A Republican Trifecta?

Happy Friday! It somehow feels appropriate to end this week with the news that a bunch of monkeys escaped from an Alpha Genesis research facility in South Carolina. Never fear, though, because “Alpha Genesis currently have eyes on the primates and are working to entice them with food,” according to police. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he had named campaign manager Susie Wiles to serve as his chief of staff, a powerful White House role that saw significant turnover during Trump’s previous term. She will be the first woman to hold the role. “Susie Wiles just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history, and was an integral part of both my 2016 and 2020 successful campaigns,” Trump said. “Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected. Susie will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again.” 
• President Joe Biden addressed the nation on Thursday for the first time since Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat, urging Americans to accept the results of the election and arguing that Trump’s victory should allow the country to “lay to rest the question about the integrity of the American electoral system,” adding, “it is honest, it is fair, and it is transparent.” He also has reportedly invited President-elect Donald Trump to the White House for a meeting. 
• The Associated Press on Thursday projected that Dave McCormick would beat Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey, flipping a key Senate seat for Republicans, whose control of the Senate is expanding with 53 seats now in GOP hands.  
• San Francisco Mayor London Breed conceded the mayoral race to Democratic newcomer Daniel Lurie on Thursday. Lurie, the heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, challenged Breed, who led the city through the pandemic and oversaw the proliferation of drug and homelessness crises in the city. 
• The Federal Reserve on Thursday cut interest rates by a quarter of a point, its second rate cut this year. In a statement, Fed officials noted that inflation “has made progress toward the Committee’s 2 percent objective but remains somewhat elevated,” justifying the more cautious cut after the 50-basis-point cut in September. Fed Chair Jerome Powell also said Thursday that he would not resign if President-elect Trump asked him to step down, adding that he doesn’t believe it’s “permitted under the law” for a president to fire the Fed chair.  
• Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, announced on Thursday that he has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Connolly, who has served in Congress since 2009, represents Virginia’s 11th District, which includes parts of Northern Virginia and the suburbs of Washington, D.C. “​​It was a surprise because, except for some intermittent abdominal aches and pains, I had no symptoms,” Connolly tweeted. “I’m going to undergo chemotherapy and immunotherapy right away. Cancer can be tough. But so am I.”
• The Israeli government said early Friday morning that Israeli soccer fans had been targeted in a wave of violent attacks in Amsterdam, with a number of Israelis injured and at least two missing. Supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv “were ambushed and attacked in Amsterdam” as they left the stadium, including by assailants who reportedly yelled “Free Palestine.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Dutch authorities to hold the attackers accountable and said he was dispatching “two rescue planes” to retrieve Israeli citizens. Amsterdam police said Friday that at least 62 people had been arrested in connection to the antisemitic rampage.    
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered remarks to the European Political Community Summit in Budapest, Hungary, on Thursday, signaling his opposition to concessions to Russia after the election of former President Trump, who has vowed to end the war in Ukraine on the first day of his presidency. “Since the July summit of the European Political Community in Great Britain, there has been much talk about giving in to Putin, retreating, and making some ‘concessions,’” he said. “This is unacceptable for Ukraine and suicide for all of Europe.” Also on Thursday, Russia struck the southeast Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia using guided aerial bombs, killing at least nine people, wounding dozens, and damaging apartments, houses, and a hospital. 
• German authorities on Thursday arrested a U.S. citizen accused of offering intelligence about the American military to China, according to German federal prosecutors. The man, identified only as Martin D. due to German privacy laws, apparently recently worked for the U.S. military and “contacted Chinese government agencies and offered to provide them with sensitive U.S. military information for forwarding to a Chinese intelligence service.” The arrest comes after multiple arrests in recent months of individuals accused of spying in Germany for the Chinese government. 
• Hurricane Rafael struck southwest Cuba on Wednesday as a Category 3 storm, bringing high winds and storm surges that caused the nation’s power grid to collapse. The country has recently struggled with failures in its energy infrastructure. Residents of the capital city of Havana are being urged to shelter in place, with flights, schools, and public transportation suspended. The path of the storm, which has since weakened, is unclear, with possible effects felt in the U.S. or Mexico in the coming days.  
• The Mountain Fire in Southern California spread to over 20,000 acres on Thursday, fueled by high winds in Ventura County. Some 10,000 Californians are under evacuation orders, with dozens of homes already destroyed and 3,500 threatened, according to fire officials. Hundreds of firefighters are struggling to contain the blaze, which was at 5 percent containment Thursday evening. 
• Germany’s three-party coalition government collapsed on Wednesday following Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s decision to fire Finance Minister Christian Lindner over disagreements regarding the country’s 2025 budget. Lindner’s departure meant the exit of the Free Democrats from Scholz’s Social Democrat-led coalition. Scholz has said he will hold a confidence vote in the Bundestag in January, though it is likely to fail, laying the groundwork for parliamentary elections in early spring. 
• According to a Wednesday statement by DePaul University President Robert L. Manuel, two Jewish students who were “visibly showing their support for Israel” were attacked by masked assailants on Wednesday afternoon. Chicago police said that one of the two men was struck in the face and body, and the other was pushed to the ground before the attackers ran away. The incident is being investigated as simple battery. 
• The Canadian government on Thursday ordered the social media company TikTok to close its offices in the country. Canadian officials said they had determined that the intelligence risks posed by ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns Tiktok, were too high. The order comes after the release of a report last week by Canadian intelligence that claimed that Chinese actors had “compromised” Canadian government networks. 

