November 30—President-elect Donal Trump has announced his intention to appoint fervent loyalist and election-denier Kash Patel as director of the nation's leading law enforcement agency. The 44-year-old Patel, in an interview with fellow Trump loyalist Steve Bannon, promised to "come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections." In another interivew Patel promsied to shut down the FBI's Washington HQ, dispersing it's 7,000 staff around the country and turning the building into a "museum of the deep state."

November 22—In the UK, where a social democratic Labour government won an absolute majority in Parliament after 14 years of conservative Tory rule, we social democrats have a wonderful window on a real-world attempt to implement social democratic government in a society much like our own. A recent measure to tax inheritances on the richest family farms, with estates valued in the multi-millions, has led to tractor convoys blocking the roads around Parliament and a media circus. TSD opines that it will not be until a critical mass of the public (and a significant slice of the press) adopts a social democratic mindset that true progress can be made. This will require a major effort, likely taking decades, to counter the stale every-man-for-himself mentality that has been fostered for so long by entrenched interests. Three article form the Guardian (links just below) look at the issue.

November 23—The nations of the world, meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan at the latest iteration of the COP climate talks, have agreed to allot $300 billion to developing nations to help them both mitigate the effects of climate change and to implement strategies to move away from fossil fuel consumption. The developing nations have expressed their dissatisfaction, expecting a considerably greater commitment on the part of the developed nations, like the United States, which have been chiefly responsible for the CO² emissions which cause global warming.

November 26—In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, Democrat-dominated jurisdictions around the country elected "progressive" DAs who promised to lower incarceration rates of Americans racialized as "Black." In order to do so, these newly elected DAs ended practices like cash bail and extended sentences for dangerous individuals, refused to try older adolescents, even those convicted of heinous acts of violence, as adults, and completely forewent the prosecution of entire swaths of lesser criminal acts. The result has been major upticks in crime in such localities as San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York and an outraged citizenry. Democrats are still learning, at their peril, that crime is not a partisan issue. All Americans, with the exception of the criminally minded, want to be able to walk the streets of their neighborhoods in safety and, if they are shop owners, to sell their wares without being robbed.

November 26—A key aspect of the Democrats' losses in the recent elections was the continuing desertion of working men and women from the Democratic fold. This movement includes even union members, who blame Democrats for NAFTA and other free-trade measures which resulted in the loss of millions of union jobs to overseas producers, with many union members also finding the "woke" discourse of the coastal elites (and Democratic Party officials) off-putting. In a sign of the times, both the Teamsters and the International Association of Firefighters declined to endorse Kamala Harris. Meanwhile Donald Trump, with a long history of bashing unions, reached out to organized labor; and in another surprising move has named a pro-union congresswoman, Lori Chavez-DeRemer as the incoming administration's labor secretary. Will the rest of the modern Republican Party, viscerally hostile to organized labor, follow Trump's lead, instituting a new era of a labor-friendly (or at least not a labor-averse) GOP? TSD will be watching closely.

November 26—In the face of Trump Supreme Court rullings calling into question race-based preferences in college admissions, hiring and other areas, U.S. Corporations are rapidly dismantling DEI programs and other race-based measures. TSD has long argued for an end to racializing Americans (see, on this site, "America's Tortured Discourse on Race"), but argues that the end of programs designed to help Americans racialized as "Black" overcome the sequelae of centuries of unfair treatment must be accompanied by (1) a reasonable plan of reparations, and (2) the implementation of a fulsome social democracy based upon the values of solidarity and inclusion.

November 25—Immigration policy is extrinsic to the social democratic project: that is, social democracy is essentially about how a society is organized internally and has nothing to say, one way or the other, about how a nation decides to admit, or not admit, foreign nationals. Nonetheless, immigration has become an indelible part of the U.S. political debate, and due to the large number (roughly 11 million) of undocumented immigrants living and working in the country, the issue has become inextrinsically woven into our discourse about what kind of nation we will be. About one-half of the nation's two million agricultural workers are undocumented immigrants. In the face of President-elect Trump's pledge of mass deportations, major industry groups representing agriculture are calling on the incoming administration to exempt their workforce from any deportation plan.

