerstone presumption of innocence. With law enforcement typically keeping some or all of the assets that are seized, the practice has rightly been called “policing for profit.”
I’ve previously examined the raw tyranny of civil asset forfeiture, spotlighting the story of a Mississippi man who took $42,300 in cash to Houston with the intent of buying a second semi truck for his fledgling trucking business, only to have it seized — or, in legal jargon, “forfeited” — by Harris County police, who pulled him over for allegedly following the vehicle in front of him too closely.
Now I’m compelled to share a new example of this legalized theft — the most brazenly unjust and opportunistic one I’ve encountered yet: In an ongoing, multi-million-dollar racket in Indianapolis, police are routinely seizing cash they find in FedEx packages that happen to be routed through that company’s second-largest hub.
Like bears wading into a river teeming with salmon, state and local Indiana police officers routinely stride up to the conveyer belts at FedEx’s sprawling Indianapolis facility, where tens of thousands of packages flow by every hour, pouncing when they see a package with traits that meet their absurdly broad definition of “suspicious.”
Review the criteria and you’ll quickly conclude you’ve sent and received many “suspicious” packages yourself. Supposedly damning attributes include:
A box that’s taped on all its seams — something FedEx itself recommends
A box that’s new
A package that was dropped off at a FedEx shipping center
A shipment paid by credit card, or “possibly by cash,” or by “unknown means” — a trio of criteria that seems to cover every possible means of payment.
A package being sent to or from a so-called “source state” — a state that police consider a prominent conduit of illegal drugs. Depending on the law enforcement agency, that could encompass, among others, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. That sample list alone accounts for 29% of the US population.
After plucking a package from the FedEx stream, police present it to a K-9. If the dog alerts — which dogs have been found to do unjustifiably up to 66% or more of the time — police obtain a warrant to open it. While they often find no drugs, they’re all too happy when they find cash, which is confiscated and held as prosecutors file suit for the government to take permanent ownership.
In April of this year, Henry and Minh Cheng, who run a mom-and-pop jewelry wholesaling business in Los Angeles, were caught in Indiana’s unconscionable web, as police confiscated $42,825 in a FedEx package en route to them from a retailer in Virginia. The retailer had been slow to pay for jewelry the Chengs had shipped to them in January. When the Chengs followed up on the invoice, the retailer offered to pay immediately via cash. In a fateful move, the Chengs obtained a FedEx shipping label and transmitted it to the Virginia retailer.
“The next thing I know is the police and the prosecutor [are] forfeiting my money…based solely on suspicions,” Henry Cheng told Los Angeles station ABC7. “They didn’t even name the crime that I’ve committed, because I know I have not committed any crime.”
Consistent with the inherent madness of civil asset forfeiture — in which property itself is put on trial — asset forfeiture cases are given bizarre case names such as “Nebraska v. One 1970 2-Door Sedan Rambler (Gremlin).” The case in which Indiana seeks ownership of the Chengs’ seized cash is “State of Indiana v. $42,825.00 in US Currency.”
It’s bad enough when Indiana police seize cash out of a car they pull over for speeding somewhere in the state, baselessly assuming the money played some unknown role in the violation of Indiana law. However, in their exploitation of the FedEx facility, Indiana police are typically taking cash that’s only in Indiana because FedEx’s logistical algorithms routed it there rather than through another FedEx hub.
(When asked by Stark Realities if the police presence at the facility requires FedEx’s consent, the company declined comment. FedEx likewise chose not to say if it was concerned about customers’ property being seized by police without any specific allegation of a crime.)
The Marion County Prosecutor’s Office has sued to confiscate currency in FedEx packages traveling to and from states other than Indiana at least 130 times in just the past two years, never identifying any specific violation of Indiana law that’s the basis for the asset forfeiture. The prosecutor’s complaint typically only alleges that “the seized currency was furnished or was intended to be furnished in exchange for a violation of a criminal statute, or is traceable as proceeds of a violation of a criminal statute, in violation of Indiana law” — which is utterly implausible given the money was merely being shipped through the state, and not at the direction of the shipper or receiver.
