Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: Lori Mosura goes to the grocery store on a bicycle because she can’t afford to fix her Ford F-150 truck. The single mother and her 17-year-old son live in an apartment that is so small she sleeps in the dining room. They receive $1,200 each month in food stamps and Social Security benefits but still come up short. Mosura said she often must decide whether to buy milk or toilet paper. It was all that penny-pinching…

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BBC News reports: Finnish police are investigating whether a Russian ship was involved in the sabotage of an electricity cable running between Finland and Estonia. The authorities said on Thursday that they believe the anchor of the Eagle S, a tanker registered with the Cook Islands, may have damaged the Estlink 2 cable, which became disconnected on Wednesday. The vessel is thought to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet”, which is made up of ships that carry embargoed Russian oil…

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The Washington Post reports: Revelations that Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) has been residing at an independent living facility for seniors and is experiencing dementia symptoms while missing months of votes have renewed a national discussion about Washington’s aging leaders. Granger, 81, left her post as chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee in March after announcing last year that she would retire at the end of this congressional term. She has been “having some dementia issues late in the year,”…

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Amanda Marcotte writes: The more Donald Trump denies he’s being controlled by billionaire Elon Musk, who purchased the president-elect with over $250 million in campaign spending this year, the less anyone believes him. Last week’s spending battle was complex in the details, but not in the main takeaway: The Tesla CEO is leading the aging and tired Trump by the nose. Trump’s sole ask of congressional Republicans going into budget negotiations was to end the debt ceiling, at least for a couple of years, to spare…

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Sharon McGowan writes: Nearly every exit poll conducted on Election Day found that, more than any other issues, voters’ concerns about the economy helped to return Donald Trump to the White House and put Republicans back in charge of both houses of Congress. Americans who felt the sting of inflation and who had trouble making ends meet, as companies steadily increased prices for essential goods like groceries and clothing, voted in the hopes that a new administration and new Congress would bring relief for their families….

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  After the Republican-led Congress passes a government spending bill but rejects a last-minute demand for a debt limit suspension from President-elect Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, we look at the richest man in the world’s growing influence, with The American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner. “At the end of the day, Musk got exactly what he wanted,” says Kuttner, referring to Musk’s influence in the removal of an anti-China trade provision in the bill. “It’s a classic…

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Axios reports: President-elect Trump has big plans to make America greater, in terms of square mileage. Why it matters: Trump has been in a strikingly imperial mood since his election victory. He has floated acquiring Greenland, reclaiming the Panama Canal, annexing Canada, and potentially invading Mexico — to the intense consternation of their leaders. In each case, Trump is blending trolling, negotiation and intimidation. He pitched statehood for Canada at least in part to needle “Governor” Justin Trudeau. But he has doubled down in the last 48 hours (including…

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BBC News reports: The Danish government has announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland, hours after US President-elect Donald Trump repeated his desire to purchase the Arctic territory. Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package was a “double digit billion amount” in krone, or at least $1.5bn (£1.2bn). He described the timing of the announcement as an “irony of fate”. On Monday Trump said ownership and control of the huge island was an “absolute necessity” for…

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  Timothy Snyder writes: For a new world we need new words. Facing the coming Musk-Trump regime, we will have to be creative. It will not be enough just to rely on the standard terms that come to easily to our lips and pens (“administration,” “presidency”, and the like). That normalizes the abnormal. And to repeat unreflectively the words that Musk and Trump and other mumpers use is to take part in the transformation that they bring. Opposition requires clarity…

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