November 26—One of the key departures of the Biden Administration from recent American norms is its embrace of "industrial policy," that is, the use of government authority and funding to encourage development of favored industrial sectors. Under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, the federal government has been extending loans and grants to key sectors, including computer chips, green energy and electric vehicles. The latest tranche of such funding has been announced: a $6.6 billion loan to EV automaker Rivian to expand operations in Georgia.

November 15—Donald Trump has pledged to work to rescind the centerpiece of President Joe Biden's push both for a greener America and infrastructure modernization: the Inflation Reduction Act of 2021. In attempting to preserve the Act, which includes subsidies for clean energy projects, Democrats will find help from corporate America. Reuters reports that the U.S. utility industry, which benefits from the Act's tax credits for everything from energy transmission and storage to the development of hydrogen energy, is lobbying the incoming administration to retain the program. Meanwhile, manufacturers of electric vehicals and their components are lobbying for the maintenance of the IRA's EV tax credits, which are supporting major employment gains in many red states.

November 15—Congestion charges (charging motorists fees to drive within congested urban areas) are a wonderfull tool with multiple benefits. They make getting around by car easier for those who pay the fees; by reducing traffic, they increase safety and mobility for pedestrians; they reduce air pollution; and the revenue raised can be used to build out needed public transporation, which furthers all of the same goals. New York had planned to begin charging a $15 toll to drive south of 60th Street on June 30, but New York Governor Kathy Hochul paused implementation over concerns about inflation and the dissuasion of tourists. The revived plan, which reduces the toll to $9, must be approved by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

November 15—The Democratic Party's loss in November 5's balloting became total this week when previously pending results showed Republicans maintaining their majority in the House of Representatives. With 52 seats in the Senate (plus the vice-president's tie-breaking vote) and the presidency, there is no reason not to expect a severe rightward shift in federal law and regulation, at least for the next two years.

November 15—The Global Carbon Project reports that humans on Planet Earth are on a path to emit 330 million tons more heat-trapping carbon gases into the atmosphere in 2024 than in 2023, representing a point-8 percent increase. The increase is being driven mainly by China and developing nations like India, the world's third-biggest carbon emitter, which experienced a 4.6 percent increase over 2023. Emissions fell point-6 percent in the United States, which is responsible for 13 percent of world emissions. Bright spots included Japan, the UK and Europe, where cuts in coal use drove a 3.8 percent decrease.

November 15—The U.S. Constitution grants the president the power to appoint heads of executive-branch agencies with "the advice and consent of the Senate." The Founders allowed the president the authority to make "recess appointments" in order to fill vacancies while the Senate is not in session, a necessary provision in colonial times when it could take weeks for senators to travel to Washington. Such appointments end at the conclusion of the relevant Senate session: in the current case, 2026.

President-elect Donald Trump is leaning on Senate Republicans, and made it a litmus test in his endorsement for Senate majority leader, to go into recess at his bidding, so that he might bypass the separation or powers which is at the heart of the nation's founding document.

Democratic presidents, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have resorted to recess appointments, but none have attempted to so systematically bypass the process of advice and consent.

November 15—President-elect Donald Trump is running true to form with his initial cabinet picks, displaying a lack of appreciation for the qualifications required to manage massive federal agencies and his habitual penchant for people with wacky ideas. This AP article summarizes the current roster. 

November 10—An Illinois law banning the sale and distribution of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines has been declared unconstitutional by the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Illinois.  Judge Stephen McGlynn claimed to rely on a standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020: that gun-control laws must be "consistent with the nation's history and tradition of firearm regulations." TSD notes: for most of the nation's history it has had no tradition of regulating high-capacity assault weapons, which did not exist prior to the 1950s.