‘You’re just scum.’ The emotional high (or low?) point of last night’s Republican presidential debate: When Nikki Haley shot back at Vivek Ramaswamy after he’d cited her adult daughter for using TikTok.
■ The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes: “The insult was both apt and richly deserved.”
■ Ramaswamy cemented his rep as the candidate everyone loves to hate.
■ Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell says he was “unhinged, unserious and unpleasant” (gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters).
■ In a show co-sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition—and as a consequence largely concerned with foreign affairs—the candidates, in the words of NPR’s Sarah McCammon, “jockeyed to demonstrate their steadfast backing for the world’s only Jewish state.”
■ CNN analyst Stephen Collinson: “The five candidates … came up with at least five different positions about the extent to which abortion should be allowed and … whether the federal government or the states should adjudicate the issue” …
■ … including Tim Scott, who repeatedly and falsely condemned abortion law in Illinois, among other states …
■ … without getting challenged by the debate’s feckless moderators.
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “Maybe a dragon would have helped?”
■ Don’t expect much better from next month’s face-off, to be co-hosted by Fox refugee and NBC washout Megyn Kelly.
Trump’s ballot victory. Minnesota’s Supreme Court says that state’s presidential primary ballot can include Donald Trump, despite his nurturing of insurrectionists.
■ The legal fight now moves to Michigan.
■ Law professor Joyce Vance sounds a “boiling frog” warning about Trump’s reported plans for a second term.
‘A bad day for extremism.’ Historian Heather Cox Richardson reflects on Tuesday’s election results.
■ A more blunt assessment from Abortion, Every Day columnist Jessica Valenti: “Fuck you, we win.”
■ Across the nation, the AP reports, liberal and moderate candidates took control of school boards.
■ Popular Information notes that one race involving a Moms for Liberty troglodyte managed to turn one town blue for the first time in recent memory.
‘We have to be watched by bodyguards just to walk to our parents’ car. The bathroom doors are locked.’ A student at an Islamic school that WBEZ and the Sun-Times pointedly don’t name, in a suburb they also don’t identify, talks about life in the two weeks since the school received a letter threatening in violent detail to kill Palestinian American and Muslim kids.
■ The UN human rights chief says Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes.
■ The AP: “Israel says it will maintain ‘overall security responsibility’ for Gaza. What might that look like?”
■ Columnist Bess Kalb shares “Several Additional Facts About Jews!”
10 days. The Chicago City Council was poised today to vote on one of the nation’s most generous private-sector employee leave policies: At least five sick days and five vacation days, with payouts for unused leave at outfits with more than 100 workers.
■ Columnist Eric Zorn on chaos in the council: “What does an alder have to do to deserve censure, anyway?”
■ Charlie Pierce at Esquire: The U.S. House, which “refused to censure George Santos, who is under indictment,” censured Rep. Rashida Tlaib “for political speech plain and simple.”
Illinois Senate goes nuclear. In a move opposed by some environmental activists but championed as a way to cut the state’s carbon pollution, senators are sending the House a bill that would clear the way for small reactors designed to power contained sites like factories.
■ A nonprofit research group reports that the last 12 months were the hottest ever recorded on Earth.
Whoops. ProPublica says its trove of leaked IRS data reveals that celebrated investor Warren Buffett privately traded in stocks that his Berkshire Hathaway was buying and selling—possibly in violation of ethics policies he wrote himself.
■ Also from ProPublica: 20 farming families use more water from the Colorado River than some western states.
Hollywood hurrah. Pieces are finally in place for an end to the actors’ strike …
■ … setting the stage for a scramble to get production of TV shows and movies back on track.
AI alerts. Facebook parent Meta’s going to require political advertisers to disclose when they’ve used AI or other digital tools to create their pitches.
■ Google did the same in September.
■ GM’s recalling all its self-driving vehicles for a software update.
■ The Onion’s concocted an “exclusive interview with Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot.”
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