Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: While Donald Trump’s opponents denounce the president-elect’s planned “mass deportations” and border crackdown, this state’s Republican leaders are vying to make Texas the launching pad. Gov. Greg Abbott and other top officials have spent the past four years positioning themselves as the Biden administration’s greatest antagonists — and heirs to the border enforcement campaign begun by the last Trump administration. Despite having no constitutional authority on immigration enforcement, they have used tools of the state to…

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The New York Times reports: During the campaign, President-elect Donald J. Trump swore he had “nothing to do with” a right-wing policy blueprint known as Project 2025 that would overhaul the federal government, even though many of those involved in developing the plans were his allies. Mr. Trump even described many of the policy goals as “absolutely ridiculous.” And during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he said he was “not going to read it.” Now, as he plans…

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The Washington Post reports: Top cryptocurrency executives and investors are pushing President-elect Donald Trump to create a national stockpile of bitcoin, a move that could more closely tie the little-regulated, volatile industry to the future of the country’s finances. Trump has publicly expressed broad interest in the idea, though some crypto advocates have urged him to take an even more aggressive step: They want him to acquire tokens worth billions of dollars, then hold them for decades in the hopes…

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Politico reports: The ruble tumbled on Wednesday to its lowest level in over two years, as a mix of low oil prices, new sanctions against Russian businesses and burgeoning government spending on its war effort put ever-greater strain on the Russian economy. The central bank reacted by suspending currency purchases for the rest of this year. That will restrict the supply of rubles and should support the exchange rate accordingly. It took a similar step last year, after the mutiny…

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The Washington Post reports: Elon Musk on Wednesday called for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the nation’s most powerful watchdog agencies, signaling it could be scrapped as part of a planned review of government spending ordered by President-elect Donald Trump. “Delete CFPB,” Musk said in an early-morning post on X, the social media site he owns, categorizing the bureau as an example of “too many duplicative regulatory agencies” in Washington. Formed in the wake of…

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