Civil asset forfeiture places a daunting burden on those are victimized by it, forcing them to spend time and money navigating the government’s house of mirrors in an attempt to prove their money or property wasn’t associated with a crime. In many cases, victims of this legalized theft find the situation hopelessly complex and expensive, and simply give up. That demoralizing dynamic is compounded where the Indianapolis FedEx hub is concerned, as victims often live several hundred or even thousands of miles away.
Fortunately for the Chengs and hundreds of other victims of Indiana’s FedEx trap, their plight is now the focus of a class action lawsuit filed on their behalf by the Institute for Justice — a non-profit, public interest law firm that’s represented civil asset forfeiture victims across the country. Among other wrongs, the suit asserts that the police seizures of FedEx packages violate the US Constitution’s guarantees of due process, and the Indiana Constitution’s prohibition against prosecuting alleged crimes that occur outside Indiana.
“This scheme is one of the most predatory we have seen, and it’s past time to put a stop to it,” said Institute for Justice attorney Sam Gedge when the suit was filed. “It’s illegal and unconstitutional for Indiana to forfeit in-transit money whose only connection to Indiana is the happenstance of FedEx’s shipping practices.”
Perhaps seeking to thwart the class action suit, the Marion County prosecutor’s office last week said it would give the lead plaintiff Chengs their money back — some seven months after taking it without articulating any specific violation of Indiana law. The suit will proceed, however, with Institute for Justice lawyers asking the court to bar the state of Indiana and Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears from initiating currency forfeitures like the one that targeted the Chengs.
Reflecting on what police have done to him and continue doing to people across the country, Henry Cheng’s sentiments echo those of many Americans upon first learning about civil asset forfeiture: “I am just totally stunned that this can happen in America.”
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Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
Kremlin Warns Biden It Will Mount Response To ‘Each’ Use Of US-Supplied Missiles
The Kremlin has communicated to the Biden administration that its forces will hit back in major attacks on Ukrainian targets “each time” Russia is hit with US-supplied missiles.
President Putin “had warned that the authorization to use U.S. and other foreign-made missiles was an irresponsible and escalatory step,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a Friday briefing.
“And if these missiles are used, there will be an appropriate response every time,” he warned.
This new warning came after President Putin said Russia could hit “decision-making centers” in Kiev with the new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile, the Oreshnik. “As I have said repeatedly, there will always be a response from our side,” Putin stressed.
This past week began with days of record-setting drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, chiefly targeting the country’s energy infrastructure. This has left vast swathes of Ukraine without power, or else on a rolling blackout rationing system.
A Thursday overnight attack had additionally included 90 missiles and around 100 drones, according to Moscow’s description.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko has said the national power infrastructure was “under massive enemy attack.“
“Once again, the energy sector is under massive enemy attack. Attacks on energy facilities are taking place across Ukraine,” Galushchenko said.
Emergency power outages have been confirmed in the regions of Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Donetsk. Ukrenergo said it “urgently introduced emergency power cuts,” as temperatures hover at around 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Mate, let’s face it. We’re waging a proxy war!”
Boris Johnson states unambiguously that Britain is engaged in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/pJTswKDi0p
Outside of Ukraine, a ‘dirty war’ and NATO escalation is taking shape. The below is a summary of events via Al Jazeera:
Russia is waging a “staggeringly reckless campaign” of sabotage in Europe, while also stepping up its nuclear sabre-rattling to scare other countries off from backing Ukraine, the head of the United Kingdom’s MI6 foreign spy agency said.
Poland has deployed Leopard 2 battle tanks in Latvia to reinforce the NATO brigade there.
German defence giant Rheinmetall and Lithuania signed deals to begin construction of a $190m ammunition plant to make artillery shells in the country.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius wants to order four new submarines to help meet NATO’s security requirements in Europe, a parliamentary budget committee source told the AFP news agency.
Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency has warned of possible attempts by other states to influence the upcoming federal election.
When President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House on January 20, he will certainly have his hands full on the diplomatic front, if he hopes to negotiate a quick end to the war – as currently the conflict is only growing.
The 2024 presidential election may be remembered as the moment Americans abandoned the issues that defined the post-Cold War era and formed new political coalitions based on class, some experts say.
President-elect Donald Trump solidified his hold on the working class in his second electoral victory, even as voters with higher incomes and education levels moved to the left. Whether those shifts will be permanent depends largely on how both parties respond to the emerging politics of class, according to analysts.
Some believe Democrats can recapture their historic working-class base by listening to the voters who have been drifting away from their party for a decade and crafting a new liberal vision based more on class than on race, gender, or social issues.
Republicans, on the other hand, might keep this new party configuration together if they deliver on the promises that won the majority while forming a governing philosophy based on Trump’s America First agenda without alienating traditional Republicans of the Reagan-Bush era.
Here’s what happened in 2024 and what it means for both parties.
Voters Moved in Both Directions
The composition of the major political parties has been shifting since 2012, but that shift reached a tipping point in 2024. The movement was seen most clearly in working-class voters, who supported Trump in even greater numbers than in 2016 and 2020.
Analysts commonly use education and income levels as indicators of class identity. By both measures, working-class voters across racial lines shifted right.
Education and Income
College graduates favored Republican candidates in every election from 1988 through 2004. That began to change in 2008 when President Barack Obama earned 50 percent of the college vote. The shift accelerated in 2016 when Democrats gained 55 percent of the vote among college graduates and held a majority for the next two elections. In 2024, 53 percent of voters with a Bachelor’s degree voted for Harris, as did 59 percent of those holding an advanced degree, exit polls showed.
Over the same period, voters who never attended college, a traditional mainstay of the Democratic coalition, increasingly voted Republican. In 2016, 46 percent of voters having a high school education or less voted Republican, which was consistent with the two previous election cycles. By 2024, the number of Republican voters who never attended college had risen to 63 percent, the polls revealed.
A similar migration occurred in terms of income. In 2012, 60 percent of voters with household incomes less than $50,000 voted Democrat. By 2024, that number had dropped below half.
At the same time, a majority of voters from households earning more than $100,000 per year favored the Democratic candidate for the first time since the data was tracked in 1988. The Republican share from this group in 2024 was 46 percent, the lowest ever.
Race, Gender, Religion
Minorities’ support for Democratic candidates has been strong since the 1970s, reaching a high point in 2008 with the election of Obama. Since then, however, the dropoff has been significant, especially among black and Hispanic men.
Support for Democrats by black voters fell from a high of 95 percent in 2008 to 85 percent in 2024. The drop was greatest among black men, 77 percent of whom voted for the Democratic candidate in 2024, the same percentage as in 1972. Black women, the most reliable Democratic voters, voted 91 percent for Vice President Kamala Harris, 5 percent lower than for Obama in 2008.
Hispanic support for the Democrats hovered around 65 percent for over 40 years. In 2024, the level dropped by 13 percentage points. The decline was more pronounced among Hispanic men. Just 43 percent of them voted Democratic this year, a lower percentage than that of white women.
Asian voters supported the Democratic candidate by 73 percent in 2012. That number dropped steadily over the next three cycles, reaching 54 percent in 2024.
Muslim voters, 74 percent of whom had supported Democrats in 2016 and 69 percent in 2020, all but abandoned the party in 2024, according to exit polling conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. That was due largely to the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Only 20 percent of Muslim voters chose Harris. In Michigan, home to the nation’s highest concentration of Muslim Americans, the number was 14 percent.
Regional Shifts
Shifts in the electorate by class and race in 2024 were significant enough to create movement, if not a landslide, in regional voting patterns.
The Blue Wall of industrial states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, had been solidly Democratic in presidential elections from 1992 until 2016, when Trump won all three. Though President Joe Biden rebuilt that wall in 2020, Trump again carried those states again in 2024.
