Year-End Clearance: Some News Items That Shouldn’t Be Left Behind

In no particular order:

STOP THE CLOCK: The Supreme Court will on January 10th decide whether a controversial ban on the social media app TikTok, signed by President Biden in April of last year and about to take effect January 19th, violates the First Amendment. But Donald Trump’s lawyers have submitted a brief to the Court asking that their hearing be postponed until after Trump is inaugurated the day after, January 20th, so that the then-president can negotiate a compromise.

"President Trump alone possesses the consummate deal-making expertise, the electoral mandate and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the government”

A baffled MSNBC host Christina Ruffini asked,

"Does the president even have standing to do this? And what kind of a motion is this? Is this an amicus brief, a writ? I don't know what this is. Can he just involve himself in a case that he is not, you know, a party to?"

But Trump appointed three out of the nine justices, so he thinks he, still just a citizen, has a right to special deference.

THE GREAT ONE: It rises majestically to its snow-capped peak 20,310 above the near sea-level Alaska tundra, the most rapid ascent of any mountain on Earth. It was unaccountably named Mt. McKinley after the 25th president until President Obama’s Department of the Interior granted Alaska’s long-standing request that the mountain finally be renamed Denali, meaning “The High One” or “The Great One” in the language of Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascan people who have inhabited these lands for thousands of years.

But now, as part of Trump’s campaign to reverse everything of the nation’s first black president, Trump wants the mountain restored to the McKinley name. In a speech before the arch-conservative group Turning Point USA in Phoenix, Trump obscurely said:

“They took his name off Mount McKinley, right? That’s what they do to people. That’s one of the reasons that we’re going to bring back the name of Mount McKinley, because I think he deserves it. . . That was not very gracious to somebody that did a good job.”

Alaskans are furious. Denali is the state’s official name for the mountain, ignoring the McKinley label. The mountain is located in Denali National Park and Preserve. Denali is a commonly used name elsewhere in Alaska, for an interior borough, schools, a highway. As for McKinley, he was from Ohio. He never set foot in Alaska.

MAGAFEST DESTINY: It was laughed at when proposed late in his presidency, but it has returned, and this time he means it. Mr. Trump again wants Greenland, calling it “an absolute necessity”, never mind that Denmark and Greenland have a long history dating back to the 10th century when Norse explorers settled there.

Additionally, he is irate that Jimmy Carter signed away control of the Panama Canal, which he says is now charging U.S. ships exorbitant rates to transit. He is irate, also, that the American flag is at half-mast for Carter, probably ignorant that control of the canal would have reverted to Panama a quarter century ago on the last day of 1999 under the Panama Canal Treaty.

As if that is not imperialism enough, Trump has begun calling Canada the 51st state, referring to President Justin Trudeau as its “governor”. Is it that he wants to show Vladimir Putin that he, too, can take away other countries’ land?

Fact is, Greenland would be valuable for national security reasons, a strategic choke point against Russia’s increasing activity across the top of the world now that ice melt has made navigation possible. It also has the rare earth minerals needed for this century’s technology that China, the world’s biggest source, is keeping for itself in retaliation against Biden’s export ban of semiconductor chips and technology that China is using to build its military against us.

Trump is also worried that the Panama Canal could fall into the “wrong hands”, taking note that a Hong Kong firm controls two ports near the canal. “We will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States”, he said to a crowd in Phoenix.

SOONER SUMMER SUNSETS: It is unclear what moved Donald Trump to deliver at this moment an edict on Truth Social that,

”The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”

The costs were not enumerated, but neither was there any knowledge of how planet Earth tilts and curves. Down where he is, there are 10 ½ hours of daylight even on the shortest day of the northern hemisphere — the Winter Solstice, December 21. Mr. Trump doesn’t need the extra light for his golf afternoons. But he would take away the northern latitudes’ light in late afternoons from March to November.

VISA VITRIOL: A feud erupted at year-end when Trump hired Sriram Krishnan as senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence, a venture capitalist who has argued that there should be no green card and H-1B visa limits. A limited number of H-1Bs are handed out each year to foreigners with special skills needed by U.S. tech companies.

Trump allies objected. Wasn’t the president-to-be elected to deport immigrants who are taking jobs that should belong to Americans? Right-wing extremist and Trump Influencer Laura Loomer called Krishnan’s appointment “deeply disturbing”.

Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are users of H-1B talent. Musk tweeted about those objecting to H-1B visas, "Those contemptible fools must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem", and later explained “contemptible fools” to mean "those in the Republican Party who are hateful unrepentant racists". H-1Bs are “the top 0.1% of engineering talent”, is Musk’s point. It's like the NBA recruiting foreign players to “help your whole team (which is mostly Americans!) win the NBA”.

Ramaswamy claimed on X that recruiting foreign workers is necessary because America “has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.” Musk agreed, saying that “the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.”

Trump will have to figure out how to work both sides of this schism: The less-educated working class who elected him who think they are qualified for such jobs, and the billionaire tech-bros who know they aren't. For now, it looks like he's with Musk: Trump said a few days ago:

"I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I've been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great program."

Of course Trump would be hiring common workers under the H-2B visa allotment, not H-1B; his properties hired 209 foreign workers in 2024 for jobs that Americans might have wanted, contrary to his pledge to supporters.

Will Bunch, columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer observes that Musk is "a man with 11 kids who spends Christmas Eve tweeting" on his soapbox X. Once holding liberal views, Musk has taken a decided turn to the right, tweeting one recent morning (at !:03 AM) support for Germany’s neo-Nazi AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) political party : “'Only the AfD can save Germany.” Next will he get behind Marine Le Pen in equally troubled France?

1846 TO 1848 REDUX: James Bosworth is the founder of Hxagon, a firm that does political risk analysis. He wrote in November at World Politics Review that,

"Trump appears to be moving toward a more aggressive use of the U.S. military at the border to combat migration, and his advisers are also building a case for cross-border military operations into Mexico. In other words, the signs are that the incoming Trump administration is preparing for an actual war against the drug cartels in 2025 that goes well beyond the 'War on Drugs' of the past."

Several members of Trump's team are reportedly on board with plans to launch military operations into Mexico. Political scientist Daniel Drezner, writing at Substack says that,

"When it comes to Mexico or the Panama Canal, however, it is hard to believe that Trump will back down. I sure don’t see Marco Rubio trying to talk him out of it. As I noted in the New York Times, 'Mr. Rubio’s own hawkishness will mesh well with the MAGA view on Latin America; expect to see lots of American force used in that region.'”

President-elect Donald Trump's expansionist cravings have left Russian propagandists "delighted", according to a new report from The Daily Beast's Julia Davis.

She monitors and translates Russian state television news broadcasts. She says Kremlin insiders see Trump's bellicosity toward neighbors as an equivalence acceptance of Russia's war of conquest in neighboring Ukraine.

WHO KNEW?: In a mid-December press conference, the president-elect said,

"I've spoken to way over 100 people, where they called to congratulate not only the election but also the size of the election and the extent of the victory."

But what really wow’d him was,

"You wouldn't believe how many countries there are. There are a lot of countries.”

After four years a president and a president about-to-be, Mr. Trump was surprised there are a hundred countries, having no clue that there in fact 195. Former City University of New York professor and "This Week in Google" podcast host Jeff Jarvis was unforgiving: "The idiot you elected, America."

PAY TO PRAY: You can participate in the inaugural festivities, but each has a price tag befitting its "benefits". If you give $100,000 or raise $200,000 you attend church with the president-elect at the "One America, One Light Sunday Service" on January 19th.

CRIME FICTION: After the horrific slaughter in New Orleans, Trump tweeted,

"When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true. The crime level in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before."

Crime, especially murder, has been dropping sharply for years in a row. The New Orleans suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was a Texan born in the United States and served in the U.S. Army.

DOES LIKE THIS IN THE CONSTITUTION: As one after another corporate billionaire came to present their one-million dollar inaugural offerings at dinner with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, seeming permanent resident Elon Musk invited himself to join them. And he had inserted himself into the funding deliberations in the House, telling Speaker Mike Johnson to scuttle an1,800-page bill and substitute a continuing resolution with just a few pages. The left-wing media took to calling him the “co-president” and then “President Musk”.

"But no, he's not going to be president that I can tell you", Trump assured us. "And I'm safe. You know why? He can't be. He wasn’t born in this country."

Obama appointee Eric Columbus had fun with that: "The last guy Trump claimed wasn’t born in this country was president for eight years."