The ‘Red Wave’ Finally Materializes

Now that President-elect Donald Trump is headed back to the White House, speculation is swirling about who’ll land the top jobs in his Cabinet. The 53-seat—potentially even more—GOP Senate majority should give Trump his pick when it comes to Senate-confirmed posts. 

“I think the Senate is going to give great deference to a president that just won a stunning — what I think is an Electoral College landslide when all is said and done,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said when asked by CNN Wednesday whether the Senate would confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to a Cabinet position. Rubio himself is one of the people reportedly being discussed for secretary of state. (Too bad the feeling apparently isn’t mutual for Kennedy.)

Republicans grew their Senate majority Thursday and are increasingly favored to retain control of the House, where the number of seats the GOP has flipped continues to tick up. As the likelihood of a Republican trifecta come January increases, attention is now turning to the GOP Senate leadership race and the implications for the Trump administration’s personnel and legislative agenda. 

Control of the House is still uncertain as of the time of publication, with more than a dozen close races remaining undecided. Republicans have won 211 races to Democrats’ 199, and they’re currently leading in enough races—mostly in Arizona and California—to reach the 218 seats needed to keep the majority. But they do need to hold onto their leads in at least eight races. We may not know the results in some of those districts for days, since California allows mail-in ballots received up to a week after Election Day to be counted. 

Each party picked up several seats on Wednesday. Pennsylvania Republicans Rob Bresnahan Jr. and Ryan Mackenzie unseated both of the Democratic incumbents in their races, and GOP incumbent Rep. Scott Perry secured his reelection in the commonwealth’s 10th congressional district. Republican Jeffrey Hurd kept Rep. Lauren Boebert’s current Colorado seat in the R column after Boebert ran for former Rep. Ken Buck’s vacant seat this year following a near loss to a Democratic challenger in 2022. Rep. Young Kim, a California Republican, also won reelection Thursday. 

Democrat Lauren Gillen flipped GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito’s New York seat Thursday, making for a total of three Democratic pickups in the Empire State. D’Esposito’s campaign was rocked by scandal in September when a story broke alleging he hired both his fiancée’s daughter and his mistress to work in his district office. Three Democratic incumbents in Nevada House races defeated their Republican challengers on Thursday, as did incumbents in North Carolina, Washington, and Oregon. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries maintained his belief in the potential for a Democratic majority. “The path to take back the majority now runs through too close to call pick-up opportunities in Arizona, Oregon and Iowa—along with several Democratic-leaning districts in Southern California and the Central Valley,” he said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. “We must count every vote.”  

But forecasters are giving Republicans the edge. Rep. Richard Hudson—a North Carolina Republican and chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee—said yesterday that he’s “confident we will hold the majority.” 

The message echoed House Speaker Mike Johnson’s confidence in a Wednesday letter to his conference predicting the GOP could even grow their majority and asking his colleagues to support his continued speakership in the next Congress. “With unified Republican government, if we meet this historic moment together, the next two years can result in the most consequential Congress of the modern era,” Johnson noted. In recent weeks, the speaker has outlined a slew of legislative goals, including extending and expanding the tax cuts from Trump’s first term, overhauling the Affordable Care Act, comprehensive immigration reform and border security enforcement, and rolling back some of the Biden administration’s regulations and tax credits including portions of the Inflation Reduction Act. 

But if the 118th Congress taught us anything, it’s that the productivity of a slim House majority can be tanked by a handful of defectors, and there were plenty of opportunities to learn that lesson. The hard-right rebels who ousted former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and made failure to pass simple procedural votes—much less continuing resolutions to fund the federal government—the norm during Johnson’s tenure may still have an ax to grind with the current speaker. 

Assuming Republicans keep the House, the dynamic will no doubt be different when they have a GOP Senate to play ball with, perhaps opening up the possibility of a more aggressive agenda, including pursuing what the president-elect called “retribution” during his campaign. But the same voices that vigorously opposed the legislative compromises required to do things like fund the government could be just as obstinate, if not more so, when it comes to compromises with more moderate Republicans. January’s speakership vote will be an early sign of how much productive unity the conference can maintain in an era when Republicans have been more than willing to train their fire on each other.