Trump also eroded Democratic support in traditional party strongholds like New York, New Jersey, and California. While Harris carried all three by a comfortable margin, she gained a smaller share of the vote than either Biden in 2020 or Hillary Clinton in 2016.
In Wayne County, Michigan, home to Detroit, Harris drew about 38,000 fewer votes than Biden did in 2020. In Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, Harris received about 36,000 fewer votes than Biden had. In Queens County, New York, the deficit was nearly 165,000, and in Los Angeles County, California, it was 621,000.
“Harris, in Democratic strongholds in Michigan and Pennsylvania, simply underperformed Biden’s vote totals,” Ken Kollman, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, told The Epoch Times.
Though Harris still won those counties by a large margin, the erosion of support in traditionally strong democratic areas fueled Trump’s victory, according to Kollman.
According to William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the upshot of these shifts is that class has again become a powerful force in electoral politics.
“We are witnessing the emergence of a new politics of class,” Galston said in a Nov. 12 panel hosted by the Brookings Institution. “Class, defined as educational attainment, dominates the scene in the United States and throughout the industrialized world.”
This new reality undercuts assumptions that have informed both parties for decades, and experts say both will need to make adjustments before the next election.
Democrats: Listen, Reimagine
Self-reflective statements by Democrats in the wake of the election have centered on the need to listen to voters.
“The country wanted change, and the vice president’s campaign decided they would not offer that,” longtime Democratic strategist James Carville said in a PBS interview on Nov. 13.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, the historian and Democratic commentator, focused on the need to reengage the people who have given the party its strength for generations.
“The most important thing that the Democrats have to take away from this loss is that they lost the working class base, and that’s been the foundation of the Democratic Party ever since FDR,” Goodwin said in a Fox News interview on Nov. 8. “I think the working class felt invisible. They felt forgotten.”
David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, told The Epoch Times that Democrats should talk to real working-class people.
“More importantly, go out and listen to them,” he said.
Economics Trumps Identity
A likely takeaway from those conversations, Schultz said, could be that identity politics seems less important to working-class voters than basic questions of economic survival.
“Hispanics, at the end of the day, are saying, ‘We want jobs. We’re not thrilled about illegal immigration, and we want higher wages.’” Schultz said, noting that this does not conform to the general perception of “Hispanic issues.”
Gabriel Sanchez, a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico, reached a similar conclusion.
“Overwhelmingly, the economy is what Latino men have actually been talking about for three election cycles in a row,” Sanchez said in the Nov. 12 panel discussion.
That may be, in part, because Hispanics are a diverse group comprising a mix of national origins and cultures. As a result, “they do not have nearly as strong a sense of linked fate,” Aaron Dusso, a professor of political science at Indiana University Indianapolis, told The Epoch Times, referring to the sense of common identity and interests that characterizes some demographic groups.
The sense of linked fate is more pronounced among black Americans, according to Dusso. Yet an increasing share of black men voted Republican in the 2024 presidential election—for a fourth consecutive time. And that was despite direct appeals to black men from both Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, to vote for Harris based on their identity.
One explanation for that shift may be that younger blacks seem less concerned with the civil rights issues of a previous generation and more concerned with economic opportunity.
Lorenzo Sewell, a Detroit-area pastor who spoke at the Republican National Convention, said his decision to support Trump was rooted in disappointment with the economic results of Democratic leadership for the black community.
Noting that many are routinely forced to choose between paying rent, repairing their car, or paying child support, Sewell told the Epoch Times, “We’ve had Democrats running this city for 56 years. I’m not saying Democrats are wrong. I’m just asking, ‘Where’s the change?’”
Harris campaigned heavily on a promise to protect access to abortion as a civil right. Democrats had success with that issue on several state ballot initiatives after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Yet in the presidential contest, Harris drew the smallest share of the women’s vote, 53 percent, since 2004. Trump, with 45 percent, received the highest share of the women’s vote by any Republican since President George H.W. Bush.
