One great way to kill your populist youth movement is to require it in schools.

Something pieces like this miss -- and I don't see many talking about this -- is that our curriculum, at least at the high school level, has been so out of touch with the economy that most kids rightly question why they have said required course load. www.msn.com/en-us/news/u...

I forgot to mention, but last week on Dec. 2, I was sworn in as a board member for Upper Darby School District here in Pennsylvania. Proud to serve our community and looking forward to making an impact for our kids!

One of the few things I agree with him on; not only banning social media for youth but pushing tech away from classrooms. www.politico.com/news/2025/12...

He also did one for Bluey

A colleague used Gemini to put the new 2026 NatSec strategy into a Gen Z-friendly infographic.

UAE-backed separatist forces significantly expanded their control in south Yemen this week. For background on UAE policy in Yemen (objectives, who it supports, consequences) see my Survival article: The UAE & the War in Yemen: From Surge to Recalibration www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

In the 1920s the markets loved risky debt; now they seem to love risky gambling. No way this doesn't blow up in our faces. www.axios.com/2025/12/02/c...

Kash Patel must have forgotten to tell the American people this part yesterday. Must have slipped his mind.

BREAKING: CDC panel drops hepatitis B shot recommendation

NEW: Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba head Akram al Kaabi threatened on Dec. 3 to attack US Special Envoy to Iraq Mark Savaya in response to his “blatant interference in Iraqi affairs.” Iran Update, December 3, 2025: isw.pub/IranUpdate12... Other Key Takeaways ⬇️ (1/4)

using AI to generate custom children's books for my kiddos is a reminder of how dumb AI remains (also promise I gave $40 to them for the book fair this week, we still want and read real books)

If Trump does attack Venezuela, I give it a few weeks of fireworks and civilian casualties before Trump unilaterally ends the war he started and calls it peace.

OPINION: By Evan Ellis, Latin America Research Professor, US Army War College.

If the U.S. attacks Venezuela, the U.S. must have a ground option to actually oust Maduro; as far as I can tell, it doesn't have a credible one (15k Marines is not enough for 28 million people). Unless they have an insider army, the air campaign will look a lot like Yemen's earlier this year --

68% OF US CONSUMERS NOW LIVE PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK, UP FROM ~60% TWO YEARS AGO — AND 24.3% SAY THEY STRUGGLE TO PAY THEIR BILLS

Israeli helicopter aviation fires intensively east of Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip - local reports

This would be a big deal in another era. Now I'm not so sure; right-wing media will bury it, GOP will stay loyal.

The days of thanking veterans today and forgetting them tomorrow has to come to an end.

Breaking WSJ: Fannie Mae watchdogs who were removed from their jobs had been probing if Trump appointee Bill Pulte had improperly obtained mortgage records of key Democratic officials, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to people familiar with the matter.

Per multiple sources: Both House Democrats and Senate Republicans have closed door meetings at 4 p.m. today as the Pennsylvania state budget hits 134 days late. Details of what will be discussed therein is still unclear.

This is a good take because it hits on the reality of our modern political age: voters are holding the White House responsible for everything, mostly the bad things. As a result, one term presidencies very well be our thing until the 2040s.

Tucked into a spending bill that is part of the deal to end the government shutdown is a provision that would allow GOP senators to personally sue the federal government for as much as $500K over Special Counsel Jack Smith’s lawful search of their phone records. talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...

One important result of the Dems' surrender on the shutdown: It is already producing a rebellion from the party's base. Which is a good thing! Anger is the most powerful force in politics. I explore in my latest for Public Notice: www.publicnotice.co/p/shutdown-d...

I've decided she's smiling

The subtle ? is doing a lot of work here. www.politico.com/news/2025/11...

This is a huge deal -- U.S.-UK intelligence sharing is a cornerstone of the Five Eyes alliance. And it suggests Trump's policies are pulling apart one of the most successful intelligence alliances in Western history.

The indictment of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu is a textbook example of how hybrid regimes operate: elections continue, but the field is tilted beyond recognition. It’s a sobering signal for Turkey — and for other democracies, including the US - that is under threat. apnews.com/article/turk...

Someone is genuinely pitching this for Gaza reconstruction.

This informal truce will hold so long as the 'war' in Gaza is frozen. The Houthis took need to assess how to take advantage of the narrative war to consolidate their position in the north, battered as it was by Israeli-American bombings.

The Chair Company episode 5 was exactly as unhinged as I needed this week.

Pathetic to the point of disqualifying. Leave the game. You have failed. You don't get it. You are wrong on the facts, wrong on the analysis, and wrong on strategy.

“.. The Supreme Court has already rejected Maxwell’s appeal to her conviction, meaning Trump’s pardon could be her only clear means to escape her decadeslong sentence.” @politico.com www.politico.com/news/2025/11...

KILMEADE: Schumer says he's voting no. Did you do this outside leadership? SHAHEEN: No. We kept leadership informed throughout.

Chuck Schumer Helps Pull Democrats Back From Brink Of Courage

I agree; yes, the shutdown would have nuked Thanksgiving, but it might have also nuked the useless filibuster and forced the Republicans to fully own their 'defund healthcare' ideology. Primary them out.

MSNBC reported Schumer's office felt that the longer that shutdown went on, the more likely it was that people would start to blame the Dems. My kingdom for Democrats that don't govern out of fear. I've said it before and I'll say it again: The American people are far braver than their reps.

“If you want to shoot without restraint, you can,” Daniel, the commander of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank unit, says in Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War, due to be broadcast in the UK on ITV on Monday evening.

At the moment any Dem who voted to reopen without an ACA victory should be targeted for a primary.

Dems backed Trump into a corner where he’s advocating for starving Americans and hemorrhaging support. If they vote to let him off the hook in exchange for nothing it’s a cataclysmic failure. I know people are in pain but insulating Republicans from political consequences is not the answer.

It's not smart to cave on the ACA. The base deserves a win and this is what we want.

All of this is going to get messier and the main question elected Democrats need to decide is which side of this building anger are they on? Because they can either help lead the groundswell of opposition or they can be a target alongside their Republican colleagues but they don’t get to opt out.

I suspect that a lot of people will find Mamdani's uncompromising progressivism much more appealing than a centrism that appears to think we should calculate our moral stances on the basis of whether we expect them to bump us 1 or 2 points in the polls. www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-cas...

The president seems to have been briefed on how the tariffs oral argument at SCOTUS went:

This morning, I spoke at the SOMOS Labor Breakfast. "We are not looking to remake New York City in my image. We are looking to remake it in the image of struggling workers across the five boroughs."

Lost in the (important) national stories, I'd like to share a local triumph: in Upper Darby, PA, we finished a job decades in the making, and completely swept city council. We (including me!) took the school board too.

List of countries Trump has threatened with military action: Canada, Greenland/Denmark, Venezuela, Iran, Gaza, Russia, and Mexico. To little real effect. The rhetoric tries to make headlines and but little else. Even in Iran, the bombings so far have only reinforced a tense status quo.

Miami Herald is reporting that Trump has decided to strike Venezuela. We've seen two Trumpian military campaigns this year already (Yemen, Iran): both times they were heavy on air power, short on time, and inconclusive. Will Venezuela be the same? www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-...

I hope someone with deeper expertise than me sees this; this is from the ICE website, does it really show that ICE was *more* effective under Biden than under Trump?

Bob Yantorno, a Republican candidate for a seat on Upper Darby’s Township Council, is facing scrutiny over material he posted three years ago that Democrats have decried as racist.