Republicans have already secured control in the upper chamber, but the Senate’s relationship with a Trump White House could hinge on the size of their majority. The Senate races in Nevada and Arizona remain too close to call, according to the Associated Press, with the Democratic candidates currently leading the vote tallies. But the GOP secured 53 seats after the AP called the narrow Pennsylvania race for Republican challenger Dave McCormick on Thursday afternoon, marking the fourth flipped seat. The incumbent in the race, Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, did not concede the race yesterday, arguing that every eligible vote must be counted first.  

As our own Chris Stirewalt and Sarah Isgur pointed out on our election night Dispatch Live, the difference between a 52-seat majority and a 54-seat GOP majority could be determinative for the success of any MAGA nominees to Senate-confirmed posts. Moderate Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins would likely blanch at, say, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Cabinet nomination. 

Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana both also have track records of breaking with Trump in the past: Murkowski, Collins, and Cassidy are the only remaining Republican senators still in office of the seven who voted to convict Trump in his January 6 impeachment trial. But if Republicans pick up one or both of the two outstanding Senate races, the president-elect will likely have more leeway in selecting the leaders of his administration.   

Next week, the Senate will pick a leader of their own to replace the outgoing Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The top two contenders for the job are Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. Both are McConnell acolytes who have served as the leader’s No. 2. (Thune became the current Republican whip in 2019 when Cornyn hit the term limit for the conference position.) Sen. Rick Scott of Florida is also vying for the job and has the support of some prominent MAGA voices, but anonymous reporting from Axios suggests Trump doesn’t consider Scott’s bid to be serious. 

The president-elect has not weighed in publicly on the leadership race, and at least Thune would like to keep it that way. “I think it’s in his best interest to stay out of that,” Thune said Thursday morning during a CNBC appearance. “These Senate secret ballot elections are best left to senators. And he’s got to work with all of us when it’s all said and done.”  

Thune also said he feels good about his chances, but “it’s never over till it’s over.” 

Cornyn reiterated his pitch for the job on Monday. “I want to make America great again by making the Senate work again,” he told Fox News. “As I told President Trump, I’m interested in getting the band back together.”    

The Senate will vote to select their new leader via secret ballot on Wednesday. 

Worth Your Time

• The Economist explored the potential results of one of the wackier storylines of this election: Tesla CEO and X-owner Elon Musk’s full-throated embrace of Donald Trump and likely role in his incoming administration. “Mr Musk stands to benefit from Trumpian favour in a number of ways,” they write. “The president-elect is no fan of EVs; his allies have talked of rolling back or eliminating emission standards for vehicles and Mr Trump may cut tax credits to EV buyers. Rather than hurting Tesla, though, such measures would give it an advantage over legacy carmarkers, such as General Motors and Ford, whose EVs are not yet profitable.” Musk’s other companies could also benefit: “Mr Musk’s goal is to send people to Mars. That would be easier without regulatory tussles with the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees commercial space flight. It is hard to imagine Mr Trump not being supportive.”
• Walter Russell Mead, writing last week in Tablet, argued the underlying problem of American life as one of leadership, not discrete issues. “America’s leadership problem is only likely to become more acute as the international situation grows more challenging,” he wrote. “In stable times, the need for effective leadership can recede into the background. But in crisis, institutions and societies with weak leaders often perish. Great Britain could survive the rule of sleek nonentities like Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain in the 1930s, but after Hitler’s blitzkrieg broke the allied lines in Europe, only Winston Churchill would do. Franklin Pierce and John Tyler might have been good-enough presidents for peaceful times, but it took an Abraham Lincoln to lead the country through the Civil War. Average leadership may work fine in average times. But extraordinary times demand more.”

Presented Without Comment

New York Post: Harris Campaign Senior Adviser Deletes X Account After Dinging Biden for ‘Deep Hole’ He Left Dems In   

In the Zeitgeist

If you’ve watched College GameDay recently, you may have noticed an additional crew member keeping prolific commentator Kirk Herbstreit company: his golden retriever, Ben. Every school he visited gave him the VIP treatment, with special credentials and usually some Ben-themed treats for man and dog. Ben passed away on Thursday, but he’ll be remembered as a Very Good Boy. 

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: The Dispatch Politics crew covered Harris’ supporters’ reaction to her defeat, Nick weighed the argument (🔒) that Biden was ultimately to blame for Harris’ loss, and Will laid out what the new Congress needs to know about tech policy.
• On the podcasts: Sarah and David explored the future of the cases against Donald Trump on Advisory Opinions. 
• On the site: Kevin pointed out that Democrats have an arithmetic problem after giving up on the working class, John examines exit polls that suggest abortion didn’t much factor in for voters on Tuesday, and Greg Lukianoff argues that universities can fix their free speech problem by recruiting scholars instead of activists. 

Let Us Know

What do you expect from a Republican trifecta, assuming it materializes?