“It’s a clear indication to me that, ultimately, the Dobbs decision is not going to have a political effect,” Dusso said.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi has announced the deployment of 600 additional police officers to Milan, citing concerns over integration challenges and rising crime rates, particularly in areas with significant immigrant populations.
The announcement follows recent unrest in the Corvetto district, where a 19-year-old Egyptian resident, Ramy Elgaml, died in a road accident after a police chase, sparking mass protests by the considerable immigrant population.
During a meeting on security with Milan’s prefect Claudio Sgaraglia and Police Chief Vittorio Pisani, Piantedosi confirmed that the reinforcements, planned before the Corvetto unrest, will enhance territorial control and improve public safety.
He offered damning statistics on the disproportionate involvement immigrants have in committing crime, noting that 65 percent of all offenses in the city are committed by foreign nationals despite representing 20 percent of all residents.
“These figures highlight integration challenges that must be addressed to reduce marginalization and its consequences,” Piantedosi stated. He denied comparisons to the recent Parisian suburban riots, calling them “very exaggerated,” but acknowledged that the Corvetto unrest signals issues requiring attention.
The Italian minister criticized the reliance on issuing residence permits as a solution to integration issues, pointing out the need for more comprehensive measures. He highlighted efforts already underway, noting over 40 high-impact operations and 162 arrests in Corvetto this year, but accepted that much more needed to be done.
“The second-most important city in Italy after Rome deserves all the attention it can get,” he added.
Milan’s left-wing mayor Beppe Sala echoed the need for investments in public housing and community centers to foster integration and accepted that the Italian city can no longer be considered a safe place to live.
“I won’t claim Milan is a safe city, but it is making an effort to address challenges faced by all international cities,” he said.
Sala claimed that migrant crime was a result of shortcomings in creating spaces for young immigrants to engage positively within their communities, linking the lack of such centers to increased alienation in the suburbs.
With over 60,000 public housing units out of Milan’s 800,000 apartments, Sala described the distribution as “disproportionate,” emphasizing the importance of equitable urban planning.
Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, whose League party first made its name in the northern Italian city and the surrounding area, remarked on the meeting in a post on X.
“Minister Piantedosi’s data are crystal clear. Yet for the left, it is a non-problem, they seek justifications to the point of falsifying reality,” he wrote.
“Woe to anyone who criticizes the dogma of indiscriminate reception at all costs, woe to anyone who criticizes environments in which foreign crime thrives in our cities, woe to anyone who wants to harshly apply the law to intervene in an increasingly unsustainable situation,” he quipped.
Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar Rocked By Fears Over Fake $50 And $100 Bills
Fears of counterfeit $50 and $100 bills have disrupted foreign-exchange trade at Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, the nation’s largest currency trading gray market.
According to the state-run Anadolu Agency, some bureaus at the bazaar, a hub for currency trading, stopped purchasing the bills, saying the counting machines they use can’t identify the fake notes.
“The number of counterfeit dollars isn’t clear,” Anadolu cited Resat Yilmaz, a tradesman at the Bazaar, as saying. “These bills have to be collected, which can take two weeks.” Money-counting machines also have to be updated, he added.
A representative for currency traders said the disruption has no basis and “there’s no fake currency” in circulation. He blamed banks for what he said was a “clogging” of trading.
“Banks should accept old dollar bills. Currently, no bank is doing that,” Mehti Seren, head of the Association of All Authorized Institutions and Foreign Exchange Offices, said in a press conference. “Clients are then returning the dollars to us. That’s what’s clogging the system.”
The central bank said it’s sent warnings and expert opinions about the fake bills to banking associations.
“The necessary guidance on precautions to be taken regarding the technological infrastructure has been made,” the bank said in a statement. Bill counters, bill checkers and teller machines are being controlled and updated, the Turkish Banks Association said in a separate statement.
The prosecutor’s office in Istanbul launched an investigation, Anadolu said. The counterfeit bills entered Turkey from abroad, Haberturk reported, citing sources it didn’t identify.
